Quotes Page (stolen from UVa, ref. see below)

"If a man does his best, what else is there?"

- George S. Patton (1885-1945)

"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever."

- Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

"Victory goes to the player who makes the next-to-last mistake."

- Chessmaster Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower (1887-1956)

"Don't be so humble - you are not that great."

- Golda Meir (1898-1978) to a visiting diplomat

"I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody who can write better."

- A. J. Liebling (1904-1963)

"Give me chastity and continence, but not yet."

- Saint Augustine (354-430)

"This book fills a much-needed gap."

- Moses Hadas (1900-1966) in a review

"I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart."

- e e cummings (1894-1962)

"Give me a museum and I'll fill it."

- Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)

"Assassins!"

- Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957) to his orchestra

"I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have."

- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

"Each problem that I solved became a rule which served afterwards to solve other problems."

- Rene Descartes (1596-1650), "Discours de la Methode"

"Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right."

- Henry Ford (1863-1947)

"Do, or do not. There is no 'try'."

- Yoda ('The Empire Strikes Back')

"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it."

- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so."

- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

"Wit is educated insolence."

- Aristotle (284-322 B.C.)

"Egotist: a person more interested in himself than in me."

- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)

"A narcissist is someone better looking than you are."

- Gore Vidal

"Wise men make proverbs, but fools repeat them."

- Samuel Palmer (1805-80)

"Sometimes when reading Goethe I have the paralyzing suspicion that he is trying to be funny."

- Guy Davenport

"Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has not heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains."

- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

"The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth."

- Niels Bohr (1885-1962)

"When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong."

- Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983)

"In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite."

- Paul Dirac (1902-1984)

"I would have made a good Pope."

- Richard M. Nixon (1913-1994)

"Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin."

- John von Neumann (1903-1957)

"The mistakes are all waiting to be made."

- chessmaster Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower (1887-1956) on the game's opening position

"It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims."

- Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)

"One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important."

- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

"A little inaccuracy sometimes saves a ton of explanation."

- H. H. Munro (Saki) (1870-1916)

"What do you take me for, an idiot?;"

General Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970), when a journalist asked him if he was happy

"I heard someone tried the monkeys-on-typewriters bit trying for the plays of W. Shakespeare, but all they got was the collected works of Francis Bacon."

- Bill Hirst

"Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do."

- Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)

"A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines."

- Frank Lloyd Wright (1868-1959)

"It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid."

- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"If you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me."

- Alice Roosevelt Longworth (1884-1980)

"A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies."

- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names."

- John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)

"Logic is in the eye of the logician."

- Gloria Steinem

"No one can earn a million dollars honestly."

- William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925)

"Everything has been figured out, except how to live."

- Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)

"Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech."

- Martin Fraquhar Tupper

"Thank you for sending me a copy of your book - I'll waste no time reading it."

- Moses Hadas (1900-1966)

"From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it."

- Groucho Marx (1895-1977)

"It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating."

- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"When ideas fail, words come in very handy."

- Goethe (1749-1832)

"In the end, everything is a gag."

- Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977)

"The nice thing about egotists is that they don't talk about other people."

- Lucille S. Harper

"You got to be careful if you dont know where your'e going, because you might not get there."

- Yogi Berra

"I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I have ever known."

- Walt Disney (1901-1966)

"He who hesitates is a damned fool."

- Mae West (1892-1980)

"Good teaching is one-forth preparation and three-fourths theater."

- Gail Godwin

"University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small."

- Henry Kissinger (1923-)

"The graveyards are full of indispensable men."

- Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970)

"You can pretend to be serious; you can't pretend to be witty."

- Sacha Guitry (1885-1957)

"Behind every great fortune there is a crime."

- Honore de Balzac (1799-1850)

"If women didn't exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning."

- Aristotle Onassis (1906-1975)

"I am not young enough to know everything."

- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

"The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his."

- General George Patton (1885-1945)

"Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

"There is no sincerer love than the love of food."

- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"I don't even butter my bread; I consider that cooking."

- Katherine Cebrian

"I have an existential map; it has 'you are here' written all over it."

- Steven Wright

"Mr. Wagner has beautiful moments but bad quarters of an hour."

- Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868)

"Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure."

- Oliver Herford (1863-1935)

"I have read your book and much like it."

- Moses Hadas (1900-1966)

"The cover of this book are too far apart."

- Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)

"Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them."

- Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964)

"Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end."

- Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)

"Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung."

- Voltaire (1694-1778)

"When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I've never tried before."

- Mae West (1892-1980)

"I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to."

- Elvis Presley (1935-1977)

"No Sane man will dance."

- Cicero (106-43 B.C.)

"Hell is a half-filled auditorium."

- Robert Frost (1874-1963)

"Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you."

- C. G. Jung (1875-1961)

"Vote early and vote often."

- Al Capone (1899-1947)

"If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?"

- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

"Few things are harder to put up with than a good example."

- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"Hell is other people."

- Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)

"I am become death, shatterer of worlds."

- Robert J. Oppenheimer (1904-1967) (citing from the Bhagavadgita, after witnessing the world's first nuclear explosion)

"Happiness is good health and a bad memory."

- Ingrid Bergman (1917-1982)

"Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate."

- Thomas Jones

"You can get more with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone."

- Al Capone (1899-1947)

"The gods too are fond of a joke."

- Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)

"Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes."

- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

"The difference between pornography and erotica is lighting."

- Gloria Leonard

"It is time I stepped aside for a less experienced and less able man."

- Professor Scott Elledge on his retirement from Cornell

"Every day I get up and look through the Forbes list of the richest people in America. If I'm not there, I go to work."

- Robert Orben

"The cynics are right nine times out of ten."

- H. L. Menchen (1880-1956)

"There are some experiences in life which should not be demanded twice from any man, and one of them is listening to the Brahms Requiem."

- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"Attention to health is life greatest hindrance."

- Plato (427-347 B.C.)

"Plato was a bore."

- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

"Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal."

- Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)

"I'm not going to get into the ring with Tolstoy."

- Ernest Hemingway (1889-1961)

"Hemingway was a jerk."

- Harold Robbins

"How can I lose to such an idiot?"

- A shout from chessmaster Aaron Nimzovich (1886-1935)

"Not only is there no God, but try finding a plumber on Sunday"

- Woody Allen (1935-)

"I don't feel good."

- The last words of Luther Burbank (1849-1926)

"Nothing is wrong with California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn't cure."

- Ross MacDonald (1915-1983)

"Men have become the tools of their tools."

- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."

- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"It is now possible for a flight attendant to get a pilot pregnant."

- Richard J. Ferris, president of United Airlines

"I never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television."

- Gore Vidal

"Men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all the other alternatives."

- Abba Eban (1915-)

"To sit alone with my conscience will be judgment enough for me."

- Charles William Stubbs

"Sanity is a madness put ot good uses."

- George Santayana (1863-1952)

"Imitation is the sincerest form of television."

- Fred Allen (1894-1956)

"Always do right- this will gratify some and astonish the rest."

- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"In America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take."

- Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965)

"Copy from one, it's plagiarism; copy from two, it's research."

- Wilson Mizner (1876-1933)

"Why don't you write books people can read?"

- Nora Joyce to her husband James (1882-1941)

"Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers."

- T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)

"Criticism is prejudice made plausible."

- H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

"It is better to be quotable than to be honest."

- Tom Stoppard

"Being on the tightrope is living; everything else is waiting."

- Karl Wallenda

"Opportunities multiply as they are seized."

- Sun Tzu

"A scholar who cherishes the love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar."

- Lao-Tzu (570?-490? BC)

" The best way to predict the future is to invent it."

- Alan Kay

"Never mistake motion for action."

- Ernest Hemingway (1889-1961)

"Hell is paved with good samaritans."

- William M. Holden

"The longer I live the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains that I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time."

- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"Silence is argument carried out by other means."

- Ernesto "Che"Guevara (1928-1967)

"Well done is better than well said."

- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

"The average person thinks he isn't."

- Father Larry Lorenzoni

"Heav'n hath no rage like love to hatred turn'd, Nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorn'd."

- William Congreve (1670-1729)

"A husband is what is left of the lover after the nerve has been extracted."

- Helen Rowland (1876-1950)

"Learning is what most adults will do for a living in the 21st century."

- Perelman

"The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready."

- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

"There is a country is Europe where multiple-choice tests are illegal."

- Sigfried Hulzer

"Ask her to wait a moment - I am almost done."

- Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855) when informed that his wife is dying

"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."

- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."

- Thomas Watson (1874-1956), Chairman of IBM, 1943

"I think it would be a good idea.

- Mahatma Ghandi (1869-1948), when asked what he thought of Western civilization

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

- Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

"I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!"

- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

"If Stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?" "

- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

"The backbone of surprise is fusing speed with secrecy."

- Von Clausewitz (1780-1831)

"Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions - it only guarantees equality of opportunity."

- Irving Kristol

"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."

- Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977

"640K ought to be enough for anybody. "

- Bill Gates (1955-), in 1981

"The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C', the idea must be feasible."

- A Yale University management professor in response to student Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)

"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk? "

- H. M. Warner (1881-1858), founder of Warner Brothers, in 1927

"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out. "

- Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962

"Everything that can be invented has been invented. "

- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899

"Denial ain't just a river in Egypt. "

- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"A pint of sweat, saves a gallon of blood. "

- General George S. Patton (1885-1945)

"After I'm dead I'd rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one. "

- Cato the Elder (234-149 BC, AKA Marcus Porcius Cato)

"He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know. "

- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

"Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something. "

- last words of Pancho Villa (1877-1923)

"The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins. "

- Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841-1935)

"The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense. "

- Tom Clancy

"Its not the size of the dog in the fight, its the size of the fight in the dog. "

- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both. "

- Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), "The Prince"

"Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame."

- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

"There is only one nature - the division into science and engineering is a human imposition, not a natural one. Indeed, the division is a human failure; it reflects our limited capacity to comprehend the whole."

- Bill Wulf

"There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher."

- Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964)

"A poem is never finished, only abandoned."

- Paul Valery (1871-1945)

"Your Highness, I have no need of this hypothesis."

- Pierre Laplace (1749-1827), to Napoleon on why his works on celestial mechanics make no mention of God.

"I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don't need."

- Rodin (1840-1917), when asked how he managed to make his remarkable statues

"Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing."

- Wernher Von Braun (1912-1977)

"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."

- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

For more goodies, please see Prof. Gabriel Robins' WWW home page

Burkhard Weidmann