"Lord help the fish below."

--Sam Houston, upon being congratulated that baptism had just washed away his sins, 1854

"Whatever structurally does not fit the logic of machines is effectively filtered from a culture dominated by their use."

-- Ivan Illich

"The truth is more important than the facts."

  

-- Frank Lloyd Wright

"All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why."
 
-- James Thurber

"There's a time for joking around and a time to be serious; this is not one of them."   

--Anonymous

"The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected."

-- G.K. Chesterton

"In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock."

-- Thomas Jefferson

"Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art." 

-- Tom Stoppard

"The family is the cornerstone of our society. More than any other force it shapes the attitude, the hopes, the ambitions, and the values of the child. And when the family collapses it is the children that are usually damaged. When it happens on a massive scale the community itself is crippled."

-- Lyndon B. Johnson

"I had sooner play cards against a man who was quite skeptical about ethics, but bred to believe that 'a gentleman does not cheat,' than against an irreproachable moral philosopher who had been brought up among sharpers." 

-- C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

"The glory of great men should always be measured by the means they have used to acquire it."

 

-- Francois de La Rochefoucauld

"Stoop and you'll be stepped on; stand tall and you'll be shot at."  

-- Carlos A. Urbizo

“The miracles of Jesus were the ordinary works of his Father, wrought small and swift that we might take them in.”

-- George MacDonald

"Ye know, doan't ye, what it feels like when ye burn yer hand . . wi' a match when ye're lightin' one of they godless cigarettes? Aye. It stings wi' a fearful pain, doan't it? And ye run away to clap a bit o' butter on it . . . Ah but there'll be no butter in hell!"

-- Amos Starkadder, in the novel Cold Comfort Farm (Stella Gibbons, author)

"Character is what you have left when you've lost everything you can lose."  

 

-- Evan Esar

"If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee." 

 

-- Abraham Lincoln

“Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one--the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts...”

-- C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

"My pessimism extends to the point of even suspecting the sincerity of the pessimists." 

 

-- Jean Rostand

"The graveyards are full of indispensable men." 

-- Charles de Gaulle

"What is a poet? An unhappy person who conceals profound anguish in his heart but whose lips are so formed that as sighs and cries pass over them they sound like beautiful music."

-- Soren Kierkegaard

"He observed that the people drinking alcohol would just get drunk and sing and be jolly, whereas the people drinking coffee remained sober and plotted against the government."

-- Stewart Allen

"Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom."

-- Soren Kierkegaard

"Papa used to tell me as a little child,
the only reason we're here is to make 'em smile." 

-- Wendy Waldman, Vaudeville Man

“The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.” 

-- Blaise Pascal

"When I was young, I believed in three things: Marxism, the redemptive power of cinema, and dynamite. Now I just believe in dynamite."

-- Sergio Leone, Italian film director

"A principle isn't a principle until it costs you something."

-- Bill Bernbach

"In this very real world, good doesn't drive out evil. Evil doesn't drive out good. But the energetic displaces the passive."

-- Bill Bernbach

"Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business."

 

-- Tom Robbins

"Herr, lehre uns Bedenken, dass wir alle einmal sterben müssen, auf das wir im Leben klug werden."

"Lord, teach us to understand we all have to die sometime, that we become wiser in our lives." 

-- Psalm 90:12

"Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before."  

-- Edith Wharton

"It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office."

 

-- H.L. Mencken

“We are buried beneath the weight of information, which is being confused with knowledge; quantity is being confused with abundance and wealth with happiness. We are monkeys with money and guns.” 

-- Tom Waits

"No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up." 

-- Lily Tomlin

"Death is very likely the best invention of life. All pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure, these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important." 

 

-- Steve Jobs

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.” 

  -- Noam Chomsky

"The place where optimism most flourishes is the lunatic asylum."  

-- Havelock Ellis

"In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is stoned to death."

 

-- Joan D. Vinge

“What is the New Testament? A handbook for those who are to be sacrificed.”

--Soren Kierkegaard

"Life is a fatal complaint, and an eminently contagious one."

-- Oliver Wendell Holmes

"I want to use whatever gifts I have for practical purposes, not waste them on things which have no life, or which have to be kept alive by artificial means."

-- Kurt Weill

"You’re a killer of art, you’re a killer of beauty, you’re even a killer of laughter."

-- Willem de Kooning to Andy Warhol, The 30 Harshest Artist-on-Artist Insults

"May all your expectations be frustrated, may all your plans be thwarted, may all your desires be withered into nothingness, that you may experience the paralysis and poverty of a child, and sing and dance in the compassion of God who is Father, Son and Spirit.

Amen." 

-- Brennan Manning

"In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe."

-- Carl Sagan

“If you're going through hell, keep going.”

-- Winston Churchill

"I come in peace. I didn't bring artillery. But I'm pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you fuck with me, I'll kill you all."

-- Marine General James Mattis, to Iraqi tribal leaders

"Heavenly father, we thank you tonight for all your blessings.

You said ‘in all things give thanks.’ So we want to thank you tonight for these mighty machines that you’ve brought before us. Thank you for the Dodges and the Toyotas. Thank you for the Fords and most of all thank you for Roush and Yates partnering to give us the power we see before us tonight. Thank you for GM Performance Technology and the R07 engines. Thank you for Sonoco racing fuel and Goodyear tires that bring performance and power to the track. Lord I want to thank you for my smokin’ hot wife tonight, Lisa. My two children, Eli and Emma, or as we like to call them — the little E’s. Lord I pray you’ll bless the drivers as usual tonight. May they put on a performance worthy of this great track in Jesus’ name.

Boogity boogity boogity. Amen."

-- Pastor Joe Nelms, Family Baptist Church

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

-- H. L. Mencken, US editor (1880 - 1956)

"The Christian landscape is strewn with the wreckage of derelict, half-built towers -- the ruins of those who began to build and were unable to finish.  For thousands of people still ignore Christ's warning and undertake to follow him without first pausing to reflect on the cost of doing so.  The result is the great scandal of Christendom today, so-called 'nominal Christianity'."

--John R.W. Stott

50 Quotes of Albert Einstein

1. “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.”
2.  “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
3. “Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.”
4. “The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.”
5. “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”
6. “The only real valuable thing is intuition.”
7. “A person starts to live when he can live outside himself.”
8. “Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.”
9. “I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.”
10. “The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.”
11. “Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.”
12. “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”
13. “Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds.”
14. “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”
15. “Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.”
16. “Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one’s living at it.”
17. “The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.”
18. “The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.”
19. “The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.”
20. “Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.”
21. “Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.”
22. “The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.”
23. “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”
24. “Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school.”
25. “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”
26. “Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.”
27. “Equations are more important to me, because politics is for the present, but an equation is something for eternity.”
28. “If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.”
29. “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the the universe.”
30. “As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.”
31. “Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.”
32. “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
33. “In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep.”
34. “The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there’s no risk of accident for someone who’s dead.”
35. “Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves.”
36. “Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism — how passionately I hate them!”
37. “No, this trick won’t work…How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?”
38. “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.”
39. “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.”
40. “The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking…the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.”
41. “Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.”
42. “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”
43. “Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”
44. “You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.”
45. “One had to cram all this stuff into one’s mind for the examinations, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect on me that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year.”
46. “…one of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one’s own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought.”
47. “He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action. It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.”
48. “A human being is a part of a whole, called by us ‘universe’, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest… a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
49. “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.”

Compiled by: Kevin Harris 1995

"I suddenly understood with great clarity that nothing in life-except death itself was ever going to kill me. No meeting could ever go that badly. No client would ever be that angry. No business error would ever bring me as close to the brink as I had already been."

- David E. Davis, Jr., RIP

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” 

- Leo Tolstoy

"What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do."

- John Ruskin

"Now I know what a statesman is; he's a dead politician. We need more statesmen."

- Bob Edwards

"The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable."

-- John Kenneth Galbraith

"If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you."

-- Oscar Wilde

"Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the Word is made flesh."

-- Leonard Cohen

"Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good. In area after area - crime, education, housing, race relations - the situation has gotten worse after the bright new theories were put into operation. The amazing thing is that this history of failure and disaster has neither discouraged the social engineers nor discredited them."

-Thomas Sowell, Is Reality Optional?, 1993

"The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking."

--John Kenneth Galbraith

"Far from idleness being the root of all evil, it is rather the only true good."

-- Soren Kierkegaard

"If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough."

-- Meister Eckhart

"I'm a part of Willie Nelson's world and I love it, but at the same time, I'm part of the Grateful Dead's world. One night I might be playing twin fiddles at the Broken Spoke and the next night I'll be down at Antone's playing blues. In that way Texas is a paradise, because all that music is here."

-- Doug Sahm, 1975

"I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves."

-- Ludwig Wittgenstein

"A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a fool trusts either of them."

-- P. J. O'Rourke

"Speak when you are angry, and you will make the best speech you'll ever regret."

-- Laurence J. Peter

"Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity."

--Horace Mann, founder of Antioch College

"You are traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land of imagination. Next stop, the Twilight Zone!"

--Rod Serling

"Wisdom demands a new orientation of science and technology towards the organic, the gentle, the non-violent, the elegant and beautiful."

-- E.F. Schumacher

"I've been looking for that particular son of a bitch for seven years. I could have been a doctor, or an architect."

--Vivian Stanshall (Bad Blood)

"The Church is her true self only when she exists for humanity. As a fresh start, she should give away all her endowments to the poor and needy. The clergy should live solely on the free-will offerings of their congregations, or possibly engage in some secular calling."

-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945),
Letters and Papers from Prison

“To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle.”

-- George Orwell

"Eccentricity is not, as dull people would have us believe, a form of madness. It is often a kind of innocent pride, and the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd."

-- Edith Sitwell

"Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity."

-- Frank Leahy

"I suddenly understood with great clarity that nothing in life — except death itself — was ever going to kill me. No meeting could ever go that badly. No client would ever be that angry. No business error would ever bring me as close to the brink as I had already been."

--David E. Davis, Jr., advertising writer and magazine publisher, recounting a nearly fatal auto racing accident at age 25 that left him disfigured.

"We have to repent of our blindness, our lukewarmness, and our disobedience, and turn back to the central truth of Christ as Lord and Saviour; an ethical system will not save us here, nor a timid sentimentalism, nor an excited emotional return, nor a dilettante mysticism.

We have to find that deep contrition which is the condition of His abiding.

Repentance is not a mere feeling of sorrow or contrition for an act of wrongdoing. The regret I feel when I act impatiently or speak crossly is not repentance... Repentance is contrition for what we are in our fundamental beings, that we are wrong in our deepest roots because our internal government is by Self and not by God.

And it is an activity of the whole person. Unless I will to be different, the mind will not follow.

True repentance brings an urge to be different, because of the sense of the incessant movement of what I am, forming, forming, forming what I shall be in the years to come."

-- Florence Allshorn (1887-1950)

"An ounce of loyalty is worth a pound of cleverness."

"Don't take life too seriously. You'll never get out of it alive."

"Editor: a person employed by a newspaper, whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed."

"Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped."

"If men could only know each other, they would neither idolize nor hate."

"Life is just one damned thing after another."

"Many a man's reputation would not know his character if they met on the street."

"Never explain--your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway."

"The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one."

"The recipe for perpetual ignorance is: be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge."

"To avoid criticism do nothing, say nothing, be nothing."

--Elbert Hubbard, (June 19, 1856 – May 7, 1915)

"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty."

--John Adams

‎"For some it was crazy, for others it was stupid, and others a day of courage and bravery. For me, it was a day to enjoy being on the bike."

--Carlos Sastre, on his ultimately futile attack on Stage 17 of the Tour de France

"Doesn’t surprise me that Christ our Lord preferred to live with whores & sinners, seeing I go in for that myself."

--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Venetian Epigrams, as translated by Jerome Rothenberg

"I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!"

-- Barry Goldwater

"Whatever be our conception of the universe we must, it is obvious, start somehow; we must begin with something; and the something with which we begin, from the very fact that we do begin with it, must itself be without explanation, since, if something else were invoked to explain it, then the 'something else' must needs be logically prior to that which it is invoked to explain. Thus the 'something' being explained by a logically prior 'something else' could not have been ultimate."

-- C. E. M. Joad

"The greatest mystery is not that we have been flung at random between the profusion of matter and of the stars, but that within this prison we can draw from ourselves images powerful enough to deny our nothingness."

-- Andre Malraux
French author & resistance leader (1901 - 1976)

"When the time comes to enter the darkness in which we are naked and helpless and alone; in which we see the insufficiency of our greatest strength and the hollowness of our strongest virtues; in which we have nothing of our own to rely on, and nothing in our nature to support us, and nothing in the world to guide us or give us fight—then we find out whether or not we live by faith."

-- Thomas Merton

"That is why I often find myself at such cross-purposes with the modern world: I have been a converted Pagan living among apostate Puritans."

-- C. S. Lewis (Surprised By Joy, 1955)

"Why be a man when you can be a success?"

-- Bertolt Brecht

“Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, play the man! We shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.”

-- Hugh Latimer

"Water is for washing your feet. Beer is for drinking."

-- Kosmo Spoetzl

"The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair."

- Douglas Adams

"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken."

-- Oliver Cromwell

"The opening chords are from the last movement of Vaughan Williams' Sixth Symphony. It goes from there to a Skip James motif. Following that it moves to a Gregorian chant, Dies Irae. It's the most scary one in the Episcopal hymn books, it's all about the day of judgment. Then it returns to the Vaughan Williams chords, followed by a blues run of undetermined origin, then back to Skip James and so forth."

-- John Fahey, describing his piece, "Stomping Tonight on the Pennsylvania/Alabama Border" as found on the album Death Chants, Breakdowns and Military Waltzes.

"Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, 'Where have I gone wrong?' Then a voice says to me, 'This is going to take more than one night.'"

-- Charles M. Schulz

"The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best - and therefore never scrutinize or question."

-- Stephen Jay Gould

"For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing."

--H. L. Mencken

"A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff nature replaces it with."

--Tennessee Williams

"Idealism is what precedes experience; cynicism is what follows."

-- David T. Wolf

"Failures are very public, and successes are short lived. It's the pleasure of drawing funny pictures that makes up for it."

--Bill Watterson
US cartoonist (1958 - )

"It is a sobering thought that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years."

-- Tom Lehrer

"Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere."

-- G. K. Chesterton

"Victory or death!"

-- Col. William Barret Travis

"The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern."

-- Lord Acton

"Whenever you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship."

-- Harry S. Truman