January 2017 Quotations (51)

"I finally found some affordable health insurance. Unfortunately, the annual deductible is four hundred thousand dollars."
~~ G.E. Nordell

“The white working class is about to be betrayed.”
~~ Paul Krugman, New York Times columnist

"The ability to quote is a servicable substitute for wit."
~~ W. Somerset Maugham [1874-1965]

"Du lieber Gott! was so ein Mann / Nicht alles, alles denken kann!"
"Dear God! The things that such a man / Can think of! Nothing! Everything!"
~~ {Johann Wolfgang von} Goethe [1749-1832] - in "Faust Part 1, Chapter 16" [1809]

"Your [Working Minds] website has always had the best collection of thoughtful quotations anywhere, ever."
~~ reader and T.E.D. speaker Dan Pallotta

"Doubt everything or believe everything: these are two equally convenient strategies. With either we dispense with the need for reflection."
~~ French polymath Jules Henri Poincaré [1854-1912]

"When even the brightest mind in our world has been trained up from childhood in a superstition of any kind, it will never be possible for that mind, in its maturity, to examine sincerely, dispassionately, and conscientiously any evidence or any circumstance which shall seem to cast a doubt upon the validity of that superstition. I doubt if I could do it myself."
~~ Mark Twain [1835-1910]

"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance – that principle is contempt prior to investigation."
~~ British philosopher Herbert Spencer [1820-1903]

"If a man is in too big a hurry to give up an error he is liable to give up some truth with it."
~~ Wilbur Wright [1867-1912], in 1902

"It's like religion. Heresy [in science] is thought of as a bad thing, whereas it should be just the opposite."
~~ astrophysicist Dr. Thomas Gold [1920-2004]

"Nothing is thoroughly approved but mediocrity. The majority has established this, and it fixes its fangs on whatever gets beyond it either way."
~~ Blaise Pascal [1623-62]

"The good is slow because going uphill; evil is fast because going downhill."
~~ Alexander Dumas, fils [1824-95]

"A woman is like an artichoke, you must work hard to get to her heart."
~~ Inspector Jacques Clouseau, star of "The Pink Panther" Movies

“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.”
~~ Albert Einstein [1879-1955]

“Always do what you are afraid to do.”
~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-82]

"There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we spent with a favorite book."
~~ Marcel Proust [1871-1922]

"I cannot live without books."
~~ Thomas Jefferson [1743-1826]

"Change is not merely necessary to life – it is Life."
~~ futurist Alvin Toffler [1928-2016]

“Nothing that comes easy is worth a dime.”
~~ Wayne Woodrow 'Woody' Hayes [1913-87], football coach at Ohio State University

“When you win, say nothing. When you lose, say less.”
~~ Paul Brown [1908-91], coached the Cincinnati Bengals and Cleveland Browns football teams

"If you can't stay sober to write, who will stay sober to read you?"
~~ advice to young Ernest Hemingway [1899-1961] while in Paris

"The right to vote is a consequence, not a primary cause, of a free social system – and its value depends on the constitutional structure implementing and strictly delimiting the voters' power; unlimited majority rule is an instance of the principle of tyranny."
~~ philosopher Ayn Rand [1905-82]

"It is amazing how lovely common things become, if one only knows how to look at them."
~~ Louisa May Alcott [1832-88]

"Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing."
~~ Wikimedia founder Jimmy Wales, in July 2004

"some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly."
~~ Sir Francis Bacon [1561-1626]

"Trump [is] a fascist. Not in the sense of an all-purpose bad guy, but in the sense of somebody who sincerely believes that the toxic combination of strong government and strong corporations should run the nation and the world."
~~ columnist Michael Kinsley

"If I want your opinion, I'll give it to you."
~~ line in the movie "The Last Word" [2017], also gangster Al Capone [1899-1947]

"Farting is such sweet sorrow."
~~ 'Billy Bob' Shakespeare

“The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five.”
~~ Carl Sagan [1934-96]

“Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.“
~~ James Baldwin [1924-87] , in "Giovanni's Room" (1956 novel)

“There is no comfort anywhere for anyone who dreads to go home.“
~~ Laura Ingalls Wilder [1867-1957], in "Little Town On The Prairie" (1941 novel)

“You can go home again, the General Temporal Theory asserts, so long as you understand that home is a place where you have never been.“
~~ Ursula K. Le Guin, in "The Dispossessed" (1974 novel)

“Procrastination most often arises from a sense that there is too much to do, and hence no single aspect of the to-do worth doing. Underneath this rather antic form of action-as-inaction is the much more unsettling question whether anything is worth doing at all.”
~~ Canadian philosopher Mark Kingwell

"Cultivate your curves – they may be dangerous but they won't be avoided."
~~ entertainer Mae West [1893-1980]

"One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being."
~~ poet May Sarton [1912-95]

“Arguing that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying [that] you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say."
~~ Jason Schaefer, computer consultant in Santa Fe, New Mexico

"Never does not exist for the human mind . . . only Not yet"
~~ opening title of 1929 silent movie "Woman In The Moon" by Fritz Lang [1890-1976]

"Nobody deserves Donald Trump, not even his supporters."
~~ Wisconsin journalist Bill Leuders

"We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel [within] ourselves, poetry."
~~ Irish poet William Butler Yeats [1865-1939]

"All good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings."
~~ William Wordsworth [1750-1850], in 1802

"We're all alone in a meaningless world."
~~ Joy Williams

"That's the real trouble with the world. Too many people grow up."
~~ Walt Disney [1901-66]

"Revolutionary justice is not based on legal precepts, but on moral conviction."
~~ Fidel Castro [1926-2016], in 1959

"Write a short story every week. It's not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row."
~~ Ray Bradbury [1920-2012]

"Conformity is that jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth."
~~ John F. Kennedy [1917-63]

"The only way to do great work is to love what you do."
~~ Steve Jobs [1955-2011]

"When you truly love your journey, the destination is just a bonus."
~~ motivational speaker Katrina Mayer

"Politicians are the lowest form of life on earth. Liberal democrats are the lowest form of politicians."
~~ Gen. George S. Patton [1885-1945]

"All artists are egotistical maniacs with inferiority complexes."
~~ singer-songwriter Lionel Ritchie

"The first principle of architectural beauty is that the essential lines of a construction be determined by a perfect appropriateness to its use."
~~ Gustave Eiffel [1832-1923]

"Honk if you love Jesus. Text while driving if you want to meet Him."
~~ roadside church marquee

{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}