Random Quotes

A word to the wise isn’t as good as a word from the wise.
~ Grenville Kleiser

Where ignorance is bliss,
‘Tis folly to be wise.
~ Thomas Gray

Life don’t owe you nothing.
~ August Wilson

To have a very strong opinion all the time is corrosive to a person’s intellect. It becomes your default position.
~ Denise Mina

What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.
~Salman Rushdie

Offense is not given, it’s taken.
~ Anon

“How people treat you is their karma. How you react is yours.”
~ Wayne Dyer

“Only the insecure strive for security.”
~ Wayne Dyer

“Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.”
~ Robert A. Heinlein

“If mistakes humiliate you, you will never create.”
~ Anon

Only self-educated is educated. Others are merely taught.
~ Erno Paasilinna

You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.
~ Ray Bradbury

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.
~ George Bernard Shaw

Half of being smart is knowing what you’re dumb at.
~ David Gerrold

If you seek the removal of freedoms from an opponent, simply on the grounds that they offended you, you have crossed a line to stand alongside tyrants.
~ J.K. Rowling

Character, not circumstances, makes the man.
~ Booker T. Washington

The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.
~ Bertrand Russell

The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.
~ Bertrand Russell

Too little liberty brings stagnation and too much brings chaos.
~ Bertrand Russell

Why is propaganda so much more successful when it stirs up hatred than when it tries to stir up friendly feeling?
~ Bertrand Russell

Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.
~ Bertrand Russell

We’ve heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true.
~ Robert Wilensky

The thing I hate about an argument is that it always interrupts a discussion.
~G. K. Chesterton

The only thing worse than a man you can’t control is a man you can.
~Margo Kaufman

Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.
~ William Blake

Advice? I don’t offer advice. Not my business. Your life is what you make it.
~ Betty Friedan

What you think, you become.
What you feel, you attract.
What you imagine, you create.
~ Anon

“To believe in personal responsibility would be to destroy the whole special role of the anointed, whose vision casts them in the role of rescuers of people treated unfairly by “society”.
~ Thomas Sowell, The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy

“One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain.”
~ Thomas Sowell, The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy

“We seem to be getting closer and closer to a situation where nobody is responsible for what they did but we are all responsible for what somebody else did.”
~ Thomas Sowell

“It doesn’t matter how smart you are unless you stop and think.”
~ Thomas Sowell

One of the painful signs of years of dumbed-down education is how many people are unable to make a coherent argument. They can vent their emotions, question other people’s motives, make bold assertions, repeat slogans– anything except reason.
~ Thomas Sowell

“The problem isn’t that Johnny can’t read. The problem isn’t even that Johnny can’t think. The problem is that Johnny doesn’t know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.”
~ Thomas Sowell

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
~ C. S. Lewis

Nowhere at present is there such a measureless loathing of their country by educated people as in America.
~ Eric Hoffer

Any politician who starts shouting election-year demagoguery about the rich and the poor should be asked, “What about the other 90 percent of the people?”
~ Thomas Sowell

Despite a voluminous and often fervent literature on “income distribution,” the cold fact is that most income is not distributed: It is earned.
~ Thomas Sowell

Various kinds of ideas can be classified by their relationship to the authentication process. There are ideas systematically prepared for authentication (“theories”), ideas not derived from any systematic process (“visions”), ideas which could not survive any reasonable authentication process (“illusions”), ideas which exempt themselves from any authentication process (“myths”), ideas which have already passed authentication processes (“facts”), as well as ideas known to have failed- or certain to fail- such processes (“falsehoods” – both mistakes and lies).
~ Thomas Sowell

What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don’t like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don’t expect freedom to survive very long.
~ Thomas Sowell

We should listen first and foremost to our own experience…We should stop looking for saviors… Society has not existed for thousands of years because it had a succession of saviors. It’s existed because it has institutions and processes through which people can realize their own goals.
~ Thomas Sowell

Social values in general are incrementally variable: neither safety, diversity, rational articulation, nor morality is categorically a “good thing” to have more of, without limits. All are subject to diminishing returns, and ultimately negative returns.
~ Thomas Sowell

There are few things more dishonorable than misleading the young.
~ Thomas Sowell

Many recieve advice, only the wise profit from it.
~ Harper Lee

The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for.
~ Bob Marley

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.
~ Bernard M. Baruch

“Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.”
~ Eleanor Roosevelt

“When you’re through changing, you’re through.”
~ Martha Stewart

If you can’t love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love somebody else?
~ RuPaul

I’m selfish, impatient, and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I’m out of control, and at times hard to handle. But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best.
~ Marilyn Monroe

Never complain. Never explain.
~ Katharine Hepburn

I never realized until lately that women were supposed to be the inferior sex.
~ Katharine Hepburn

There are two ways to live:
You can live as if nothing is a miracle;
You can live as if everything is a miracle.
~ Albert Einstein

Just because some people are fueled by drama doesn’t mean you have to attend the performance.
~ Cheryl Richardson

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”
~ Alice Walker

“You take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing, no one to blame.”
~ Erica Jong

“One of the most courageous things you can do is identify yourself, know who you are, what you believe in and where you want to go.”
~ Sheila Murray Bethel

“When you are going through hell, keep on going. Never never never give up.”
~ Winston Churchill

“The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me?”
~ Ayn Rand

“God gives every bird a worm, but he does not throw it into the nest.”
~ Swedish Proverb

“Courage doesn’t always roar, sometimes it’s the quiet voice at the end of the day whispering ‘I will try again tomorrow’.”
~ Mary Anne Radmacher

“The great thing in this world is not so much where you stand, as in what direction you are moving.”
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

“I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.”
~ Stephen Covey

Some people bring out the worst in you, others bring out the best, and then there are those remarkably rare, addictive ones who just bring out the most. Of everything. They make you feel so alive that you’d follow them straight into hell, just to keep getting your fix.
~ Karen Marie Moning

Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option.
~ Mark Twain

The definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results.
~ Albert Einstein

The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
~ Albert Einstein

I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.
~ Albert Einstein

If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.
~ Albert Einstein

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
~ Albert Einstein

Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them.
~ Albert Einstein

We hold on so tightly, because we’re terrified of loss. We hold on till our hands bleed. And in that self-shattering persistence, we fail to see the answer: Just let go.
~ Yasmin Mogahed

I am too intelligent, too demanding, and too resourceful for anyone to be able to take charge of me entirely. No one knows me or loves me completely. I have only myself.
~ Simone de Beauvoir

You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.
~ Maya Angelou

Never attribute to malice, that which can be reasonably explained by stupidity.
~ Spider Robinson

“There’s much more stupidity than there is malice in the world…”
~ Anon

Once you’ve accepted your flaws, no one can use them against you.
~ Tyrion Lannister

Of course governments are capable of evil… any organization is. But they’re far more likely to be guilty of incompetence.
~ A line from Elementary

“You must let what happens happen. Everything must be equal in your eyes, good and evil, beautiful and ugly, foolish and wise.”
~ Michael Ende

Who aims at excellence will be above mediocrity; who aims at mediocrity will be far short of it.
~ Burmese Saying

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

I read and walked for miles at night along the beach, writing bad blank verse and searching endlessly for someone wonderful who would step out of the darkness and change my life. It never crossed my mind that that person could be me.
~ Anna Quindlen

If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins.
~ Benjamin Franklin

Never confuse motion with action.
~ Benjamin Franklin

Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.
~ Sigmund Freud

In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt

“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”
~ Attributed to Mark Twain

I’d rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.
~ William F. Buckley, Jr.

I won’t insult your intelligence by suggesting that you really believe what you just said.
~ William F. Buckley, Jr.

“A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.”
~ George Bernard Shaw

The greatest moral failing is to condemn something as a moral failing: no vice is worse than being judgmental.
~ Julian Baggini

‘Feminism isn’t about all women believing the same thing, it’s about women standing up for what they believe in and having the freedom to make their own choices.’
~ Anon

There are two races of people – men and women – no matter what women’s libbers would have you pretend.
The male is motivated by toys and science because men are born with no purpose in the universe except to procreate. There is lots of time to kill beyond that. They’ve got to find work. Men have no inherent center to themselves beyond procreating.
Women, however, are born with a center. They can create the universe, mother it, teach it, nurture it. Men read science fiction to build the future. Women don’t need to read it. They are the future.
~ Ray Bradbury

My idea of feminism is self-determination, and it’s very open-ended: every woman has the right to become herself, and do whatever she needs to do.
~ Ani DiFranco

Feminism, unlike almost every other social movement, is not a struggle against a distinct oppressor – it’s not the ruling class or the occupiers or the colonizers – it’s against a deeply held set of beliefs and assumptions that we women, far too often, hold ourselves.
~ Kavita Ramdas

‘I hate discussions of feminism that end up with who does the dishes,’ she said. So do I. But at the end, there are always the damned dishes.
~ Marilyn French

I think feminism means what it has always meant – women want to use all their gifts, all their talents and be judged impartially for them. I don’t think feminism has ever meant anything else.
~ Erica Jong

Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
~ Calvin Coolidge

The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls the butterfly.
~ Richard Bach

The difference between involvement and commitment is like ham and eggs. The chicken is involved; the pig is committed.
~ Martina Navratilova

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn”
~ Alvin Toffler

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.
~ F. Scott Fizgerald

We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.
~ Carl Jung

The healthy man does not torture others – generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.
~ Carl Jung

Everyone knows nowadays that people ‘have complexes’. What is not so well known, though far more important theoretically, is that complexes can have us.
~ Carl Jung

“Equality may perhaps be a right, but no power on earth can ever turn it into a fact.”
~ Honore de Balzac

“Some of us think holding on makes us strong; but sometimes it is letting go.”
~ Hermann Hesse

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

“Love never dies a natural death. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.”
~ Anäis Nin”

“All things truly wicked start from an innocence.”
~ Ernest Hemingway

“It’s hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head.”
~ Sally Kempton

“A man is known by the silence he keeps.”
~ Oliver Herford”

“Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.”
~ Michel de Montaigne

“It doesn’t take a lot of strength to hang on, it takes a lot of strength to let go.”
~ JC Watts

“It has been said that time heals all wounds. I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue, and the pain lessens, but it is never gone.”
~ Rose Kennedy

“The defects and faults of the mind are like wounds in the body. After all imaginable care has been taken to heal them up, still there will be a scar left behind.”
~ Francois de la Roche Foucauld

“Whoever undertakes to set himself up as judge in the field of truth and knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.”
~ Albert Einstein

“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.”
~ Friedrich Nietzsche