Some Of My Favorite Quotable Phrases
Last-updated: 2007-07-18
- "No, my powers can only be used for good."
- "You sound reasonable . . . time to increase my medication."
- "My toys! My toys! I can't do this job without my toys!"
- "It might look like I'm doing nothing, but at the cellular level I'm really quite busy."
- "Someday, we'll look back on this, laugh nervously and change the subject."
- "Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental."
- "You can't motivate people to do things, you can only demotivate them. The primary job of the manager is not to empower but to remove obstacles." -- Scott Adams (creator of "Dilbert")
- "Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment." -- Will Rogers
- "There are two theories to arguin' with a woman. Neither one works." -- Will Rogers
- "If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop diggin'." -- Will Rogers
- "Never miss a good chance to shut up." -- Will Rogers
- "The cost of a thing is the amount of what I call "LIFE" which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run." -- Henry David Thoreau
- "Before you criticise someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticise them you're a mile away and you have their shoes!" -- J. K. Lambert
- "If a man is standing in the middle of the forest speaking and there is no woman around to hear him . . . is he still wrong?" -- George Carlin
- "Is there another word for synonym?" -- George Carlin
- "The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind." -- H. L. Mencken
- "The hardest part about gaining any new idea is sweeping out the false idea occupying that niche. As long as that niche is occupied, evidence and proof and logical demonstration get nowhere. But once the niche is emptied of the wrong idea that has been filling it - once you can honestly say, "I don't know," then it becomes possible to get at the truth." -- Robert A. Heinlein
- "The greatest and noblest pleasure which we have in this world is to discover new truths, and the next is to shake off old prejudices." -- Frederick II, the Great
- "A person is never happy except at the price of some ignorance." -- Anatole France
- "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts." -- Bertrand Russell
- "The trouble isn't that there are too many fools, but that the lightning isn't distributed right." -- Mark Twain
- "Tolerance, in the form of anti-militarism, will prove advantageous to aggressive outsiders - barbarians or neighbouring civilizations." -- Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History
- "High intelligence and learning do not always exclude unreason." -- Walter Gratzer, The Undergrowth of Science
- "Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow." -- Mark Twain
- "Vegetarian: Old Native American word for 'lousy hunter'." -- Bumper sticker
- "I earn a seven-figure salary. Unfortunately, there's a decimal point involved." -- Random thought
- "Procrastination is great. It gives me a lot more time to do things that I'm never going to do." -- Christopher Kalos
- "The Good War means that only strangers with funny names were blown to bits." -- Arthur C. Clarke / Michael Kube-McDowell, The Trigger
- "The best any human can do is to pick a delusion that helps them get through the day. This is why people of different religions can generally live in peace. At some level, we all suspect that other people don't believe their own religion any more than we believe ours." -- Scott Adams, God's Debris
- ""Women believe that men are, in a sense, defective versions of women," he said. "Men believe that women are defective versions of men. Both genders are trapped in a delusion that their personal viewpoints are universal. That viewpoint - that each gender is a defective version of the other - is the root of all misunderstandings." -- Scott Adams, God's Debris
- "The best you can hope for in a relationship is to find someone whose flaws are the sort you don't mind. It is futile to look for someone who has no flaws, or someone who is capable of significant change; that sort of person exists only in our imaginations." -- Scott Adams, God's Debris
- "You don't often see math geniuses or logic professors become great leaders. Logic is a detriment to leadership." -- Scott Adams, God's Debris
- "No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God." -- George H. Bush 1988/08/27 (what a maroon)
- "If you have to become a police state to enforce your law, the law is wrong." -- Unknown (seen on Slashdot 2002/01/28)
- "I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying that I approved of it." -- Mark Twain
- "Duct tape is like the force: It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together." -- Carl Zwanzig
- "That's not encrypted - that's a perl script I'm working on." -- from some Matrix parody
- "I'm a very dangerous fellow when I don't know what I'm doing." -- Dr. Who
- "Gods are fragile things; they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense." -- Chapman Cohen
- "Lets face it, this really is a country "Of the people, for the people, and by the people."*
* People refers to the top 1% which own %50 of the wealth, corporate trusts, and lawyers." -- CrazyDuke, Slashdot user
- "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty." -- John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address, 1961-01-20
- "All the world's a stage, and most of us are desperately unrehearsed." -- Sean O'Casey
- "Steal a man's fish and he'll be mad. Poison the lake, establish a food supply, and he'll be your slave for life." -- moncyb, Slashdot user
- "To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." -- Theodore Roosevelt
- "All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." -- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
- "Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards." -- Soren Kierkegaard
- "Conservative: One who admires radicals centuries after they're dead." -- Leo C. Rosten
- "After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music." -- Aldous Huxley
- "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." -- Richard Feynman
- "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." -- Philip K. Dick
- "Windows Security: The oxymoron for the new millenium." -- tomhudson, Slashdot user
- "There is no pleasure in having nothing to do; the fun is in having lots to do and not doing it." -- Mary Wilson Little
- "Those who suppress freedom always do so in the name of law and order." -- John V. Lindsay
- "If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?" -- Scott Adams
- "Somewhere in Texas, there's a village missing its idiot." -- various Slashdot users
- "Upcoming movies in 2004: Dumb, Dumber, and Dubya." -- Joe the Lesser, Slashdot user
- "Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened." -- Dr. Seuss
- "Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." -- Rich Cook
- "The best part about procrastination is that you are never bored, because you have all kinds of things that you should be doing." -- unknown
- "Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative" -- John Stuart Mill
- "It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority." -- Benjamin Franklin
- "Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin
- "A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both and deserve neither." -- Thomas Jefferson
- "Dissent is the highest form of patriotism." -- Thomas Jefferson
- "The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home." -- James Madison
- "It is not a coincidence that the two fields most commonly accused of being liberal - journalism and academia - are two fields whose central purpose is the pursuit of truth." -- Kenneth Quinnell
- "Anyone who is not at least a little bit cynical is either one of the bad guys or totally ignorant and/or stupid, which is just as bad." -- Kenneth Quinnell
- "So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable." -- Christopher Reeve
- "Americans have different ways of saying things. They say 'elevator', we say 'lift'; they say 'president', we say 'stupid psychopathic git'. ..." -- Alexi Sayle
- "Today the United States is the last religious country in the western world, the last in which a majority of the population are practising believers. By contrast, in all the jurisdictions where one church was formally or informally tied to the state - England, Ireland, France, Spain, Quebec, you name it - religious observance has withered away to statistically insignificant numbers." -- Mark Steyn (right-wing twerp)
- "The United States is in no sense founded upon the Christian doctrine." -- George Washington
- "My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you'll be happy; if not, you'll become a philosopher." -- Socrates
- *** Join The Dark Side! ~ Vote Bush/Satan 2004 ***
(paid for by the evil forces of hell)
-- signature of Slashdot user
- "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." -- George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Aug. 5, 2004
- "Great minds, in small numbers, can work miracles. Simple minds, in large numbers, can start wars." -- Derek Jerome Lane
- "The purpose of life is to find the purpose of life."
- "It is noble to be good; it is still nobler to teach others to be good - and less trouble." -- Mark Twain
- "Idealism is what precedes experience; cynicism is what follows." -- David T. Wolf
- "Everyone has a purpose in life. Perhaps yours is watching television." -- David Letterman
- "Love is a bad tenant for one's bosom; for when compelled to quit, he always leaves the mansion more or less out of repair." -- C. F. Hoffman 1806-1884
- "As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws." -- Tacitus, Annales 3:27
- "To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who most 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, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
- "I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." -- Douglas Adams
- "There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened." -- Douglas Adams
- "I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting. But it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously." -- Douglas Adams, Salmon of Doubt, 2002
- "The United States of America should have a foundation free from the influence of clergy." -- George Washington
- "You're not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality." -- Malcolm X
- "Faith is to believe what you do not yet see; the reward for this faith is to see what you believe." -- Saint Augustine
- "To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today." -- Isaac Asimov
- "Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." -- Blaise Pascal
- "Criminal: A person with predatory instincts who has not sufficient capital to form a corporation." -- Howard Scott
- "Some people are like Slinkies. Not really good for anything, but they still bring a smile to your face when you push them down a flight of stairs." -- Unattributed
- "Everyone is entitled to be stupid, but some abuse the privilege." -- Unattributed
- "Why it is that of all the billions and billions of strange objects in the Cosmos - novas, quasars, pulsars, black holes - you are beyond doubt the strangest?" -- Walker Percy
- "I never make the mistake of arguing with people for whose opinions I have no respect." -- Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)
- "Reality continues to ruin my life." -- Bill Watterson, from Calvin and Hobbes
- "In my many years, I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm and three or more is a congress." -- John Adams
- "Few things are more satisfying than seeing your own children have teenagers of their own." -- Doug Larson
- "Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." -- Dr. Seuss
- "Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder." -- Ambrose Bierce
- "Weekends don't count unless you spend them doing something completely pointless." -- Bill Watterson
- "Nixon was the most dishonest individual I have ever met in my life. He lied to his wife, his family, his friends, his colleagues in the Congress, lifetime members of his own political party, the American people and the world." -- Barry Goldwater
- "Think twice before you speak, and then you may be able to say something more insulting than if you spoke right out at once." -- Evan Esar
- "It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in argument." -- William G. McAdoo
- "Average intelligence is not very bright, and half the population is dumber than that." -- sig line from a friend on Skepticality.com
- "Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory." -- Albert Schweitzer
- "I think that somehow, we learn who we really are and then live with that decision." -- Eleanor Roosevelt
- "The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one." -- George Bernard Shaw
- "I have as much authority as the pope, I just don't have as many people who believe it." -- George Carlin
- "Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion." -- Stephen Weinberg, Nobel Laureate in physics
- "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
- "Religion is no longer the opiate of the masses. It is the speed of the masses." -- Akbar Ahmed
- "All religions, with their gods, demigods, prophets, messiahs and saints, are the product of the fancy and credulity of men who have not yet reached the full development and complete possession of their intellectual powers." -- Mikhail Bakunin, God and the State (1871)
- "A religion, even if it calls itself a religion of love, must be hard and unloving to those who do not belong to it." -- Sigmund Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921)
- "Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!" -- George Bernard Shaw
- "I am as firmly convinced that religions do harm as I am that they are untrue." -- Bertrand Russell
- "I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind - that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking." -- H. L. Mencken
- "I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires." -- Susan B. Anthony
- "I do not think that the real reason why people accept religion is anything to do with argumentation. They accept religion on emotional grounds. One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it." -- Bertrand Russell, Why I am not a Christian
- "I feel, like all modern Americans, no consciousness of sin and simply do not believe in it. All I know is that if God loves me only half as much as my mother does, he will not send me to Hell. That is a final fact of my inner consciousness, and for no religion could I deny its truth." -- Lin Yutang
- "I prefer rationalism to atheism. The question of God and other objects-of-faith are outside reason and play no part in rationalism, thus you don't have to waste your time in either attacking or defending." -- Isaac Asimov
- "Incurably religious, that is the best way to describe the mental condition of so many people." -- Thomas Edison
- "Life in Lubbock, Texas, taught me two things: One is that God loves you and you're going to burn in hell. The other is that sex is the most awful, filthy thing on earth and you should save it for someone you love." -- Butch Hancock
- "Making fun of born-again Christians is like hunting dairy cows with a high powered rifle and scope." -- P.J. O'Rourke
- "Man is the religious animal. He is the only religious animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion - several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat, if his theology isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven." -- Mark Twain
- "On the surface, [holy scriptures] may appear to have been composed as conscientious history. In depth they reveal themselves to have been concieved as myths: poetic readings of the mysteries of life from a certain interested point of view. But to read a poem as a chronicle of fact is - to say the least - to miss the point. To say a little more, it is to prove oneself a dolt." -- Joseph Campbell, Occidental Mythology: The Masks of God
- "Once there was a time when all people believed in God and the church ruled. This time is called the Dark Ages." -- Richard Lederer
- "Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned." -- Anonymous, quoted in Dennett, Daniel C. (2006). Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
- "Religion easily - has the best bullshit story of all time. Think about it. Religion has convinced people that there's an invisible man...living in the sky. Who watches everything you do every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a list of ten specific things he doesn't want you to do. And if you do any of these things, he will send you to a special place, of burning and fire and smoke and torture and anguish for you to live forever, and suffer, and burn, and scream, until the end of time. But he loves you. He loves you. He loves you and he needs money." -- George Carlin
- "Religion is an attempt to get control over the sensory world, in which we are placed, by means of the wish-world which we have developed inside us as a result of biological and psychological necessities. [...] If one attempts to assign to religion its place in man's evolution, it seems not so much to be a lasting acquisition, as a parallel to the neurosis which the civilized individual must pass through on his way from childhood to maturity." -- Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism (1939)
- "Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires." -- Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
- "Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful." -- Seneca the Younger
- "Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think." -- Arthur Schopenhauer, Studies in Pessimism
- "Religion is the most malevolent of all mind viruses." -- Arthur C. Clarke, The Onion AV Club interview (18th February 2004)
- "Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich." -- Napoleon Bonaparte
- "Religion... comprises a system of wishful illusions together with a disavowal of reality, such as we find in an isolated form nowhere else but in amentia, in a state of blissful hallucinatory confusion." -- Sigmund Freud
- "Religion began when the first scoundrel met the first fool." -- Voltaire
- "Religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few." -- Stendhal
- "Science can destroy religion by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets. No one ever demonstrated, so far as I am aware, the non-existence of Zeus or Thor - but they have few followers now." -- Arthur C. Clarke
- "So far as religion of the day is concerned, it is a damned fake... Religion is all bunk." -- Thomas Edison
- "Some of you say religion makes people happy. So does laughing gas." -- Clarence Darrow
- "The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance... logic can be happily tossed out the window." -- Stephen King
- "The government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion." -- Treaty of Tripoli, signed by President John Adams (1796)
- "What gods are there, what gods have there ever been, that were not from man's imagination?" -- Joseph Campbell
- "History does not record anywhere a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people not strong enough to stand up to the unknown without help." -- Lazarus Long, in Time Enough for Love by Robert A. Heinlein
- "It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics." -- Lazarus Long, in Time Enough for Love by Robert A. Heinlein
- "The most preposterous notion that H. sapiens has ever dreamed up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive this flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all the expenses of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry in all history." -- Lazarus Long, in Time Enough for Love by Robert A. Heinlein
- "It's a big question. Getting rid of religion would be a good start, wouldn't it? It seems to be causing a lot of havoc." -- Björk when asked "Given the chance, how would you change the world?"; quoted in Independent, 18 March 2005
- "Yes, the long war on Christianity. I pray that one day we may live in an America where Christians can worship freely, in broad daylight, openly wearing symbols of their religion, perhaps around their necks. And maybe - dare I dream it - maybe one day there could even be an openly Christian president. Or, perhaps, 43 of them. Consecutively." -- John Stewart, The Daily Show
- "Her virtue was that she said what she thought, her vice that what she thought didn't amount to much." -- Peter Ustinov
- "Drizzle, drazzle, druzzle, drome, time for this one to come home." -- Tooter Turtle calling for help from Mr. Wizard
- "A cult is a religion with no political power." -- Tom Wolfe, US author ∓ journalist (1931 - )
- "Man once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind." -- Thomas Jefferson to James Smith, 1822
- "There's a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot." -- Steven Wright
- "One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries." -- AA Milne
- Poe's Law: "Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won't mistake for the real thing."
- "More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly." -- Woody Allen, My Speech to the Graduates
- "The secret of eternal youth is arrested development." -- Alice Roosevelt Longworth
- "The more the fruits of knowledge become accessible to men, the more widespread is the decline of religious belief." -- Sigmund Freud
- "Don't take life too seriously; you'll never get out of it alive." -- Elbert Hubbard
- "Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die" -- unknown (seen in tagline of Slashdot user, LarsWestergren)
- "Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent." -- Friedrich Nietzsche
- "All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome." -- George Orwell
- "All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting." -- George Orwell
- "Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them." -- George Orwell
- "Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac." -- George Orwell
- "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." -- George Orwell
- "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever." -- George Orwell
- "In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
- "Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise." -- George Orwell
- "Not to expose your true feelings to an adult seems to be instinctive from the age of seven or eight onwards." -- George Orwell
- "On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time." -- George Orwell
- "Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." -- George Orwell
- "Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious." -- George Orwell
- "The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection." -- George Orwell
- "The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor." -- George Orwell
- "The main motive for 'nonattachment' is a desire to escape from the pain of living, and above all from love, which, sexual or non-sexual, is hard work." -- George Orwell
- "The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them." -- George Orwell
- "To an ordinary human being, love means nothing if it does not mean loving some people more than others." -- George Orwell
- "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
1,001 Logical Laws, etc
Ron Savage on 2006-11-18T01:26:54
Marvellous collection. One phrase by Isacc Asimov appears twice, and 'who must want' should read 'who most want'. Perhaps this will lead to a new edition of:
'1,001 Logical Laws, Accurate Axioms, Profound Principles, Trusty Truisms, Homey Homilies, Colorful Corollories, Quotable Quotes, and Rambunctious Ruminations for All Walks of Life'
Compiled by John Peers
Edited by Gondon Bennett
DoubleDay & Company
1979
Re:1,001 Logical Laws, etc
mike_arms on 2007-07-18T16:23:50
Thanks, Ron. Good catch on both of those. Fixed now, and some more added. I collect these as I encounter them into a local file and then periodically update them here.