Quote Cache

Well spoken!

2009-01-25T07:47:00.000-08:00

One of the toughest things for me to learn (and I'm still learning) is that sometimes, when you do the right thing, they feed you to the lions.

But you still have to do the right thing.

-Sailor Kenshin on CAF

Parenting

2008-08-31T10:46:00.000-07:00

Few things are more satisfying than seeing your own children have teenagers of their own.
- Doug Larson
"I think that it is distressing that one would think that it is okay to kill someone for an evil their father did. The child did nothing and I bet he doesn't want to die."
-'st lucy' on the CAF, speaking against abortion for pregnancies achieved through rape.
If your parents never had children, chances are you won't, either.
- Dick Cavett
There are times when parenthood seems nothing but feeding the mouth that bites you.
- Peter De Vries

Writers, and other art

2008-08-31T10:34:00.000-07:00

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.
- Christopher Hampton
A prose writer gets tired of writing prose, and wants to be a poet. So he begins every line with a capital letter, and keeps on writing prose.
- Samuel McChord Crothers
The cure for writer's cramp is writer's block.
- Inigo DeLeon
There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.
- Pablo Picasso
It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to paint it.
- Steven Wright

Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book.

- Edward Gibbon
All of us learn to write in the second grade. Most of us go on to greater things.
- Bobby Knight
Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.
- Flannery O'Connor
I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good.
- Seneca
An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations.
- Charles de Montesquieu
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
A good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a stamped, self-addressed envelope, big enough for the manuscript to come back in. This is too much of a temptation to the editor.
- Ring Lardner
What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.
- Samuel Johnson

Money

2008-08-31T10:01:00.000-07:00

The easiest way for your children to learn about money is for you not to have any.
- Katharine Whitehorn
Everything in the world may be endured except continued prosperity.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I have enough money to last me the rest of my life, unless I buy something.
- Jackie Mason
There is no kind of dishonesty into which otherwise good people more easily and frequently fall than that of defrauding the government.
- Benjamin Franklin
Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth.
- Rex Stout

Work

2008-08-31T09:58:00.000-07:00

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.
- Bertrand Russell
I have long been of the opinion that if work were such a splendid thing the rich would have kept more of it for themselves.
- Bruce Grocott
No man needs a vacation so much as the man who has just had one.
- Elbert Hubbard
The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work.
- Robert Frost
Work is the curse of the drinking classes.
- Oscar Wilde
My work is a game, a very serious game.
- MC Escher
So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work.
- Peter Drucker

Education

2008-08-31T09:52:00.001-07:00

For every person who wants to teach there are approximately thirty people who don't want to learn--much.
- WC Sellar and RJ Yeatman
It's a rare person who wants to hear what he doesn't want to hear.
- Dick Cavett
A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he gets to know something.
- Wilson Mizner
All of us learn to write in the second grade. Most of us go on to greater things.
- Bobby Knight
Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.
- Will Durant
America believes in education: the average professor earns more money in a year than a professional athlete earns in a whole week.
- Evan Esar
Liberty without learning is always in peril; learning without liberty is always in vain.
- John F. Kennedy
Have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things, in order to avoid the calamity of being ignorant of everything.
- Sydney Smith
We learn something every day, and lots of times it's that what we learned the day before was wrong.
- Bill Vaughan

Friends

2008-08-31T09:52:00.000-07:00

A friend is someone who will help you move. A real friend is someone who will help you move a body.
- Unknown
If men could only know each other, they would neither idolize nor hate.
- Elbert Hubbard
Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate.
- Thomas Jones
We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next door neighbour.
-G.K. Chesterton

Misc. Advice and Wisdom

2008-08-31T09:48:00.000-07:00

If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
- Isaac Newton
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
People who say they sleep like a baby usually don't have one.
- Leo J. Burke
God has placed clear limits on human intelligence, but none on human stupidity.
– Fr.John Corapi.
Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so.
- John Stuart Mill
It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.
- Mark Twain
"Some minds are like concrete - thoroughly mixed up and permanently set."
-Unknown
Everyone is entitled to be stupid, but some abuse the privilege.
- Unknown
An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.
- GK Chesterton
A sympathetic Scot summed it all up very neatly in the remark, "You should make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and folk dancing."
- Sir Arnold Bax
I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it.
- Thomas Jefferson
Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats.
- Howard Aiken
If winning isn't everything, why do they keep score?
- Vince Lombardi
A hypocrite is a person who--but who isn't?
- Don Marquis
Man is a clever animal who behaves like an imbecile.
- Albert Schweitzer
Whatever you may be sure of, be sure of this, that you are dreadfully like other people.
- James Russell Lowell
Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum (I think that I think, therefore I think that I am.)
-Ambrose Bierce
Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
- Bertrand Russell
It is a profitable thing, if one is wise, to seem foolish.
- Aeschylus
You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do.
- Henry Ford
But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
- Carl Sagan
What we call 'Progress' is the exchange of one nuisance for another nuisance.
- Havelock Ellis
Character is what you have left when you've lost everything you can lose.
- Evan Esar
Nobody outside of a baby carriage or a judge's chamber believes in an unprejudiced point of view.
- Lillian Hellman
Never confuse movement with action.
- Ernest Hemingway
The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
- Walter Bagehot
The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing at the right place but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.
- Dorothy Nevill
The most dangerous strategy is to jump a chasm in two leaps.
- Benjamin Disraeli
If you cannot convince them, confuse them.
- Harry S Truman
The secret of being a bore is to tell everything.
- Voltaire
If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.
- George Bernard Shaw
Where facts are few, experts are many.
- Donald R. Gannon
If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking.
- Lyndon B. Johnson
Some have been thought brave because they were afraid to run away.
- Thomas Fuller
Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything.
- Kurt Vonnegut
There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes.
- Doctor Who
One's real life is often the life that one does not lead.
- Oscar Wilde
In times like these, it helps to recall that there have always been times like these.
- Paul Harvey
Behind every great fortune there is a crime.
- Honore de Balzac
Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.
- Edgar Allan Poe
In real life, unlike in Shakespeare, the sweetness of the rose depends upon the name it bears. Things are not only what they are. They are, in very important respects, what they seem to be.
- Hubert H. Humphrey
To do just the opposite is also a form of imitation.
- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
If you haven't found something strange during the day, it hasn't been much of a day.
- John A. Wheeler
We are all apt to believe what the world believes about us.
- George Eliot
Some national parks have long waiting lists for camping reservations. When you have to wait a year to sleep next to a tree, something is wrong.
- George Carlin
Reality is a crutch for people who can't cope with drugs.
- Lily Tomlin
If a dog jumps in 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
After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say "I want to see the manager."
- William S. Burroughs
Don't try to solve serious matters in the middle of the night.
- Philip K. Dick
The price of freedom of religion, or of speech, or of the press, is that we must put up with a good deal of rubbish.
- Robert Jackson
The trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed.
- CS Lewis
A sense of humor is part of the art of leadership, of getting along with people, of getting things done.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
I am not in this world to live up to other people's expectations, nor do I feel that the world must live up to mine.
- Fritz Perls
The cost of living is going up and the chance of living is going down.
- Flip Wilson
Half of the modern drugs could well be thrown out of the window, except that the birds might eat them.
- Dr. Martin Henry Fischer
I like an escalator because an escalator can never break, it can only become stairs. There would never be an escalator temporarily out of order sign, only an escalator temporarily stairs. Sorry for the convenience.
- Mitch Hedberg
The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don't need to be done.
- Andy Rooney
Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.
-G.K. Chesterton
There is a road from the eye to heart that does not go through the intellect.
-G.K. Chesterton
We are more ready to try the untried when what we do is inconsequential. Hence the fact that many inventions had their birth as toys.
- Eric Hoffer
When everyone is against you, it means that you are absolutely wrong-- or absolutely right.
- Albert Guinon
It is well that war is so terrible - otherwise we would grow too fond of it.
- Robert E. Lee
I'm not sure I want popular opinion on my side -- I've noticed those with the most opinions often have the fewest facts.
- Bethania McKenstry
It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in argument.
- William G. McAdoo
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.
- Henry David Thoreau
Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.
- Euripides
The best way out is always through.
- Robert Frost
We are continually faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.
- John W. Gardner
Every increased possession loads us with new weariness.
- John Ruskin
You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance.
- Ray Bradbury
Computer dating is fine, if you’re a computer.
- Rita Mae Brown
A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.
- Joseph Stalin
A specification that will not fit on one page of 8.5x11 inch paper cannot be understood.
- Mark Ardis

Science & Religion

2008-08-31T09:26:00.003-07:00

In mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them.
- Johann von Neumann
If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.
- Sir Francis Bacon
The trouble with weather forecasting is that it's right too often for us to ignore it and wrong too often for us to rely on it.
- Patrick Young
O Lord, help me to be pure, but not yet.
- Saint Augustine
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.
- Sir Winston Churchill
If the automobile had followed the same development cycle as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside.
- Robert X. Cringely
They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.
- Sir Francis Bacon
The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.
- GK Chesterton
To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.
- Thomas A. Edison
A man of conscience, is one who never acquires tolerance, well- being, success, public standing, and approval on the part of prevailing opinion, at the expense of truth.
-Pope Benedict XVI
How many people in a church have to be on fire before the church catches fire? All it takes is one match to start a fire!!!!
-celticcrusader on the CAF
We live in a Newtonian world of Einsteinian physics ruled by Frankenstein logic.
- David Russell
If you put tomfoolery into a computer, nothing comes out of it but tomfoolery. But this tomfoolery, having passed through a very expensive machine, is somehow ennobled and no-one dares criticize it.
- Pierre Gallois
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Science is facts; just as houses are made of stones, so is science made of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house and a collection of facts is not necessarily science.
- Henri PoincareIn the beginning there was nothing. God said, 'Let there be light!' And there was light. There was still nothing, but you could see it a whole lot better.
- Ellen DeGeneres
First there is a time when we believe everything, then for a little while we believe with discrimination, then we believe nothing whatever, and then we believe everything again - and, moreover, give reasons why we believe.
- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
It is more important to remember God than it is to remember to breathe.
-- St. Gregory of Nazianzus
All that we call human history--money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery--[is] the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.
-C.S. Lewis
Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.
-G.K. Chesterton
The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.
- Bertrand Russell
Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Some things have to be believed to be seen.
- Ralph Hodgson
Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination.
- Bertrand Russell
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
The Catholic Church is for saints and sinners alone. For respectable people, the Anglican church will do.
-Oscar Wilde
Happiness is a mystery, like religion, and should never be rationalised.
-G.K. Chesterton

Politics

2008-08-31T09:25:00.000-07:00

In politics you must always keep running with the pack. The moment that you falter and they sense that you are injured, the rest will turn on you like wolves.
- RA Butler
Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.
- Henry Kissinger
There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.
- Kurt Vonnegut
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
- Douglas Adams
In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress.
- John Adams
Illegal aliens have always been a problem in the United States. Ask any Indian.
- Robert Orben
When we got into office, the thing that surprised me the most was that things were as bad as we'd been saying they were.
- John F. Kennedy
When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer 'Present' or 'Not guilty.'
- Theodore Roosevelt
Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it's important.
- Eugene McCarthy
I have opinions of my own -- strong opinions -- but I don't always agree with them.
- George Bush
Elections are won by men and women chiefly because most people vote against somebody rather than for somebody.
- Franklin P. Adams
When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President. Now I'm beginning to believe it.
- Clarence Darrow

Fluff

2008-08-19T17:11:00.000-07:00

The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.
- Douglas Adams
There is no doubt that the first requirement for a composer is to be dead.
- Arthur Honegger
Being in the army is like being in the Boy Scouts, except that the Boy Scouts have adult supervision.
- Blake Clark
It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.
- Oscar Wilde
Boys will be boys, and so will a lot of middle-aged men.
- Kin Hubbard
Journalism largely consists of saying 'Lord Jones is Dead' to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive.
- GK Chesterton
To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer.
- Farmers' Almanac
Living in a vacuum sucks.
- Adrienne E. Gusoff
There's so much pollution in the air now that if it weren't for our lungs there'd be no place to put it all.
- Robert Orben
Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling.
-G.K. Chesterton
Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.
- Samuel Goldwyn
How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?
- Charles De Gaulle
Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight Protestants, today it's open to anybody who owns hideous clothing.
- Dave Barry
Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns; he should be drawn and quoted.
- Fred Allen
I took a speed reading course and read 'War and Peace' in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.
- Woody Allen
Careful. We don't want to learn from this.
- Bill Watterson
I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image.
- Stephen Hawking
If someone wants a sheep, then that means that he exists.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Ahhh. A man with a sharp wit. Someone ought to take it away from him before he cuts himself.
- Peter da Silva
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
- Peter De Vries
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.
- George Bernard Shaw
Life... is like a grapefruit. It's orange and squishy, and has a few pips in it, and some folks have half a one for breakfast.
- Douglas Adams
Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people.
- Robert Benchley
You can only be young once. But you can always be immature.
- Dave Barry
The murals in restaurants are on par with the food in museums.
- Peter De Vries
I used to wake up at 4 A.M. and start sneezing, sometimes for five hours. I tried to find out what sort of allergy I had but finally came to the conclusion that it must be an allergy to consciousness.
- James Thurber
I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.
- Oscar Wilde
I find it rather easy to portray a businessman. Being bland, rather cruel and incompetent comes naturally to me.
- John Cleese
If the Phone Doesn't Ring, It's Me
- Jimmy Buffett
Cockroaches and socialites are the only things that can stay up all night and eat anything.
- Herb Caen
Let not the sands of time get in your lunch.
- National Lampoon
Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.
- Anonymous
One doesn't have a sense of humor. It has you.
- Larry Gelbart
It is true that I was born in Iowa, but I can't speak for my twin sister.
- Abigail Van Buren
Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American newspaper is like trying to play Bach's 'St. Matthew's Passion' on a ukulele.
- Bagdikian's Observation
The world is my lobster.
- Henry J. Tillman
Wing!! Nice to see you again! I'd like to give you a going away present. First, you do your part......
- Jnc :P
As I grow older, I regret to say that a detestable habit of thinking seems to be getting a hold of me.
- H. Rider Haggard
Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.
- Niels Bohr
I am certain there is too much certainty in the world.
- Michael Crichton
Things are more like they are now than they have ever been.
- Gerald R. Ford
We're not lost. We're locationally challenged.
- John M. Ford
Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight.
- Phyllis Diller
In Mexico we have a word for sushi: Bait.
- Jose Simon
Youth would be an ideal state if it came a little later in life.
- Herbert Henry Asquith
Everyone is born with genius, but most people only keep it a few minutes.
- Edgard Varese
Why do you have to be a nonconformist like everybody else?
- James Thurber
The only winner in the War of 1812 was Tchaikovsky.
- Solomon Short
Sometimes the mind, for reasons we don't necessarily understand, just decides to go to the store for a quart of milk.
- Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
- Herm Albright
There is a theory which states that if ever anybody 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
Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Give a fish a man, and he'll eat for weeks!
- Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata
Insane people are always sure that they are fine. It is only the sane people who are willing to admit that they are crazy.
- Nora Ephron
I was going to buy a copy of The Power of Positive Thinking, and then I thought: What the hell good would that do?
- Ronnie Shakes
As you journey through life take a minute every now and then to give a thought for the other fellow. He could be plotting something.
- Hagar the Horrible
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.
- Douglas Adams
Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself.
- AH Weiler
I'm kind of jealous of the life I'm supposedly leading.
- Zach Braff
It takes only one drink to get me drunk. The trouble is, I can't remember if it's the thirteenth or the fourteenth.
- George Burns
Sanity calms, but madness is more interesting.
- John Russell
In a country as big as the United States, you can find fifty examples of anything.
- Jeffery F. Chamberlain
You must first have a lot of patience to learn to have patience.
- Stanislaw J. Lec
Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.
- W. Somerset Maugham
I always keep a supply of stimulant handy in case I see a snake--which I also keep handy.
- WC Fields
There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.
- Oscar Levant
When someone tells you something defies description, you can be pretty sure he's going to have a go at it anyway.
- Clyde B. Aster
My theory is that all of Scottish cuisine is based on a dare.
- Mike Myers
Music makes one feel so romantic - at least it always gets on one's nerves - which is the same thing nowadays.
- Oscar Wilde
We are here on Earth to do good to others. What the others are here for, I don't know.
- WH Auden
Last night I dreamed I ate a ten-pound marshmallow, and when I woke up the pillow was gone.
- Tommy Cooper
Ah, this is obviously some strange usage of the word 'safe' that I wasn't previously aware of.
- Douglas Adams
I am a deeply superficial person.
- Andy Warhol
To me, boxing is like a ballet, except there's no music, no choreography, and the dancers hit each other.
- Jack Handy
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what's for lunch.
- Orson Welles
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
- Douglas Adams
Laughing at our mistakes can lengthen our own life. Laughing at someone else's can shorten it.
- Cullen Hightower
In all large corporations, there is a pervasive fear that someone, somewhere is having fun with a computer on company time. Networks help alleviate that fear.
- John C. Dvorak
To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than three men, two of whom are absent.
- Robert Copeland
I've done the calculation and your chances of winning the lottery are identical whether you play or not.
- Fran Lebowitz
The reason lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place is that the same place isn't there the second time.
- Willie Tyler
Idealism is what precedes experience; cynicism is what follows.
- David T. Wolf
Procrastination isn't the problem, it's the solution. So procrastinate now, don't put it off.
- Ellen DeGeneres