Favorite Quotes

668: The neighbor of the Beast.

A.A.A.A.A.:
An organization for drunks who drive

Founding member of the A.A.A.A.A.A. -
All American Association Against Acronym Abuse

Acquaintance, n.:
A person whom we know well enough to borrow from,
but not well enough to lend to.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

The plural of "anecdote" is not "data."

The fact that no one understands you doesn't mean you're an artist.

I swear to God I am an Atheist.

Authority questions you.
Return the favor.

It will be a great day when our schools have all the money they need,
and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a new bomber.

All my life I wanted to be someone;
I guess I should have been more specific.
-- Jane Wagner

Be who you are
and say what you feel,
because those who mind don't matter
and those who matter don't mind.
-- Dr. Seuss

What is wanted is not the will to believe,
but the will to find out,
which is the exact opposite.
-- Bertrand Russell, "Skeptical_Essays"

I don't want to believe, I want to know.
-- Carl Sagan

One of my less pleasant chores when I was young was to read the Bible from one end to the other. Reading the Bible straight through is at least 70 percent discipline, like learning Latin. But the good parts are, of course, simply amazing. God is an extremely uneven writer, but when He's good, nobody can touch Him.
-- John Gardner, New York Times Book Review

The Bible contains six admonishments to homosexuals and 362 admonishments to heterosexuals. That doesn't mean that God doesn't love heterosexuals. It's just that they need more supervision.
-- Lynn Lavner

Mentioning Jesus in speeches is small government.
Doing what Jesus asks is big government.
-- Stephen Colbert

It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman
to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics,
though she is still forbidden to resort to physics and chemistry.
-- H.L. Mencken

Boy, n.:
A noise with dirt on it.

Nearly all men can stand adversity,
but if you want to test a man's character,
give him power.
-- Abraham Lincoln

You can learn many things from children.
How much patience you have for instance.
-- Franklin P. Jones

Why do churches have insurance for Acts of God?

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
-- Albert Einstein

Conscience is what hurts when everything else feels so good.

Conscious is when you are aware of something
and conscience is when you wish you weren't.

"Consequences, schmonsequences, as long as I'm rich."
-- "Ali Baba Bunny" [1957, Chuck Jones]

We are the Corporatocracy.
Resistance is futile.
You will be assimilated.

There's a fine line between courage and foolishness.
Too bad it's not a fence.

Majority, n.:
That quality that distinguishes a crime from a law.

The world needs curmudgeons. They refuse to see life through the filter of wishful thinking and are outspoken in their devotion to the harsh realities of life. They protect the rest of us, stumbling about blindly behind our rose-colored glasses, from ourselves.
-- Jon Winokur

Creating a database can be like creating a universe,
only more complicated.
At least when the universe was created,
there was no one around to complain.
-- Michael J. Hernandez

Die, v.:
To stop sinning suddenly.
-- Elbert Hubbard

Death is God's way of telling you not to be such a wise guy.

Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.
-- George Bernard Shaw

Democracy: Three wolves and a sheep voting on who's for dinner.

Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie!'... till you can find a rock.

Don't put off for tomorrow
what you can do today,
because if you enjoy it today
you can do it again tomorrow.

Duct tape is like the force.
It has a light side,
and a dark side,
and it holds the universe together.
-- Carl Zwanzig

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.
-- Napoleon Bonaparte

The New York Times called for the new Afghan constitution to "state clearly that women have full and equal rights with men."

Danie Watson of Mound, Minn., wrote a letter to the editor in response. "Fabulous idea," Watson said. "Let's add it to the United States Constitution."

From "Remember the ERA?" by Barbara Miner

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
-- Aldous Huxley

Faith: Not wanting to know what is true.
-- Nietzsche

All generalizations are false.

"First things first, but not necessarily in that order."
-- The Doctor, "Doctor Who"

It is impossible to make anything foolproof
because fools are so ingenious.

Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free.
-- Montgomery Burns

"I have seen the future and it is just like the present, only longer."
-- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"

Genius may have its limitations,
but stupidity is not thus handicapped.
-- Elbert Hubbard

If you have to hate,
hate gently.

The easiest way to get shot is to carry a gun.
-- Atticus Finch

The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away.
-- Tom Wait

God is a comic playing to an audience that's afraid to laugh.

In America, you're allowed to justify almost any kind of bigotry, sexism, or intolerance if you source it to God's Big Book of Bad Ideas.
-- Bill Maher

There are two types of people in this world,
good and bad.
The good sleep better,
but the bad seem to enjoy the waking hours more.
-- Woody Allen

So far as I can remember,
there is not one word in the Gospels
in praise of intelligence.
-- Bertrand Russell

Dear God,
We paid for all this stuff ourselves,
so thanks for nothing.
-- Bart Simpson

But I have to have a gun! It's in the Constitution! ... If I didn't have this gun, the King of England could just walk in here any time he wants, and start shoving you around. Do you want that? Huh? Do you?
-- Homer Simpson

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
-- Dwight Eisenhower

Open the pod bay door, Hal.
I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave.

Baruch's Observation:
If all you have is a hammer,
everything looks like a nail.

Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.

There is no heaven or afterlife for broken-down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.
-- Stephen Hawking

Heisenberg may have slept here

Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'
-- Isaac Asimov

Once something's been approved by the government,
it's no longer immoral.
-- Reverend Lovejoy

If Christ were alive today
there is one thing for certain,
he wouldn't be a Christian.
-- Mark Twain

Today is the last day of your life so far.

You can't teach people to be lazy,
either they have it, or they don't.
-- Dagwood Bumstead

Do not follow where the path may lead.
Go, instead, where there is no path and leave a trail.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Mothers, tell your children: be quick, you must be strong.
Life is full of wonder, love is never wrong.
Remember how they taught you, how much of it was fear.
Refuse to hand it down - the legacy stops here.
-- Melissa Etheridge, "Silent Legacy," Yes I Am, 1993

Life is what happens after your plans are made.
-- David W. Anderson

I intend to live forever. So far, so good.
-- Steven Wright

When I look into your eyes, dahling,
I see the reflection of me!
Look at me dancing around in there!
I look mahvelous! Absolutely mahvelous!
-- Billy Crystal

Hanlon's Razor:
Never attribute to malice that which
is adequately explained by stupidity.

Hell is eternal, just like your marriage is supposed to be.
-- RescueMarriage.Org

The gods gave man fire
and he invented fire engines.
They gave him love
and he invented marriage.

Love is an ideal thing,
marriage a real thing;
a confusion of the real with the ideal
never goes unpunished.
-- Goethe

Marriage is like twirling a baton,
turning handsprings,
or eating with chopsticks.
It looks easy until you try it.

Life may have no meaning.
Or even worse,
it may have a meaning
of which I disapprove.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant

Just as most issues are seldom black or white, so are most good solutions seldom black or white. Beware of the solution that requires one side to be totally the loser and the other side to be totally the winner. The reason there are two sides to begin with usually is because neither side has all the facts. Therefore, when the wise mediator effects a compromise, he is not acting from political motivation. Rather, he is acting from a deep sense of respect for the whole truth.
-- Stephen R. Schwambach

There are more important things in life than money,
but they won't go out with you if you don't have any.

A computer without a Microsoft operating system
is like a dog without bricks tied to its head.

Never tell a lie unless it is absolutely convenient.

And remember: if you don't like the news, go out and make some of your own.
-- "Scoop" Nisker, KFOG radio reporter, "Preposterous Words"

Rules for driving in New York:
(1) Anything done while honking your horn is legal.
(2) You may park anywhere if you turn your four-way flashers on.
(3) A red light means the next six cars may go through the intersection.

Nuclear war would really set back cable.
-- Ted Turner

I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top.
-- English Professor, Ohio University

But in our enthusiasm, we could not resist a radical overhaul of the system, in which all of its major weaknesses have been exposed, analyzed, and replaced with new weaknesses.
-- Bruce Leverett

Every man is his own greatest enemy,
and as it were his own executioner.
-- Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?

You will pay for your sins.
If you have already paid,
please disregard this notice.

If someone had told me
I would be Pope one day,
I would have studied harder.
-- Pope John Paul I

If imprisonment worked,
the United States
would be the safest country in the world.
-- Dr. Kelly Hannah-Moffat

War. Rape. Murder. Poverty. Equal rights for gays.
Guess which one the Southern Baptist Convention is protesting?

Where there is no vision the people perish.
- Proverbs 29:18

The trouble with being punctual is that nobody's there to appreciate it.
-- Franklin P. Jones

Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
-- H. L. Mencken

I'd rather be hated for who I am than loved for who I'm not.
-- Kurt Cobain

Reality is that which,
when you stop believing in it,
doesn't go away.
-- Philip K. Dick

Bucy's Law:
Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.
-- Blaise Pascal

We must respect the other fellow's religion,
but only in the same sense and to the extent
that we respect his theory
that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.
-- H. L. Mencken

When I die, I wish to rest in peace.
In the meantime, there's a lot to be done.
-- Drew Mueske, progressmedia.org

Word processing has made it possible to right-justify any idea,
even one which cannot be justified on any other grounds.
-- J. Finnegan, USC

Even if you're on the right track,
you'll get run over if you just sit there.
-- Will Rogers

A fool-proof method for sculpting an elephant:
First, get a huge block of marble,
then chip away everything that doesn't look like an elephant.

Sex is like air.
It's only a big deal
if you can't get any.

My sexual orientation?
Horizontal, usually.

Cutting the space budget really restores my faith in humanity. It eliminates dreams, goals, and ideals and lets us get straight to the business of hate, debauchery, and self-annihilation.
-- Johnny Hart

It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word.
-- Andrew Jackson

If A equals success,
then the formula is
A = X + Y + Z.
X is work.
Y is play.
Z is keep your mouth shut.
-- Albert Einstein

Success is when you get what you want.
Happiness is when you want what you get.

Those that give up essential liberty
to obtain a little temporary safety,
deserve neither liberty nor safety.
-- Ben Franklin

Girl at Pancho's: I just noticed that a fancy pilot like Slick over there doesn't have his picture on your wall. What do you have to do to get your picture up there anyway?
Pancho Barnes: You have to die, sweetie.
-- The Right Stuff

Everybody eats,
nobody hits
and there is no third rule.
-- Billy Hults

The world is divided into two sorts of people:
those that believe the world is divided into two sorts of people,
and those that don't.

There is no reason,
beyond choice,
to remain unaware of the facts.
-- Noam Chomsky

Van Roy's Law:
An unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys.

The Heineken Uncertainty Principle:
You can never be sure how many beers you had last night.

Always remember that you are unique.
Just like everyone else.

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world;
the unreasonable one persists
in trying to adapt the world to himself.
Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
-- George Bernard Shaw

Shoplifting is a victimless crime,
like punching someone in the dark.
-- Nelson, The Simpsons

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
-- Salvor Hardin

It is better to vote for what you want and not get it
than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
-- Eugene V. Debs

You can have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few,
or democracy,
but you cannot have both.
-- Louis Brandeis

Soldiers who are not afraid of guns, bombs, capture, torture or death say they are afraid of homosexuals. Clearly we should not be used as soldiers; we should be used as weapons.
-- Letter to the editor, The Advocate

If any question
why we died,
Tell them,
because our fathers lied.
-- Rudyard Kipling

Lousy minor setbacks! This world sucks!
-- Homer Simpson

John and Mary had never met.
They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
-- Russell Beland, Worst Analogy Contest

Writing is like prostitution.
First you do it for love,
and then for a few close friends,
and then for money.
-- Moliere

Due to circumstances beyond your control,
you are master of your fate and captain of your soul.

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