Quotable Quotes

A thorn defends the rose, harming only those who would steal the blossom.

Blessed are we who can laugh at ourselves for we shall never cease to be amused.

A home is not a mere transient shelter: its essence lies in the personalities of the

Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.

The public interest is best served by the free exchange of ideas.

It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.

The fewer clear facts you have in support of an opinion, the stronger your emotional attachment to that opinion.

He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever.

The sum of intelligence on the planet is a constant; the population is growing.

It's a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it's a depression when you lose yours.

The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.

Democracy is a process by which the people are free to choose the man who will get the blame.

Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.

A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he gets to know something.

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

Honor isn't about making the right choices. It's about dealing with the consequences.

What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.

When you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.

Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it.... While it lies there, it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it.

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

I don't want any "yes-men" around me. I want everybody to tell me the truth even if it costs them their jobs.

A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure.

The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.

The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals. We cause accidents.

Good breeding consists of concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.

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

A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.

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

If we fight a war and win it with H-bombs, what history will remember is not the ideals we were fighting for but the methods we used to accomplish them. These methods will be compared to the warfare of Genghis Khan who ruthlessly killed every last inhabitant of Persia.

We believe that an informed citizenry will act for life and not for death.

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence -- and then success is sure.

Tradition is what you resort to when you don't have the time or the money to do it right.

Oh, I don't blame Congress. If I had $600 billion at my disposal, I'd be irresponsible, too.

I am not in this world to live up to other people's expectations, nor do I feel that the world must live up to mine.

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

When a thing has been said, and said well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it.

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

That is a good book which is opened with expectation and closed with profit.

We must never assume that which is incapable of proof.

It is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor relations.

When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, a hundred.

If you don't find it in the index, look very carefully through the entire catalogue.

And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for your country.

The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered... deeply, ...finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.

We can gain no lasting peace if we approach it with suspicion and mistrust or with fear. We can gain it only if we proceed with the understanding, the confidence, and the courage which flow from conviction.

With malice toward none, with charity for all, ...let us strive on to finish the work we are in, ...to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

If you don't believe in something, you'll fall for anything.

The forces of good and evil are working within and around me, I must choose, and in a free will universe I do have a choice.

I must stand up in search of the truth, if I don't I only roll with the flow of the lie and make it stronger.

In all things there are three choices: Yes, No & no choice, except in this -- I either choose the truth or I am deceit.

In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule.

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

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

A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes.

In order to preserve your self-respect, it is sometimes necessary to lie and cheat.

For the skeptic there remains only one consolation: if there should be such a thing as superhuman law it is administered with subhuman inefficiency.

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: "O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous." And God granted it.

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.

Whenever I'm caught between two evils, I take the one I've never tried.

Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.

All who would win joy, must share it; happiness was born a twin.

Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.

The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.

Anybody who wants the presidency so much that he'll spend two years organizing and campaigning for it is not to be trusted with the office.

When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live your life so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice.

I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man's being unable to sit still in a room.

It is more fun to talk with someone who doesn't use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words like "What about lunch?"

They're funny things, Accidents. You never have them till you're having them.

Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.

A little Consideration, a little Thought for Others, makes all the difference.

Always watch where you are going. Otherwise, you may step on a piece of the Forest that was left out by mistake.

When having a smackerel of something with a friend, don't eat so much that you get stuck in the doorway trying to get out.

When late morning rolls around and you're feeling a bit out of sorts, don't worry; you're probably just a little eleven o'clockish.

It's always useful to know where a friend-and-relation is, whether you want him or whether you don't.

Just because an animal is large, it doesn't mean he doesn't want kindness; however big Tigger seems to be, remember that he wants as much kindness as Roo.

When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.

When you have confidence, you can have a lot of fun. And when you have fun, you can do amazing things,

Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterward.

I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him.

People who don't Think probably don't have Brains; rather, they have grey fluff that's blown into their heads by mistake.

If the person you are talking to doesn't appear to be listening, be patient. It may simply be that he has a small piece of fluff in his ear.

If you want to make a song more hummy, add a few tiddely poms.

It is hard to be brave, when you're only a Very Small Animal.

You can't stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.

Before beginning a Hunt, it is wise to ask someone what you are looking for before you begin looking for it.

It gets you nowhere if the other person's tail is only just in sight for the second half of the conversation.

Those who are clever, who have a Brain, never understand anything.

Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and lean over to watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you, you will suddenly know everything there is to be known.

A bear, however hard he tries, grows tubby without exercise.

Poetry and Hums aren't things which you get, they're things which get you. And all you can do is go where they can find you.

Don't underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear, and not bothering.

All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality.

I use emotion for the many and reserve reason for the few.

By means of shrewd lies, unremittingly repeated, it is possible to make people believe that heaven is hell -- and hell heaven. The greater the lie, the more readily it will be believed.

A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on an installment plan.

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought.

Journalists cover words and delude themselves into thinking they have committed journalism.

Most people believe that if you go in and try to micromanage a forest, it is possible to destroy the very thing that makes it a unique and special place. That's just as true of the Net.

I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.

There is nothing so asinine that governments will not proclaim it as official doctrine.

My evening visitors, if they cannot see the clock, should find the time in my face.

A man who has committed a mistake and doesn't correct it, is committing another mistake.

Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.

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

I'm going to speak my mind because I have nothing to loose.

Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don't need to be done.

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.

Crude classifications and false generalizations are the curse of organized life.

Today the real test of power is not capacity to make war but the capacity to prevent it.

Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.

A committee is a thing which takes a week to do what one good man can do in an hour.

Each man takes care that his neighbor shall not cheat him. But a day comes when he begins to care that he does not cheat his neighbor. Then all goes well -- he has changed his market-cart into a chariot of the sun.

Doubt yourself and you doubt everything you see. Judge yourself and you see judges everywhere. But if you listen to the sound of your own voice, you can rise above doubt and judgment. And you can see forever.

Trouble is part of your life -- if you don't share it, you don't give the person who loves you a chance to love you enough.

Let your heart guide you. It whispers, so listen closely.

You are the lens in the beam. You can only receive, give, and possess the light as the lens does.

If you seek yourself, you rob the lens of its transparency. You will know life and be acknowledged by it according to your degree of transparency, your capacity, that is, to vanish as an end, and remain purely as a means.

A synonym is a word you use when you can't spell the word you first thought of.

Focus 90% of your time on solutions and only 10% of your time on problems.

Learn not only to find what you like, learn to like what you find.

Experience is not what happens to us, rather it is what we do with what happens to us.

Transcend political correctness and strive for human righteousness.

Know people for who they are rather than for what they are.

Develop a passion for learning. If you do, you will never cease to grow.

Realize that if you have time to whine and complain about something then you have the time to do something about it.

Always be nice to secretaries. They are the real gatekeepers in the world.

Smile, it is the key that fits the lock of everybody's heart.

The greatest gift that you can give yourself is a little bit of your own attention.

If life doesn't offer a game worth playing, then invent a new one.

Reality doesn't bite, rather our perception of reality bites.

Not only are you what you think you are, more so; what you think, you are.

Become a student of change. It is the only thing that will remain constant.

Promise yourself to live your life as a revolution and not just a process of evolution.

Become addicted to constant and never-ending self improvement.

Never stop learning; knowledge doubles every fourteen months.

The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.

You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.

Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.

Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.

Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.

He who wonders discovers that this in itself is wonder.

Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.

Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.

The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.

The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.

The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is its inefficiency.

I was gratified to be able to answer promptly. I said, "I don't know."

I wish people who have trouble communicating would just shut up.

The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well.

Though I am not naturally honest, I am so sometimes by chance.

I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.

An ignorant person is one who doesn't know what you have just found out.

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.

Your theory is crazy, but it's not crazy enough to be true.

All I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power.

I either want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it.

Sometimes I need what only you can provide -- your absence.

Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain -- and most fools do.

Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level.

If at first you don't succeed, failure may be your style.

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.

I believe in looking reality straight in the eye and denying it.

Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember.

I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it.

Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.

Any man whose errors take ten years to correct is quite a man.

No problem is so formidable that you can't walk away from it.

I have learned to use the word impossible with the greatest caution.

Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.

Basic research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing.

I'm just trying to make a smudge on the collective unconscious.

Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't.

You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.

It's hard to be nostalgic when you can't remember anything.

I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.

We live in an age when pizza gets to your home before the police.

Every nation ridicules other nations -- and all are right.

The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool.

Delusions of grandeur make me feel a lot better about myself.

For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of our tasks; the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.

He who laughs last is generally the last to get the joke.

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.

A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a joke or worried to death by a frown on the right person's brow.

Justice cannot be for one side alone, but must be for both.

Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or the handle.

Nothing is so bitter that a calm mind cannot find comfort in it.

Lack of money is no obstacle. Lack of an idea is an obstacle.

The world will never have lasting peace so long as men reserve for war the finest human qualities. Peace, no less than war, requires idealism and self-sacrifice and a righteous and dynamic faith.

The fruits of all our labors have left us as we started. To grow without is not to grow within.

Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.

A person travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.

Isn't it surprising how many things, if not said immediately, seem not worth saying ten minutes from now?

I believe I have no prejudices whatsoever. All I need to know is that a man is a member of the human race. That's bad enough for me.

Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.

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

When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer "Present" or "Not Guilty."