Contents

Education

Misc

Success

Animals
Science

On Drinking

Insults

Education

 

“Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.”
–G. K. Chesterton

“If you are thinking a year ahead, sow a seed. If you are thinking ten years ahead, plant a tree. If you are thinking one hundred years ahead, educate the people.
–Chinese poet, 500 BCE

“In my day, we didn’t have self-esteem, we had self-respect, and no more of it than we had earned.”
–Jane Haddam, author of the Headmaster’s Wife

“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”
–Confucius

“The one exclusive sign of thorough knowledge is the power of teaching.”
–Aristotle

“Education is the best provision for old age.”
–Aristotle

“[T]he habits we form from childhood make no small difference, but rather they make all the difference.”
–Aristotle

“In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.”
–Aristotle

“To be conscious that we are perceiving or thinking is to be conscious of our own existence.”
–Aristotle

“Youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope.”
–Aristotle

“The whole is more than the sum of its parts.”
–Aristotle

“Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach.”
–Aristotle

Remark on confidence intervals:
“It is the mark of an educated mind to rest satisfied with the degree of precision which the nature of the subject admits and not to seek exactness where only an approximation is possible.”
–Aristotle

“To-day is the pupil of yesterday.”
–Publilius Syrus

“A rolling stone gathers no moss.”
–Publilius Syrus

“He doubly benefits the needy who gives quickly.”
–Publilius Syrus

“It is only the ignorant who despise education.”
–Publilius Syrus

“You don’t understand anything until you learn it more than one way.”
–Marvin Minsky

“The important thing is not so much that every child should be taught, as that every child should be given the wish to learn.”
–John Lubbock

“The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder.”
–Ralph M. Sockman

“Knowledge is the life of the mind.”
–Abu Bakr

“Do not worry about your difficulties in mathematics. I can assure you that mine are still greater.”
–Albert Einstein

“Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.”
–Immanuel Kant

“I wept because I had no answers, until I met a man who had no questions.”
–John David Stone

“A closed mind is a dying mind.”
–Edna Ferber


Misc

“You need not do anything.
Remain sitting at your table and listen.
You need not even listen, just wait.
You need not even wait, just learn to be quiet, still and solitary.
And the world will freely offer itself to you unmasked.
It has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”
–Franz Kafka

“They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm.”
–Dorothy Parker

“Enjoy yourself, while you’re still in the pink. Enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think.”
–The Specials

“The best things in life aren’t things.”
–Graffiti

“A civilition flourishes when its people plant trees under whose shade they will never sit.”
–Ancient Greek proverb

“Who says nothing is impossible? Some people do it every day!”
–Alfed E. Neuman

“A teacher is someone who talks in our sleep!”
–Alfed E. Neuman

“Teenagers are people who act like babies if they’re not treated like adults!”
–Alfed E. Neuman

“It takes one to know one–and vice versa!”
–Alfred E. Neuman

“In retrospect it becomes clear that hindsight is definitely overrated!”
–Alfed E. Neuman

“Cleanliness becomes more important when godliness is unlikely.”
–P. J. O’Rourke

“Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it.”
–Lou Holtz

“For a list of all the ways technology has failed to improve the quality of life, please press three.”
–Alice Kahn

“If two wrongs don’t make a right, try three.”
–Laurence J. Peter

“Moderation is a virtue only in those who are thought to have an alternative.”
–Henry A. Kissinger

“When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist. ”
–Dom Helder Camara

“Courge is grace under pressure.”
–Ernest Hemmingway

“Pain is weakness leaving the body”
–Marines

“The truth is that many people set rules to keep from making decisions.”
–Mike Krzyzewski

“When I tell any truth it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those who do.”
–Wm Blake

“Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and loose both.”
–Benjamin Franklin

“It’s true, no man is an island. But if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie ’em together, they make a pretty good raft.”
–Bug-Eyed Earl

“God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please; you can never have both.”
–R. W. Emerson

“I do not know with what weapons World War 3 will be fought, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones.”
–Abert Einstein

“Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.”
–Marie Curie (who died from aplastic anemia, almost certainly due to her massive exposure to radiation)

“Nothing is that which rocks dream about.”
–Aristotle

“Moral results can only be obtained through moral restraints.”
–Mohandas Gandhi

“People who have what they want are fond of telling people who haven’t what they want that they really don’t want it.”
–Ogden Nash (1902 - 1971)

“Poverty is a stern jade to fight.”
–Charles Gibbon, Lack of Gold (1871)

“Only the shallow know themselves.”
–Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young, 1882

“It appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against christianity and theism produce hardly any effect on the public; and freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men’s minds which follows from the advance of science.”
–Charles Darwin

“If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities.”
–Voltaire

“I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own –a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotism.”
–Albert Einstein

“Faith means not wanting to know what is true.”
–Friedrich Nietzsche

“I cannot believe in the immortality of the soul.... No, all this talk of an existence for us, as individuals, beyond the grave is wrong. It is born of our tenacity of life – our desire to go on living … our dread of coming to an end.”
–Thomas Edison

“The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma.”
–Abraham Lincoln

“Religion is a byproduct of fear. For much of human history, it may have been a necessary evil, but why was it more evil than necessary? Isn’t killing people in the name of God a pretty good definition of insanity?”
–Arthur C. Clarke

“Religions are all alike—founded upon fables and mythologies.”
–Thomas Jefferson

“Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile.”
–Kurt Vonnegut

“Religion is based . . . mainly on fear . . . fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. . . . My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race.”
–Bertrand Russell

“When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realised God doesn’t work that way, so I stole one and prayed for forgiveness.”
–Emo Philips

“When a person can no longer laugh at himself, it is time for others to laugh at him.”
–Thomas Szasz, “The Second Sin”

“Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them.”
–Bill Vaughan

“Thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative.”
–Kurt Vonnegut (1922 - ), "Cold Turkey," In These Times, May 10, 2004

“The wages of sin are death, but by the time taxes are taken out, it’s just sort of a tired feeling.”
–Paula Poundstone

“What you have become is the price you paid to get what you used to want.”
–Mignon McLaughlin

“Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else.”
–James M. Barrie

“Remember there’s no such thing as a small act of kindness. Every act creates a ripple with no logical end.–Scott Adams

“I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.”
–John Cage

“My religion is simple, my religion is kindness.”
–Dalai Llama

“Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.”
–Lao-Tzu

“Money alone sets all the world in motion”
–Publilius Syrus

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”
–Gandhi

“There is no death –no death, but only change / And innovation; what men call birth / Is but a different new beginning; death / Is but to cease to be the same.”
–Pythagoras, Book 15–The Doctrines of Pythagoras, line 72-5 [italics added]

“Someone’s called the forest that might have been to the place where it would have stood–had it existed.”
–Pukwudji, from Charles de Lint’s Spiritwalk [provided by Kim Conner]

“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.”
–Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970)

“To announce there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
–Theodore Roosevelt

“Primum, non noccere”
–Hipocrates

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”
–John Kenneth Galbraith

“When the judgment’s weak, the prejudice is strong.”
–Kane O’Hara

“O, why should Fate such pleasure have
Life’s dearest bands untwining?
Or, why sae sweet a flower as love
Depend on Fortune’s shinign?”
–Robert Burns, O Poortith Cauld

“I would defend the liberty of consenting adult creationists to practice whatever intellectual perversions they like in the privacy of their own homes; but it is also necessary to protect the young and innocent.”
–Arthur C. Clarke

“If it turns out that there is a God, I don’t think that he’s evil. But the worst that you can say about him is that basically he’s an underachiever.”
–Woody Allen

“The day after tomorrow is the third day of the rest of your life.”
–George Carlin

“I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.”
–Mae West

“They can’t find Osama bin Laden ... but they have amassed a shiny new arsenal of police powers so they can always find you and me - tracking the library books we check out, the medicines we take, our political associations, our private internet searches, our psychiatric records, the church groups we join, and the charities we support.”
–Jim Hightower

“One thing is clear to me: We, as human beings, must be willing to accept people who are different from ourselves.”
–Barbara Jordan

“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”
–Carl Gustav Jung

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever could.”
–Margaret Mead

“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”
–Franklin D. Roosevelt

“Today, more than ever, it is critical for American citizens to understand the difference between the free-market capitalism that made our country great and the corporate cronyism that is now corrupting our political process.”
–Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

“America was not built by conformists, but by mutineers.”
–Jim Hightower

“The White House wants to paint the picture in Iraq as rosy, so the Pentagon has banned photos of coffins and body bags leaving Iraq or arriving in the United States . Worse, the president hasn’t attended funerals or memorials for the soldiers who have lost their lives.”
–Jesse Jackson

“There is no such thing as other people’s children.”
–Hillary Rodham Clinton

“There are two kinds of liberalism. A liberalism which is always, subterraneously authoritative and paternalistic, on the side of one’s good conscience. And then there is a liberalism which is more ethical than political; one would have to find another name for this. Something like a profound suspension of judgment.”
–Roland Barthes

“You’re only given a little spark of madness. You mustn’t lose it.”
–Robin Williams

“Faith, it seems to me, is not the holding of certain dogmas; it is simply openness and readiness of the heart to believe any truth which God may show.”
–Margaret Deland

“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”
–Marcus Tullius Cicero

“If homosexuality is a disease, let’s all call in queer to work. ’Hello, can’t work today, still queer.’”
–Robin Tyler

“Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.”
–Frederich Nietzsche

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed.”
–Martin Luther King, Jr.

“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
–Anaïs Nin

“I contend that we are both atheists, I just believe in one less god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all other possible gods, then you will know why I dismiss yours.”
–Stephen F. Roberts

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”
–Dwight D. Eisenhower

“Suppose we’ve chosen the wrong god. Every time we go to church we’re just making him madder and madder.”
–Homer Simpson

“We are told that people stay in love because of chemistry, or because they remain intrigued with each other, because of many kindnesses, because of luck . . . But part of it has got to be forgiveness and gratefulness.”
–Ellen Goodman (1941-____) US journalist

“For every ten people who are clipping at the branches of evil, you’re lucky to find one who’s hacking at the roots.”
–Henry David Thoreau, Walden [1854]

“A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him, that of plants and animals as that of his fellow men, and when he devotes himself to all like that is in need of help.”
–Albert Schweitzer

“To the size of the state there is a limit, as there is to plants, animals and implements, for none of these retain their facility when they are too large.”
–Aristotle

“An angry man is again angry with himself when he returns to reason.”
–Publilius Syrus

“It is no profit to have learned well, if you neglect to do well.”
–Publilius Syrus

“Look to be treated by others as you have treated others.”
–Publilius Syrus

“The liberally educated person is one who is able to resist the easy and preferred answers not because he is obstinate but because he knows others worthy of consideration.”
–Allan Bloom

“If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.”
–Abraham Maslow

“All you have to do is to tell them that they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.”
–Hermann Goering

“Great loves too must be endured.”
–Coco Chanel

“Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.”
–Oscar Wilde

“The cure for anything is salt water—sweat, tears, or the sea.”
–Isak Dinesen


Success

“Too many parents make life hard for their children by trying, too zealously, to make it easy for them.”
–Goethe

“I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning to sail my ship.”
–Louisa May Alcott

“Some people dream of accomplishing great things. Others stay up late to do them.”
–Anon., a quote I leaned from a friend, and taped to my computer monitor through most of grad school.

“You will finally land your dream job this week, an ironic achievement considering how little you’ll be sleeping from now on.”
–Pisces horoscope from The Onion

“The toughest thing about success is that you’ve got to keep on being a success.”
–Irving Berlin

“A goal is a dream with a deadline.”
–Napoleon Hill

“Perseverance: The majority of men meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail.”
–Napoleon Hill

“If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way. ”
–Napoleon Hill

“Pray that success will not come any faster than you are able to endure it.”
–Elbert Hubbard

“If at first you don’t succeed, skydiving is not for you.”
–Arthur McAuliff

“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I’ll try again tomorrow.”
–Mary Anne Radmacher

“Fall seven times, stand up eight.”
–Japanese Proverb

“It’s not whether you get knocked down; it’s whether you get back up.”
–Vince Lombardi

“Don’t look where you fall, but where you slipped.”
–African Proverb

“A person can fail many times but it isn’t a failure until he begins to blame others.”
–Anon

“Whether you think that you can, or that you can’t, you are usually right.”
–Henry Ford

“I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is to try to please everyone.”
–Bill Cosby

“Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats.”
–Howard Aiken, IBM engineer

“It’s better to be known by six people for something you’re proud of than by 60 million for something you’re not.”
–Albert Brooks

“There are two rules for ultimate success in life. 1. Never divulge everything you know.’
–Anon.

“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.”
–Bertrand Russell

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.”
–Aristotle

“The life of man is like a game with dice; if you don’t get the throw you want, you must show your skill in making the best of the throw you get.”
–Unknonwn/span>

“You desire to know the art of living, my friend? It is contained in one phrase: make use of suffering.”
–Henri Frederic Amiel, philosopher and writer (1821-1881)

“Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow; it empties today of its strength.”
–Corrie Ten Boom

“There is nothing noble about being superior to some other man. The true nobility is in being superior to your previous self.”
–Hindu Proverb

“When I hear somebody sigh, ‘Life is hard,’ I am always tempted to ask, ‘Compared to what?’”
–Sydney J. Harris

“We will either find a way, or make one.”
–Hannibal

“You don't drown by falling in the water; you drown by staying there.”
–Edwin Louis Cole

“I don't think of myself as a poor deprived ghetto girl who made good. I think of myself as somebody who from an early age knew I was responsible for myself, and I had to make good.”
–Oprah Winfrey

viriya.net/mental_midden/dark_matter/worst_crash.html

Science

“A fact is a simple statement that everyone believes. It is innocent, unless found guilty. A hypothesis is a novel suggestion that no one wants to believe. It is guilty, until found effective.”
–Edward Teller

“If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the precipitate.”
–Henry J. Tillman

“Science has made us gods even before we are worthy of being men.”
–Jean Rostand

“Science is simply common sense at its best.”
–Thomas Huxley

“The more we exploit nature, the more our options are reduced, until we have only one: to fight for survival.”
–Morris K. Udall

“The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the cosmos.”
–Stephen Jay Gould

“Observations always involve theory.”
–Edwin Hubble

“The capacity to blunder slightly is the real marvel of DNA. Without this special attribute, we would still be anaerobic bacteria and there would be no music.”
–Lewis Thomas

“The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them.”
–William Lawrence Bragg

“In all science, error precedes the truth, and it is better it should go first than last.”
–Hugh Walpole

“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”
–Isaac Asimov, Isaac Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature Quotations, 1988

“It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics and chemistry.”
–H.L. Mencken, “Minority Report,” Notebooks, 1956


On Drinking

“I feel sorry for people who don’t drink. When they wake up in the morning, that’s as good as they’re going to feel all day.”
–Frank Sinatra

“When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.”
–Henny Youngman

Cliff Clavin on Cheers explained the Buffalo Theory to Norm:
“Well ya see, Norm, it’s like this: A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. And when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members. In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells. Excessive intake of alcohol, as we know, kills brain cells. But naturally, it attaacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine. That’s why you always feel smarter after a few beers.”


Animal

“Boys stone a frog in sport, but the frog dies in earnest.”
–Bion, 100 BCE

“Why breed or buy while homeless animals die?”
–Kerry Ecklebe, Nebraska Humane Society

“To err is human; to forgive, canine.”
–Anon.

“The dog has seldom been successful in pulling man up to his level of sagacity, but man has frequently dragged the dog down to his.”
–James Thurber

“Who kicks a dog kicks his own soul towards hell”
–Will Judy

“Until one has loved an animal a part of one’s soul remains unawakened”
–Anatole France

“When a man’s best friend is his dog, that dog has a problem.”
–Edward Abbey

“Properly trained, a man can be dog’s best friend.”
–Corey Ford, American writer

“The other day I saw two dogs walk over to a parking meter. One of them says to the other, ‘How do you like that? Pay toilets!’”
–Dave Starr

“The greatest pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him, and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself, too. ”
–Samuel Butler

“The reason a dog has so many friends is that he wags his tail instead of his tongue.”
–Anonymous

“Dogs feel very strongly that they should always go with you in the car, in case the need should arise for them to bark violently at nothing right in your ear.”
–Dave Barry

“Dogs need to sniff the ground; it’s how they keep abreast of current events. The ground is a giant dog newspaper, containing all kinds of late-breaking dog news items, which, if they are especially urgent, are often continued in the next yard.”
–Dave Barry

“A dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance, and to turn around three times before lying down.”
–Robert Benchley

“A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than he loves himself.”
–Josh Billings

“In order to keep a true perspective of one’s importance, everyone should have a dog that will worship him and a cat that will ignore him.”
–Dereke Bruce, Taipei, Taiwan

“Of all the things I miss from veterinary practice, puppy breath is one of the most fond memories!”
–Dr. Tom Cat

“You enter into a certain amount of madness when you marry a person with pets.”
–Nora Ephron

“We give dogs time we can spare, space we can spare and love we can spare. And in return, dogs give us their all. It’s the best deal man has ever made”
–M. Facklam

“Dogs love their friends and bite their enemies, quite unlike people, who are incapable of pure love and always have to mix love and hate.”
–Sigmund Freud

“Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.”
–Robert A. Heinlein

“Whoever said you can’t buy happiness forgot about puppies.”
–Gene Hill

“To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs.”
–Aldous Huxley

“Man is a dog’s idea of what God should be.”
–Holbrook Jackson

“Anybody who doesn’t know what soap tastes like never washed a dog.”
–Franklin P. Jones

“Don’t accept your dog’s admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful.”
–Ann Landers

“No animal should ever jump up on the dining room furniture unless absolutely certain that he can hold his own in the conversation.”
–Fran Lebowitz

“Outside of a dog, a book is probably man’s best friend; inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.”
–Groucho Marx

“No one appreciates the very special genius of your conversation as the dog does.”
–Christopher Morley

“I wonder what goes through his mind when he sees us peeing in his water bowl.”
–Penny Ward Moser

“Did you ever walk into a room and forget why you walked in? I think that’s how dogs spend their lives.”
–Sue Murphy

“If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.”
–Will Rogers

“The average dog is a nicer person than the average person.”
–Andrew A. Rooney

“I wonder if other dogs think poodles are members of a weird religious cult.”
–Rita Rudner

“I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven’t got the guts to bite people themselves.”
–August Strindberg

“If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons.”
–James Thurber

“If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you; that is the principal difference between a dog and a man.”
–Mark Twain

“Ever consider what they must think of us? I mean, here we come back from a grocery store with the most amazing haul - chicken, pork, half a cow. They must think we’re the greatest hunters on earth!”
–Anne Tyler

“My dog is worried about the economy because Alpo is up to $3.00 a can. That’s almost $21.00 in dog money.”
–Joe Weinstein

“There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face.”
–Ben Williams

“Cat’s motto No matter what you’ve done wrong, always try to make it look like the dog did it.”
–Unknown

“He is your friend, your partner, your defender, your dog. You are his life, his love, his leader. He will be yours, faithful and true, to the last beat of his heart. You owe it to him to be worthy of such devotion.”
–Unknown

“If your dog is fat, you aren’t getting enough exercise.”
–Unknown

“In dog years, I’m dead.”
–Unknown

“Money will buy you a pretty good dog, but it won’t buy the wag of his tail.”
–Unknown

“Don’t accept your dog’s admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful.”
–Ann Landers

“If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.”
–Will Rogers

“There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face.”
–Ben Williams

“A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than he loves himself.”
–Josh Billings

“We give dogs time we can spare, space we can spare and love we can spare. And in return, dogs give us their all. It’s the best deal man has ever made.”
–M. Acklam

“Dogs are not our whole life, but they make our lives whole.”
–Roger Caras

“If you think dogs can’t count, try putting three dog biscuits in your pocket and then giving Fido only two of them.”
–Unknown

“If (man) is not to stifle his human feelings, he must practice kindness towards animals, for he who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.”
–Immanuel Kant

“The well-taught philosophic mind
To all compassion gives;
Cats round the world an equal eye,
And feels for all that lives.”
–Anna Letitia Barbauld

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”
–Mahatma Gandhi

“True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. Mankind’s true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it.”
–Milan Kundera

“Until he extends the circle of compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace.”
–Albert Schweitzer

“The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man.”
–Charles Darwin

“God requires that we assist the animals when they need our help. Each being (human or creature) has the same right of protection.”
–St. Francis of Assisi

“Not to hurt our humble brethren (the animals) is our first duty to them, but to stop there is not enough. We have a higher mission - to be of service to them whenever they require it. If you have men who will exclude any of God’s creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men.”
–Saint Francis of Assisi

“If you have men who will exclude any of God’s creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men.”
–St. Francis of Assisi

“Above all we must realize that each of us makes a difference with our life. Each of us impacts the world around us every single day. We have a choice to use the gift of our life to make the world a better place - or not to bother.”
–Dr. Jane Goodall

“Every individual matters and has a role to play in this life on earth. The chimpanzees teach us that it is not only human but also non-human beings who matter in the scheme of things.”
–Dr. Jane Goodall

“The Zoo chimp has none of the calm dignity, the serenity of gaze or the purposeful individuality of his wild counterpart. Typically, he develops odd stereotypes in his behaviour - as he walks he may give one hand a slight rotation to the side, always the same hand, always the same side.”
–Dr. Jane Goodall

“Most people are only familiar with the zoo or the laboratory chimpanzee. This means that even those who work closely with chimpanzees, such as zoo-keepers or research scientists, can have no concept or appreciation of what a chimpanzee really . Which is, perhaps, why so many scientific laboratories maintain chimpanzees in conditions which are appalling, housed singly for the most part in small concrete cells with nothing to do day in and day out except to await some new - and often terrifying or painful - experiment.”
–Dr. Jane Goodall

“It is man’s sympathy with all creatures that first makes him truly a man.”
–Dr. Albert Schweitzer

“That’s my private ant. You’re liable to break its legs.”
–Albert Schweitzer to a ten-year-old boy

“We must fight against the spirit of unconscious cruelty with which we treat the animals. Animals suffer as much as we do. True humanity does not allow us to impose such sufferings on them. It is our duty to make the whole world recognize it.”
–Dr. Albert Schweitzer

“Anyone who has accustomed himself to regard the life of any living creature as worthless is in danger of arriving also at the idea of worthless human lives.”
–Dr. Albert Schweitzer

“Whenever an animal is forced into the service of men, everyone of us must be concerned for any suffering it bears on that account. No one of us may permit any preventable pain to be inflicted, even though he would be interfering in something that does not concern him. No one may shut his eyes and think the pain, which is therefore not visible to him is non-existent.”
–Dr. Albert Schweitzer

“The chief cause of pain to me was the knowledge of the untold sufferings of animals. ... it seemed to be incredible - this was even before I was old enough to go to school - that I should include only human beings in my evening prayers. So when my mother had heard my prayers and kissed me good-night, I said secretly another prayer, which I had composed myself, for all living creatures: ‘Dear God, protect and bless all creatures that have breath; save them from all evil and let them sleep in peace and quietness.’”
–Dr. Albert Schweitzer

“Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight. ”
–Albert Schweitzer

 

A PRAYER FOR ANIMALS
  by Albert Schweitzer:
Hear our humble prayer, O God,
for our friends the animals,
especially for animals who are suffering;
for any that are hunted or lost or deserted
or frightened or hungry;
for all that must be put to death.
We entreat for them all Thy mercy and pity,
and for those who deal with them
we ask a heart of compassion and gentle hands and kindly words.
Make us, ourselves, to be true friends to animals.

 

“My favorite animal is steak.”
–Fran Lebowitz

Insults

From http://www.insultmonger.com/:

“The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.&rdsquo;
–George Bernard Shaw

“Last week I stated that this woman was the ugliest woman I had ever seen. I have since been visited by her sister and now wish to withdraw that statement.”
–Mark Twain

“A modest little person, with much to be modest about.”
–Winston Churchil

“Her face was her chaperone.”
–Rupert Hughe

“She is a peacock in everything but beauty.”
–Oscar Wild

“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 wears her clothes as if they were thrown on with a pitchfork.”
–Jonathan Swift

“He is a man of splendid abilities but is utterly corrupt. He shines and stinks like rotten mackerel by moonlight.”
–John Randolph

“He never bore a grudge against anyone he wronged.”
–Simone Signoret

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

“I remember when I was a child, being taken to the celebrated Barnum’s Circus, which contained an exhibition of freaks and monstrosities, but the exhibit on the program which I most desired to see was the one described as "The Boneless Wonder". My parents judged that the spectacle would be too demoralizing and revolting for my youthful eye and I have waited fifty years, to see the Boneless Wonder sitting on the Treasury Bench.”
–Winston Churchill, on Ramsay MacDonald

“I think it would be a very good idea.”
–Mahatma Ghandi, when asked what he thought of Western civilization

“There’s nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won’t cure.”
–Jack E. Leonard

“He missed an invaluable opportunity to hold his tongue.”
–Andrew Lang

“I would not want to put him in charge of snake control in Ireland.”
–Eugene McCarthy

“I married beneath me. All women do.”
–Lady Nancy Astor

“In a mere half century films have gone from silent to unspeakable.”
–Doug Larson

“This isn’t right. This isn’t even wrong.”
–Wolfgang Pauli

“The play was a great success, but the audience was a disaster.”
–Oscar Wilde

“We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe.”
–Johann von Goethe

“I once sent a dozen of my friends a telegram saying ’flee at once - all is discovered.’ They all left town immediately.”
–Mark Twain

“Biologically speaking, if something bites you, it is more likely to be female.”
–Desmond Morris

“The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage.”
–Mark Russell

“The terrifying power of the human sex drive is horrifically demonstrated by the fact that someone was willing to father you.”
–Ipso Fatso

“Some people can stay longer in an hour than others can in a week.”
–William Dean Howells

“Stay with me, I want to be alone.”
–Joey Adams

“I’d like to thank my family for loving me and taking care of me. And the rest of the world can kiss my ass.”
–Johnny Frank Garrett, Sr., executed by injection, Texas

“If you can’t be a good example, then you’ll just have to be a horrible warning.”
–Catherine Aird

“Ordinarily he is insane. But he has lucid moments when he is only stupid.”
–Heinrich Heine

“They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge.”
–Thomas Brackett Reed

“He may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot but don’t let that fool you. He really is an idiot.”
–Groucho Marx

“What’s on your mind? If you’ll forgive the overstatement.”
–Fred Allen

“If all the girls who attended the Harvard-Yale game were laid end to end, I wouldn’t be surprised.”
–Dorothy Parker

“I used to keep my college room mate from reading my personal mail by hiding it in her textbooks.”
–Joan Welsh

“Sociology is the study of people who do not need to be studied by people who do.”
–ES Turner

“It’s great to be with Bill Buckley because you don’t have to think. He takes a position and you automatically take the opposite and you know you are right.”
–J.K.Galbraith

“He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know.”
–Abraham Lincoln

“I never forget a face, but in your case I’ll make an exception.”
–Groucho Marx

“I would like to take you seriously, but to do so would be an affront to your intelligence.”
–George Bernard Shaw

“You must have taken great pains, sir; you could not have been naturally so stupid.”
–Samuel Johnson

“You couldn’t get a clue during the clue mating season in a field full of horny clues if you smeared your body with clue musk and did the clue mating dance.”
–Edward Flaherty

“Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.”
–Albert EinsteinHe was born stupid, and greatly increased his birthright.”
–Samuel Butler

“When you go to the mind reader, do you get half price?”
–David Letterman

“Give a man a fish and he has food for a day; teach him how to fish and you can get rid of him of the entire weekend.”
–Zenna Schaffer

“There are three stages of man: He believes in Santa Claus; he doesn’t believe in Santa Claus; he is Santa Claus.”
–Bob Philips

“An extravagance is anything you buy that is of no earthly use to your wife.”
–Franklin Adams

“It doesn’t make any difference what you do in the bedroom as long as you don’t do it in the street and frighten the horses.”
–Mrs. Patrick Campbell

“She has been kissed as often as a police-court Bible, and by much the same class of people.”
–Robertson Davies

“There goes the famous good time that was had by all.”
–Bette Davis

“That woman speaks eight languages and can’t say "no" in any of them.”
–Dorothy Parker

“Wild horses couldn’t drag a secret out of most women. However, women seldom have lunch with wild horses.”
–Ivern Boyett

“Before marriage, a man will lie awake all night thinking about something you said; after marriage, he’ll fall asleep before you finish saying it.”
–Helen Roland

“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

“My wife has a slight speech impediment. Every now and then she stops to breathe.”
–Jack Durante

“The only time my wife and I had a simultaneous orgasm was when the judge signed the divorce papers.”
–Woody Allen

“Before I met my husband, I’d never fallen in love, though I’d stepped in it a few times.”
–Rita Rudner

“I’ve had bad luck with both my wives. The first one left me and the second one didn’t.”
–Patrick Murray

“Instead of getting married again, I’m going to find a woman I don’t like and give her a house.”
–Lewis Grizzard

“He was so narrow minded, he could see through a keyhole with both eyes.”
–Molly Ivins

“She was like a sinking ship firing on the rescuers.”
–Alexander Woollcott

“He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up.”
–Paul Keating

“Sometimes I need what only you can provide: your absence.”
–Ashleigh Brilliant

“Every time I look at you I get a fierce desire to be lonesome.”
–Oscar Levant

“Don’t look now, but there’s one too many in this room and I think it’s you.”
–Groucho Marx

“Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.”
–Oscar Wilde

“I worship the quicksand he walks in.”
–Art Buchwald

“He is the same old sausage, fizzing and sputtering in his own grease.”
–Henry James

“I regard you with an indifference bordering on aversion.”
–Robert Louis Stevenson

“You had to stand in line to hate him.”
–Hedda Hopper

“He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.”
–Oscar Wilde

“The last time I saw him he was walking down Lover’s Lane holding his own hand.”
–Fred Allen

“You can always tell when he’s lying - his lips move.”
–Frankie Howard on Richard M. Nixon

“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

“You have to stay in shape. My grandmother, she started walking five miles a day when she was 60. She’s 97 today and we don’t know where the hell she is.”
–Ellen DeGeneris

“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”
–Douglas Adams

“I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.”
–Groucho Marx

“He ended the job as he began it; fired with enthusiasm.”
–Don O’Shaughnessy

“Statistics indicate that as a result of overwork, modern executives are dropping like flies on the nation’s golf courses.”
&rdsquo;
–Ira Wallach

“Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.”
–Tom Lehrer

“I must remind the right honorable gentleman that a monologue is not a decision.”
–Clement Atlee, on Winston Churchill

“One could not even dignify him with the name of stuffed shirt. He was simply a hole in the air.”
–George Orwell, on Stanley Baldwin

“He occasionally stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened.”
–Winston Churchill, on Stanley Baldwin

“We make fun of George W. Bush, but this morning he was at work bright and early. Okay, he was early.”
–Jay Leno

“Calvin Coolidge didn’t say much, and when he did he didn’t say much.”
–Will Rogers

“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

“He is so dumb he can’t fart and chew gum at the same time.”
–Lyndon Baines, Johnson on Gerald Ford

“His speeches left the impression of an army of pompous phrases moving over the landscape in search of an idea.”
–William McAdoo, on Warren Harding

“Don’t be so humble, you’re not that great.”
–Golda Meir to Moshe Dayan

“A little emasculated mass of inanity.”
–Theodore Roosevelt, on Henry James

“Whenever cannibals are on the brink of starvation, Heaven, in its infinite mercy, sends them a fat missionary.”
–Oscar Wilde

“Thank you for sending me a copy of your book - I’ll waste no time reading it.”
–Moses Hadas

“From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.”
–Groucho Marx

“Fine words! I wonder where you stole them.”
–Jonathan Swift

“The covers of this book are too far apart.”
–Ambrose Bierce

“This is not a book which should be put aside lightly, it should be tossed aside with great force.”
–Dorothy Parker

“I didn’t like the play but then I saw it under adverse conditions - the curtain was up.”
–Groucho Marx

“This book is both good and original, but the part that is original is not good and the part that is good, is not original.”
–George Bernard Shaw

“Nature not content with denying him the ability to think, has endowed him with the ability to write.”
–A. E. Housman

“Sitting in a sewer and adding to it.”
–Thomas Carlyle, on Algernon Charles Swinburne

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

“She’s the kind of girl who climbed the ladder of success, wrong by wrong.”
–Mae West, on fellow film star, Jean Harlow

“An Actor is someone whom, if you aren’t talking about him, he isn’t listening.”
–Marlon Brando

“Who among us has not gazed thoughtfully and patiently at a painting of Jackson Pollock and thought &lsqruo;What a piece of crap?’”
–Rob Long

“Always willing to lend a hand to the one above him.”
–F. Scott Fitzgerald, on Ernest Hemmingway