RS Classic: Saturday Quote-a-Thon - Learning a Little Somethin’

Once again, reusing quotes because, hey, I'm lazy.

With all the education talk this week and elder sibling stuff goin’ on, seemed like learning might be a good subject for quotes. Let’s just dig into the Big Bag O’ Quotes and see what we find.

He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils.
–Sir Francis Bacon

Advice is seldom welcome, and those who need it the most, like it the least.
–Philip Dormer Stanhope, Lord Chesterfield

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.
–Winston Churchill

Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak it to?
–Clarence Darrow

The most glorious moments in your life are not the so-called days of success, but rather those days when out of dejection and despair you feel rise in you a challenge to life, and the promise of future accomplishments.
–Gustave Flaubert

The most valuable of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it has to be done, whether you like it or not.
–Aldous Huxley

Colleges are places where pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed.
–Robert Green Ingersol

Experience, the most brutal of teachers; but you learn, my God do you learn.
–C. S. Lewis

The pupil who is never required to do what he cannot do, never does what he can do.
–John Stuart Mill

I respect faith, but doubt is what gives you an education.
–Wilson Mizner

If history teaches anything, it teaches that self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly.
–Ronald Reagan [Ed: might we remind the GOP of that now?]

What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out, which is the exact opposite.
–Bertrand Russell

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It is simply too painful to acknowledge — even to ourselves — that we’ve been so credulous. (So the old bamboozles tend to persist as the new bamboozles rise.)
–Carl Sagan

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Saturday Quotathon: Women

The view of women has often been focused on the physical or superficialities. Today, I'm look for quotes by women or about women that see beyond that.

Too much of a good thing is wonderful.
--Mae West

I was always looking outside myself for strength and confidence but it comes from within. It is there all the time.
--Anna Freud

Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels.
--Faith Whittlesey

Intimacy is being seen and known as the person you truly are.
-- Amy Bloom

If you are never scared or embarrassed or hurt, it means you never take any chances.
- Julia Sorel

Speak the truth in a million voices. It is silence that kills.
- Catherine of Siena, 1347 - 1380

No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up.
-- Lily Tomlin

Instead of comparing our lot with that of those who are more fortunate than we are, we should compare it with the lot of the great majority of our fellow men. It then appears that we are among the privileged.
--Helen Keller, 1880 - 1968

No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit.
--Helen Keller, 1880 - 1968

I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you.
-Elizabeth Barrett Browning

You can give without loving, but you cannot love without giving.
-Amy Carmichael

If you judge people, you have no time to love them.
-Mother Theresa

Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman, but an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force.
-Dorothy Sayers “Clouds of Witness”

She has a sense of humor... and brains... life wouldn't be dull. One would wake up, and there would be a whole day full of jolly things to do. And then we would come home and go to bed... and that would be jolly too.
-Dorothy Sayers “Strong Poison”

The great advantage about telling the truth is that nobody ever believes it.
-Dorothy Sayers

As I grow older and older
And totter toward the tomb
I find that I care less and less
Who goes to bed with whom
-Dorothy Sayers

Somehow or other, and with the best of intentions, we have shown the world the typical Christian in the likeness of a crashing and rather ill-natured bore—and this in the name of one who assuredly never bored a soul in those thirty-three years during which he passed through the world like a flame.
-Dorothy Sayers

I'm never going to accomplish anything; that's perfectly clear to me. I'm never going to be famous. My name will never be writ large on the roster of Those Who Do Things. I don't do anything. Not one single thing. I used to bite my nails, but I don't even do that any more.
-Dorothy Parker

The whole duty of man consists in being reasonable and just ... I am reasonable because I know the difference between understanding and not understanding and I am just because I have no opinion about things I don’t understand.
- Gertrude Stein

The strongest natures, when they are influenced, submit the most unreservedly; it is perhaps a sign of their strength.
- Virginia Woolf

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
- Evelyn Beatrice Hall

Our earth is round, and, among other things, that means that you and I can hold completely different points of view and both be right. The difference of our positions will show stars in your window I cannot even imagine. Your sky may burn with light, while mine, at the same moment, spreads beautiful to darkness. Still we must choose how we separately corner the circling universe of our experience. Once chosen, our cornering will determine the message of any star and darkness we encounter.
-June Jordan

No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.
-Mary Wollstonecraft

Looks like quotes "about" women may have to wait. Of course, I'm going to have to get more. Most of the quotes I've found "about" women are somewhat, well, I'll need more.

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Saturday Quotathon: Completely Random

I'm just going to grab some as I go through the dwindling remainder of my quotes list. It's just been that kind of day.

May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't.
--George Patton

Stay with me, I want to be alone.
- Joey Adams

Wild horses couldn't drag a secret out of most women. However, women seldom have lunch with wild horses.
- Ivern Boyett

Don't look now, but there's one too many in this room and I think it's you.
- Groucho Marx

I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial.
- Irvin S. Cobb

Cucumber should be well sliced, dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out.
- Samuel Johnson

I read the newspapers avidly. It is my one form of continuous fiction.
- Aneurin Bevan

He ended the job as he began it; fired with enthusiasm.
- Don O'Shaughnessy

Hollywood is a place where people from Iowa mistake each other for stars.
- Fred Allen

Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?
-Mark Twain

He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts... for support rather than illumination.
Andrew Lang 1844-1912)

It was the Law of the Sea, they said. Civilization ends at the waterline.
Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top.
- Hunter S. Thompson

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.
--Buddha

The past is finished. There is nothing to be gained by going over it. Whatever it gave us in the experiences it brought us was something we had to know.
-- Rebecca Beard


Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot.
--D. H. Lawrence

There's no present. There's only the immediate future and the recent past.
-- George Carlin

I'm sure the universe is full of intelligent life. It's just been too intelligent to come here.
--Arthur C. Clarke 1917-2008

Those who face that which is actually before them, unburdened by the past, undistracted by the future, these are they who live, who make the best use of their lives; these are those who have found the secret of contentment.
--Alban Goodier

That seemed like a good one to end on.

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Saturday Quote-a-thon: War

All this discussion of bad guys and villains and Hitler, it seems like a valid subject. So, here we go...

No poor bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making other bastards die for their country.
--George Patton

Nothing is so exhilarating in life as to be shot at with no result.
--Winston Churchill

Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
- Julius Caesar

In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
--George Orwell

I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights.
- Desmond Tutu

Strange that we all defend our wrongs with more vigor than we do our rights.
- Kahlil Gibran, 1883 - 1931

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.
- Sun Tzu

The problems of victory are more agreeable than the problems of defeat, but they are no less difficult.
- Winston Churchill, 1874 - 1965

There has never been a just one, never an honorable one - on the part of the instigator of the war. I can see a million years ahead, and this rule will never change in so many as half a dozen instances. The loud little handful - as usual - will shout for the war. The pulpit will - warily and cautiously - object - at first; the great, big, dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should be a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, "It is unjust and dishonorable, and here is no necessity for it." Then the handful will shout louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have a hearing and be applauded; but it will not last long; those others will out shout them, and presently the anti-war audiences will thin out and lose popularity. Before long you will see this curious thing: the speakers stoned from the platform, and free speech strangled by hordes of furious men who in their secret hearts are still at one with those stoned speakers - as earlier - but do not dare to say so. And now the whole nation - pulpit and all - will take up the war-cry, and shout itself hoarse, and mob any honest man who ventures to open his mouth; and presently such mouths will cease to open. Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.
-Mark Twain in “The Mysterious Stranger”

The responsibility of the great states is to serve and not to dominate the world.
-Harry S. Truman

Let us not forget that violence does not live alone and is not capable of living alone: it is necessarily interwoven with falsehood. Between them lies the most intimate, the deepest of natural bonds. Violence finds its only refuge in falsehood, falsehood its only support in violence. Any man who has once acclaimed violence as his METHOD must inexorably choose falsehood as his PRINCIPLE.
-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Inferiors revolt in order that they may be equal, and equals that they may be superior. Such is the state of mind which creates revolutions.
-Aristotle

When war is not just it is subsequently justified; so it becomes many things. In reality, an unjust war is merely piracy. It consists of piracy, ego, and, more than anything, money. War is our century’s prostitution.
-T.S. Elliot

Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind.
-John F. Kennedy

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what a people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. Men may not get all they pay for in this world; but they must pay for all they get.
- Frederick Douglass

The first casualty when war comes is truth.
- Hiram Johnson

As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.
- Gore Vidal

When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called "the People's Stick."
-Mikhail Bakunin

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Saturday Quotathon: Politics, Politicians and Patriotism

In honor of the holiday...

In the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding on the back of the tiger ended up inside.
--John F. Kennedy

People think responsibility is hard to bear. It's not. I think that sometimes it is the absence of responsibility that is harder to bear. You have a great feeling of impotence.
--Henry Kissinger

How perilous it is to free a people who prefer slavery.
--Niccolò Machiavelli

Status quo, you know, that is Latin for 'the mess we're in'.
--Ronald Reagan

A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular.
--Adlai Stevenson

Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies but which let wasps and hornets break through.
--Jonathon Swift

The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin.
--Mark Twain

I not only use all of the brains I have, but all I can borrow.
--Woodrow Wilson

After the game, the king and the pawn go into the same box.
-- Italian Proverb

Crash programs fail because they are based on the theory that, with nine women pregnant, you can get a baby a month.
-- Wernher von Braun

Diplomacy is the art of letting the other party have things your way.
-- Daniele Vare

So much attention is paid to the aggressive sins, such as violence and cruelty and greed with all their tragic effects, that too little attention is paid to the passive sins, such as apathy and laziness, which in the long run can have a more devastating and destructive effect upon our society than the others.
-- Eleanor Roosevelt

He who stops being better stops being good.
-- Oliver Cromwell

If you're not making waves, you're not underway.
-- Admiral Chester Nimitz

I have discovered the art of deceiving diplomats. I speak the truth, and they never believe me.
-- Camillo di Cavour

It is not true that equality is a law of nature. Nature has no equality. Its sovereign law is subordination and dependence.
-- Marquis de Vauvenargues

It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.
-- Giordano Bruno

Never be afraid to stand with the minority when the minority is right, for the minority which is right will one day be the majority.
-- William Jennings Bryan

No one ever excused his way to success.
-- David de Dotto

No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power.
-- Jacob Bronowski

Right is right, even if everyone is against it, and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it.
-- William Penn

Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of.
Since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.
-- Viktor Frankl

Experience is the best teacher, but only a fool would choose to learn at the school of experience.
--Ben Franklin

Political necessities sometimes turn out to be political mistakes.
-George Bernard Shaw

Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.
-Albert Einstein

If you are going through hell, keep going.
-Winston Churchill

I have always thought that all men should be free; but if any should be slaves, it should be first those who desire it for themselves, and secondly, those who desire it for others. When I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
-Abraham Lincoln

The average "educated" American has been made to believe that, somehow, the United States must lead the world even though hardly anyone has any information at all about those countries we are meant to lead. Worse, we have very little information about our own country and its past.
- Gore Vidal

It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.
- Harry S. Truman

I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it's for or against.
- Malcolm X

Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' And Vanity comes along and asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But Conscience asks the question 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right.
- Martin Luther King

It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.
- Thomas Paine

Between individuals, as between nations, respect for the rights of others is peace.
- Benito Juárez

By a free country, I mean a country where people are allowed, so long as they do not hurt their neighbours, to do as they like. I do not mean a country where six men may make five men do exactly as they like.
- Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, Lord Salisbury

Statistics are no substitute for judgment.
-Henry Clay

Has it been found that bodies of men act with more rectitude or greater disinterestedness than individuals? The contrary of this has been inferred by all accurate observers of the conduct of mankind; and the inference is founded upon obvious reasons. Regard to reputation has a less active influence, when the infamy of a bad action is to be divided among a number than when it is to fall singly upon one. A spirit of faction, which is apt to mingle its poison in the deliberations of all bodies of men, will often hurry the persons of whom they are composed into improprieties and excesses, for which they would blush in a private capacity.
-Alexander Hamilton

If I am to be shot at, I want no man to be in the way of the bullet.
-Andrew Johnson

Even if we accept, as the basic tenet of true democracy, that one moron is equal to one genius, is it necessary to go a further step and hold that two morons are better than one genius?
-Leó Szilárd

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
-William Pitt the Younger

Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't.
-Margaret Thatcher

It is especially important to encourage unorthodox thinking when the situation is critical: At such moments every new word and fresh thought is more precious than gold. Indeed, people must not be deprived of the right to think their own thoughts.
- Boris Yeltsin

The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world's problem.
-Mahatma Gandhi

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.
H.L. Mencken

Richard Nixon is a no-good lying bastard. He can lie out of both sides of his mouth at the same time, and if he ever caught himself telling the truth, he'd lie just to keep his hand in.
- Harry S. Truman on Richard Nixon

History buffs probably noted the reunion at a Washington party a few weeks ago of three ex-presidents: Carter, Ford, and Nixon-See No Evil, Hear No Evil, and Evil.
- Robert J. Dole, speech, 1983

A Member of Parliament to Disraeli: "Sir, you will either die on the gallows or of some unspeakable disease."
"That depends, Sir," said Disraeli, "on whether I embrace your policies or your mistress."

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Saturday Quote-a-thon: Pets and Animals

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

In honor of our new family additions, Moxie and Foxy, here are some quotes on cats, dogs and the like.

Both the cockroach and the bird would get along very well without us, although the cockroach would miss us most.
--Joseph Wood Krutch

Cats are rather delicate creatures and they are subject to a good many ailments, but I never heard of one who suffered from insomnia.
--Joseph Wood Krutch

Cats seem to go on the principle that it never does any harm to ask for what you want.
--Joseph Wood Krutch

A child is a person who can't understand why someone would give away a perfectly good kitten.
--Doug Larsen

No matter how much the cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens.
--Abraham Lincoln

If a cat sits down on a hot stove, that's knowledge; it will never sit down on a hot stove again. But if it never sits down on a cold one either, that's belief.
--Solomon Short

Here is an animal with a hide two feet thick and no apparent interest in politics. What a waste.
-- James C. Wright, Jr., regarding the rhinoceros

Of all the [cat] toys available, none is better designed than the owner himself. A large multipurpose plaything, its parts can be made to move in almost any direction. It comes completely assembled and it makes a sound when you jump on it.
-- Stephen Baker

I never married because there was no need. I have three pets at home, which answer the same purpose as a husband. I have a dog which growls every morning, a parrot which swears all afternoon and a cat that comes home late at night.
- Marie Corelli

Children left unattended will be given a free kitten.
--Sign at a DMV office

You cannot hunt with a tied dog.
-Albanian Proverb

The badger is not aware of its own blaze.
-Altay Proverb

Any time you think you have influence, try ordering around someone else’s dog.
-The Cockel Bur

At first I thought he was walking a dog. Then I realized it was his date.
- Edith Massey

He has all the characteristics of a dog except loyalty.
- Sam Houston, on Thomas Jefferson Green

Debating against him is no fun, say something insulting and he looks at you like a whipped dog.
- Harold Wilson

All animals are equal— but some animals are more equal than others.
- Animal Farm by George Orwell

Enjoy. My pussycats are asleep on my lap as I write this.

Yay!

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Saturday Quote-a-thon: Beauty

It's Saturday Quote-a-Thon and, since I was mentioning physical beauty yesterday, I thought I'd look for quotes about beauty. Except, I seem to have very few that aren't insults. I wonder what it means that so many choose to focus on appearance to insult. I guess beauty just isn't that big for me. I'm sort of a substance type.

She is a peacock in everything but beauty.
- Oscar Wilde

She not only kept her lovely figure, she's added so much to it.
- Bob Fosse

She was a large woman who seemed not so much dressed as upholstered.
- James Matthew Barrie

She was so ugly she could make a mule back away from an oat bin.
- Will Rogers

She wears her clothes as if they were thrown on with a pitchfork.
- Jonathan Swift

The tautness of his face sours ripe grapes.
- William Shakespeare

Glenda Jackson has a face to launch a thousand dredgers.
- Jack deManio

Her face was her chaperone.
- Rupert Hughes

But I did know some that were really about beauty.

My favorite of all time (and I doing this one from memory):

A woman who makes you feel good about yourself is never homely. After a while, you realize she always was beautiful. You just didn't notice it at first.
-Robert Heinlein (that's his picture from Wikipedia)

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Saturday Quote-a-thon: Government

Since I'll be away on government business, here are some government-related quotes for Saturday.

Businesses stay open for business by solving people's problems. Government stays open for business not by solving problems, but by maintaining them.
--Jay Charles

The repeated failure of well-intentioned programs is not an accident. It is not simply the result of mistakes of execution. The failure is deeply rooted in the use of bad means to achieve good objectives.
--Milton Friedman


Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time; what we really want is for things to remain the same but get better.
--Sydney J. Harris

The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.
--Thomas Jefferson

The future is purchased by the present.
--Samuel Johnson

Mothers all want their sons to grow up to be President, but they don't want them to become politicians in the process.
--John F. Kennedy

Instead of giving a politician the keys to the city, it might be better to change the locks.
--Doug Larsen

Determine that the thing can and shall be done, and then we shall find the way. --Abraham Lincoln

It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage, than the creation of a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institutions and merely lukewarm defenders in those who would gain by the new ones.
--Niccolò Machiavelli

There's a great deal of talk about loyalty from the bottom to the top. Loyalty from the top down is even more necessary and is much less prevalent. One of the most frequently noted characteristics of great men who have remained great is loyalty to their subordinates.
--Gen George Patton

Right is right, even if everyone is against it, and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it.
--William Penn

There can be no such thing, in law or in morality, as actions forbidden to an individual, but permitted to a mob.
--Ayn Rand

They say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They are wrong. There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right.
--Ronald Reagan

Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business.
--Tom Robbins

No man is above the law and no man is below it; nor do we ask any man's permission when we require him to obey it. Obedience to the law is demanded as a right; not asked as a favor.
--Theodore Roosevelt

In America, anyone can become president. That's one of the risks you have to take. --Adlai Stevenson

Standing in the middle of the road is very dangerous; you get knocked down by traffic from both sides.
--Margaret Thatcher

Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.
--Mark Twain

No man can sit down and withhold his hands from the warfare against wrong and get peace from his acquiescence.
--Woodrow Wilson

A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled.
-- Sir Barnett Cocks

A committee is a group that keeps the minutes and loses hours.
-- Milton Berle

A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.
-- Edward Abbey

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