The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has limits

-Albert Einstein

The only person you should try to be better than is the person you were yesterday

-Anonymous

The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.

- Plutarch

All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.

-Aristotle

If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking

-Lyndon B. Johnson

A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject

-Winston Churchill

A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others have thrown at him

- David Brinkley

For each person there is a sentence - a series of words - which has the power to destroy them

- Philip K. Dick

No human being, when you understand his desires, is worthless.  No one's life is nothing.  Even the most evil of men and women, if you understand their hearts, has some generous act that redeems them, at least a little, from their sins

-Andrew "Ender" Wiggin (Speaker for the Dead)

There are always two people in any picture: The photographer and the viewer

-Ansel Adams

Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass, it's about learning to dance in the rain

- Vivian Greene

Fear not the path of truth, fear the lack of people walking on it

-Robert F. Kennedy

It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated; or undergo such incessant changes that no man knows what the law is today, or can guess what it will be tomorrow

-James Madison

The reward for conformity is that everyone likes you except for yourself

-Rita Mae Brown

Creativity is allowing oneself to make mistakes.  Art is knowing which to keep.

- Scott Adams

If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished

-Rumi

I think of a hero as somebody who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom

-Bob Dylan

Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed by the masses

-Plato

You can be the ripest, juiciest peach in the world and there's still going to be somebody that hates peaches

-Dita von Teese

Money will buy you a pretty dog, but it won't buy you the wag of its tail

-Josh Billings

Normality is a paved road: it's comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow on it

-Vincent Van Gogh

You don't need religion to have morals.  If you can't determine right from wrong then you lack empathy, not religion

-Anonymous

If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples, then you and I each have one apple.  But if you have an idea and I have an idea and exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas

-George Bernard Shaw

When the winds of change blow; some people build walls and others build windmills

-Chinese Proverb

A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is he sees the dawn before the rest of the world

-Oscar Wilde

I love sleep.  My life has a tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know?

-Ernest Hemingway

It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring

-Carl Sagan

You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you

-Eric Hoffer

You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him discover it himself

-Galileo Galilei

It is just as difficult and dangerous to try to free a people that wants to remain servile as it does to enslave a people that wants to remain free

-Niccolo Machiavelli

Kill a man, one is a murderer.  Kill a million, a conqueror.  Kill them all, a God

-Jean Rostrand

The further society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it

-George Orwell

Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls;  the most massive characters are seared with scars

-Khalil Gibran

A day can really slip by when you're avoiding what you're supposed to do

-Calvin (Bill Watterson)

Why is it that when one man builds a wall, the next man immediately needs to know what's on the other side of it?

-George R.R. Martin (Game of Thrones)

If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, the world would be a merrier place

-J.R.R Tolkein

There are things we don't want but have to accept.  Things we don't want to know but have to learn and people we can't live without, but have to let go

-Anonymous

Stupidity has a certain charm.  Ignorance does not

-Frank Zappa

Pray like it depends on God.  Work like it depends on you.

-Dave Ramsey

The moon has given us months, tides and a destination that ever-beckons.  It's time we build a rocket and go to stay.

-Col Chris Hadfield

Show me a man or a woman alone and I'll show you a saint. Give me two and they'll fall in love. Give me three and they'll invent the charming thing we call 'society'. Give me four and they'll build a pyramid. Give me five and they'll make one an outcast. Give me six and they'll reinvent prejudice. Give me seven and in seven years they'll reinvent warfare. Man may have been made in the image of God, but human society was made in the image of His opposite number, and is always trying to get back home.

-Glen Bateman (The Stand)

The two most important days of your life are the day that you are born and the day you find out why.

-Goku (Dragon Ball Z)

If we can hit that bulls-eye, the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards. Checkmate

-Zap Brannigan (Futurama)

Before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.

- Atticus Finch (Harper Lee)

Some people will always need help, the doesn't mean they're not worth helping

-Meera Reed (George R.R. Martin)

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

-Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Worry is interest paid in advance on a loan that never comes due

 - George Lang

God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables – slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need.

-Tyler Durden (Fight Club)

For someone who was never meant for this world, I must confess, I'm suddenly having a hard time leaving it. Of course they say every atom in our bodies was once part of a star. Maybe I'm not leaving. Maybe I'm going home.

-Gattaca

They don’t know about real loss, because that only occurs when you love something more than you love yourself.

-Robin Williams (Good Will Hunting)

Sadness gives depth.  Happiness gives height. Sadness gives roots.  Happiness gives branches.

Happiness is like a tree going into the sky and sadness is like roots going down into the womb of the earth.  Both are needed and the higher the tree goes, the deeper it goes simultaneously.

The bigger the tree, the bigger will be its roots.  In fact, it is always in proportion. That's its balance

-Osho

We read to know we are not alone

-C.S. Lewis

When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world you fear what he might say

-Tyrion Lannister (George R.R.Martin)

The best thing in life to hold onto is each other

-Audrey Hepburn

I don't wish to be everything to everyone, but would like to be something to someone

-Javan

It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our enemies.

-J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone)

There is nothing more rare or more beautiful, than a woman being unapologetically herself; comfortable in her imperfection.  To me, that is the essence of true beauty

-Steve Maraboli

I've seen so many young men over the years, who think they're running at other young men.  Really, they're running at me.

-Death (The Book Thief)

If a man would move the world he must first move himself.

-Socrates

You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from

-Cormac McCarthy

The governments of the people are better than those of princes...in a well-ordered republic it should never be necessary to resort to extra-constitutional measures

-Niccolo Machiavelli

Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck

- The Dalai Lama

I've lived by the dangerous -- and sometimes rather foolish -- maxim that I'm prepared to try anything once.

-Richard Branson

You have to learn how to duck, because they're gonna throw it at you.

-Arthur Miller

When you are in a position to not be a nice person, that's when you find out who you really are.

-Hugh Hefner

You're never as good as they say you are.  You're never as bad as they say you are

-George Clooney

At his best, man is the noblest of all the animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst

-Aristotle

Adventure may hurt you but monotony will kill you

-Anonymous

The important thing is not to stop questioning.  Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life of the marvelous structure of reality.  It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day.  Never lose a holy curiosity

-Albert Einstein

A freedom that only asks what's in it for me, a freedom without commitment to others, a freedom without love or charity or duty or patriotism, is unworthy of our founding ideals and those who died in their defense

-Barack Obama

The most effective way to destroy a people is to obliterate their understanding of their own history

-George Orwell

A man is never as big as when he is on his knees to help a child

-Pythagoras

Comparison is the thief of joy

-Theodore Roosevelt

The consent of the governed is not consent if it is not informed

-Edward Snowden

I don't give a fuck what brand you are, I'm concerned what type of man you are, what your principles and standards are.

-Mos Def

When injustice become law, resistance becomes duty

-Thomas Jefferson

Success is having to worry about every damn thing in the world except money

-Johnny Cash

Freedom is the right to tell people what they don't want to hear

-George Orwell

A house that has a library in it has a soul

-Plato

I like you guys who want to reduce the size of government - make it just small enough to fit inside the bedroom

-Josh Lyman (The West Wing)

My goal is no longer to get more done, but to have less to do

-Francine Jay

Monsters are real and ghosts are real too.  They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.

-Stephen King

Physics is like sex; yes, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it

-Richard Feynman

The good thing about science is that it's true, whether you believe it or not

-Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Don't give up what you want most for what you want now.

-Richard G. Scott

With the first link, the chain is formed.  The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably. 

-Judge Aaron Satie

If there were a little more silence, if we all kept quiet...maybe we could understand something

-Federico Fellini

If death causes you no pain when you are dead, it is foolish to let the fear of it cause you pain now

-Epicurus

Hold fast to your dreams...but temper your ideas with reality

-Vermont State Motto

There are no passengers on spaceship Earth.  We are all the crew

-Marshall McLuhan

And now that you don't have to be perfect you can be good

-John Steinbeck

Progress has never been a bargain.  You have to pay for it.  Sometimes I think there is a man who sits behind a counter and says, "Alright, you can have a telephone, but you lose the privacy and charm of distance.  Madam, you may vote, but at a price.  You lose the right to retreat behind the powder puff of your petticoat.  Mister, you may conquer the air, but the birds will lose their wonder and the clouds will smell of gasoline

-Henry Drummond (Inherit The Wind)

You read that certain kind of fiction where the guy will always get the girl and the good guys win and it reaffirms to you that life is fair.  We all want that at times.  There is a certain vicarious release to that...But that's not the fiction that I write, in most cases.  It's certainly not what Ice and Fire is.  It has joy, but it also has pain and fear. I think the best fiction captures the life in all its light and darkness

-George R.R. Martin

The more I learn about people, the more I like my dog

-Mark Twain

Do not regret growing older.  It is a privilege denied to many.

-Anonymous

Always remember the crowd that applauds your coronation is the same crowd that will applaud your beheading.  People like a show.

-Terry Pratchett

A revolution is an idea that has found bayonets

-Napoleon Bonaparte

It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong

- Voltaire

Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person that has nothing to eat

-Mother Teresa

Most people are about as happy as they make up their mind to be.

-Abraham Lincoln

It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live

-Albus Dumbledore (J.K. Rowling)

Watch your thoughts, for they become words. Watch your thoughts, for they become words. Watch your words, for they become actions. Watch your actions, for they become habits. Watch your habits, for they become character. Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.

-Lao Tse

Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future

- Paul Boese

I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibit the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state.”

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut, 1802

We live in a world in which we need to share responsibility. It’s easy to say, ‘It’s not my child, not my community, not my world, not my problem.’ Then there are those who see the need and respond. I consider those people my heroes. 

- Fred Rogers

When you have faults, do not fear to abandon them 

- Confucius

Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future

- Paul Boese

The average man does not want to be free, he wants to be safe 

- HL Mencken

If you can’t explain something simply, you don’t understand it enough 

-Albert Einstein

No one saves us but ourselves.  No one can and no one may.  We ourselves must walk the path 

- Buddha

The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. 

-George Bernard Shaw

The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think 

- Horace Walpole

To buy books would be a good thing if we also could buy the time to read them

- Arthur Schopenauer

They say there’s no future for us.  They’re right.  Which is fine with us 

- Rumi

Have no fear of perfection, you’ll never reach it 

-Pablo Picasso

There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.

-Oscar Wilde

Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please 

- Mark Twain

He had delusions of adequacy 

- Walter Kerr

You have enemies?  Good, the means you stood up for something, sometime in your life 

- Winston Churchill

An ounce of peace is all I want for you.  Will you never call me again? 

- Blue October

So it goes. 

- Kurt Vonnegut

Never go on trips with anyone you don’t love

-Ernest Hemingway

You can boast about anything if it’s all you have.  Maybe the less you have the more you’re required to boast.

-Chuck Palahniuk (Rant)

There were honest people long before there were Christians and there are, God be praised, still honest people where there are no Christians. It could therefore easily be possible that people are Christians because true Christianity corresponds to what they would have been even if Christianity did not exist.

-Georg Lichtenberg

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum

-Noam Chomsky

No snowflake in an avalanche ever felt responsible

-Voltaire

He had decided to live forever, or die in the attempt.

-Joseph Heller

If a problem has no solution, it may not be a problem, but a fact - not to be solved, but to be coped with over time.

-Shimon Peres

The point of living and of being an optimist, is to be foolish enough to believe the best is yet to come.

-Peter Ustinov

Don't raise your voice, improve your argument

- Desmond Tutu

Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.

- Charles Caleb Colton

Most people would like to be delivered from temptation but would like it to keep in touch.

-Robert Orben

Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain.

-Frederich von Schiller

The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking

-A.A. Milne

A quotation, like a pun, should come unsought, and then be welcomed only for some propriety of felicity justifying the intrusion.

-Richard Chapman

Sometimes the appropriate response to reality is to go insane.

-Phillip K. Dick

The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it

-William Gibson

Good taste is the worst vice ever invented

-Edith Sitwell

Strange as it seems, no amount of learning can cure stupidity, and higher education positively fortifies it

-Stephen Vizinczey

Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.

-Robert Frost

Take everything you like seriously, except yourselves.

-Rudyard Kipling

History is philosophy teaching by examples.

- Thucydides

Mediocre men often have the most acquired knowledge

-Claude Bernard

If mankind minus one were of one opinion, then mankind is no more justified in silencing the one than the one - if he had the power - would be justified in silencing mankind.

-John Stuart Mill

Your parents, they give you your life, but then they try to give you their life.

-Chuck Palahniuk

A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in return.

-Salman Rushdie

He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past

-George Orwell

The speed of communication is wondrous to behold. It is also true that speed can multiply the distribution of information that we know to be untrue.

-Edward R. Murrow

We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?

-Ray Bradbury (Farenheit 451)

A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation

-Saki

Force is all-conquering, but its victories are short-lived.

-Abraham Lincoln

It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself but at some more ambitious goal beyond it.

- Arnold Toynbee

The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action.

-Frank Herbert

Anger is never without Reason, but seldom with a good One.

-Benjamin Franklin

In battling evil, excess is good; for he who is moderate in announcing the truth is presenting half-truth. He conceals the other half out of fear of the people's wrath.

- Khalil Gibran 

Let tears flow of their own accord: their flowing is not inconsistent with inward peace and harmony

-Seneca

Most people have seen worse things in private than they pretend to be shocked at in public.

-Edgar Watson Howe

One loyal friend is worth ten thousand relatives

- Euripides

There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher.

-Victor Hugo

Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled.

- Michael Crichton

TV is chewing gum for the eyes.

-Frank Lloyd Wright

We keep passing unseen through little moments of other people's lives

- Robert M. Pirsig

Careful. We don't want to learn from this.

-Bill Watterson

The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him.

-Robert Benchley

Few people have the virtue to withstand the highest bidder.

-George Washington

Old age is fifteen years older than I am.

-Oliver Wendell Holmes

Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.

- Albert Schweitzer

If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you.

- Don Marquis

When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.

-Oscar Wilde

People speak of my drinking, but never of my thirst

- The Menzingers

Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right.

- Laurens Van der Post

A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past, he is one who is prematurely disappointed in the future

-Sidney J. Harris

Whoever drinks beer, he is quick to sleep; Whoever sleeps long, does not sin; Whoever does not sin, enters Heaven!  Thus, let us drink beer!

-Martin Luther

To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.

-G. K. Chesterton

If all the cars in the United States were placed end to end, it would probably be Labor Day Weekend.

-Doug Larson

God loved the birds and invented trees. Man loved the birds and invented cages

- Jacques Deval

Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?

-Henry Ward Beecher

Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die.

-Mel Brooks

The Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion

 -Treaty of Tripoli (signed by John Adams)

The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or in America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses.”

  ~John Adams

We have abundant reason to rejoice that in this Land the light of truth and reason has triumphed over the power of bigotry and superstition… In this enlightened Age and in this Land of equal liberty it is our boast, that a man’s religious tenets will not forfeit the protection of the Laws, nor deprive him of the right of attaining and holding the highest Offices that are known in the United States.

 ~George Washington

What some people mistake for the high cost of living is really the cost of high living.

-Doug Larson

I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.

-Bilbo Baggins (J.R.R. Tolkein)

If your brains were dynamite there wouldn't be enough to blow your hat off.

- Kurt Vonnegut

True words aren't eloquent; eloquent words aren't true

-Lao Tzu

Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured

-Mark Twain

Live your life so thoroughly that the Westboro Baptist Church will picket your funeral

-Wantagh Memorial Congregation Church

Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.

- Oliver Wendell Holmes

To buy books would be a good thing if we also could buy the time to read them

-Arthur Schopenhaure

If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give.

-Bertrand Russell

One must be a wise reader to quote wisely and well.

Have you ever observed that we pay much more attention to a wise passage when it is quoted than when we read it in the original author?

- Philip G. Hamerton

Today's public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can't read them either.

-Gore Vidal

With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another.

 -Georg Lichtenberg

Guilt is helpful only when it keeps us acting in line with our beliefs and morals. Otherwise, it creates needless suffering.

-Judy Corcoran

The Wheel of Time turns, and ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legends fade to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the third age by some, an Age yet to come, an age long pass, a wind rose in the Mountains of Mist. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings or endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning.

-Robert Jordan

Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy.

-Edgar Bergen

Every cloud has its silver lining but it is sometimes a little difficult to get it to the mint.

-Don Marquis

The nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased, and not impaired, in value.

-Theodore Roosevelt

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions that differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.

-Albert Einstein