September 2012 Quotations

"I hate authors. I wouldn't mind them so much if they didn't write books."
~~ Elizabeth van Arnim

"Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative."
~~ Oscar Wilde [1854-1900]

“There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the passion of life.”
~~ Federico Fellini [1920-93]

"If the fascist Republican Party had anything of value to offer the American voter they would not have to lie and cheat and steal to win elections."
~~ G.E. Nordell

"The United States was founded by the brightest people in the country – and we haven't seen them since."
~~ Gore Vidal [1925-2012]

"People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war, or before an election."
~~ Otto von Bismarck [1815-98]

"If one cannot do great work, it is worthwhile to do good work and think it great."
~~ Ambrose Bierce [1842-1914]

"Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul."
~~ Edward Abbey [1927-89]

"Hell is a place where you have nothing to do but amuse yourself."
~~ George Bernard Shaw [1856-1950]

"In Hollywood a girl's virtue is much less important than her hairdo."
~~ Marilyn Monroe [1926-62]

"What is that unforgettable line?"
~~ Samuel Beckett [1906-89]

"Occupy something!"
~~ radio talk show host Thom Hartmann

"It's theatre, you know. I'm whispering in your ear, and you're dreaming my dreams, and then I'm getting a feeling for yours. I've been doing that for forty years."
~~ Bruce Springsteen

“A created thing is never invented and it is never true: it is always and ever itself.”
~~ Federico Fellini [1920-93]

"I hate it when I don't forward a chain letter and I die the next day."
~~ Kelly Kronbar

"The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour upon it, the more it will contract."
~~ Oliver Wendell Holmes [1809-94]

"My country, right or wrong; when right to be kept right, when wrong to be put right."
~~ Carl Schurz [1829-1906]

“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot / Nothing is going to get better. It's not.”
~~ Dr. Seuss {Theodor Geisel 1904-91}, in "The Lorax", 1971

"To be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others."
~~ Nelson Mandela

“The next best thing to knowing something is to know where to find it.”
~~ Robert Johnson

"The cleverly expressed opposite of any generally-accepted idea is worth a fortune to somebody."
~~ F. Scott Fitzgerald [1896-1940]

"Finishing second in the Olympics gets you silver. Finishing second in politics gets you oblivion."
~~ Richard M. Nixon [1913-94]

"Hobbies of any kind are boring, except to people who have the same hobby."
~~ Dave Barry

"Take care of the luxuries, and the necessities will take care of themselves."
~~ Dorothy Parker [1893-1967]

"The truth is lived, not taught."
~~ Herman Hesse [1877-1962]

"If you're not a sex object, you're in trouble."
~~ Helen Gurley Brown [1922-2012]

"The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize."
~~ art historian Robert Hughes [1938-2012]

"[Paul Ryan is] a supply-side zealot who would shred the safety net to put more money in the pockets of the very rich."
~~ William Falk

"There are no rationalists. We all believe in fairy tales, and live in them."
~~ G.K. Chesterton [1874-1936]

"Jesus was a bachelor."
~~ Don Herold [1889-1966]

"Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you."
~~ Nathaniel Hawthorne [1804-64]

"Nothing flatters a man as much as the happiness of his wife; he is always proud of himself as the source of it."
~~ Dr. Samuel Johnson [1709-84]

"I don't pretend to understand the universe, it is a great deal bigger than I am."
~~ Thomas Carlyle [1795-1881]

"To invent you need a good imagination and a pile of junk."
~~ Thomas Alva Edison [1847-1931]

"Never use a long word when a short one will do."
~~ George Orwell [1903-50]

"Democracy is supposed to give you the feeling of choice, like Painkiller X and Painkiller Y. But they're both just apirin."
~~ Gore Vidal [1925-2012]

"A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others."
~~ philosopher Ayn Rand [1905-82]

"History is the sum total of the things that could have been avoided."
~~ Konrad Adenauer [1876-1967]

"Success loves a witness, but failure can't exist without one."
~~ Junot Diaz

"Life is too short, and the time [that] we waste in yawning can never be regained."
~~ Stendhal 1783-1842]

"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge."
~~ Charles Darwin [1809-82]

"Speak softly and carry a big stick."
~~ Vice President Theodore Roosevelt [1858-1919], in a speech at the Minnesota State Fair on 2 September 1901

"It is the business of the artist to make humanity aware of itself."
~~ poet Ezra Pound [1885-1972]

"Humankind cannot bear very much reality."
~~ poet T.S. Eliot [1888-1965]

"Only by going alone in silence, without baggage, can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness."
~~ eco-activist John Muir [1838-1914]

"I do not like what is going on in our society. Our education system . . . is a total disaster."
~~ Ray Bradbury [1920-2012], in Salon interview 8/2001

"I don't believe in the tooth fairy, although I once had a dentist [that] I wasn't too sure of."
~~ Hollywood columnist James Bacon [1914-2010]

"If you tell about one place really well, you tell about the whole world."
~~ Isaac Bashevis Singer [1902-91]

"Basic research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing."
~~ rocket scientist Werner Von Braun [1912-77]

"If Paul Ryan was honest, he would have pointed to that debt clock and said, ‘We built that'."
~~ Cong. Chris Van Hollen

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