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My personal motto:

"Quando omni flunkus moritati!" (When all else fails, play dead!)

Some favorite quotes:

... when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce [the people] under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.

The Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776).

There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.

George Washington, Address to Congress, 1790).

I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

Thomas Jefferson, from a letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush, September 23, 1800. This quote also encircles the interior of the rotunda of the Jefferson Memorial). .

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

Benjamin Franklin, writing the reply of the Pennsylvania assembly to the Governor, Nov 11, 1755 (this statement became the motto of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania four years later)..

The cry has been that war is declared, and all opposition should therefore be hushed. A sentiment more unworthy of a free country could hardly be propagated. If the doctrine be admitted, rulers have only to declare war and they are screened at once from scrutiny. At the very time when they have armies at command, when their patronage is most extended, and their power most formidable, not a word of warning, of censure, of alarm must be heard. The press, which is to expose inferior abuses, must not utter one rebuke, one indignant complaint, although our best interests and most valuable rights are put to hazard by an unnecessary war! Admit this doctrine, let rulers once note that, by placing the courtry in a state of war, they place themselves beyond the only power they dread--the power of free discussion--and we may expect war without end. ...In war, then as in peace, assert the freedom of speech and of the press. Cling to this as the bulwark of all our rights and priveleges.

William Ellery Channing (during the War of 1812), reprinted 1903 in The Works of William E. Channing, D.D., Boston: American Unitarian Association, "Duties of the Citizen in Times of Trial or Danger (Extracts from Sermons preached on Days of Humiliation and Prayer, appointed in consequence of the Declaration of War against Great Britain), p. 682.

I am tired of this sort of thing called science. We have spent millions in that sort of thing... ... and it is time it should be stopped.

Simon Cameron, the first Republican Senator from Pennsylvania (on funding for the Smithsonian Institution, 1861). Cameron was named Secretary of War in exchange for supporting Lincoln's nomination. He was forced to resign in a corruption scandal in 1862, and Lincoln named him Ambassador to Russia. In fairness to Senator Cameron, at that point in history, almost one-third of Federal Expenditures were for science and scientific exploration. Those were the days.

We may congratulate ourselves that this cruel war is nearing its end. It has cost a vast amount of treasure and blood. ...It has indeed been a trying hour for the Republic; but I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless.

Abraham Lincoln, in a letter to Col. William F. Elkins, Nov 21, 1864.

The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.

Theodore Roosevelt, from his editorial essay "Lincoln and Free Speech" in the Kansas City Star, May 7, 1918.

Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peace time, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea. Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United State corporations. This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence-economic, political, even spiritual-is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Dwight David Eisenhower, Farewell Radio and Television Address to the American People, January 17, 1961.

Why should we subsidize intellectual curiosity?

Ronald Reagan (40th President of the United States), Campaign speech, 1980.

President, n: The leading figure in a small group of men of whom - and of whom only - it is positively known that immense numbers of their countrymen did not want any of them for President.

Ambrose Bierce, in The Devil's Dictionary, a column published in The Wasp magazine between 1881 and 1887. Bierce vanished in 1914, while covering the Mexican Revolution led by Pancho Villa, and was never heard from again.

It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.

Josef Stalin

Göring: Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.
Gilbert: There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States, only Congress can declare wars.
Göring: Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.

Hermann Göring, in an interview he gave to Gustave Gilbert during the Easter recess of the Nuremberg trials, April 18, 1948, quoted in Gilbert's book, Nuremberg Diary.

Rarely is the question asked, "Is our children learning?"

George W.Bush, 11 January 2000..

As people do better, they start voting like Republicans... ...unless they have too much education and vote Democratic, which proves there can be too much of a good thing.

Karl Rove, George W. Bush's former Chief Political Advisor.

When you give a Republican a choice between [less] poison and less regulation, we need some time to think about it.

Christine Todd Whitman, George W. Bush's first Environmental Protection Agency Administrator (at the 2002 Gridiron Dinner. She resigned May 20, 2003 and left office June 28, 2003.

"A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimensions."

"Never let a computer know you're in a hurry."

"A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep."

"The Republicans are considering changing their emblem from an elephant to a condom. Why? Because a condom stands for inflation, halts production, encourages cooperation, protects a bunch of pricks, and gives one a sense of security while screwing others."

Anonymous

"I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you, because someone has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top."

Anonymous English professor, Ohio University

"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."

"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."

"Life... is like a grapefruit. It's orange and squishy, and has a few pips in it, and some folks have half a one for breakfast."

"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."

"You live and learn. At any rate, you live."

Douglas Adams (he'll be missed!)

"The creator of the universe works in mysterious ways, but he uses a base ten counting system and likes round numbers."

"Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep."

Scott Adams (Dilbert)

"There are more pleasant things to do than beat up people."

Muhammad Ali

"Eighty percent of life is just showing up."

"If Jesus Christ came back today and saw what was being done in his name, he'd never stop throwing up."

"More than any time in history mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly."

Woody Allen

"There are two major products that came out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence."

Jeremy S. Anderson

"I want to find a voracious, small-minded predator and name it after the IRS."

Robert Bakker, paleontologist

"Not all chemicals are bad. Without chemicals such as hydrogen and oxygen, for example, there would be no way to make water, a vital ingredient in beer."

"Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. Oh, I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza."

Dave Barry

"Art is 'I'. Science is 'we'."

Claude Bernard

"In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office."

"Absurdity, n: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion." "Academe, n: An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught." "Academy, n: [from ACADEME] A modern school where football is taught." "Adder, n: A species of snake. So called from its habit of adding funeral outlays to the other expenses of living." "Babe or Baby, n: A misshapen creature of no particular age, sex, or condition, chiefly remarkable for the violence of the sympathies and antipathies it excites in others, itself without sentiment or emotion." "Beauty, n: The power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband." "Birth, n: The first and direst of all disasters. As to the nature of it there appears to be no uniformity. Castor and Pollux were born from the egg. Pallas came out of a skull. Galatea was once a block of stone. Peresilis, who wrote in the tenth century, avers that he grew up out of the ground where a priest had spilled holy water. It is known that Arimaxus was derived from a hole in the earth, made by a stroke of lightning. Leucomedon was the son of a cavern in Mount Aetna, and I have myself seen a man come out of a wine cellar." "Bore, n: A person who talks when you wish him to listen." "Botany, n: The science of vegetables -- those that are not good to eat, as well as those that are. It deals largely with their flowers, which are commonly badly designed, inartistic in color, and ill-smelling." "Cat, n: A soft, indestructible automaton provided by nature to be kicked when things go wrong in the domestic circle." "Conservative, n: A statesman who is enamoured of existing evils, as distinguished from a Liberal who wishes to replace them with others." "Corporation, n: An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility." "Cynic, n: A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be." "Dog, n: A kind of additional or subsidiary Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the world's worship. This Divine Being in some of his smaller and silkier incarnations takes, in the affection of Woman, the place to which there is no human male aspirant. The Dog is a survival -- an anachronism. He toils not, neither does he spin, yet Solomon in all his glory never lay upon a door-mat all day long, sun-soaked and fly-fed and fat, while his master worked for the means wherewith to purchase the idle wag of the Solomonic tail, seasoned with a look of tolerant recognition." "Education, n: That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding." "Egotist, n: A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me." "Politeness, n: The most acceptable hypocrisy." "Politician, n: An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of organized society is reared. When he wriggles, he mistakes the agitation of his tail for the trembling of the edifice. As compared with the statesman, he suffers the disadvantage of being alive." "Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another." "Vote, n: The instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country." Ambrose Bierce

From "The Devil's Dictionary"

"Don't ever speak more clearly than you think."

"An expert is one who has made all of the mistakes in a very narrow field."

Niels Bohr

We are an impossibility in an impossible universe."

Ray Bradbury

"After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say 'I want to see the manager.'"

William Burroughs

"Road rage, air rage. Why should I be forced to divide my rage into separate categories? To me, it's just one big, all-around, everyday rage. I don't have time for fine distinctions. I'm busy screaming at people."

"You keep hearing that society's greatest tasks aer educating people and getting them jobs. That's great. Two things people hate to do: go to school and go to work."

"The reason I talk to myself is that I'm the only one whose answers I accept."

"If you can't beat them, arrange for them to be beaten."

"After every horror, we're told: 'Now the healing can begin.' No. There is no healing. Just a short pause before the next horror."

George Carlin

"A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary."

Thomas Carruthers

"A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students."

John Ciardi

"Any science or technology which is sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic."

Arthur C. Clarke

"Scientists have odious manners, except when you prop up their theory; then you can borrow money of them."

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."

"The man who sets out to carry a cat by its tail learns something that will always be useful and which never will grow dim or doubtful."

"We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it - and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She
will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again, and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore."

"Learning softeneth the heart and breedeth gentleness and charity." (In The Prince and the Pauper)

"Supposing is good, but finding out is better." (In Eruption; Mark Twain's Autobiography)

"Never let formal education get in the way of your learning."

"When some men discharge an obligation, you can hear the report for miles around."

"Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a Congressman can."

"It can probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctively native American criminal class except Congress."

"Reader, suppose you were an idiot; and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself."

"A verb has a hard time enough of it in this world when it's all together. It's downright inhuman to split it up, but that's just what the Germans do. They take part of a verb and put it down here, like a stake, and they take the other part of it and put it way over yonder like another stake, and between those two limits they just shovel in German."

Samuel Langhorne Clemens ("Mark Twain"). Twain had way too many great quotes to list here, check out this site

"If one were to take the Bible seriously, one would go mad. But, to take the Bible seriously, one must be already mad."

Aleister Crowley

"It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts."

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, in A Scandal in Bohemia

"Everything that can be invented has been invented."

Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899

"I am free of all prejudices. I hate everyone."

"A woman drove me to drink, and I didn't even have the decency to thank her."

"Fried." (when asked, "How do you like children, Mr. Fields?"

"Never give a sucker an even break."

William Claude Dukenfield ('W.C. Fields')

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."

Thomas Edison

"Not all that is counted counts, and not all that counts can be counted."

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen."

"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."

"If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith."

"The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible."

"The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one."

"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war."

Albert Einstein

"We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."

T.S. Elliot

"The two most abundant things in the Universe are hydrogren and stupidity."

Harlan Ellison

"I was born not knowing and have had only a little time to change that here and there."

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled."

"I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy."

"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool."

"Physics is like sex. Sure, it has some practical results, but that's not why we do it."

Richard Feynman

"Health nuts are going to feel stupid some day, lying in hospitals dying of nothing."

Redd Foxx

"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. "

Benjamin Franklin

The politics of restoration will start, not in Washington, but in many other places, separately and together, when people decide to close the gap between what they believe and what is. People may begin this work by understanding what they are up against."

William Grieder

"Chicago has only two seasons: winter and the Fourth of July"

Lewis Grizzard

"Everything to excess. To enjoy the flavor of life, take big bites. Moderation is for monks."

"The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require scholarship."

"When a place gets crowded enough to require ID's, social collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere."

Robert Heinlein

"We seem to have a compulsion these days to bury time capsules in order to give those people living in the next century or so some idea of what we are like. I have prepared one of my own. I have placed some rather large samples of dynamite, gunpowder, and nitroglycerin. My time capsule is set to go off in the year 3000. It will show them what we are really like."

Alfred Hitchcock

"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man."

Elbert Hubbard

"Maybe this world is another planet's Hell."

"Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted."

"Experience is not what happens to you. It is what you do with what happens to you."

"Several excuses are always less convincing than one."

"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored."

"There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self."

Aldous Huxley

"A student by definition doesn't know what he or she doesn't know."

Michael Gorman

"I think that's how Chicago got started: a bunch of people in New York said, 'Gee, I'm enjoying the crime and the poverty, but it just isn't cold enough! Let's go west!'"

Richard Jeni

"A scholar who cherishes the love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar."

Lao-Tzu

"Get your feet off my desk, get out of here, you stink, and we're not going to buy your product."

Joe Keenan, President of Atari, in 1976 responding to Steve Jobs' offer to sell him rights to the new personal computer he and Steve Wozniak developed

"Most cities have a smell of their own. Chicago smells like it's not sure."

Alan King

"'Tis better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt."

"He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas better than any man I ever met."

"His argument was as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had been starved to death."

"It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues."

"Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally."

Abraham Lincoln

"Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind."

"The silliest woman can manage a clever man; but it needs a very clever woman to manage a fool."

Rudyard Kipling

"A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five."

"I would not want to belong to a club that would have me as a member."

Groucho Marx

"It always starts with a test tube, but suddenly that's not enough. Before
you know it, you're lying with a beaker in one hand, a flask in the other,
strung out and begging for grant money."

Tim Mitchell

"Anyone who works is a fool. I don't work - I merely inflict myself upon the public."

Robert Morley

"A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation."

H.H. Munro ('Saki')

"I think that I shall never see, a billboard lovely as a tree. In fact, unless the billboards fall, I'll never see a tree at all."

"Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker."

Ogden Nash

"There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home."

Ken Olson (President of Digital Equipment Corporation) at the Convention of the World Future Society in Boston in 1977

"The optimist believes that we live in the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears that this is true."

"I am become death, the destroyer of worlds." (mentally quoting from the 'Bhagavad Gita' during the first nuclear test)

J. Robert Oppenheimer

"The more intelligent a man is, the more originality he discovers in men. Ordinary people see no difference between men."

Blaise Pascal

"The most overlooked advantage to owning a computer is that if they foul up there's no law against whacking them around a little."

Porterfield

"The difference between man and the animals is that we don't use our tongues to clean our own genitals."

"Arnold Rimmer" (on the British TV comedy, Red Dwarf)

"Ordinary people: I hate 'em!"

"Bud", the Repo Man (from the movie, Repo Man)

"Radiation. You hear the most outrageous lies about it! Half-baked, gogglebox do-gooders telling everybody it's bad for you! Pernicious nonsense! Everybody could stand a hundred chest x-rays a year! They oughta have 'em, too!"

unnamed fugitive physicist from Los Alamos (also from the movie, Repo Man)

"Science is for those who learn; poetry for those who know."

Joseph Roux

"We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology."

Carl Sagan

"A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence university education."

George Bernard Shaw

"Hell is other people."

Jean Paul Sartre

"The real problem is not whether machines think, but whether men do."

B.F. Skinner

"Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines."

Todd C. Somers

"Ninety percent of everything is shit. Nine percent is mediocre, and the rest is really fine."

Theodore Sturgeon

"Any teacher that can be replaced by a computer, deserves to be."

David Thornburg

"You can fool too many people too much of the time."

James Thurber

"My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four, unless there are three other people."

Orson Welles

"In Chicago, it is unwise to take your eyes off any asset smaller than a locomotive."

Keith Wheeler

"I am not young enough to know everything."

"It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information."

"There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written."

"The basis for optimism is sheer terror."

"Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong."

"Why was I born with such contemporaries?"

"There is only one thing worse than being famous, and that is not being famous."

"I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train."

"Only the shallow know themselves."

"The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple."

"In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane."

"The pursuit of the inedible by the unspeakable" (on fox hunting)

"Nothing but my genius" (when asked by New York customs officials whether he had anything to declare on entering the U.S.)

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."

"There is no sin except stupidity."

Oscar Wilde

"Give me a woman who loves beer and I will conquer the world."

Kaiser Wilhelm (It’Äôs why I haven't conquered the world)

"24 hours in a day, 24 beers in a case. Coincidence?"

"The problem with the gene pool is, there's no lifeguard."

Stephen Wright

"It's not getting any smarter out there. You have to come to terms with stupidity and make it work for you."

"You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer."

Frank Zappa

"Bring lawyers, guns, and money, Dad, get me out of this."

Warren Zevon

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Last Updated: Wednesday, 14 December 2005, 4:00 PM