Saturday Quote-a-thon: Words of Wisdom II

>> Saturday, April 11, 2009


I feel so guilty. I move over here, so many people come by and offer support, and I give them a week of odds-n-ends instead of something funny, thought-provoking, or informative. But I will get back on track...starting today with my regular feature, the Saturday quote-a- thon. Today, since my brain's been at half mast, I offer some words of wisdom. Let's see what we got...

Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.
--Sir Francis Bacon

It is the nature, and the advantage, of strong people that they can bring out the crucial questions and form a clear opinion about them. The weak always have to decide between alternatives that are not their own.
--Dietrich Bonhoeffer

An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.
--Winston Churchill

The sun should not set upon our anger; neither should he rise upon our confidence. We should forgive freely, but forget rarely. I will not be revenged, and this I owe to my enemy; but I will remember, and this I owe to myself.
--Charles Caleb Colton

If 50 million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.
--Anatole France

If an exchange between two parties is voluntary, it will not take place unless both believe they will benefit from it. Most economic fallacies derive from the neglect of this simple insight, from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.
--Milton Friedman

Most human organizations that fall short of their goals do so not because of stupidity or faulty doctrines, but because of internal decay and rigidification. They grow stiff in the joints. They get in a rut. They go to seed.
--James A. Garfield

A single lie destroys a whole reputation of integrity.
--Baltasar Gracián

Those who stand for nothing will fall for anything.
--Alexander Hamilton

Maturity begins when we're content to feel we're right about something without feeling the necessity to prove someone else wrong.
--Sydney J. Harris

Most people can't think, most of the remainder won't think, the small fraction who do think mostly can't do it very well. The extremely tiny fraction who think regularly, accurately, creatively, and without self-delusion -- in the long run, these are the only people who count.
--Robert Heinlein

Character is the result of two things, mental attitude and the way we spend our time. It is what we think and what we do that makes us what we are.
--Elbert Hubbard

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
--Aldous Huxley

A thousand words will not leave so deep an impression as one deed.
--Henrik Ibsen

In Nature there are neither rewards nor punishments, there are consequences. --Robert Green Ingersol

An unlearned carpenter of my acquaintance once said in my hearing: "There is very little difference between one man and another, but what there is is
--William James

Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.
--John F. Kennedy

If one looks with a cold eye at the mess man has made of history, it is difficult to avoid the conclusions that he has been afflicted by some built-in mental disorder which drives him towards self-destruction.
--Arthur Koestler

A lot of people mistake a short memory for a clear conscience.
--Doug Larsen


You can have no dominion greater or less than that over yourself.
--Leonardo da Vinci

If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend six sharpening my axe.
--Abraham Lincoln

It takes less time to do a thing right than it does to explain why you did it wrong.
--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

We die only once, and for such a long time.
--Moliere

Stubborn and ardent clinging to one's opinion is the best proof of stupidity.
--Michel de Montaigne

Common sense could prevent most divorces; also a lot of marriages.
--Joe Moore

If you have to keep reminding yourself of a thing, perhaps it isn't so.
--Christopher Morley

Few things concentrate the mind more efficiently than the necessity of saying what you mean. It brings you face to face with what you are talking about, what you are actually proposing. It gets you away from the catch phrases that not merely substitute for thought but preclude it.
--Edwin Newman

8 comments:

  • Roy
     

    So the repairs are finally done, and the last room painted? I hope you and Lee have some kind of celebration planned.

    Interesting quotes. Let's see if I have anything close to hand.

    "Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them?Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends."
    ~ J. R. R. Tolkien (Gandalf speaking to Frodo)

    "You cannot find peace by avoiding life, Leonard."
    ~ Virginia Woolf in The Hours (David Hare, screenplay)

    "When I hear Mozart, I understand what it is to be a human being; when I hear Beethoven, I understand what it is to be Beethoven; but when I listen to Bach, I understand what it is to be the universe."
    -- Douglas Adams
    (You knew I just had to get a Douglas Adams quote in here!)

    "If civilization has an opposite, it is war. Of those two things, you can have either one or the other. Not both."
    -- Ursula K. LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness

    "Great things have been achieved by naive and poorly informed people - parenthood, for one thing."
    ~ Garrison Keillor

    "I imagine God is weary of being called down on both sides of an argument."
    ~ Inman in "Cold Mountain" (Anthony Minghella, screenwriter)

    Okay, that should do.

  • Stephanie Barr
     

    You always add such good quotes, Roy!

  • flit
     

    ah ... here it is... losted the comment box for a bit there!

    Hope you guys are having a very Happy Easter.

  • Phyl
     

    I can't even begin to pick a favourite out of these; they're all so uplifting. Not to mention uncomfortable!

    I hope you're having a great Easter. A relaxing Easter, especially.

  • musingwoman
     

    A lot of people mistake a short memory for a clear conscience.
    --Doug Larsen


    So true! I'm copying that one down in my notebook.

  • shakespeare
     

    These quotes remind me of myself sometimes...okay, most of the time... well, maybe all the time...

    Drat! Why can't I be one of the clear thinkers?

  • Unknown
     

    I always love these quote collections. I'm curious what the missing word is in the William James quote. :-)

  • Maien
     

    I like quotathon series :) enjoyed it a lot on today blog

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