Quotations

It's funny how you can go through life thinking you've seen everything...Then you suddenly realize there are millions of things you've never seen before. -- Linus, to Charlie Brown

I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me. -- Hunter S. Thompson

The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place. -- George Bernard Shaw

No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn. -- Jim Morrison

A nation that gives up liberty for security is worthy of neither. -- Thomas Jefferson

There's no way to measure his greatness or magnitude as a person or as a player. I don't think eulogizing will do him justice. He was that great. To me he wasn't only a musician and friend, he was more like a big brother who taught and showed me more than he'll ever know. There are a lot of spaces and advances between the Carter family, Buddy Holly and, say, Ornette Coleman, a lot of universes, but he filled them all without being a member of any school. His playing was moody, awesome, sophisticated, hypnotic and subtle. There's no way to convey the loss. It just digs down really deep. -- Bob Dylan on Jerry Garcia

Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind.... And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded with patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader, and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar. -- William Shakespeare

To be a patriot, one had to say, and keep on saying, "Our country, right or wrong," and urge on the little war. Have you not perceived that that phrase is an insult to the nation. -- Mark Twain

I gained nothing at all from Supreme Enlightenment, and for that very reason it is called Supreme Enlightenment. -- Gotama Buddha

All of us who are concerned for peace and triumph of reason and justice must be keenly aware how small an influence reason and honest good will exert upon events in the political field. -- Albert Einstein

The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naive and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair. -- H.L. Mencken

There are many ways of being a man. Mine is to express what is deepest in my heart. -- E.M. Forster (A Passage To India)

I've been on a calendar, but never on time. -- Marilyn Monroe

You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence. -- Charles A. Beard, American Historian, 1874-1948

Listen, buddy, if I could tell you in a minute what I did, it wouldn't be worth the Nobel Prize. -- Richard Feynman (1965)

He had that rare weird electricity about him -- that extremely wild and heavy presence that you only see in a person who has abandoned all hope of ever behaving "normally." -- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing '72"

My only complaint about having a father in fashion is that every time I'm about to go to bed with a guy I have to look at my dad's name all over his underwear. -- Marci Klein, daughter of Calvin Klein.

Don't you try to outweird me; I get stranger things than you free with my breakfast cereal. -- Zaphod Beeblebrox

"Education never ends, Watson. It is a series of lessons with the greatest for the last." -- Sherlock Holmes to Dr. Watson in the short story Adventure of the Red Circle.

Meticulous engineering habits do not pay off in the short run, which is one reason why software plays a dubious role among established engineering disciplines. -- Niklaus Wirth, Computer, Feb. 1995, p. 66.

Democracy, the practice of self-government, is a covenant among free men to respect the rights and liberties of their fellows. -- Franklin Roosevelt

It's a great idea. A girl's name for a guy and lots of theatrics. I wish I'd thought of that. --Alice Cooper discussing Marilyn Manson

You're a taxpayer, and your business is to send in money, and if the Air Force wants a special combat fax machine, or a whole combat office with combat staplers and combat potted plants and combat Muzak systems capable of playing Barry Manilow at 45 degrees below zero, then it will be your pleasure to pay for them. Because this is America, and we are Americans, and -- call me sentimental, but this is how I feel -- there is something very appealing about the concept of Barry Manilow at 45 degrees below zero. -- Dave Berry

When they took the fourth amendment, I was quiet because I didn't deal drugs. When they took the sixth amendment, I was quiet because I was innocent. When they took the second amendment, I was quiet because I didn't own a gun. Now they've taken the first amendment, and I can say nothing about it. -- Anon

Unless there is good reason for its being there, do not inject opinion into a piece of writing. We all have opinions about almost everything, and the temptation to toss them in is great. To air one's views gratuitously, however, is to imply that the demand for them is brisk, which may not be the case, and which, in any event, may not be relevant to the discussion. Opinions scattered indiscriminately about leave the mark of egotism on a work. Similarly, to air one's views at an improper time may be in bad taste. If you have received a letter inviting you to speak at the dedication of a new cat hospital, and you hate cats, your reply, declining the invitation, does not necessarily have to cover the full range of your emotions. You must make it clear that you will not attend, but you do not have to let fly at cats. The writer of the letter asked a civil question; attack cats, then, only if you can do so with good humor, good taste, and in such a way that your answer will be courteous as well as responsive. Since you are out of sympathy with cats, you may quite properly give this as a reason for not appearing at the dedicatory ceremonies of a cat hospital. But bear in mind that your opinion of cats was not sought, only your services as a speaker. Try to keep things straight. -- Strunk and White (Elements Of Style)

In 1990 American workers and firms spent 6 billion man-hours computing their taxes---more man-hours than were used to build every car, van and truck manufactured in the United States. -- The Detroit News, 10 Apr. 1994

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. -- William James

Bird often used to play in short, hard bursts of breath. Hard as a mad man. Max Roach would find himself in between the beat. And I wouldn't know what the fuck Bird was doing because I wouldn't have never heard it before. Poor Duke Jordan and Tommy Potter, they'd be there lost as motherfuckers--like everybody else, only more lost. When Bird played like that, it was like hearing music for the first time. I'd never heard anybody play like that. When Bird played like that, he was outrageous. I hate to use a word like "outrageous," but that's what he was. He was notorious in the way he played combinations of notes and musical phrases. The average musician would try to develop something more logically, but not Bird. Everything he played--when he was on and really playing--was terrifying, and I was there every night! And so we couldn't just keep saying, "What? Did you hear that!" all night long. Because then we couldn't play nothing. So we got to the point where, when he played something that was so outrageous, we blinked our eyes. They would just get wider than they were, and they already were real wide. But after a while it was just another day at the office playing with this bad motherfucker. It was unreal. -- Miles Davis (Kind of Blue)

You will remember, Watson, how the dreadful business of the Abernetty family was first brought to my notice by the depth which the parsley had sunk into the butter upon a hot day. -- Sherlock Holmes

Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has changed. -- Irene Porter

"Is it true that you smoke eight to ten cigars a day?"
"That's true."
"Is it true that you drink five martinis a day?"
"That's true."
"Is it true that you still surround yourself with beautiful young women?"
"That's true."
"What does your doctor say about all of this?"
"My doctor is dead."
-- George Burns (1896 - 1996)

"Public media should not contain explicit or implied descriptions of sex acts. Our society should be purged of the perverts who provide the media with pornographic material while pretending it has some redeeming social value under the public's 'right to know'." -- Kenneth Starr, 1987, "Sixty Minutes" interview with Dianne Sawyer.

"Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future." -- Niels Bohr (Nobel physicist)