So It's Said

Here's another batch of quotations; all of them this time from the excellent A Word A Day:

My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions or its officeholders. -Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910)

The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion. -Arthur C Clarke, science fiction writer (1917- )

A society that gets rid of all its troublemakers goes downhill. -Robert A. Heinlein, science-fiction author (1907-1988)

You can't live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you. -John Wooden, sports coach (1910- )

For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery. -Jonathan Swift, satirist (1667-1745)

Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband a month before she marries him and what she thinks of him a year afterward, and you will have the truth about him. -H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956)

How can a society that exists on instant mashed potatoes, packaged cake mixes, frozen dinners, and instant cameras teach patience to its young? -Paul Sweeney

There's so much pollution in the air now that if it weren't for our lungs there'd be no place to put it all. -Robert Orben, magician (1927- )

The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been. -Madeleine L'Engle, writer (1918- )

There are two things to aim at in life; first to get what you want, and after that to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second. -Logan Pearsall Smith, essayist (1865-1946)

When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stone-cutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it would split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before together. -Jacob A. Riis, journalist and social reformer (1849-1914)

If the truth doesn't save us, what does that say about us? -Lois McMaster Bujold, writer (1949- )

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

Be careful how you interpret the world: it *is* like that. -Erich Heller, essayist (1911-1990)

When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stone-cutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it would split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before together. -Jacob A. Riis, journalist and social reformer (1849-1914)

Never eat more than you can lift. -Miss Piggy, a character in the cartoon The Muppet Show

Nothing produces such odd results as trying to get even. -Franklin P. Jones

Let your capital be simplicity and contentment. -Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)

One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being. -May Sarton, poet and novelist (1912-1995)

I don't trust a man who uses the word evil eighteen times in ten minutes. If you're half evil, nothing soothes you more than to think the person you are opposed to is totally evil. -Norman Mailer, author (1923- )

If an animal does something, we call it instinct; if we do the same thing for the same reason, we call it intelligence. -Will Cuppy, journalist (1884-1949)

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, philosopher, mathematician, author, Nobel laureate (1872-1970)

Language is the archives of history. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)