Please feel free to note who said (or wrote) these first; it would be interesting to have sources for them besides Kurt, although of course Kurt is to be hailed for making us all aware of these.
A celebrity is a person who works hard all his life to become well known, then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized. (Fred Allen)
Never judge a book by its movie. (J. W. Eagan)
Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there. (Will Rogers)
We can't all be heroes, because somebody has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by. (Will Rogers)
The best way to predict the future is to invent it. (Alan Kay)
You can pretend to be serious; you can't pretend to be witty. (Sacha Guitry)
Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't. (Erica Jong)
It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them. (Alfred Adler)
The best way to keep one's word is not to give it. (Napoleon Bonaparte)
Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act. (Truman Capote)
Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten. (B. F. Skinner)
It is far more impressive when others discover your good qualities without your help. (Judith Martin)
A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject. (Winston Churchill)
When ideas fail, words come in very handy. (Goethe)
There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers. (William James)
Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted. (Aldous Huxley)
Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement. (Jim Horning)
You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do. (Henry Ford)
Don't tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results. (George S. Patton)
The important thing is not to stop questioning. (Albert Einstein)
There are two kinds of people: those who finish what they start, and so on. (Robert Byrne)
Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest. (Mark Twain)
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months. (Oscar Wilde)
Of those who say nothing, few are silent. (Thomas Neill)
Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper. (Robert Frost)
It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues. (Abraham Lincoln)
Old age is not so bad when you consider the alternatives. (Maurice Chevalier)
Human beings are the only creatures that allow their children to come back home. (Bill Cosby)
Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed. (Alexander Pope)
Drawing on my fine command of the English Language, I said nothing. (Robert Benchley)
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. (Aristotle)
Fortune does not change men, it unmasks them. (Suzanne Necker)
Knowledge is power.
The basis for optimism is sheer terror. (Oscar Wilde)
The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously. (Hubert Humphrey)
It is bad luck to be superstitious. (Andrew Mathis)
Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress. (Mahatma Gandhi)
When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other. (Eric Hoffer)
If you don't know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else. (either Yogi Berra or Lawrence J. Peter)
A hospital is no place to be sick. (Samuel Goldwyn)
Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to. (Mark Twain)
My sources are unreliable, but their information is fascinating. (Ashleigh Brilliant)
The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true. (James Branch Cabell)
You can't shake hands with a clenched fist. (Indira Gandhi)
Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right. (Salvor Hardin)
Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else. (Will Rogers)
Most people would like to be delivered from temptation but would like it to keep in touch. (Robert Orben)
Never confuse motion with action. (Ernest Hemmingway)
A free society is a place where it's safe to be unpopular. (Adlai Stevenson)
In these matters the only certainty is that nothing is certain. (Pliny the Elder)
Thanks to the interstate highway system, it is now possible to travel from coast to coast without seeing anything. (Charles Kuralt)
He's the kind of a guy who lights up a room just by flicking a switch.
Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality. (Jules de Gaultier)
The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple. (Oscar Wilde)
A synonym is a word you use when you can't spell the word you first thought of. (Burt Bacharach)
Life is what happens while you are making other plans. (-looks like a paraphrase of John Lennon's "Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans.")
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power. (Abraham Lincoln)
Isn't it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction listen to weather forecasts and economists? (Kelvin Throop III)
An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field. (Niels Bohr)
Hollywood is a place where they place you under contract instead of under observation. (Walter Winchell)
In archaeology you uncover the unknown. In diplomacy you cover the known. (Thomas Pickering)
Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it. (Andre Gide)
If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants. (Isaac Newton)
A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on. (Samuel Goldwyn)
There never was a good war or a bad peace. (Benjamin Franklin)
If one sticks too rigidly to one's principles, one would hardly see anybody. (Agatha Christie)
Research is the process of going up alleys to see if they are blind. (Marston Bates)
It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend. (William Blake)
If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything. (Mark Twain)
Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever. (Napoleon Bonaparte)
I would never die for my beliefs, because I might be wrong. (Bertrand Russell)
Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself. (A. H. Weiler)
Life is a long lesson in humility. (James M. Barrie)
Speak the truth, but leave immediately afterward.
The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter. (Mark Twain)
Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish. (Euripides)
Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example. (Mark Twain)
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise. (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk. (Thomas A. Edison)
A good listener is usually thinking about something else. (Kin Hubbard)
A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don't need it. (Bob Hope)
Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together. (Carl Zwanzig)
Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people. (W. C. Fields)
I always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific. (Lily Tomlin)
If all the cars in the United States were placed end to end, it would probably be labor day weekend. (Doug Larson)
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana. (Groucho Marx)
I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter. (Winston Churchill)
Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better. (Emile Coué)
Some men are born mediocre, some men acheive mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them. (Joseph Heller)
Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth. (Lillian Helman)
It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do. (Jerome K. Jerome)
Competence, like truth, beauty, and contact lenses, is in the eye of the beholder. (Lawrence J. Peter)
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. (Eleanor Roosevelt)
The young have aspirations that never come to pass; the old have reminiscences of what never happened. (Saki)
A child becomes an adult when he realizes that he has a right not only to be right but also to be wrong. (Thomas Szasz)
A compromise is the art of dividing a cake in such a way that everyone believes he has the biggest piece. (Ludwig Erhard)
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author. (Gilbert K. Chesterton)
A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing. (George Bernard Shaw)
A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure. (Segal's Law)
A rumor without a leg to stand on will get around some other way. (John Tudor)
A wise man can see more from the bottom of a well than a fool can from a mountain top.
All generalizations are dangerous, even this one. (Alexandre Dumas, fils)
All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed. (Sean O'Casey)
An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that they will also make better soup. (H. L. Mencken)
An undefined problem has an infinite number of solutions. (Robert A. Humphrey)
Anyone who uses the phrase "Easy as taking candy from a baby" has never tried taking candy from a baby. (Robin Hood?)
Astronomers say the universe is finite, which is a comforting thought for those people who can't remember where they leave things. (Woody Allen)
Cigarette smoking is a major cause of statistics. (a paraphrase of "Smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics"--Fletcher Knebel)
Computers can figure out all kinds of problems, except the things in the world that just don't add up. (James Magary)
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking. (H. L. Mencken)
Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia. (Charles Schultz)
Good breeding consists of concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person. (Mark Twain)
He who hesitates is not only lost, but miles from the next exit.
I never think of the future. It comes soon enough. (Albert Einstein)
I use to work in a fire hydrant factory. You couldn't park anywhere near the place. (Stephen Wright)
If God had really intended men to fly, he'd make it easier to get to the airport. (George Winters)
If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner. (Tallulah Bankhead)
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man. (Mark Twain)
In answer to the question of why it happened, I offer the modest proposal that our universe is simply one of those things which happen from time to time. (Edward P. Tryon)
It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit. (Harry S Truman)
It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt. (Mark Twain)
It is only possible to live happily ever after on that day-to-day basis. (Margaret Bonnano)
It is possible to store the mind with a million facts and still be entirely uneducated. (Alec Bourne)
It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others. (John Andrew Holmes)
I hate quotations. Tell me what you know. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
Other Quotes (fill in your favorites here)
"...He who holds Alaska will rule the World..." Gen. Billy Mitchell, U.S. Army, 1935
"...We can't just let nature run wild!" Former U.S. Secretary of Interior and two time Alaska Governor, Walter J. Hickel.
"...I'm basically a media creation. I've never done anything. I've worked for my dad. I worked in the oil business. But that's not the kind of profile you have to have to get elected to public office." -George W. Bush, 1989
"Life is complex. It has real and imaginary parts."
"You are the weakest link. Goodbye."
"There is no god, and Murphy is his prophet."
"Atlas had a great reputation, but I'd have liked to have seen him try to carry a mattress upstairs." (Kin Hubbard)
"A mistress is halfway between a mister and a mattress."
"Love is the extreme difficult realization that someone other than oneself is real." (Iris Murdoch)
"Love can sweep you off your feet and carry you along in a way you've never known before. But the ride always ends, and you end up feeling lonely and bitter. Wait. That's not love I'm describing. I'm thinking of a monorail." (Jack Handey)
"On the plains of hesitation lie the bones of countless millions, who, at the dawn of victory lay down to rest. And resting died" (my badminton coach)
"First they came for the verbs and I said nothing, for verbing weirds language. Then they arrival for the nouns and I speech nothing, for I no verbs." (Peter Ellis)
"In a perfect universe 'T. S. Eliot' would be 'toilets' backwards." (Eric Idle)
"Two symplectic fibrations are never exactly the same. When you have two fibrations, they may be canonically isomorphic, but when you look closely, the points of one might be numbers while the points of the other are bananas." (Paul Seidel)
"Even the evil Lord Voldemort cannot turn Pavarotti into a turnip." (Josh Parsons)
"Surely, God could have caused birds to fly with their bones made of solid gold, with their veins full of quicksilver, with their flesh heavier than lead and with their wings exceedingly small. He did not, and that ought to show something." (Galileo Galilei)
Quotes from Robert Heinlein's Time Enough For Love
"It is better to copulate than never."
"Sex should be friendly. Otherwise stick to mechanical toys; it's more sanitary."
"Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house." Um... *cough* Number of the Beast *cough* vector addition *cough*
"A 'critic' is a man who creates nothing and thereby feels qualified to judge the work of creative men. There is logic in this; he is unbiased--he hates all creative people equally."
"To be 'matter of fact' about the world is to blunder into fantasy--and dull fantasy at that, as the real world is strange and wonderful."
"Never try to outstubborn a cat."
"Animals can be driven crazy by placing too many in too small a pen. Homo sapiens is the only animal that voluntarily does this to himself."