Quotations - Volume 6

Every effort has been made to attribute the source of each quotation properly. Anyone finding an error or who knows the source for any quotation marked "Unknown" or "Anonymous" please contact Fred O'Bryant.

1.  Don't be afraid to take a big step. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps. — David Lloyd George (1863-1945)

2.  Boredom is the feeling that everything is a waste of time; serenity, that nothing is. — Thomas Szasz (1920- )

3.  Writing is a way of talking without being interrupted. — Jules Renard (1864-1910)

4.  We never really grow up; we only learn how to act in public. — Bryan White (1974- )

5.  Each morning when I open my eyes I say to myself: I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn't arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I'm going to be happy in it. — Groucho Marx (1890-1977)

6.  I accept the whole damn thing. It is neither all beautiful nor all terrible, but a wash of multitudinous despairs and exhilarations about which we know nothing. Our history is so small, our experience so limited, our science so inadequate, our theologies so crammed in mere matchboxes, that we know we stand on the outer edge of a beginning and our greatest history lies before us, frightening and lovely, much darkness and much light. — Ray Bradbury (1920- )

7.  Someone once said that a democratic society cannot survive for long after 51 percent of the people decide that they want to live off the other 49 percent. Yet that is the direction in which we are being pushed by those who are promoting envy under its more high-toned alias, "social justice". — Thomas Sowell (1930- )

8.  American culture is, one way or another, business culture, and our business is service. Once we were a great industrial nation. Now we are a service economy. Which means we are forced to interact with each other, every day, in person and by phone and email. And it's making us all a little mad. — Peggy Noonan (1950- ) in "We Pay Them to Be Rude to Us" in the WSJ.com Opinion Journal

9.  While college students may be computer-literate, they are not, as a rule, research-literate. And there's a huge difference between the two. — Todd Gilman in "Not Enough Time in the Library" in The Chronicle of Higher Education

10.  We cannot undo the past,but we are bound to pass it in review in order to draw from it such lessons as may be applicable to the future. — Winston S. Churchill (1874-1965)

11.  To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness. — Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

12.  The longer you can look back, the farther you can look forward. — Winston S. Churchill (1874-1965)

13.  It is better to be both right and consistent. But if you have to choose—you must choose to be right. — Winston S. Churchill (1874-1965)

14.  To try to be safe everywhere is to be strong nowhere. — Winston S. Churchill (1874-1965)

15.  Sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together. — Donna Westmoreland Oneal (1949- )

16.  The game of life is the game of boomerangs. Our thoughts, deeds and words return to us sooner or later with astounding accuracy. — Florence Scovel Shinn (1871-1940)

17.  How often in life must one be content with what one can get! — Winston S. Churchill (1874-1965)

18.  It is wonderful how well men can keep secrets they have not been told. — Winston S. Churchill (1874-1965)

19.  Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active. — Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)

20.  Money often costs too much. — Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

21.  The best evidence of the fairness of any settlement is the fact that it fully satisfies neither party. — Winston S. Churchill (1874-1965)

22.  Out of intense complexities, intense simplicities emerge. — Winston S. Churchill (1874-1965)

23.  Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof. — John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006)

24.  These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves. — Gilbert Highet (1906-1978)

25.  All social reform... which is not founded upon a stable medium of internal exchange becomes a swindle and a fraud. — Winston S. Churchill (1874-1965)

26.  It is pretty tough to reshape human society in an after-dinner speech. — Winston S. Churchill (1874-1965)

27.  Enough is as good as a feast. — Winston S. Churchill (1874-1965)

28.  Intolerance of ambiguity is the mark of an authoritarian personality. — Theodor Adorno (1903-1969)

29.  You can preach a better sermon with your life than with your lips. — Oliver Goldsmith (1730-1774)

30.  You may try to destroy wealth, and find that all you have done is to increase poverty. — Winston S. Churchill (1874-1965)

31.  Fearthought is futile worrying over what cannot be averted or will probably never happen. — Winston S. Churchill (1874-1965)

32.  You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing—after they have tried everything else. — Winston S. Churchill (1874-1965)

33.  Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go. — Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

34.  Every generation of faculty seems to have to rediscover what really works in pedagogy. — Larry G. Richards (1939- )

35.  Because we don't understand the brain very well we're constantly tempted to use the latest technology as a model for trying to understand it. In my childhood we were always assured that the brain was a telephone switchboard. (What else could it be?) And I was amused to see that Sherrington, the great British neuroscientist, thought that the brain worked like a telegraph system. Freud often compared the brain to hydraulic and electromagnetic systems. Leibniz compared it to a mill, and now, obviously, the metaphor is the digital computer. — John R. Searle (1932- )

36.  In the case of good books, the point is not how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you. — Mortimer J. Adler (1902-2001)

37.  Be the master of your will and the slave of your conscience. — Hasidic Saying

38.  In winter why do we try to keep the house as warm as it was in summer when we complained about the heat? — Unknown

39.  Pedantry and mastery are opposite attitudes toward rules. To apply a rule to the letter, rigidly, unquestioningly, in cases where it fits and in cases where it does not fit, is pedantry ... To apply a rule with natural ease, with judgment, noticing the cases where it fits, and without ever letting the words of the rule obscure the purpose of the action or the opportunities of the situation, is mastery. — George Polya (1887-1985)

40.  Miss Mae West / Is one of the best: / I would rather not / Say the best what. — E. W. Fordham (1845-1925)

41.  "I quite realized," said Columbus, / "That the earth was not a rhombus, / But I am a little annoyed / To find it an oblate spheroid." — E. Clerihew Bentley (1875-1956)

42.  Henry the Eighth / Took a thucthethtion of mateth. / He inthithted that the monkth / Were a lathy lot of thkunkth. — E. Clerihew Bentley (1875-1956)

43.  "Susaddad!" exclaimed Ibsen, / "By dose is turdig cribson! / I'd better dot kiss you. / Atishoo! Atishoo!" — E. Clerihew Bentley (1875-1956)

44.  Edgar Allen Poe / Was passionately fond of roe. / He always liked to chew some / When writing anything gruesome. — E. Clerihew Bentley (1875-1956)

45.  Before we set our hearts too much on anything, let us examine how happy are those who already possess it. — Francois de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)

46.  I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy. — Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)

47.  If writers were good businessmen, they'd have too much sense to be writers. — Irvin S. Cobb (1876-1944)

48.  May we each be the person someone else is grateful for. — Arlyn Newcomb (1966- )

49.  We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible. You cannot educate a man wholly out of the superstitious fears which were implanted in his imagination, no matter how utterly his reason may reject them. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809-1894)

50.  In heaven, the police are British, the chefs are French, the mechanics are German, the lovers are Italian, and everything is organized by the Swiss. In hell, the police are German, the chefs are British, the mechanics are French, the lovers are Swiss, and everything is organized by the Italians. — Unknown

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51.  Elitism is the slur directed at merit by mediocrity. — Sydney J. Harris (1917-1986)

52.  Public opinion rarely considers the needs of the next generation or the history of the last. It is frequently hampered by myths and misinformation, by stereotypes and shibboleths, and by an inate resistance to innovation. — Theodore C. Sorensen (1928-2010)

53.  Some people become so expert at reading between the lines they don't read the lines. — Margaret Millar (1915-1994)

54.  A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary. — Thomas Carruthers

55.  Would the boy you were be proud of the man you are? — Laurence J. Peter (1919-1990)

56.  In a free country there is much clamor, with little suffering: in a despotic state there is little complaint but much suffering. — Lazare Hippolyte Carnot (1801-1888)

57.  You can't shame or humiliate modern celebrities. What used to be called shame and humiliation is now called publicity. — P. J. O'Rourke (1947- )

58.  There may be a great fire in our soul, yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a wisp of smoke. — Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)

59.  The average man, who does not know what to do with his life, wants another one which will last forever. — Anatole France (1844-1924)

60.  What we think, or what we know, or what we believe, is in the end, of little consequence. The only thing of consequence is what we do. — John Ruskin (1819-1900)

61.  You must have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by. Yes, but some of them are golden only because we let them slip by. — James M. Barrie (1860-1937)

62.  Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock. — Ben Hecht (1894-1964)

63.  Nothing is so firmly believed as what is least known. — Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)

64.  If a dog jumps into your lap, it is because he is fond of you; but if a cat does the same thing, it is because your lap is warmer. — Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947)

65.  A man really writes for an audience of about ten persons. Of course if others like it, that is clear gain. But if those ten are satisfied, he is content. — Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947)

66.  An empty bladder is the indispensible prelude to a fruitful discussion. — Winston S. Churchill (1874-1965)

67.  The alteration of Parties in power, like the rotation of crops, has beneficial results. — Winston S. Churchill (1874-1965)

68.  Among our Socialist opponents there is great confusion. Some of them regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Only a handful see it for what it really is—the strong and willing horse that pulls the whole cart along. — Winston S. Churchill (1874-1965)

69.  These examinations were a great trial to me... I should have liked to be asked to say what I knew. They always tried to ask what I did not know. — Winston S. Churchill (1874-1965)

70.  I get my exercise serving as pall-bearer to my many friends who exercised all their lives. — Winston S. Churchill (1874-1965)

71.  Thought is the most dangerous process known to man. — Winston S. Churchill (1874-1965)

72.  Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts. — Ascribed to Jules Ellinger

73.  It is more often from pride than from ignorance that we are so obstinately opposed to current opinions; we find the first places taken, and we do not want to be the last. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)

74.  It is better to prevent crimes than to punish them. — Cesare Beccaria (1738-1794)

75.  It's a great mistake when you are in a leadership position to want to be like everyone else. Because that, actually, is not your job. Your job is to be better, and to set standards that those below you have to reach to meet. And you have to do this even when it's hard, even when you know you yourself don't quite meet the standards you represent. — Peggy Noonan (1950- ) from "The Captain and the King" in the WSJ.com Opinion Journal, 1/7/11

76.  Useless laws weaken the necessary laws. — Charles de Montesquieu (1689-1755)

77.  Politicians exploit economic illiteracy. — Walter E. Williams (1936- )

78.  You have to evaluate the effects of public policy as opposed to intentions. — Walter E. Williams (1936- )

79.  If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

80.  No man has a prosperity so high or firm, but that two or three words can dishearten it; and there is no calamity which right words will not begin to redress. — Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

81.  Moderate giftedness has been made worthless by the printing press and radio and television and satellites and all that. A moderately gifted person who would have been a community treasure a thousand years ago has to give up, has to go into some other line of work, since modern communications put him or her into daily competition with nothing but world's champions. — Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1922-2007)

82.  I have learnt silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers. — Khalil Gibran (1883-1931)

83.  Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself. — James Anthony Froude (1818-1894)

84.  Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end. There was a time when you were not: that gives us no concern. Why then should it trouble us that a time will come when we shall cease to be? To die is only to be as we were before we were born. — William Hazlitt (1778-1830)

85.  It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do. There is no fun in doing nothing when you have nothing to do. Wasting time is merely an occupation then, and a most exhausting one. Idleness, like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen. — Jerome K. Jerome (1859-1927)

86.  Remember that you are needed. There is at least one important work to be done that will not be done unless you do it. — Charles L. Allen (1913-2005)

87.  Google can bring you back 100,000 answers. A librarian can bring you back the right one. — Neil Gaiman (1960- )

88.  The older I get, the better I was. — Unknown

89.  Absolute justice is achieved by the suppression of all contradiction: therefore it destroys freedom. — Albert Camus (1913-1960)

90.  Mere parsimony is not economy. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy. — Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

91.  The feeling of being hurried is not usually the result of living a full life and having no time. It is on the contrary born of a vague fear that we are wasting our life. When we do not do the one thing we ought to do, we have no time for anything else—we are the busiest people in the world. — Eric Hoffer (1902-1983)

92.  All men whilst they are awake are in one common world: but each of them, when he is asleep, is in a world of his own. — Plutarch (c.46-120)

93.  No door is so tight that rumors cannot escape it. — Robin Hobb (1952- ) in Dragon Keeper

94.  The more instantaneous our technology, the more we are losing the ability to communicate. Twitter and text-messaging result in economy of expression, not in clarity or beauty. — Victor Davis Hanson (1953- ) from In Defense of the Liberal Arts

95.  While some people were struck by the president’s reference to Sputnik, I thought it served as yet another reminder that we’ll be lucky if we can borrow enough money from the Chinese to buy a good telescope so we can watch their moon landing. — Fred Thompson (1942- ) in Fixing Bathroom Tiles on the Titanic (2011)

96.  Only in government is any benefit, however small, considered to be worth any cost, however large. — Thomas Sowell (1930- )

97.  At least one way of measuring the freedom of any society is the amount of comedy that is permitted, and clearly a healthy society permits more satirical comment than a repressive, so that if comedy is to function in some way as a safety release then it must obviously deal with these taboo areas. This is part of the responsibility we accord our licensed jesters, that nothing be excused the searching light of comedy. If anything can survive the probe of humour it is clearly of value, and conversely all groups who claim immunity from laughter are claiming special privileges which should not be granted. — Eric Idle (1943- )

98.  A goal without a plan is just a wish. — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900-1944)

99.  Historian Paul Johnson once asked Winston Churchill to what he attributed his success in life. Churchill replied: Conservation of energy. Never stand up when you can sit down. And never sit down when you can lie down. — Winston Churchill (1874-1965) as quoted by Paul Johnson (1928- )

100.  Sometimes a man wants to be stupid if it lets him do a thing his cleverness forbids. — John Steinbeck (1902-1968)

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101.  There are many people who reach their conclusions about life like schoolboys; they cheat their master by copying the answer out of a book without having worked out the sum for themselves. — Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)

102.  Brian Sutton-Smith, a leading psychologist of play, once said, "The opposite of play isn't work. It's depression." In our real lives, hard work is too often something we do because we have to do it—to make a living, to get ahead, to meet someone else's expectations, or simply because someone else gave us a job to do. We resent that kind of work. It stresses us out. It takes time away from our friends and family. It comes with too much criticism. We're afraid of failing. We often don't get to see the direct impact of our efforts, so we rarely feel satisfied. Or, worse, our real-world work isn't hard enough. We're bored out of our minds. We feel completely underutilized. We feel unappreciated. We are wasting our lives. — Jane McGonigal (1977- ) in Reality Is Broken

103.  If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. — James Madison (1751-1836) in Federalist No. 51

104.  Ideas are such intangible things that it is hard to believe that they have had a huge impact on the lives of people who are not intellectuals and who, in many cases, have paid little attention to those ideas. — Thomas Sowell (1930- ) in Dangerous Minds

105.  Air travel is the most expensive unpleasant experience in everyday life outside the realm of words ending in -oscopy. — Jonah Goldberg (1969- )

106.  The United States does not have a [airport/airline] security system; it has a system for bothering people. — Shlomo Dror, Israeli air-security expert

107.  Fear is the tax that conscience pays to guilt. — George Sewell (1690-1736)

108.  Everything you add to the truth subtracts from the truth. — Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008)

109.  The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention... A loving silence often has far more power to heal and to connect than the most well-intentioned words. — Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D.

110.  The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year. — Mark Twain (1835-1910)

111.  Think much, speak little, and write less. — French Proverb

112.  Books have to be heavy because the whole world's inside them. — Juliaerin [Flickr screen name]

113.  The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits, but not when it misses. — Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

114.  As you get older, you still seek the meaning of life, but it becomes more important to seek it in good company and in pleasant places and with 4 o'clock cocktails. — Robert Brault

115.  An individual human existence should be like a river: small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being. — Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

116.  To every man is given the key to the gates of heaven; the same key opens the gates of hell. — Buddhist Proverb

117.  How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these. — George Washington Carver (1864-1943)

118.  Consider how hard it is to change yourself and you'll understand what little chance you have in trying to change others. — Jacob M. Braude

119.  We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations. — Charles R. Swindoll (1934- )

120.  What people want, mainly, is to be told by some plausible authority that what they are already doing is right. I don't know of a quicker way to become unpopular than to disagree. — John Brunner (1934-1995) in The Jagged Orbit

121.  No one imagines that symphony is supposed to improve as it goes along, or that the whole object of playing is to reach the finale. The point of music is discovered in every moment of playing and listening to it. It is the same, I feel, with the greater part of our lives, and if we are unduly absorbed in improving them we may forget altogether to live them. — Alan Watts (1915-1973)

122.  By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve. — Robert Frost (1874-1963)

123.  All attempts to reduce bureaucracy increase it. — Theodore Dalrymple [Anthony Daniels] (1949- )

124.  Librarians are the secret masters of the universe. They control information. Never piss one off. — Spider Robinson (1948- ) in The Callahan Touch

125.  Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them. — Laurence J. Peter (1919-1990)

126.  Education is a method whereby one acquires a higher grade of prejudices. — Laurence J. Peter (1919-1990)

127.  When people know that you believe in them, wondrous things begin to happen in their lives. — Yvette Nicole Brown (1971- ) quoting her mother

128.  Rimsky-Korsakov, in his famous treatise on orchestration, said that it is almost impossible to make a bad sound with the orchestra, and provided a composer has some aural imagination and a working knowledge of instruments, that is more or less true. — John Rutter (1945- ) in album notes for Distant Land

129.  If you sit around and wait for inspiration, all you get is a sore ass. — Michael Tompkins, quoting Wayne Thiebaud (1920- )

130.  To simplify where you know little is easy. To simplify where you know a great deal requires gifts of a different order: unusual penetration of mind and, above all, sheer nerve. — Edmund S. Morgan (1916- )

131.  You cannot lay bare your private soul and look at it... It is too disgusting. — Mark Twain (1835-1910)

132.  I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it. — Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

133.  Too many Americans complain, not because they don't have what they truly need, but because they don't have what they want, and worse, what they feel "entitled to". — Cal Thomas (1942- )

134.  Good government can't solve all our problems, but it can at least not make them worse. — Robert J. Samuelson (1945- )

135.  Nothing illustrates the superficiality of our times better than the enthusiasm for electric cars, because they are supposed to greatly reduce air pollution. But the electricity that ultimately powers these cars has to be generated somewhere—and nearly half the electricity generated in this country is generated by burning coal. — Thomas Sowell (1930- ) in "Random Thoughts for the New Year"

136.  What do you call it when someone steals someone else's money secretly? Theft. What do you call it when someone takes someone else's money openly by force? Robbery. What do you call it when a politician takes someone else's money in taxes and gives it to someone who is more likely to vote for him? Social Justice. — Thomas Sowell (1930- ) in "Random Thoughts for the New Year"

137.  When an organization has more of its decisions made by committees, that give more influence to those who have more time available to attend committee meetings and to drag out each meeting longer. In other words, it reduces the influence of those who have work to do, and are doing it, while making those who are less productive more influential. — Thomas Sowell (1930- ) in "Random Thoughts for the New Year"

138.  The real egalitarians are not the people who want to redistribute wealth to the poor, but those who want to extend to the poor the ability to create their own wealth, to life themselves up, instead of trying to tear others down. Earning respect, including self-respect, is better than being a parasite. — Thomas Sowell (1930- ) in "Random Thoughts for the New Year"

139.  The bigger the government, the less citizens do for one another. If the state will take care of me and my neighbors, why should I? — Dennis Prager (1948- ) from Big Government Means Small People in "The National Review Online"

140.  Nothing more guarantees the erosion of character than getting something for nothing. In the liberal welfare state, one develops an entitlement mentality… And the rhetoric of liberalism—labeling each new entitlement a "right"—reinforces this sense of entitlement. — Dennis Prager (1948- ) from Big Government Means Small People in "The National Review Online"

141.  The leftist weltanschauung sees society's and the world's great battle as between rich and poor rather than between good and evil. Equality therefore trumps morality. — Dennis Prager (1948- ) from Big Government Means Small People in "The National Review Online"

142.  If you want to feel good, liberalism is awesome. If you want to do good, it is largely awful. — Dennis Prager (1948- ) from Big Government Means Small People in "The National Review Online"

143.  In the West, we are hard at work establishing a culture that fetishizes education, and instills the belief that college®ardless of its content or application—will, and should, inexorably lead to a better job, or a better life, or even a better America. Worse, that one has a right to these things. In doing so, we have created a Potemkin aristocracy, one based upon the erroneous and tragic conceit that having letters after one's name intrinsically confers excellence. We are happily encouraging our children to join its ranks, regardless of whether there is any evidence that to do so will be in their interest. This is supremely ironic, given that so many of America's billionaires—i.e. those who pay for more educations and create more jobs than anyone else—are college dropouts. Indeed, both Steve Jobs and Bill Gates failed to finish college. Can we say with a straight face that this has adversely affected them, or America at large? — Charles C. W. Cooke (1984- ) in "Don't Occupy Education?" from The Corner (National Review Online) October 17, 2011

144.  For every prohibition you create you also create an underground. — Jello Biafra (1958- )

145.  The prospects are dim for a society that makes mascots out of the unproductive and condemns the productive. — Walter E. Williams in "The Patriot Post", 11/23/11

146.  Responsibility matures and advances the competent and ages and breaks fools. — Dudley Pope (1925-1997) in Ramage's Challenge

147.  We are no longer land of the free and home of the brave. America is now land of the envious and home of the victim. — Star Parker [Larstella Irby] (1956- ) in Lux Libertas, 12/12/11

148.  A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others. — William Faulkner (1897-1962)

149.  Once plants and animals were raised together on the same farm—which therefore neither produced unmanageable surpluses of manure, to be wasted and to pollute the water supply, nor depended on such quantities of commercial fertilizer. The genius of American farm experts is very well demonstrated here: they can take a solution and divide it neatly into two problems. — Wendell Berry (1934- )

150.  Guard well within yourself that treasure, kindness. Know how to give without hesitation, how to lose without regret, how to acquire without meanness. — George Sand [Amantine Aurore Lucile Dupin] (1804-1876)

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151.  Wandering in a vast forest at night, I have only a faint light to guide me. A stranger appears and says to me: "My friend, you should blow out your candle in order to find your way more clearly." The stranger is a theologian. — Denis Diderot (1713-1784)

152.  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 (1898-1963)

153.  I also mentioned that it makes no difference whether racial slurs are banned. Removing the word for an attitude has no effect on the attitude. Removing the attitude, however, does remove the taboo words associated with it. Words only alert us to the attitudes; they do not control them. — Dr. Goodword [Robert E. Beard] (1938- ) in "Dr. Goodword's Language Blog", 10/18/2006

154.  There is no exception to the rule that every rule has an exception. — James Thurber (1894-1961)

155.  If you carry the bricks from your past relationship to the new one, you'll only build the same house. — Lance D. Watson

156.  America is definitely getting older, but we don't seem to be maturing. — Burt Prelutsky (1940- ) in "The Patriot Post" 12/26/2011

157.  Remorse is a violent dyspepsia of the mind. — Ogden Nash (1902-1971)

158.  In a library we are surrounded by many hundreds of dear friends imprisoned by an enchanter in paper and leathern boxes. — Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

159.  Solitude is out of fashion. Our companies, our schools and our culture are in thrall to an idea I call the New Groupthink, which holds that creativity and achievement come from an oddly gregarious place. Most of us now work in teams, in offices without walls, for managers who prize people skills above all. Lone geniuses are out. Collaboration is in. But there's a problem with this view. Research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption. — Susan Cain in The Rise of the New Groupthink

160.  Most inventors and engineers I've met are like me ... they live in their heads. They're almost like artists. In fact, the very best of them are artists. And artists work best alone ... I'm going to give you some advice that might be hard to take. That advice is: Work alone... Not on a committee. Not on a team. — Stephen G. Wozniak (1950- )

161.  However, with charity as with everything else, it cannot simply be assumed that more is always better. A "safety net" can easily become a hammock. "Social justice" can easily become class warfare that polarizes a nation, while leading those at the bottom into the blind alley of resentments, no matter how many broad avenues of achievement may be available to them. — Thomas Sowell (1930- ) in "Two Worlds, National Review Online 9/6/2011

162.  Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct. — Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

163.  The secret of good writing is to say an old thing in a new way or a new thing in an old way. — Richard Harding Davis (1864-1916)

164.  A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs—jolted by every pebble in the road. — Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887)

165.  Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war. — Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898)

166.  Comedy has to be based on truth. You take the truth and you put a little curlicue at the end. — Sid Caesar (1922- )

167.  When small men begin to cast big shadows, it means that the sun is about to set. — Lin Yutang (1895-1976)

168.  There are two kinds of truth: the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The first of these is science, and the second is art. Neither is independent of the other or more important than the other. Without art science would be as useless as a pair of high forceps in the hands of a plumber. Without science art would become a crude mess of folklore and emotional quackery. The truth of art keeps science from becoming inhuman, and the truth of science keeps art from becoming ridiculous. — Raymond Thornton Chandler (1888-1959)

169.  The path of least resistance makes all rivers, and some men, crooked. — Napoleon Hill (1883-1970)

170.  Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day. — A. A. Milne (1882-1956)

171.  If you've forgotten the language of gratitude, you'll never be on speaking terms with happiness. — Folk Saying

172.  Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of nonessentials. — Lin Yutang (1895-1976)

173.  Eternal suffering awaits anyone who questions God's infinite love. — Bill Hicks (1961-1994)

174.  You have this little spot of time between eternities to do something amazing—don't waste it. — Dean L. Kamen (1951- ) speaking at the dedication of Rice Hall, University of Virginia, 11/18/11

175.  An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile hoping it will eat him last. — Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

176.  The art of life is to know how to enjoy a little and to endure much. — William Hazlitt (1778-1830)

177.  He who has a why can endure any how. — Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

178.  Be careful how you live. You may be the only Bible some people will ever read! — Unknown

179.  Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot. — Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977)

180.  The new Obama Doctrine is a lead from behind strategy for a left-behind America. The world has always had, and will always have, a leader. As America steps back, someone else will step forward. — Howard Philip "Buck" McKeon (1938- ) quoted in "Strategic Capitulation" in PatriotPost.US 1/6/2012

181.  The more sand that has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it. — Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)

182.  Cheerfulness and contentment are great beautifiers and are famous preservers of youthful looks. — Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

183.  Never cut what you can untie. — Joseph Joubert (1754-1824)

184.  A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both. — Milton Friedman (1912-2006)

185.  We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people. — John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)

186.  It's change only when you don't want it, but improvement if you do. — Sherwood Smith (1951- ) [Paraphrased] in Treason's Shore

187.  If a rabbit defined intelligence the way man does, then the most intelligent animal would be a rabbit, followed by the animal most willing to obey the commands of a rabbit. — Robert Brault (1938- )

188.  Nothing an engineer likes more than when things go wrong in a predictable manner. Woo! Repeatability! — Sara Gould (1979- )

189.  The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas. — Linus Pauling (1901-1994)

190.  We should not write so that it is possible for the reader to understand us, but so that it is impossible for him to misunderstand us. — Quintilian [Marcus Fabius Quintilianus] (c.35-100)

191.  You can't get around newspaper people. I think they are the slobber-heartedest, lily-mindedest, piously conniving crowd in the modern world. — Flannery O'Connor

192.  Fame is a high place surrounded with traps set by jealous men. — Dudley Pope (1925-1997) in Ramage's Trial

193.  The general trend in modern thinking [is that] rights become more important than responsibility. — H.R.H. Charles, Prince of Wales (1948- ) in Harmony - A New Way of Looking at Our World

194.  That is human nature, that people come after you, willingly enough, provided only that you no longer love or want them. — A. S. Byatt [Antonia Susan Duffy] (1936- ) in Possession

195.   We are defined by the lines we choose to cross or to be confined by. — A. S. Byatt [Antonia Susan Duffy] (1936- ) in Possession

196.  Sometimes, the facts aren't the truth. — L. E. Modesitt, Jr. inImager's Challenge

197.  Mercy or forebearance in return for pure evil is not virtue; it is disaster. — L. E. Modesitt, Jr. (1943- ) in Imager's Challenge

198.  Politicians can solve almost any problem—usually be creating a bigger problem. — Thomas Sowell (1930- ) in "Spreading the Wealth" in National Review Online 10/18/11

199.  The nicest place to be is in someone's thoughts. — Marilyn Austin

200.  No one likes change unless he makes it himself. Then it's innovation. — Sherwood Smith (1951- ) in Inda

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201.  When facing a difficult task, act as though it is impossible to fail. If you are going after Moby Dick, take along the tartar sauce. — Joel Huffer

202.  There is no technological fix that will allow perpetual population and economic growth. — Paul Ehrlich (1932- )

203.  There are two kinds of truth: that which enlightens and that which is only cruel. — Sherwood Smith (1951- ) in Treason's Shore

204.  War is a convenient fix for government problems if it happens somewhere else. To other people. — Sherwood Smith (1951- ) in Treason's Shore

205.  It is the fate of most voyagers, no sooner to discover what is most interesting in any locality, than they are hurried from it. — Charles Darwin (1809-1882) in Voyage of the Beagle

206.