Man is not the creature of circumstances, circumstances are the creatures of men. We are free agents, and man is more powerful than matter.-- Benjamin Disraeli
Yes, we have to divide up our time like that, between our politics and our equations. But to me our equations are far more important, for politics are only a matter of present concern. A mathematical equation stands forever.-- Albert Einstein
One comes to believe whatever one repeats to oneself sufficiently often, whether the statement be true of false. It comes to be dominating thought in one's mind.-- Robert Collier
They are so damn 'intellectual' and rotten that I can't stand them anymore....I [would] rather sit on the floor in the market of Toluca and sell tortillas, than have anything to do with those 'artistic' bitches of Paris.-- Frida Kahlo
I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.-- Martin Luther King Jr.
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.-- Thomas Paine
If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, how ever measured or far away.-- Henry David Thoreau
If you neglect to recharge a battery, it dies. And if you run full speed ahead without stopping for water, you lose momentum to finish the race.-- Oprah Winfrey
Never think that you're not good enough yourself. A man should never think that. People will take you very much at your own reckoning.-- Anthony Trollope
When I have been asked during these last weeks who caused the riots and the killing in L.A., my answer has been direct and simple: Who is to blame for the riots? The rioters are to blame. Who is to blame for the killings? The killers are to blame.-- Dan Quayle
Instead of giving money to found colleges to promote learning, why don't they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as good as the Prohibition one did, why, in five years we would have the smartest race of people on earth.-- Will Rogers
It's like: never relax, never take that breath, never stop to get that drink of water. You know you can always smell roses when you're running with them in your hand.-- Garth Brooks
I can win an argument on any topic, against any opponent. People know this, and steer clear of me at parties. Often, as a sign of their great respect, they don't even invite me.-- Dave Barry
How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks, but only at what he does himself, to make it just and holy.-- Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
Every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving.-- Albert Einstein
Geschichte ist die geistige Form, in der sich eine Kultur ueber ihre Vergangenheit Rechenschaft gibt. [transl.:] History is the mental-- Johan Huizinga
The ability to understand a question from all sides meant one was totally unfit for action. Fanatical enthusiasm was the mark of the real man.-- Thucydides
Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.-- Henry David Thoreau
Men want sex. If men ruled the world, they could get sex anywhere, anytime. Restaurants would give you sex instead of breath mints on the way out. Gas stations would give sex with every fill-up. Banks would give sex to anyone who opened a checking account.-- Scott Adams
It is in fact nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curious of inquiry. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty.-- Albert Einstein
The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.-- Sir Winston Churchill
The tendinous part of the mind, so to speak, is more developed in winter; the fleshy, in summer. I should say winter had given the bone and sinew to literature, summer the tissues and the blood.-- John Burroughs
Mach-S, the speed at which stress can't keep up, is simply forward motion. But it has to be self- propelled. Note that people in cars are still stressed.-- Jef Mallett
When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.-- Arthur C. Clarke
What if you slept? And what if, in your sleep, you dreamed? And what if, in your dream, you went to heaven and plucked a strange and beautiful flower? And what if, when you awoke, you had the flower in your hand? Ah, what then?-- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.-- Albert Einstein
The fact is, that civilization requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture, and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends.-- Oscar Wilde
We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?-- Ray Bradbury
To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.-- Douglas Adams
We spend most of our time and energy in a kind of horizontal thinking. We move along the surface of thingsÂ…[but] there are times when we stop. We sit sill. We lose ourselves in a pile of leaves or its memory. We listen and breezes from a whole other world begin to whisper.-- James Carroll
Forsake not an old friend; for the new is not comparable to him: a new friend is as new wine; when it is old, thou shalt drink it with pleasure.-- Bible
I feel like somebody just punched me in the stomach and knocked all my wind out. I'm only 30 years old and I want to have a chance to continue creating things. I know I've got at least one more great computer in me. And Apple is not going to give me a chance to do that.-- Steve Jobs
[On recognizing China] But if you recognize anyone it does not mean you like them. For instance, we all recognize the right honourable gentleman the member for Ebbw Vale.-- Sir Winston Churchill
Making a living and having a life are not the same thing. Making a living and making a life that´s worthwhile are not the same thing. Living the good life and living a good life are not the same thing. A job title doesn't even come close to answering the question "What do you do?"-- Robert Fulghum
I'm proof against that word failure. I've seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure of cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.-- George Eliot
There is nothing more dread and more shameless than a woman who plans such deeds in her heart as the foul deed which she plotted when she contrived her husband's murder.-- Homer
Anybody can become angry, that is easy; but to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, and for the right purpose, and in the right way, that is not within everybody's power and is not easy.-- Aristotle
WEREWOLF, n. A wolf that was once, or is sometimes, a man. All werewolves are of evil disposition, having assumed a bestial form to gratify a beastial appetite, but some, transformed by sorcery, are as humane as is consistent with an acquired taste for human flesh.-- Ambrose_Bierce/"
The grass is not, in fact, always greener on the other side of the fence. Fences have nothing to do with it. The grass is greenest where it is watered. When crossing over fences, carry water with you and tend the grass wherever you may be.-- Robert Fulghum
The link between ideas and action is rarely direct. There is almost always an intermediate step in which the idea is overcome. De Tocqueville points out that it is at times when passions start to govern human affairs that ideas are most obviously translated into political action. The translation of ideas into action is usually in the hands of people least likely to follow rational motives. Hence, it is that action is often the nemesis of ideas, and sometimes of the men who formulate them. One of the marks of the truly vigorous society is the ability to dispense with passion as a midwife of action - the ability to pass directly from thought to action.-- Eric Hoffer
The national budget must be balanced. The public debt must be reduced; the arrogance of the authorities must be moderated and controlled. Payments to foreign governments must be reduced, if the nation doesn't want to go bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.-- Cicero
My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.-- Albert Einstein
If you don't know what to do with many of the papers piled on your desk, stick a dozen colleagues' initials on 'em, and pass them along. When in doubt, route.-- Malcolm Forbes
If there be no great love in the beginning, yet heaven may decrease it upon better acquaintance, when we are married and have more occasion to know one another: I hope, upon familiarity will grow more contempt.-- William Shakespeare
Acting is the most minor of gifts and not a very high-class way to earn a living. After all, Shirley Temple could do it at the age of four.-- Katharine Hepburn
I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn't wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine.-- Bertrand Russell
I lived what most people call the good life. I was happy, but deep inside I always felt that, with the short amount of time we are given to live and love in this world, we spend too much time loving things instead of people.-- Antonia Brenner
The habit of love cuts through confusion and stumbles or contrives its way out of difficulty, it remembers the way even when it forgets, for a dumfounded moment, its reason for being. The path is the thing that matters.-- Eudora Welty
PLUNDER, v. To take the property of another without observing the decent and customary reticences of theft. To effect a change of ownership with the candid concomitance of a brass band. To wrest the wealth of A from B and leave C lamenting a vanishing opportunity.-- Ambrose Bierce
Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.-- Kurt Vonnegut
MINISTER, n. An agent of a higher power with a lower responsibility. In diplomacy and officer sent into a foreign country as the visible embodiment of his sovereign's hostility. His principal qualification is a degree of plausible inveracity next below that of an ambassador.-- Ambrose Bierce
Let us not forget that knowledge and skills alone cannot lead humanity to a happy and dignified life. ... I claim credit for nothing. Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insects as well as for the stars, Human beings, vegetables or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.-- Albert Einstein
America's greatest strength, and its greatest weakness, is our belief in second chances, our belief that we can always start over, that things can be made better.-- Anthony Walton
When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability... To be alive is to be vulnerable.-- Madeleine L'Engle
Although the most acute judges of the witches and even the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt of witchery, the guilt nevertheless was non-existent. It is thus with all guilt.-- Friedrich Nietzsche
All [zoos] actually offer to the public in return for the taxes spent upon them is a form of idle and witless amusement, compared to which a visit to a penitentiary, or even to a State legislature in session, is informing, stimulating and ennobling.-- H. L. Mencken
Doctors are men who prescribe medicines of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less in human beings of whom they know nothing.-- Voltaire
NEWTONIAN, adj. Pertaining to a philosophy of the universe invented by Newton, who discovered that an apple will fall to the ground, but was unable to say why. His successors and disciples have advanced so far as to be able to say when.-- Ambrose Bierce
Live all you can - it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that, what have you had?-- Henry James
Such is the common process of marriage. A youth and maiden exchange meeting by chance, or brought together by artifice, exchange glances, reciprocate civilities, go home, and dream of one another. Having little to divert attention, or diversify thought, they find themselves uneasy when they are apart, and therefore conclude that they shall be happy together. They marry, and discover what nothing but voluntary blindness had before concealed; they wear out life in altercations, and charge nature with cruelty.-- Samuel Johnson
Words -- so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.-- Nathaniel Hawthorne
MULTITUDE, n. A crowd; the source of political wisdom and virtue. In a republic, the object of the statesman's adoration. "In a multitude of consellors there is wisdom," saith the proverb. If many men of equal individual wisdom are wiser than any one of them, it must be that they acquire the excess of wisdom by the mere act of getting together. Whence comes it? Obviously from nowhere -- as well say that a range of mountains is higher than the single mountains composing it. A multitude is as wise as its wisest member if it obey him; if not, it is no wiser than its most foolish.-- Ambrose Bierce
If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches.-- Rainer Maria Rilke
It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them.-- P. G. Wodehouse
I said to myself, I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me - shapes and ideas so near to me - so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn't occurred to me to put them down. I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught.-- Georgia O'Keeffe
Anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough. Not only have I found that when I talk to the little flower or to the little peanut they will give up their secrets, but I have found that when I silently commune with people they give up their secrets also - if you love them enough.-- George Washington Carver
Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. True friendship is a plant of slow grow, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.-- George Washington
The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, they mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construct which, with the addition of certain verbal interpretations, describes observed phenomena. The justification of such a mathematical construct is solely and precisely that it is expected to work.-- Johann Von Neumann
Let's talk about how to fill out your 1984 tax return. Here's an often overlooked accounting technique that can save you thousands of dollars: For several days before you put it in the mail, carry your tax return around under your armpit. No IRS agent is going to want to spend hours poring over a sweat-stained document. So even if you owe money, you can put in for an enormous refund and the agent will probably give it to you, just to avoid an audit. What does he care? It's not his money.-- Dave Barry
If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of star dust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly the Jew ought hardly to be heard of; but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world's list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are also way out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvelous fight in this world, in all the ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself and be excused for it. The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up
It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.-- Robert Benchley
We find no evidence that Congress intended to modify the nostrum to read, 'crime does not pay, except for attorney's fees.'-- Unknown (can you tell me?)
If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome; if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent; if you believe the military, nothing is safe.-- Lord Salisbury
We are not enemies but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic cords of memory shall swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of nature.-- Abraham Lincoln
I believe that justice is instinct and innate, the moral sense is as much a part of our constitution as the threat of feeling, seeing and hearing.-- Thomas Jefferson
Be fit for more than the thing you are now doing. Let everyone know that you have a reserve in yourself; that you have more power than you are now using. If you are not too large for the place you occupy, you are too small for it.-- James A. Garfield
CHRISTIAN, n. One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor. One who follows the teachings of Christ in so far as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin.-- It made me with a thousand blushes burn
The main things which seem to me important on their own account, and not merely as means to other things, are knowledge, art, instinctive happiness, and relations of friendship or affection.-- Bertrand Russell
Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.-- Thomas Jefferson
There are three classes of intellects: one which comprehends by itself; another which appreciates what others comprehend; and a third which neither comprehends by itself nor by the showing of others; the first is the most excellent, the second is good, and the third is useless.-- Niccolo Machiavelli
There are only two kinds of freedom in the world; the freedom of the rich and powerful, and the freedom of the artist and the monk who renounces possessions.-- Anais Nin
In most people's vocabularies, design means veneer. It's interior decorating. It's the fabric of the curtains of the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.-- Steve Jobs
About the capitalist states, it doesn't depend on you whether we (Soviet Union) exist. If you don't like us, don't accept our invitations, and don't invite us to come to see you. Whether you like it our not, history is on our side. We will bury you.-- Nikita Khrushchev
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired in the final analysis, is a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, who are cold and not clothed.-- Dwight D. Eisenhower
You can turn your back on a person, but, never turn your back on a drug. Especially when it's waving a razor-sharp hunting knife in your eye.-- Hunter S. Thompson
I always remember an epitaph which is in the cemetery at Tombstone, Arizona. It says: 'Here lies Jack Williams. He done his damnedest.' I think that is the greatest epitaph a man can have - When he gives everything that is in him to do the job he has before him. That is all you can ask of him and that is what I have tried to do.-- Harry S Truman
Count your blessings. Once you realize how valuable you are and how much you have going for you, the smiles will return, the sun will break out, the music will play, and you will finally be able to move forward the life that God intended for you with grace, strength, courage, and confidence.-- Og Mandino
Can women imagine anything finer than to experience centuries and millennia with the beloved husband in a cozy home in reverent attention to the inner workings of creative motherhood?-- Unknown (can you tell me?)
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