May 2020 Quotations (53)

"November 3 the nightmare ends."
~~ Rob Reiner on Twitter, 22 May 2020

"Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings worse things than any that can ever happen in war."
~~ Ernest Hemingway [1899-1961]

"The more we see of men, the more we like dogs."
~~ inscription by Messrs. Frank and Dubois on a 1902 dog collar
at the Colorado Railroad Museum

"Social distancing is not difficult for me because of my years of practice in anti-social distancing."
~~ philosopher, hermit & curmudgeon G.E. Nordell

"Fear cannot be banished, but it can be calm and without panic; it can be mitigated by reason and evaluation."
~~ engineer Vannevar Bush [1890-1974]

"Be a first rate version of yourself, not a second rate version of someone else."
~~ entertainer Judy Garland [1922-69]

"It's never too early to be annoyed by Christmas."
~~ Grinch character, as written by Dr. Seuss

“Losing doesn’t make me want to quit. It makes me want to fight that much harder.”
~~ Bear Bryant [1913-83], football coach at the University of Alabama

"It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow."
~~ rocket scientist Robert H. Goddard [1882-1945]

“Positive leadership, in my mind, comes from two things ... No. 1 [is] do your job. No. 2 [is] put the team first.”
~~ Bill Belichick, football coach of the New England Patriots

"I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure."
~~ Clarence Darrow [1857-1938]

"He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary."
~~ William Faulkner [1897-1962] (about Ernest Hemingway [1899-1961])

"The Republican Party is the Special Olympics for politicians."
~~ G.E. Nordell

"Don't shove me into some pigeonhole, where I don't fit, because I'm all over. My tentacles are coming out of the pigeonhole in all directions."
~~ Ursula K. Le Guin [1929-2018]

“I’ve spent my entire writing life trying to make sure that the white gaze was not the dominant one in any of my books.”
~~ Nobel-laureate author Toni Morrison [1931-2019] to Charlie Rose, in a 1998 interview

“Not making a decision is the worst thing you can do. So long as you feel you made the right decision based on the information you had at the time, there’s no need to fret about it. If it fails, you’ll know what to do next time.”
~~ Bo Schembechler [1929-2006], football coach at the University of Michigan

"We are going to have to understand evermore complex systems if we are to deal with the future. Without that understanding there may be no future."
~~ mathematician & philosopher Norbert Wiener [1894-1964]

"To be really great in little things, to be truly noble and heroic in the insipid details of everyday life, is a virtue so rare as to be worthy of canonization."
~~ Harriet Beecher Stowe [1811-96]

"All religion may be centered around a generally good idea; however, this has not stopped its adherents from acting like bastards."
~~ Paul K. Feyerabend [1924-94]

"I'm astounded by people who want to 'know' the universe when it's hard enough to find your way around Chinatown."
~~ Woody Allen

"I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious."
~~ physicist Albert Einstein [1879-1955]

"Climate change is the single biggest thing that humans have ever done on this planet. The one thing that needs to be bigger is our movement to stop it."
~~ eco-activist Bill McKibben

"Science is not only a discipline of reason but, also, one of romance and passion."
~~ Stephen W. Hawking [1942-2018]

"The virtues of science are skepticism and independence of thought."
~~ Nobel-laureate Walter Gilbert

"In order to improve the mind, we ought less to learn, than to contemplate."
~~ French/Dutch philosopher René Descartes [1596-1650]

"Things start out as hopes and end up as habits."
~~ playwright Lillian Hellman [1905-84]

"You have been my friend . . . That in itself is a tremendous thing."
~~ E.B. White [1899-1985], in "Charlotte’s Web" [1952]

"Jazz, to me, is one of the inherent expressions of Negro life in America: the eternal tom-tom beating in the Negro soul — the tom-tom of revolt against weariness in a white world, a world of subway trains, and work, work, work; the tom-tom of joy and laughter, and pain swallowed in a smile."
~~ Langston Hughes [1902-67]

"Dune is the bestselling science fiction book of all time. It's something [that] you really need to read in your lifetime. If you're going to read The Lord of The Rings, which everyone should, then you have to read Dune too."
~~ Kevin J. Anderson

"Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage."
~~ Chinese philosopher Lao-Tzu [IVth Century B.C.E.]

"There are trivial truths and there are great truths. The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false. The opposite of a great truth is also true."
~~ physicist Niels Bohr [1885-1962]

"If we wait for a pandemic to appear, it will be too late to prepare."
~~ President George W. Bush in 2005

"We are born weak, we need strength; helpless, we need aid; foolish, we need reason. All that we lack at birth, all that we need when we come to man's estate, is the gift of education."
~~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau [1712-78]

"We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission."
~~ philosopher Ayn Rand [1905-82]

"The lies Trump tells won’t wash the truth away."
~~ Laura Leighton, on Facebook

“A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.”
~~ Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. [1922-2007]

"Not all idiots are Republicans, but all Republicans are idiots."
~~ G.E. Nordell

"[Trump's] dishonesty has no limits."
~~ John O. Brennan, former head of the C.I.A.- in April 2020

"Three things I prize and hold fast: Humility, Compassion, and Economy."
~~ Chinese philosopher Lao-Tzu [IVth Century B.C.E.]

"Please don't call them protesters . . . they're terrorists. Protesters don't carry AK47s, wave swastika flags, or block ambulances."
~~ shared on Facebook, April 2020

"A gathering of covidiots is known as a covfefe."
~~ shared on Facebook, April 2020

"Donald Trump is the number one mass murderer in U.S. history."
~~ G.E. Nordell

"The takeover of the environmental movement by capitalism is now complete."
~~ filmmaker Jeff Gibbs

"Humankind is challenged, as it has never been challenged before, to prove its maturity and its mastery - not of nature, but of itself."
~~ Rachel L. Carson [1907-64] in 1962

"The coronavirus didn’t break America. It revealed what was already broken."
~~ The Atlantic Magazine

"We've reached a point where every day must be Earth Day."
~~ Canadian eco-journalist David Suzuki

"Under certain circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer."
~~ Mark Twain [1835-1910]

"Every time I learn something new, something old falls out. And I might really need that!"
~~ Homer Simpson, your spiritual advisor

"Religion is a primitive form of philosophy, [an] attempt to offer a comprehensive view of reality."
~~ philosopher Ayn Rand [1905-82]

"Human history is the long terrible story of humans trying to find something other than God which will make them happy."
~~ C.S. Lewis [1898-1963]

"I try to avoid looking forward or backward and try to keep looking upward."
~~ Charlotte Brontë [1816-55]

"Everyone says he is crazy – which maybe he is – but the scarier thing about him is that he is stupid. You do not know anyone as stupid as Donald Trump."
~~ Fran Lebowitz

"Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force."
~~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer [1906-45]

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