I collect quotations, and keep them here for my own amusement. Here they are:
- “If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.”
-- Henry J. Tillman - “Man, despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication and many accomplishments, owes the fact of his existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains.”
-- Anonymous (attributed as a Chinese saying) - “The original definition of consumer is "one who destroys or expends by use; devours, spends wastefully."”
-- Yvon Chouinard (Let My People Go Surfing (2006)) - “The two-party system was never anything, just two political factions fighting over jobs, money, influence and power. We have only one political party, the Party of Property, which has two right wings: Republican and Democrat, and that’s it. There are no great differences.”
-- Gore Vidal - “In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is.”
-- Jan L.A. van de Snepscheut (What computing is all about' (1993), Springer) - “To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter...to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated by a bird's nest or a wildflower in Spring - these are some of the rewards of the simple life.”
-- John Burroughs - “In science, 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.' I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.”
-- Stephen Jay Gould - “Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction.”
-- Blaise Pascal - “Most people would rather be certain they're miserable than risk being happy.”
-- Robert Anthony - “Patriotism is often an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles.”
-- George Jean Nathan - “A fine quotation is a diamond on the finger of a man of wit, and a pebble in the hand of a fool.”
-- Joseph Roux - “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”
-- Leo Tolstoy - “I feel a little odd about buying anything labeled classic, though. In marketing, classic is a way of making timidity and obstinacy sound cutting-edge. You're on the avant-garde forefront of resisting change! You hated anything new before hating anything new was trendy!”
-- Lore Sjöberg (http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/commentary/alttext/2008/03/alttext_0326) - “Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.”
-- Paul Valery - “People are, if anything, more touchy about being thought silly than they are about being thought unjust.”
-- E. B. White - “The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.”
-- Herbert Spencer - “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.”
-- Charles Dickens (David Copperfield, Chap. XII) - “The best definition we have for civilization is that the civilized man does what is best for all, while the savage does what is best for himself. Civilization is but a huge mutual insurance company against human selfishness.”
-- John Hubble (Big Bang by Simon Singh) - “Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness”
-- Robertson Davies - “As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.”
-- William James - “I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.”
-- Umberto Eco - “A preoccupation with the next world pretty clearly signals an inability to cope credibly with this one.”
-- Richard K. Morgan (Broken Angels) - “The world has not promised anything to anybody.”
-- Moroccan proverb - “Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign
funds from the rich by promising to protect each from the other.”
-- Oscar Ameringer - “The eating of meat extinguishes the seed of great compassion. ”
-- Mahaparinirvana