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Showing posts from 2009

Ginger Meggs

Can we ever truly know when our philosophy assignment is due?

Terry Pratchett

I’ll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there’s evidence of any thinking going on inside it.

George Bernard Shaw

What is life but a series of inspired follies? The difficulty is to find them to do. Never lose a chance: it doesn’t come every day.

Robin Williams

Cocaine is God’s way of saying that you’re making too much money.

Mae West

Marriage is a great institution, but I’m not ready for an institution yet.

Laurence J. Peter

An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn’t happen today.

Robertson Davies

The love of truth lies at the root of much humor.

G.K.Chesterton

Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.

Russell Baker

Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it.

Robert Frost

The world is full of willing people, some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.

Peter Ustinov

If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can’t be done.

Edward Abbey

Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others.

Sue Murphy

Did you ever walk into a room and forget why you walked in? I think that’s how dogs spend their lives.

Thomas Szasz

Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults.

Robert Orden

Most people would like to be delivered from temptation but would like it to keep in touch.

B.F.Skinner

Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.

Anon

Instead of talking to your plants, if you yelled at them would they still grow? Only to be troubled and insecure?

Minna Thomas Antrim

Man forgives woman anything save the wit to outwit him.

Anon

Being vague is almost as fun as doing this other thing.

Lois McMaster Bujold

The will to be stupid is a very powerful force, but there are always alternatives.

H. L. Mencken

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

John H. Patterson

An executive is a person who always decides; sometimes he decides correctly, but he always decides.

Peter Ustinov

It is our responsibilities, not ourselves, that we should take seriously.

Aldous Huxley

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

Mitch Hedberg

I like an escalator because an escalator can never break, it can only become stairs. There would never be an escalator temporarily out of order sign, only an escalator temporarily stairs. Sorry for the convenience.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.

Graffito

Is there life before death?

Sam Levenson

You must learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t possibly live long enough to make them all yourself.

Douglas Adams

Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?

Robert M. Pirsig

When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Religion.

H.L.Mencken

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.

Ambrose Bierce

'to pray': 'to ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner, confessedly unworthy'.

Bertrand Russell

Unknown Person: But what if you’re wrong about your atheism? What if you die and find yourself before God, who asks you why you didn’t believe? Bertrand Russell: Not enough evidence, Lord; not enough evidence.

Carl Sagan

… if by “God” one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying … it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity.’

Oscar Wilde

Truth, in matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived.

George Bernard Shaw

Martyrdom is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability.

James Thurber

It had only one fault. It was kind of lousy.

Thomas A. Edison

Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do doesn’t mean it’s useless.

Orson Welles

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

Ellen DeGeneres

I’m a godmother, that’s a great thing to be, a godmother. She calls me god for short, that’s cute, I taught her that.

William G. McAdoo

It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in argument.

Josh Billings

About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment.

Anatole France

To be willing to die for an idea is to set a rather high price on conjecture.

Bette Midler

But enough of me. Let us talk about you. What do YOU think of me?

Mark Twain

Familiarity breeds contempt, and children.

Rebecca West

Before a war military science seems a real science, like astronomy; but after a war it seems more like astrology.

Anon

Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down to their level then beat you with experience.

Ginger Meggs

I can’t cook without a can opener.

Mignon McLaughlin

No one really listens to anyone else, and if you try it for a while you’ll see why.

H.L.Mencken

It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.

Anon

Some people have so much respect for their superiors that they have none left for themselves.

Jules Renard

Literature is an occupation in which you have to keep proving your talent to people who have none.

G.K.Chesterton

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

Bill Watterson

Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.

Bertrand Russell

Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.

Mark Twain

Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.

George Bernard Shaw

If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion.

Art Spander

The great thing about democracy is that it gives every voter a chance to do something stupid.

Lewis Thomas

The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand.

Wilson Mizner

Those who welcome death have only tried it from the ears up.

Anon

Growing old is inevitable, growing UP is optional.

John J.Plomp

The one thing children wear out faster than shoes is PARENTS.

Paul Beatty

If all the world’s a stage, I want to operate the trap door.

Mark Twain

Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform.

Vilhjalmur Stefansson

What is the difference between unethical and ethical advertising? Unethical advertising uses falsehoods to deceive the public; ethical advertising uses truth to deceive the public.

Jane Caminos

A waist is a terrible thing to mind.

John Maynard Keynes

The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent

Ashleigh Brilliant

The difference between science and magic is that magicians usually know what they’re doing

Aeschylus

It is a profitable thing, if one is wise, to seem foolish.

George Burns

Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.

Sir Winston Churchill

When I am abroad, I always make it a rule never to criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home.

Alfred Korzybski

There are two ways to slide easily through life; to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking.

Russel Lynes

Every journalist has a novel in him, which is an excellent place for it.

Alan Corenk

Television is more interesting than people. If it were not, we would have people standing in the corners of our rooms.

George Bernard Shaw

It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.

Douglas Adams

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.

Richard Bach

The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.

George Carlin

Religion convinced the world that there’s an invisible man in the sky who watches everything you do. And there’s 10 things he doesn’t want you to do or else you’ll go to a burning place with a lake of fire until the end of eternity. But he loves you! …And he needs money! He’s all powerful, but he can’t handle money!

George Carlin

Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity.

George Carlin

I was thinking about how people seem to read the Bible a whole lot more as they get older; then it dawned on me - they’re cramming for their final exam.

George Carlin

I’m completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.

George Carlin

If you can’t beat them, arrange to have them beaten.

George Carlin

What does it mean to pre-board? Do you get on before you get on?

Scott Adams

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

George Carlin

I' m not concerned about all hell breaking loose, but that a PART of hell will break loose… it’ll be much harder to detect.

Anon

There hasn’t been a child born yet, good enough so his parents weren’t glad when he fell asleep.

Abba Eban

History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.

Bertrand Russell

The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.

Evan Esar

Think twice before you speak, and then you may be able to say something more insulting than if you spoke right out at once.

Henry Adams

There is no such thing as an underestimate of average intelligence.

Mickey Mantle

If I knew I was going to live this long, I’d have taken better care of myself.

Thomas Berger

Why do writers write? Because it isn’t there.

William Safire

Is sloppiness in speech caused by ignorance or apathy? I don’t know and I don’t care.

Anatole France

If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.

Orson Scott Card

It’s called civilization. Women invented it, and every time you men blow it all to bits, we just invent it again.

Russell P. Askue

If living conditions don’t stop improving in this country, we’re going to run out of humble beginnings for our great men.

Leslie Nielson

Doing nothing is very hard to do … you never know when you’re finished.

Robertson Davies

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.

Saki

He is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death.

Jeph Jacques

There are two ways to pass a hurdle: leaping over or plowing through… There needs to be a monster truck option.

Emo Phillips

I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was telling me this.

Bill Clinton

When I took office, only high energy physicists had ever heard of what is called the Worldwide Web…. Now even my cat has its own page.

Victor Hugo

There is in every village a torch - the teacher: and an extinguisher - the clergyman.

Bertrand Russell

The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy - I mean that if you are happy you will be good.

Jef Mallett

An opinion should be the result of thought, not a substitute for it.

Marilyn Monroe

I don’t mind being in a man’s world as long as I can be a woman in it.

Miss Piggy

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye.

H.L.Mencken

A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.

Mark Twain

He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it - namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to obtain.

Cyril Connolly

There are many who dare not kill themselves for fear of what the neighbors will say.

Joseph Conrad

The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.

Kenneth Tynan

A neurosis is a secret that you don’t know you are keeping.

Sir Julian Huxley

Operationally, God is beginning to resemble not a ruler but the last fading smile of a cosmic Cheshire cat.

Sir Winston Churchill

A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.

Ed Gardner

Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and, instead of bleeding, he sings.

Peter De Vries

Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.

Arthur Schopenhauer

We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.

Bertrand Russell

If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have paradise in a few years.

Leslie Nielsen

Who are you and how did you get in here?’ ‘I’m a locksmith. And, I’m a locksmith.

Poul Anderson

I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when you looked at it in the right way, did not become still more complicated.

A. Whitney Brown

That is the saving grace of humor, if you fail no one is laughing at you.

Thomas Pickering

In archaeology you uncover the unknown. In diplomacy you cover the known.

Jane Austen

A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of.

Laurence J. Peter

The incompetent with nothing to do can still make a mess of it.

Edgard Varese

Everyone is born with genius, but most people only keep it a few minutes.

George Burns

The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending, then having the two as close together as possible.

Mel Brooks

Humor is just another defense against the universe.

Bill Lyon

If at first you don’t succeed, find out if the loser gets anything.

Harry Shearer

If absolute power corrupts absolutely, does absolute powerlessness make you pure?

Caskie Stinnett

A diplomat… is a person who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you actually look forward to the trip.

Mark Twain

Often it does seem a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat.

Henry David Thoreau

Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.

Kurt Vonnegut

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.

Doris Egan

You talk to God, you’re religious. God talks to you, you’re psychotic.

Gallagher

Don’t you wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence? There’s one marked ‘Brightness,’ but it doesn’t work.

Alice Thomas Ellis

There is no reciprocity. Men love women, women love children, children love hamsters.

Margaret Thatcher

Well behaved women rarely make history.

G. M. Trevelyan

Education… has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.

Bertrand Russell

The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.

Harry S. Truman

It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.

Marston Bates

Research is the process of going up alleys to see if they are blind.

H.L.Mencken

A celebrity is one who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn’t know.

Robert Bryne

Learning to dislike children at an early age saves a lot of expense and aggravation later in life.

Micheal McClary

Irrigation of the land with seawater desalinated by fusion power is ancient. It’s called ‘rain’.

Laurence J. Peter

Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status.

Stephen King

Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.

Paul Fix

The only reason some people get lost in thought is because it’s unfamiliar territory.

E.V. Lucas

I have noticed that the people who are late are often so much jollier than the people who have to wait for them.

Janet Long

Part of being sane, is being a little bit crazy.

Avinash Kaushik

Social media is like teen sex, everyone wants to do it. No one actually knows how. When finally done, there is surprise it’s not better.

Blaise Pascal

We are generally the better persuaded by the reasons we discover ourselves than by those given to us by others.

Elizabeth Taylor

The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they’re going to have some pretty annoying virtues.

George Santayana

Skepticism, like chastity, should not be relinquished too readily.

Norman Ford

Never try to tell everything you know. It may take too short a time.

Putt’s law

Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand.

Randy K. Milholland

It’s not a matter of whether or not someone’s watching over you. It’s just a question of their intentions.

Oscar Wilde

Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.

Pam Davis

Lies are like children: they’re hard work, but it’s worth it because the future depends on them.

Woodrow Wilson

A conservative is a man who sits and thinks, mostly sits.

Doug Larson

If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.

John Lennon

Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.

James Thurber

I do not have a psychiatrist and I do not want one, for the simple reason that if he listened to me long enough, he might become disturbed.

Al Fraken

When you encounter seemingly good advice that contradicts other seemingly good advice, ignore them both.

Niels Bohr

An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.

Lady Nancy Astor

I married beneath me. All women do.

Margaret Atwood

We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly.

Dave Barry

In the past decade or so, the women’s magazines have taken to running home-handyperson articles suggesting that women can learn to fix things just as well as men. These articles are apparently based on the ludicrous assumption that _men_ know how to fix things, when in fact all they know how to do is _look_ at things in a certain squinty-eyed manner, which they learned in Wood Shop; eventually, when enough things in the home are broken, they take a job requiring them to transfer to another home.

Clare Booth Luce

Because I am a woman, I must make unusual efforts to succeed. If I fail, no one will say, ‘She doesn’t have what it takes.’ They will say, ‘Women don’t have what it takes.’

H.L. Mencken

A man’s women folk, whatever their outward show of respect for his merit and authority, always regard him secretly as an ass, and with something akin to pity. His most gaudy sayings and doings seldom deceive them; they see the actual man within, and know him for a shallow and pathetic fellow. In this fact, perhaps, lies one of the best proofs of feminine intelligence, or, as the common phrase makes it, feminine intuition.

Will Rogers

You know, women always could endure more than men. Not only physically, but mentally - did you ever get a peek at some of the husbands?

Anon

Woman’s Rule of Thumb: If it has tires or testicles, you’re going to have trouble with it.

Piet Hein

A lifetime is more than sufficiently long for people to get what there is of it wrong.

John Updike

A healthy male adult bore consumes each year one and a half times his own weight in other people’s patience.

Sigmund Freud

I had some words with my wife, and she had some paragraphs with me.

Nash

The most effective way to remember your wife’s birthday is to forget it once…

Rodney Dangerfield

A good wife always forgives her husband when she’s wrong.

Richard Dawkins

We are all atheists about most of the Gods that man have ever believed in. Some of us just go one God further.

E. Joseph Cossman

Drive-in banks were established so most of the cars today could see their real owners.

Kin Hubbard

There’s no secret about success. Did you ever know a successful man who didn’t tell you about it?

Andrew W. Mathis

It is bad luck to be superstitious.

Herb Caen

Cockroaches and socialites are the only things that can stay up all night and eat anything.

Cullen Hightower

Wisdom is what’s left after we’ve run out of personal opinions.

W. Somerset Maugham

If nobody spoke unless he had something to say, the human race would very soon lose the use of speech.

Bertrand Russell

Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man.

Mo Udall

If you can find something everyone agrees on, it’s wrong.

Don Marquis

Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.

H.L.Mencken

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.

Rita Rudner

Someday I want to be rich. Some people get so rich they lose all respect for humanity. That’s how rich I want to be.

Wilson Mezner

A fellow who is always declaring he’s no fool usually has his suspicions.

Jay Trachman

We’re told Abe Lincoln studied by the fireplace, Mozart composed by candlelight and Galileo did his inventing by the light of an oil lamp. Didn’t any of these guys ever think of working during the day?

Dorothy Parker

If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.

Frederick Douglass

People might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get.

Aldous Huxley

Maybe this world is another planet’s hell.

Lillian Hellman

Nobody outside of a baby carriage or a judge’s chamber believes in an unprejudiced point of view.

Isaac Newton

Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy.

Sidney J.Harris

A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past, he is one who is prematurely disappointed in the future.