"Basically, I no longer work for anything but the sensation I have while working."
- Albert Giacometti (sculptor)
"There's a limit to how many times you can read how great you are and what an inspiration you are, but I'm not there yet."
- Randy Pausch (1960-2008)
"It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring."
- Carl Sagan (1934-1996)
"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)
"Many a man's reputation would not know his character if they met on the street."
- Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915)
"There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life."
- Frank Zappa
"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."
- Antoine de Saint Exupery
"Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome."
- Isaac Asimov
"If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe."
- Carl Sagan (1934-1996)
"It is much more comfortable to be mad and know it, than to be sane and have one's doubts."
- G. B. Burgin
"Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action."
- Auric Goldfinger, in "Goldfinger" by Ian L. Fleming (1908-1964)
"To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance"
- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
"Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens."
- Jimi Hendrix
"A clever man commits no minor blunders."
- Goethe (1749-1832)
"Argue for your limitations, and sure enough they're yours."
- Richard Bach
"A witty saying proves nothing."
- Voltaire (1694-1778)
"Sleep is an excellent way of listening to an opera."
- James Stephens (1882-1950)
"The nice thing about being a celebrity is that if you bore people they think it's their fault."
- Henry Kissinger (1923-)
"Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance."
- Will Durant
"I have often regretted my speech, never my silence."
- Xenocrates (396-314 B.C.)
"It was the experience of mystery -- even if mixed with fear -- that engendered religion."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough."
- Mario Andretti
"I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure -- that is all that agnosticism means."
- Clarence Darrow, Scopes trial, 1925.
"Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal."
- Henry Ford (1863-1947)
"I'll sleep when I'm dead."
- Warren Zevon (1947-2003)
"There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread."
- Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)
"When you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you."
- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
"The instinct of nearly all societies is to lock up anybody who is truly free. First, society begins by trying to beat you up. If this fails, they try to poison you. If this fails too, they finish by loading honors on your head."
- Jean Cocteau (1889-1963)
"Everyone is a genius at least once a year; a real genius has his original ideas closer together."
- Georg Lichtenberg (1742-1799)
"Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it"
- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
"While we are postponing, life speeds by."
- Seneca (3BC - 65AD)
"Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?"
- Bumper Sticker
"God, please save me from your followers!"
- Bumper Sticker
"Fill what's empty, empty what's full, and scratch where it itches."
- the Duchess of Windsor, when asked what is the secret of a long and happy life
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
- Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)
"Luck is the residue of design."
- Branch Rickey - former owner of the Brooklyn Dodger Baseball Team
"Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die."
- Mel Brooks
"Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so."
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
"Wit is educated insolence."
- Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
"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 (470-399 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)
"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"The secret of success is to know something nobody else knows."
- Aristotle Onassis (1906-1975)
"Sometimes when reading Goethe I have the paralyzing suspicion that he is trying to be funny."
- Guy Davenport
"When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has no 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)
"We all agree that your theory is crazy, but is it crazy enough?"
- 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)
"In any contest between power and patience, bet on patience."
- W.B. Prescott
"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.)
"Grove giveth and Gates taketh away."
- Bob Metcalfe (inventor of Ethernet) on the trend of hardware speedups not being able to keep up with software demands
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"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)
