He Said, She Said

More quotations!

As usual, the majority of these come from the wonderful A Word a Day...with one or two from here and there, just for fun.
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Do not judge men by mere appearances; for the light laughter that bubbles on the lip often mantles over the depths of sadness, and the serious look may be the sober veil that covers a divine peace and joy. -E.H. Chapin

It is a sad fact that 50 percent of marriages in this country end in divorce. But hey, the other half end in death. You could be one of the lucky ones! - Richard Jeni

Anyone who isn't confused here doesn't really understand what is going on. -Man in Belfast

I am desperately trying to figure out why Kamikaze pilots wore helmets.
Dave Edison

USA Today has come out with a new survey: Apparently three out of four people make up 75 percent of the population. David Letterman

What would I do if I had only six months left to live? I'd type faster.Isaac Asimov

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure. Samuel Johnson

The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid and stable business. John Steinbeck

The trade of governing has always been monopolized by the most ignorant and the most rascally individuals of mankind. -Thomas Paine, philosopher and writer (1737-1809)

I think the next best thing to solving a problem is finding some humor in it. -Frank A. Clark, writer (1911- )

I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands. You need to be able to throw something back. -Maya Angelou, poet (1928- )

The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from. -Andrew Tannenbaum, computer science professor (1944- )

The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself. -Archibald MacLeish, poet and librarian (1892-1982)

How dreadful knowledge of the truth can be when there's no help in the truth. -Sophocles, (495-405 BCE)

Criticism, like rain, should be gentle enough to nourish a man's growth without destroying his roots. -Frank A. Clark, writer (1911- )

Ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have. -James Baldwin, writer (1924-1987)

From my close observation of writers... they fall into two groups: those who bleed copiously and visibly at any bad review, and those who bleed copiously and secretly at any bad review. -Isaac Asimov, scientist and writer (1920-1992)

If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. It it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day. -E.B. White, writer (1899-1985)

News is what people want to keep hidden; everything else is publicity. -Bill Moyers, journalist (1934- )

We find comfort among those who agree with us, growth among those who don't. -Frank A. Clark, writer (1911- )

The average pencil is seven inches long, with just a half-inch eraser - in case you thought optimism was dead. -Robert Brault, software developer, writer (1972- )

Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination. -Ludwig Wittgenstein, philosopher (1889-1951)

The courage of the poet is to keep ajar the door that leads into madness. -Christopher Morley, writer (1890-1957)

I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork. -Peter De Vries, editor, novelist (1910-1993)

Testing can show the presence of errors, but not their absence. -Edsger Dijkstra, computer scientist (1930-2002)

There is no coming to consciousness without pain. -Carl Jung, psychiatrist (1875-1961)

The unconscious mind is decidedly simple, unaffected, straight-forward and honest. It hasn't got all of this facade, this veneer of what we call adult culture. It's rather simple, rather childish. It is direct and free. -Milton H. Erikson, psychiatrist (1901-1980)

What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books. -Sigmund Freud, neurologist, founder of psychoanalysis (1856-1939)

The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him... a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create -- so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating. -Pearl S. Buck, novelist, Nobel laureate (1892-1973)

There is a tragic clash between Truth and the world. Pure undistorted truth burns up the world. -Nikolai Berdyaev, philosopher (1874-1948)

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives. -Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel laureate (1879-1955)

As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests. -Gore Vidal, writer (1925- )

I love you, and because I love you, I would sooner have you hate me for telling you the truth than adore me for telling you lies. -Pietro Aretino, satirist and dramatist (1492-1556)

In the republic of mediocrity genius is dangerous. -Robert G. Ingersoll, lawyer and orator (1833-1899)

Whoever imagines himself a favorite with God holds others in contempt. -Robert Green Ingersoll, lawyer and orator (1833-1899)

We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -Dwight David Eisenhower, U.S. general and 34th president (1890-1969)

Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone? -Thomas Wolfe, novelist (1900-1938)

A king can stand people fighting but he can't last long if people start thinking. -Will Rogers, humorist (1879-1935)

The problem with being sure that God is on your side is that you can't change your mind, because God sure isn't going to change His. -Roger Ebert, film-critic (1942- )

An open mind is a prerequisite to an open heart. -Robert M. Sapolsky, neuroscientist and author (1957- )

Literature is the language of society, as speech is the language of man. -Louis de Bonald, philosopher and politician (1754-1840)

It is one of the maladies of our age to profess a frenzied allegiance to truth in unimportant matters, to refuse consistently to face her where graver issues are at stake. -Janos Arany, poet (1817-1882)

Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear. -Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, author, Nobel laureate (1872-1970)

I don't hate my enemies. After all, I made 'em. -Red Skelton, comedian (1913-1997)

Words are things; and a small drop of ink / Falling like dew upon a thought, produces / That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think. -Lord Byron, poet (1788-1824)

Creative activity could be described as a type of learning process where teacher and pupil are located in the same individual. -Arthur Koestler, novelist and journalist (1905-1983)

When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people. -Abraham Joshua Heschel, theology professor (1907-1972)

I place economy among the first and most important republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared. To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. -Thomas Jefferson, third US president, architect and author (1743-1826)

Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little. -Edmund Burke, statesman and writer (1729-1797)

We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them. -Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel laureate (1879-1955)

Whoever, in the pursuit of science, seeks after immediate practical utility, may generally rest assured that he will seek in vain. -H.L.F. von Helmholtz, physiologist and physicist (1821-1894)

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little. -Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd US President (1882-1945)

These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves. -Gilbert Highet, writer (1906-1978)

In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful. -Leo Tolstoy, author (1828-1910)

We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person. -William Somerset Maugham, writer (1874-1965)

If writers were good businessmen, they'd have too much sense to be writers. -Irwin S. Cobb, author and journalist (1876-1944)

If you want to work on your art, work on your life. -Anton Chekhov, short-story writer and dramatist (1860-1904)

A society that presumes a norm of violence and celebrates aggression, whether in the subway, on the football field, or in the conduct of its business, cannot help making celebrities of the people who would destroy it. -Lewis H. Lapham, editor and writer (1935- )

When angry, count to four; when very angry, swear. -Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910)

Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough. -Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd US President (1882-1945)

The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another, and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it. -J.M. Barrie, novelist and playwright (1860-1937)

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know. -Ernest Hemingway, author and journalist, Nobel laureate (1899-1961)

When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kind of dogmas or goals, it's always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt. -Robert T. Pirsig, author and philosopher (1928- )

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested. -Francis Bacon, essayist, philosopher, and statesman (1561-1626)

The power to command frequently causes failure to think. -Barbara Tuchman, author and historian (1912-1989)

For me, words are a form of action, capable of influencing change. -Ingrid Bengis, writer and teacher (1944- )

Laws too gentle are seldom obeyed; too severe, seldom executed. -Benjamin Franklin, statesman, author, and inventor (1706-1790)

It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind. -Voltaire, philosopher (1694-1778)

Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be grasped at once. -Cyril Connolly, critic and editor (1903-1974)

The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude. -Aldous Huxley, novelist (1894-1963)

In the case of good books, the point is not how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you. -Mortimer J. Adler, philosopher, educator and author (1902-2001)

Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -Friedrich Nietzsche, philosopher (1844-1900)

The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone. -Harriet Beecher Stowe, abolitionist and novelist (1811-1896)

An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it. -Don Marquis, humorist and poet (1878-1937)

New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common. -John Locke, philosopher (1632-1704)

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.--John Steinbeck, novelist, Nobel laureate (1902-1968)

A quiet conscience sleeps in thunder. -English proverb

Questions show the mind's range, and answers its subtlety. -Joseph Joubert, essayist (1754-1824)

The voice of conscience is so delicate that it is easy to stifle it; but it is also so clear that it is impossible to mistake it. -Madame De Stael, writer (1766-1817)

Political freedom cannot exist in any land where religion controls the state, and religious freedom cannot exist in any land where the state controls religion. -Samuel James Ervin Jr., lawyer, judge, and senator (1896-1985)

You can't do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth. -H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956)

Learning is weightless, a treasure you can always carry easily. -Chinese Proverb

To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting. -Edmund Burke, statesman and writer (1729-1797)

A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury. -John Stuart Mill, philosopher and economist (1806-1873)

Truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it. -Flannery O'Connor, writer (1925-1964)

In this age, the mere example of nonconformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. -John Stuart Mill, philosopher and economist (1806-1873)

The high minded man must care more for the truth than for what people think. -Aristotle, philosopher (384-322 BCE)

You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions. -Naguib Mahfouz, writer (1911- )

It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry. -Thomas Paine, philosopher and writer (1737-1809)

The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause. A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business. - Eric Hoffer, philosopher and author (1902-1983)

A sneer is the weapon of the weak. -James Russell Lowell, poet, editor, and diplomat (1819-1891)

People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them. -Dave Barry, author and columnist (1947- )

They defend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance. -Edmund Burke, statesman and writer (1729-1797)