Quotes

  • # I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. Abraham Maslow
  • # All this machinery making modern music can still be open-hearted. Not so boldly charted, it’s really just a question of your honesty. Neil Peart (Rush-‘Spirit of Radio’)
  • #
    Information is not knowledge.
    Knowledge is not wisdom.
    Wisdom is not truth.
    Truth is not beauty.
    Beauty is not love.
    Love is not music.
    Music is the best.

    Frank Zappa (Lyrics to ‘Packard Goose’)

  • # Though free to think and act, we are held together, like the stars in the firmament, with ties inseparable. These ties cannot be seen, but we can feel them. Nikola Tesla, 1900
  • # 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
  • # Free discussion requires an atmosphere unembarrassed by any suggestion of authority or even respect. Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, Address delivered to US Naval Post Graduate School (16 March 1954)
  • # Success teaches us nothing; only failure teaches. Hyman G. Rickover
  • # The Devil is in the details, but so is salvation. Hyman G. Rickover
  • # I suggest that this is a good time to think soberly about our responsibilities to our descendents – those who will ring out the Fossil Fuel Age. Our greatest responsibility, as parents and as citizens, is to give America’s youngsters the best possible education. We need the best teachers and enough of them to prepare our young people for a future immeasurably more complex than the present, and calling for ever larger numbers of competent and highly trained men and women. Hyman G. Rickover, On the educational standards of the United States, 1957
  • # When we learn how to store electricity, we will cease being apes ourselves; until then we are tailless orangutans. You see, we should utilize natural forces and thus get all of our power. Sunshine is a form of energy, and the winds and the tides are manifestations of energy. Do we use them? Oh, no! We burn up wood and coal, as renters burn up the front fence for fuel. We live like squatters, not as if we owned the property. Thomas Edison
  • # There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.’ Kurt Vonnegut, From ‘God Bless You, Mr Rosewater’ or ‘Pearls Before Swine’
  • # I think William Shakespeare was the wisest human being I ever heard of. To be perfectly frank, though, that’s not saying much. Kurt Vonnegut, From ‘Hocus Pocus’
  • # Future generations will look back on TV as the lead in the water pipes that slowly drove the Romans mad. Kurt Vonnegut
  • # Symbols can be so beautiful, sometimes. Kurt Vonnegut
  • # I couldn’t survive my own pessimism if I didn’t have some kind of sunny little dream. Kurt Vonnegut, Playboy Interview, 1973
  • # ‘To be is to do–Socrates.
    ‘To do is to be’–Jean-Paul Sartre.
    ‘Do be do be do’–Frank Sinatra

    Kurt Vonnegut
  • # We have a good time together, even when we’re not together. Yogi Berra
  • # Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe. Abraham Lincoln
  • # Loyalty to petrified opinions never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul in this world — and never will. Mark Twain
  • # Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR. Mark Twain
  • # You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft. Huckleberry Finn
  • # I was a-trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself, ‘All right, then, I’ll GO to hell.’ Huckleberry Finn (on whether or not to turn in Jim for escaping slavery)
  • # H’aint we got all the fools in town on our side? And ain’t that a big enough majority in any town? Mark Twain (Huckleberry Finn)
  • # Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing. Mark Twain
  • # Never let your schooling interfere with your education. Mark Twain
  • # What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know. It’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so. Mark Twain
  • # The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them. Mark Twain
  • # There ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them. Mark Twain
  • # When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years. Mark Twain
  • # With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be careful. Strive to be happy. Max Ehrmann (Desiderata)
  • # Little League baseball is a good thing ’cause it keeps the parents off the streets, and it keeps the kids out of the house! Yogi Berra
  • # When you get to a fork in the road, take it. Yogi Berra
  • # The future ain’t what it used to be. Yogi Berra
  • # …We are the children of those who tried to solve old problems with a new place…
    William Least Heat-Moon (Blue Highways)
  • # Not all those who wander are lost. J.R.R. Tolkien
  • # You can do anything in this world if you are prepared to take the consequences. W. Somerset Maugham
  • # Quotation…is a serviceable substitute for wit. W. Somerset Maugham

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