There are people who have an appetite for grief;
pleasure is not strong enough and they crave pain. They have mithridatic
stomachs which must be fed on poisoned bread, natures so doomed that no
prosperity can sooth their ragged and dishevelled desolation.—Ralph Waldo
Emerson
A cynic is a person searching for an honest man, with a stolen lantern.—Edgar
A. Shoaff
It is not a fragrant world.—Raymond Chandler
I don't answer the phone. I get the feeling whenever I do that there will
be someone on the other end.—Fred Couples
I love mankind - it's people I can't stand.—Charles M. Schulz, Go Fly a Kite,
Charlie Brown
[I] put the question directly to myself: "Suppose that all your
objects in life were realized; that all the changes in institutions and opinions
which you are looking forward to, could be completely effected at this very
instant: would this be a great joy and happiness to you?" And
an irrepressible self-consciousness distinctly answered, "No!"—John
Stuart Mill, Autobiography, 1909
When we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of
fools.—William Shakespeare, King Lear
Oh for a lodge in some vast wilderness,
Some boundless contiguity of shade,
Where rumour of oppression and deceit,
Of unsuccessful or successful war,
Might never reach me more.—William Cowper
Sarcasm is the sour cream of wit.—Author Unknown
There is no such thing as inner peace. There is only nervousness and
death.—Fran Lebowitz
Life is one long process of getting tired.—Samuel Butler
A cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.—Oscar Wilde,
Lady Windermere's Fan, 1893
Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's
face but their own.—Jonathan Swift, The Battle of the Books, 1704
When you face the sun, all the shadows fall behind
you.—Helen Keller
Of the demonstrably wise there are but two: those who commit suicide, and
those who keep their reasoning faculties atrophied by drink.—Mark Twain,
Note-Book, 1935
Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? Is it
because we are not the person involved?—Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson, 1894
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have
not got it.—George Bernard Shaw
Nothing is more miserable than man,
Of all upon the earth that breathes and creeps.—Homer, Iliad
Oh that this too too solid flesh would melt, thaw and resolve itself into a
dew.—William Shakespeare, Hamlet
I hate to be near the sea, and to hear it raging and roaring like a wild beast
in its den. It puts me in mind of the everlasting efforts of the human
mind, struggling to be free and ending just where it began.—William Hazlitt
The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably
because they are generally the same people.—G.K. Chesterton
I've always been interested in people, but I've never liked them.—W. Somerset
Maugham
Not to be born at all would be the best thing for man, never to behold the sun's
scorching rays; but if one is born, then one is to press as quickly as possible
to the portals of Hades, and rest there under the earth.—Thiognis
We can destroy ourselves by cynicism and disillusion, just as effectively as by
bombs.—Kenneth Clark
Men hate to be misunderstood, and to be understood makes them furious.—Edgar
Saltus
Things are not as bad as they seem. They are worse.—Bill Press
Forgive,
O Lord, my little jokes on Thee / And I'll forgive Thy great big one on
me.—Robert Frost
I advise you to go on living solely to enrage those
who are paying your annuities. It is the only pleasure I have
left.—Voltaire
He had the uneasy manner of a man who is not among his own kind, and who has not
seen enough of the world to feel that all people are in some sense his own
kind.—Willa Cather
We semaphore from ship to ship, but they're sinking, too.—Mignon McLaughlin,
The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966
Nothing begins, and nothing ends, that is not paid with moan; for we are born in
other's pain, and perish in our own.—Francis Thompson
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.—Author Unknown
Sometimes you wake up in the morning and wish your parents had never met.—Bill
Fitch
We are adhering to life now with our last muscle - the heart.—Djuna Barnes
The dignity of man lies in his ability to face reality in all its
meaninglessness.—Martin Esslin
I see it all perfectly: there are two possibilities, one can either do
this or do that. My honest opinion and friendly advice is this: do it or
do not do it, you will regret both.—Kierkegaard
Comfort, or revelation: God owes us one of these, but surely not
both.—Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960
Janie's a pretty typical teenager - angry, insecure, confused. I wish I
could tell her that's all going to pass, but I don't want to lie to her.—Alan
Ball, American Beauty, 1999
I like long walks, especially when they're taken by people who annoy me.—Fred
Allen
You're obliged to pretend respect for people and institutions you think absurd.
You live attached in a cowardly fashion to moral and social conventions you
despise, condemn, and know lack all foundation. It is that permanent
contradiction between your ideas and desires and all the dead formalities and
vain pretenses of your civilization which makes you sad, troubled and
unbalanced. In that intolerable conflict you lose all joy of life and all
feeling of personality, because at every moment they suppress and restrain and
check the free play of your powers. That's the poisoned and mortal wound
of the civilized world.—Octave Mirbeau, Torture Garden, "The
Mission," Chapter 8
Youth is a blunder; Manhood a struggle; Old Age a regret.—Benjamin Disraeli,
Coningsby
It must be admitted that there are some parts of the soul which we must entirely
paralyze before we can live happily in this world.—Sébastien-Roch Nicolas de
Chamfort
He seems
To have seen better days, as who has not
Who has seen yesterday?—George Gordon, Lord Byron, Werner
Idealism is what precedes experience; cynicism is what follows.—David T. Wolf
That I could clamber to the frozen moon
And draw the ladder after me.—Author Unknown
Many of us go through life feeling as an actor might feel who does not like his
part, and does not believe in the play.—Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's
Notebook, 1960
The enthusiastic, to those who are not, are always something of a trial.—Alban
Goodier
All our lives we are putting pennies - our most golden pennies - into
penny-in-the-slot machines that are almost always empty.—Logan Pearsall Smith
I never knew whether to pity or congratulate a man on coming to his
senses.—William Makepeace Thackeray
Man is the cruelest animal. At tragedies, bullfights, and crucifixions he
has so far felt best on earth; and when he invented hell for himself, behold,
that was his very heaven.—Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1892
Nine-tenths of the people were created so you would want to be with the other
tenth.—Horace Walpole
Medvedénko: "Why do you always wear black?"
Masha: "I am in mourning for my life."—Anton Chekhov, The
Seagull
There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing
nothing to believing nothing.—Maya Angelou, PBS, 28 March 1988
A satirist is a man who discovers unpleasant things about himself and then says
them about other people.—Peter McArthur
How I wish that somewhere there existed an island for those who are wise and of
good will.—Albert Einstein
Nowadays most men lead lives of noisy desperation.—James Thurber, Further
Fables for Our Time, 1956
This world is gradually becoming a place
Where I do not care to be any more.—John Berryman
The better I get to know men, the more I find myself loving dogs.—Charles de
Gaulle
You have come into a hard world. I know of only one easy place in it, and
that is the grave.—Henry Ward Beecher
It's just life... wake up and smell the thorns.—From the movie Meet Joe Black
I am too tired to fight, but too stubborn to conform to the ways of this fucked
up world. I give up.—Author Unknown, supposed suicide note (Thank you,
M6stewart.)
All my joys to this are folly,
Naught so sweet as melancholy.—Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, 1651
I had a lover's quarrel with the world.—Robert Frost, The Lesson for Today,
1942
Its almost impossible to remember how tragic a place
the world is when one is playing golf.—Robert Lynd
In October 1929 it was discovered that the 'Salem Trade School' which has
fielded a football team for six years and collected receipts for its games, does
not exist; the team is merely a group of players who share profits and are
always in demand because they invariably lose.—from The Great American Sports
Book
If to look truth in the face and not resent it when
it's unpalatable, and take human nature as you find it . . . is to be cynical,
then I suppose I'm a cynic.—Somerset Maugham
Nature loves a burst of energy .—Boe Lightman
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I..... I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.—Robert Frost: The Road Not Taken
Half the lies they tell about me aren't true.—Yogi
Berra
To know all is not to forgive all. It is to despise
everybody .—Quentin Crisp
The wise through excess of wisdom is made a fool.—Ralph Waldo Emerson
The question of whether a computer can think is
no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.—E.W.
Dijkstra
One of the penalties for refusing to
participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your
inferiors.—Plato
At the root of the present troubles of the world we
must find a pervasive materialism, a devastating desire for material goods. We
know now that mechanical and technical progress is not identical with
civilization. We must conclude in fact, that our faith that technology will take
the place of justice has been naive. We look upon our neighbor either as
customer or competitor or an instrument of production.
We must reconstruct education, directing it
to virtue and intelligence, To formulate, to clarify, to animate the ideals
which should animate mankind - this is the incredibly heavy burden which rests,
even in total war, upon the universities. If they cannot carry it, nobody else
will; for nobody else can. If it cannot be carried, civilization cannot be
saved. The task is stupendous.—Robert Maynard Hutchins: President University
of Chicago 1943: Education for Freedom
These people, like the overindulgent guardians who
spend the child's inheritance catering to adolescent whims and desires, are now
naively amazed at what their overindulgence has produced.—Barry Goldwater:
Responding to presidential candidate John Kennedy's lamentation that Americans
have become soft 1960
Children have never been
very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate
them.—James Baldwin
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
A man who marries a bad wife will be miserable, a man
who marries a good wife will get a mix of good and bad, and a man who is
unmarried will be lonely, uncared-for, and without direct heirs.—Hesiod
Inferior intellects generally succeeded best. For,
aware of their own deficiencies, and fearing the capacity of their opponents,
for whom they were no match in powers of speech, and whose subtle wits were
likely to anticipate them in contriving evil, they struck boldly and at once.
But the cleverer sort, presuming in their arrogance that they would be aware in
time, and disdaining to act when the could think, were taken off their guard and
easily destroyed.—Thucydides: History of the Peloponnesian War
The tendency of liberals is to create bodies of men
and women-of all classes-detached from tradition, alienated from religion, and
susceptible to mass suggestion-mob rule. And a mob will be no less a mob if it
is well fed, well clothed, well housed, and well disciplined.—T.S. Eliot
...Two and two are four . Sometimes, Winston.
Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of
them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane .—George
Orwell: 1984
The finest works of art are precious, among
other reasons, because they make it possible for us to know, if only imperfectly
and for a little while, what it actually feels like to think subtly an feel
nobly.—Aldous Huxley
Mathematics, rightly viewed, posses not only
truth, but supreme beauty a beauty cold and austere, like that of
sculpture.—Bertrand Russell
Infancy: n. The period of our lives when,
according to Wordsworth, 'Heaven lies about us.' The world begins lying about us
pretty soon afterward.—Ambrose Bierce
[The New World Order] cannot happen without
U.S. participation, as we are the most significant single component. Yes, there
will be a New World Order, and it will force the United States to change it's
perceptions.—Henry Kissinger: 1994
The universe is not indifferent to
intelligence, it is actively hostile to it.--Anonymous
The easiest person to deceive is
yourself.—Anonymous
The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted
time.—Bertrand Russell
A man that should call everything by its right name, would hardly pass the
streets without being knocked down as a common enemy.—Lord Halifax
The power of accurate observation is commonly
called cynicism by those who have not got it.—George Bernard Shaw
O shrieve me, shrieve me, holy man! The Hermit
crossed his brow. "Say quick" quoth he,"I bid thee say--"
What manner of man art thou?—Samuel Coleridge: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Fine words and insinuating appearance are seldom
associated with true virtue.--Confucius
Enlightened people seldom or never possess a
sense of responsibility.—George Orwell
The bigger the information media, the less
courage and freedom they allow. Bigness means weakness.—Eric Sevareid
My music doesn't come from the heart, it comes from
the groin.—Rock Star Bryan Adams
You have to be deviant if you're going to do
anything new.—David Lee
The genius of the American system is that we
have created extraordinary results from plain old ordinary people.—Phil Gramm
Sex is the Tabasco sauce which an adolescent national
palate sprinkles on every course in the menu.—Mary Day Winn
The most dangerous man, to any government, is
the man who Is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the
prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost invariably he comes to the
conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and
intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And if he is not
romantic personally, he is apt to spread discontent among those who are.—H.L.
Mencken
America is a vast conspiracy to make you
happy.—John Updike
America is a large friendly dog in a small
room. Every time it wags its tail it knocks over a chair.—Arnold Toynbee
Fame is proof
that people are gullible.—Ralph Waldo Emerson
F. Scott Fitzgerald is the first of the last
generation.—Gertrude Stein
Sir, I say that justice is truth in
action.—Benjamin Disraeli
Jews don't go camping . Life is hard enough as it
is.—Carol Siskind
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
Woe to him inside a
nonconformist clique who does not conform with noconformity.—Eric Hoffer
Infinity and nothingness are two words which
are inspired by the same emotion.—Richard Anonymous
Happiness in
intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.—Ernest Hemingway
When men are
easy in their circumstances, they are naturally enemies to innovations.—Joseph
Addison
Nothing
overshadows truth so completely as authority.—Alberti
They that can give up essential liberty to
obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.—Benjamin
Franklin
Vision without action is a daydream. Action
with without vision is a nightmare.—Japanese Proverb
Truth is not determined by majority vote.—Doug Gwyn
There is nothing more agreeable in life than to
make peace with the establishment and nothing more corrupting,--Alan John
Percivale Taylor
The following
are titles of Country-Western Music songs:
You're
the Reason our Kids are so ugly.
I've been flushed from the bathroom of your heart.
I got in at 2 with a 10 and Woke Up at 10 with a 2
If you see me Gettin' smaller it's cause I'm Leavin'
you
I'll Marry You Tomorrow but Let's Honeymoon Tonite
He's been Drunk Since His
Wife's Gone Punk
Boredom is a vital problem for the moralist, since at least half the sins of
mankind are caused by the fear of it.—Bertrand Russell
If we think we regulate printing, thereby to rectify
manners, we must regulate all regulations and pastimes, all that is delightful
to man.—John Milton
We should be eternally vigilant against attempts to
check the expression of opinions that we loathe.—Oliver Wendel Holmes Jr.
You do ill if you praise, but worse if you
censure, what you do not understand.—Leonardo Da Vinci
It isn't the incompetent who destroy an
organization It is those who have achieved something and want to rest upon their
achievements who are forever clogging things up.—Charles Sorenson
If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner,
you have learned how to live.—Lin Yutang
It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become
a conservative without changing a single idea.—Robert Anton Wilson
The Constitution gives every
American the inalienable right to make a damn fool of himself.—John Ciardi
There is no nonsense so
gross that society will not, at some time, make a doctrine of it and defend it
with every weapon of communal stupidity.—Robertson Davies
Politics, n. strife of interests
masquerading as a contest of principles.—Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's
Dictionary
Like its politicians and its wars, society has the
teenagers it deserves.—J. B. Priestley
Trying to determine what is
going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by
watching the second hand of a clock.—Ben Hecht
The world is a tragedy to those
who feel, but a comedy to those who think.—Horace Walpole
Never attribute to malice what
can be adequately explained by stupidity.—Nick Diamos
You can discover what your enemy
fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.—Eric Hoffer
There is a theory which states that if ever anybody
discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly
disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There
is another theory which states that this has already happened.—Douglas Adams
When men are pure, laws are useless; when men
are corrupt, laws are broken.—Benjamin Disraeli
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger,
more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of
courage - to move in the opposite direction.—E. F. Schumacher
The only reason some people get lost in thought
is because it's unfamiliar territory.—Paul Fix
Democracy is the theory that the common people
know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.—H. L. Mencken
Man is an animal which, alone among the
animals, refuses to be satisfied by the fulfilment of animal
desires.—Alexander Graham Bell
Whoever is not a misanthrope at forty can never
have loved mankind.—Nicolas Chamfort
Somewhere between the Angels and the French
lies the rest of humanity.—Mark Twain
The thing I hate about an argument is that it
always interrupts a discussion.—G. K. Chesterton
When people are free to do as
they please, they usually imitate each other.—Eric Hoffer
Experience is the name everyone
gives to their mistakes.—Oscar Wilde
Doctors are men who prescribe
medicines of which they know little, to cure diesease of which they know less,
in human beings of whom they know nothing.—Voltaire
I don’t care to belong to a
club that accepts people like me as members.—Groucho Marx
I love children, especially when
they cry, for then someone takes them away.—Nancy Mitford
Everyone thinks of changing the
world, but no one thinks of changing himself.—Tolstoy
Why do grandparents and
grandchildren get along so well? They have the same enemy- the
mother.—Claudette Colbert
I love being married. It’s so
great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your
life. –Rita Rudner
A Classic is something that
everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.—Mark Twain
It has been said that we have
not had the three R’s in America, we had the six R’s: remedial readin’,
remedial ‘ritin’and remedial ‘rithmetic.—Robert M. Hutchins
Equal opportunity means that
everyone will have a fair chance at being incompetent.—Laurence J. Peter
If the world should blow itself
up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can’t be
done.—Peter Ustinov
Inanimate objects are classified
scientifically into three major categories: those that don’t work, those that
break down and those that get lost.—Russell Baker
If you talk to God, you are
praying; if God talks to you, you have schizophrenia.—Thomas Szasz
Always forgive your enemies:
nothing annoys them so much.—Oscar Wilde
We learn from experience that
men never learn anything from experience.—George Bernard Shaw
Education: the inculcation of
the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent.—John Maynard
Keynes
By the time the youngest
children have learned to keep the house tidy, the oldest grandchildren are on
hand to tear it apart.—Christopher Morley
If the headache would only
precede the intoxication, alcoholism would be a virtue.—Samuel Butler
Statistics are like a bikini:
what they reveal is suggestive but what they conceal is vital.--Anonymous
Living well is the best
revenge.--Anonymous
Virtue, among other definitions,
may thus be defined: an action against the will.--Anonymous
Faith is that quality which
enables us to believe what we know to be untrue.--Anonymous
Here lies a poor woman who
always was tired,
For she lived in a place where help wasn't hired.
Her last words on earth were, Dear friends I am going
Where washing ain't done nor sweeping nor sewing,
And everything there is exact to my wishing of dishes...
Don't mourn for me now, don't mourn for me never,
For I'm going to do nothing for ever and ever.—Anonymous
Life is a sexually transmitted
disease.--Anonymous
To err is human but to really
foul things up requires a computer.—Anonymous
There was a young lady named
Bright,
Who traveled much faster than light.
She started one day
In the relative way,
And returned on the previous night.—Anonymous
He's a born-again Christian. The
trouble is, he suffered brain damage during rebirth.—Anonymous
Beneath this smooth stone by the
bone of his bone
Sleeps Master John Gill;
By lies when alive this attorney did thrive,
And now that he's dead he lies still.--Anonymous
It has been said that there are
seven essential requisites for going to law:
a good cause,
a good lawyer,
good evidence,
good witnesses,
a good judge,
a good jury,
and good luck!—Anonymous
With the exception of lawyers,
there is no profession which considers itself above the law so widely as the
medical profession.—Samuel Hopkins Adams
The trouble with this country is
that there are too many politicians who believe, with a conviction based on
experience, that you can fool all of the people all of the time.—Franklin P.
Adams: Nods and Becks, 1944
Experience is a good teacher,
but she sends in terrific bills.—Minna Antrim: Naked Trugh and Veiled
Allusions, 1902
[A conversation between
Alexander the Great and a pirate he had seized]
When the king asked him what he meant by infesting the sea, the pirate defiantly
replied:
The same as you do when you infest the whole world;
but because I do it with a little ship I am called a robber,
and because you do it with a great fleet, you are an emperor.—St. Augustine:
Book Four of the City Of God
The most essential mental
quality for a free people, whose liberty is to be progressive, permanent and on
a large scale, is much stupidity.—Walter Bagehot
It is a good idea to 'shop
around' before you settle on a doctor. Ask about the condition of his Mercedes.
Ask about the competence of his mechanic. Don't be shy! After all, you're paying
for it.—Dave Berry
You made one mistake. You
married me. (Last words to his wife, Beatrice) –Brenda Behan
Take our politicians: they're a
bunch of yo-yos. The presidency is now a cross between a popularity contest and
a high school debate, with an encyclopedia of clichés as the first
prize.—Saul Bellow. 1980
Consistency requires you to be
as ignorant today as you were a year ago.—Bernard Berenson: Notebook, 1982
When a man speaks of the need
for realism one may be sure that this is always the prelude to some bloody
deed.—Sir Isaiah Berlin: quoted in The Times, 1981
All of us are mad. If it weren't
for the fact that every one of us is slightly abnormal, there wouldn't be any
point in giving each person a separate name.—Betti Ugo
Brain, n. An apparatus with
which we think that we think.—Ambrose Bierce
When the leaders speak of peace
The common folk know
That war is coming
When the leaders curse war
The mobilization order is already written out. Every day, to earn my daily bread
I go to the market where lies are bought
Hopefully
I take up my place among the sellers.—Betolt Brecht: Hollywood, in Collected
Poems, 1913-1956
It is well said that success has
many fathers but failure is an orphan.—Lord Brougham
A lawyer is a learned gentleman
who rescues your estate from your enemies and keeps it for himself.—Lord
Brougham
Christian ethics are seldom
found save in the philosophy of some unbeliever.—Heywood Broun
An expert is a man who tells you
a simple thing in a confused way in such a fashion as to make you think the
confusion is your own fault.—William B. Castle
Bunyan spent a year in prison,
Coleridge was a drug addict, Poe was an alcoholic, Marlowe was killed by a man
he was trying to stab, Pope took a large sum of money to keep a woman's name out
of a vicious satire and then wrote it so that she could be recognized anyway,
Chatterton killed himself, Somerset Maugham was so unhappy in his final thirty
years that he longed for death... do you still want to be a writer?—Bennett
Cerf
The only thing that stops God
sending a second Flood is that the first one was useless.—Nicolas Chamfort:
Characters and Anecdotes, 1771
The success of many books is due
to the affinity between the mediocrity of the author's ideas and those of the
public.—Nicolas Chamfort: quoted in A Cynic’s Breviary, by J.R. Solly, 1925
It is usually when men are at
their most religious that they behave with the least sense and the greatest
cruelty.—Ilka Chase
Democracy means government by
the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.—G.K.
Chesterton, Heretics, 1905
Conscience is what your mother
told you before you were six years old.—Dr. Brock Chisholm, quoted in
Ladies’ Home Journal, 1949
The First Law of Journalism: to
confirm existing prejudice, rather than contradict it.—Alexander Cockburn:
More Magazine, 1974
Nature is that lovely lady to
whom we owe polio, leprosy, smallpox, syphilis, tuberculosis, cancer.—Stanley
N. Cohen
Computer was something on TV from a science fiction
show.
A window was something you hated to clean.
And ram was the cousin of a goat.
MEG was the name of my girlfriend and GIG was your middle finger upright,
Now they all mean different things and that really Mega bytes.
An application was for employment,
A program was a TV show,
A cursor used profanity,
A keyboard was a piano.
Memory was something that you lost with age,
A CD was a bank account,
And if you had a 3 1/2 inch floppy,
You hoped nobody found out.
Compress was something you did to the garbage,
Not something you did to a file,
And if you unzipped anything in public you'd be in jail for a while.
Log on was adding wood to the fire,
Hard Drive was a long trip on the road,
A mouse pad was where a mouse lived,
And a backup happened to your commode.
Cut you did with a pocket knife,
Paste you did with glue,
A web was a spider's home,
And a virus was the flu.
I guess I'll stick to my pad and paper,
And the memory in my head,
I hear nobody's been killed in a computer crash,
But when it happens they wish they were dead.—Computer Age: Remember When. . .
The past is the only dead thing
that smells sweet.—Cyril Connally: Journal and Memoir, 1983
English Law: where there are two
alternatives: one intelligent, one stupid; one attractive, one vulgar; one
noble, one ape-like; one serious and sincere, one undignified and false; one
far-sighted, one short; Everybody will invariably choose the latter.
President and Mrs. Coolidge,
visiting a government farm, were taken around on separate tours.
At the chicken pens Mrs. Coolidge paused to inquire of the overseer whether the
rooster copulated more than once a day.
'Dozens of times,'
said the man.
'Tell that to the president,'
requested Mrs. Coolidge. The president came past the pens and was told about the
rooster.
'Same hen every time?'
he asked.
'Oh, no, a different one each time.'
Coolidge nodded.
'Tell that to Mrs. Coolidge,'
he said.—Calvin Coolidge: (This incident gave the president lasting fame he
could never have foreseen. From it arose the technical term 'the Coolidge
effect' to describe the rearousal of a male animal by a new female.)
Life was a funny thing that
occurred on the way to the grave.—Quentin Crisp
The idea of a Supreme Being who
creates a world in which one creature is designed to eat another in order to
subsist, and then pass a law saying, "Thou shalt not kill," is so
monstrously,immeasurably, bottomlessly absurd that I am at a loss to understand
how mankind has entertained or given it house room all this long.—Peter De
Vries
The first half of our lives is
ruined by our parents, and the second half by our children.—Clarence Darrow
Youth is a blunder, manhood a
struggle, old age a regret.—Benjamin Disraeli: Coningsby, 1844
The animals are not as stupid as
one thinks - they have neither doctors nor lawyers.—L. Docquier: Reflections
On The Art Of Life, 1902
War is delightful to those who
have had no experience of it.—Desiderius Erasmus
A myth is a religion in which
no-one any longer believes.—James K. Feibleman: Understanding Philosophy, 1973
Justice is the sanction of
established injustice.—Anatole France: Crainquebille, 1901
Forty is the old age of youth;
fifty is the youth of old age.—French Proverb
The brain is a wonderful organ.
It starts working the moment you get up in the morning, and does not stop until
you get into the office.—Robert Frost
I do not feel obliged to believe
that that same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has
intended us to forgo their use.—Galileo Galilei
Organized Christianity has
probably done more to retard the ideals that were its founders' than any other
agency in the world.—Richard Le Gallienne
There is nothing so absurd or
ridiculous that has not at some time been said by some philosopher.—Oliver
Goldsmith
We are the unwilling, led by the
unqualified, doing the unnecessary for the ungrateful.—Graffiti: Vietman,
1960s and 1970s
There is nothing more I should
do to it now, and therefore I am not likely to be more ready to go than at this
moment. (Last words)—Ulysses S. Grant
You may be sure that when a man
begins to call himself a realist he is preparing to do something that he is
secretly ashamed of doing.—Sydney J. Harris
When people are free to do as
they please, they usually imitate each other.—Eric Hoffer: The Passionate
State Of Mind, 1954
"I'm so worried,"
the nervous patient said as the nurse plumped up his pillows.
"Last week, I read about a man who was in the hospital because of heart
trouble and he died of malaria."
"Relax,"
the nurse said, smiling.
"This is a first-rate hospital. When we treat someone for heart trouble, he
dies of heart trouble."—Hospital
When Hutchins was dean of Yale
Law School, he had a brief conversation with William Howard Taft, then Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court.
'Well, Professor Hutchins, '
said Taft,
'I suppose you teach your students that the judges are all fools.'
'No, Mr. Chief Justice,'
replied Hutchins,
'we let them find that out for themselves.'—Robert Maynard Hutchins
The death of democracy is not
likely to be assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from
apathy, indifference and undernourishment.—Robert Maynard Hutchins
That men do not learn very much
from history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to
teach.—Aldous Huxley: Collected Essays. 1959
You never see animals going
through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. Only man
behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being
intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough.—Aldous Huxley
We tolerate shapes in human
beings that would horrify us if we saw them in a horse.—W.R. Inge
In the name of religion, one
tortures, persecutes, builds pyres. In the guise of ideologies, one massacres,
tortures and kills. In the name of justice one punishes...in the name of love of
one's country or of one's race hates other countries, despises them, massacres
them. In the name of equality and brotherhood there is suppression and torture.
There is nothing in common between the means and the end, the means go far
beyond the end...ideologies and religion... are the alibis of the
means.—Eugene Ionesco: Esquire Magazine, 1974
A great many people think they
are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.—William James
Be not too hasty to trust or
admire the teachers of morality: they discourse like angels but they live like
men.—Dr. Samuel Johnson: The Rasselas, 1759
Every form of addiction is bad,
no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.—Carl Jung
Physicians think they do a lot
for a patient when they give his disease a name.—Immanuel Kant
Anybody who is 25 or 30 years
old has physical scars from all sorts of things, from tuberculosis to polio.
It's the same with the mind.—Ralph Kaufman
If one looks with a cold eye at
the mess man has made of his history, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion
that he has been afflicted by some built-in mental disorder which drives him
towards self-destruction. Murder within the species on an individual or
collective scale is a phenomenon unknown in the whole animal kingdom, except for
man, and a few varieties of ants and rats.—Arthur Koestler: Observer, 1968
Logic is the art of going wrong
with confidence.—Joseph Wood Krutch
When we ask advice, we are
usually looking for an accomplice.—Marquis de La Grange: Pensees, 1872
Society highly values its normal
men. It educates children to lose themselves and to become absurd, and thus be
normal. Normal men have killed perhaps 100,000,000 of their fellow normal men in
the last fifty years.—R.D. Laing: The Politics of Experience, 1967
In an act that amazed the
audience, a dog sat onstage and played several tunes on a piano. As the audience
applauded, a larger dog came onstage, forced the smaller dog from its stool, and
led it into the wings. Backstage, the trainer told the theater manager,
"That's his mother. She wants him to give up music and go to law
school."—Law School
It is only the learned who care
to learn, the ignorant who prefer to teach.—Edouard Le Berquier: Pensees Des
Aurtes
Life is a sewer. What you take
out depends on what you put into it.—Tom Lehrer
The four stages of man are
infancy, childhood, adolescence, and obsolescence.—Art Linkletter
We must remember that in time of
war what is said on the enemy's side of the front is always propaganda and what
is said on our side of the front is truth and righteousness, the cause of
humanity and a crusade for peace.—Walter Lippmann, 1966
The business world worships
mediocrity. Officially we revere free enterprise, initiative and individuality.
Unofficially we fear it.—George Lois: The Art Of Advertising, 1977
Whatever you may be sure of, be
sure of this: that you are dreadfully like other people.—James Russell Lowell:
My Study Windows, 1871
Every society honours its live
conformists and its dead troublemakers.—Mignon McLaughlin: The Neurotic’s
Notebook, 1963
Every country has the government
it deserves.—Joseph de Maistre: Letter, 1811
The more conscious a philosopher
is of the weak spots of his theory, the more certain he is to speak with an air
of final authority.—Don Marquis
'Peace' is when nobody's
shooting. A 'just peace' is when our side gets what it wants.—Bill Mauldin:
Loose Talk, 1980
Specialist: a man who knows more
and more about less and less.—William J. Mayo
To die for an idea - it is
unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that
were true.—H.L. Mencken
Metaphysics is almost always an
attempt to prove the incredible by an appeal to the unintelligible.—H.L.
Mencken: Minority Report, 1956
We must respect the other
fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his
theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.—H.L. Mencken:
Minority Report, 1956
God is the immemorial refuge of
the incompetent, the helpless, the miserable. They find not only sanctuary in
His arms, but also a kind of superiority, soothing to their macerated egos; He
will set them above their betters.—H.L. Mencken: Minority Report, 1956
Alimony - the ransom that the
happy pay to the devil.—H.L. Mencken: A Book Of Burlesques, 1920
An idealist is one who, on
noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also
make better soup..—H.L. Mencken: Minority Report, 1956
Men are the only animals that
devote themselves, day in and day out, to making one another unhappy. It is an
art like any other. Its virtuosi are called altruists.—H.L. Mencken: Minority
Report, 1956
Did you hear what the white rat
said to the other white rat? 'I've got that psychologist so well trained that
every time I ring the bell he brings me something to eat.'—David Mercer
I respect faith, but doubt is
what gives you an education.—Wilson Mizner
Religion is the venereal disease
of mankind.—Henri de Montherlant: Ultimate Insult
Enough research will tend to
support your theory (quoted in Murphy's Law by A.Bloch, 1979).—Murphy’s Law
of Research
The history of saints is mainly
the history of insane people.—Benito Mussolini, 1904
Bad officials are elected by
good citizens who do not vote.—George Jean Nathan
The preponderance of pain over
pleasure is the cause of our fictitious morality and religion.—Friedrich
Wilhelm Nietzsche
A casual stroll through the
lunatic asylums shows that faith does not prove anything.—Friedrich Wilhelm
Nietzsche
I cannot believe in a God who
wants to be praised all the time.—Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
Serious sport has nothing to do
with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of
all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war
minus the shooting.—George Orwell (Eric Blair): The Sporting Spirit, 1945
The two most beautiful words in
the English language are 'Cheque Enclosed'.—Dorothy Parker
While a book reviewer for the
New Yorker, Dorothy Parker went on her honeymoon. Her editor, Harold Ross, began
pressuring her for her belated copy. She replied, 'Too fucking busy, and vice
versa.'—Dorothy Parker
Let the people think they govern
and they will be governed.—William Penn, 1693
Once (says an Author; where I
need not say)
Two Trav'lers found an Oyster in their way;
Both fierce, both hungry; the dispute grew stong;
While Scale in Hand Dame Justice pass'd along
Before her each with clamour pleads the Laws.
Explain'd the matter, and would win the cause,
Dame Justice wighing long the doubtful Right
Takes, opens, swallows it, before their sight.
The cause of strife remov'd so rarely well,
"There take" (says Justice), "take ye each a shell.
We thrive at Westminster on Fools like you:
'Twas a fat oyster -- live in peace -- Adieu."—Alexander Pope
History repeats itself - the
first time as tragi-comedy, the second time as bedroom farce.—Private Eye
Magazine, 1978
A priest sees people at their
best, a lawyer at their worst, but a doctor sees them as they really
are.—Proverb
Try to be forgotten. Go live in
the country. Stay in mourning for two years, then remarry, but choose somebody
decent.—Alexander Pushkin (Last words to his wife, Natalya)
You can't say civilization don't
advance...for in every war they kill you a new way.—Will Rogers: The
Autobiography of Will Rogers, 1949
Kill one man and you are a
murderer. Kill millions and you are a conqueror. Kill all and you are a
God.—Jean Rostand: Thoughts of a Biologist, 1955
The first man to fence in a
piece of land saying 'This is mine' and who found people simple enough to
believe him, was the real founder of civil society.—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
So little done, so much to
do.—Cecil Rhodes (last words)
The infliction of cruelty with a
good conscience is a delight to moralists - that is why they invented
hell.—Bertrand Russell
We have, in fact, two kinds of
morality side by side; one which we preach but do not practice, and another
which we practice but seldom preach.—Bertrand Russell: Skeptical Essays, 1928
There are two motives for
reading a book: one, that you enjoy it, the other that you can boast about
it.—Bertrand Russell: The Conquest of Happiness, 1930
The fact that an opinion has
been widely held is no evidence whatsoever that it is not utterly absurd.
Indeed, in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief
is more likely to be foolish than sensible.—Bertrand Russell: Marriage and
Morals, 1929
RUSSELL, Bertrand, MYSTICISM AND
LOGIC, 'A Free Man's Worship'
Organic Life, we are told, has
developed gradually from the protozoon to the philosopher and this development,
we are assured, is indubitably an advance. Unfortunately it is the philosopher,
not the protozoon, who gives us this assurance.—Bertrand Russell: Mysticism
and Logic, A Free Man’s Worship
The working of great
institutions is mainly the result of a vast mass of routine, petty malice, self
interest, carelessness and sheer mistake. Only a residual fraction is
thought.—George Santayana: The Crime of Galileo
Living with a conscience is like
driving a car with the brakes on.—Budd Schulberg: What Makes Sammy Run
Do you know the difference
between education and experience? Education is when you read the fine print;
experience is what you get when you don't.—Pete Seeger: Loose Talk, 1980
When a stupid man is doing
something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.—George
Bernard Shaw: Caesar and Cleopatra, 1901
Moral indignation is in most
cases 2 percent moral, 48 percent indignation and 50 percent envy.—Vittorio de
Sica: Observer, 1961
A well governed people are
generally a people who do not think much.—Andre Siegfried: Inedit
Do you want to injure someone's
reputation? Don't speak ill of him, speak too well.—Andre Siegfried: Quelques
Maximes, 1943
Laws are like spiders' webs
which, if anything small falls into them they ensnare it, but large things break
through and escape.—Solon
Live as long as you may, the
first twenty years are the longest half of your life.—Robert Southey
A woman scientist had been
working for some time with a chimpanzee teaching it to carry out various tasks
such as opening a box and rewarding it with fruit. One day, after a session with
the chimpanzee, she came into the coffee room half laughing and half crying,
obviously very emotional. Her colleagues, a little alarmed, finally managed to
get out of her what had happened. She had decided to leave the laboratory area
temporarily, and had undone the bolt on the door -- whereupon the chimpanzee had
solemnly handed her a stick of celery.—Ian Stewart & Jack Cohen: Figments
of Reality, 1997
We don't call it sin today, we
call it self-expression.—Max Stirner
To be patriotic, hate all
nations but your own; to be religious, all sects but your own; to be moral, all
pretences but your own.—Lionel Strachey
When a true genius appears in
the world you may know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in confederacy
against him.—Jonathan Swift
If you talk to God, you are
praying; if God talks to you, you have schizophrenia.—Thomas Szasz: The Second
Sin
Speech
was given to man to conceal his thoughts.—Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand
No-one would remember the Good
Samaritan if he had only had good intentions. He had money as well.—Margaret
Thatcher: Spectator, 1980
America...just a nation of two
hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no
qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us
uncomfortable.—Hunter S. Thompson: Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail,
1972
The only qualities for real
success in journalism are rat-like cunning, a plausible manner and a little
literary ability. The capacity to steal other people's ideas and phrases...is
also invaluable.—Nicolas Tomalin: Stop the Press, I Want to Get On
We
have been God-like in our planned breeding of our domesticated plants and
animals, but we have been rabbit-like in our unplanned breeding of
ourselves.—Arnold Toynbee
Immature artists imitate, mature
artists steal.—Lionel Trilling: Esquire Magazine, 1962
It's a recession when your
neighbor loses his job; it's a depression when you lose yours.—Harry S.
Truman, 1958
A classic is something that
everyone wants to have read and nobody wants to read.—Mark Twain: The
Disappearance of Literature, 1900
A successful man is one who
makes more money than his wife can spend. A successful woman is one who can find
such a man.—Lana Turner, 1980
The radical invents the views.
When he has worn them out, the conservative adopts them.—Mark Twain:
Notebooks, 1935
The habit of religion is
oppressive, an easy way out of thought.—Peter Ustinov: Everybody’s Magazine,
1957
A hustler is a man who will talk
you into giving him a free ride and make it seem as if he is doing you a great
favor.—Bill Veeck, 1965
For certain people, after fifty,
litigation takes the place of sex.—Gore Vidal: Evening Standard, 1981
Do not fear when your enemies
criticize you. Beware when they applaud.—Vo Dong Giang: Time Magazine, 1978
Animals have these advantages
over man: they have no theologians to instruct them, their funerals cost them
nothing, and no-one starts law suits over their wills.—Voltaire (Francois
Marie Arouet)
Religion is the source of all
imaginable follies and disturbances; it is the parent of fanaticism and civil
discord; it is the enemy of mankind.—Voltaire
When he who hears doesn't
understand him who speaks, and when he who speaks doesn't know what he himself
means - that is philosophy.—Voltaire: Candid, 1759
Someone once remarked that in
adolescence pornography is a substitute for sex, whereas in adulthood sex is a
substitute for pornography.—Edmund White: New Times Magazine, 1979
There is much to be said in
favor of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it
keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.—Oscar Wilde: The Critic
As Artist, 1891
Those who don't study the past
will repeat its errors; those who do study it will find other ways to
err.—Charles Wolf Jr.: Wall Street Journal, 1976
Politicians who wish to succeed
must be prepared to dissemble, at times to lie. All deceit is bad. In politics
some deceit or moral dishonesty is the oil without which the machinery would not
work.—Woodrow Wyatt: Sunday Times, 1973