"A dreamer is one who can only find
his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the
rest of the world ."
OSCAR
WILDE
"To know all is not to forgive all. It
is to despise everybody ."
QUENTIN
CRISP
"Real education must ultimately be
limited to men who insist on knowing. The rest is mere sheep-herding ."
EZRA
LOOMIS POUND
"Children have to be educated, but they
have also to be left to educate themselves ."
ERNEST
DIMNET
"Little children are still the symbol of
the eternal marriage between love and duty ."
GEORGE
ELIOT
"Recommend virtue to your children; it
alone, not money, can make them happy. I speak from experience ."
BEETHOVEN
The Heiligenstadt Testament
"A ragged colt may prove a good horse.
And so may an untoward slovenly boy prove a decent and useful man ."
JAMES
KELLY
"Boys are capital fellows in their own
way, among their mates; but they are unwholesome companions for grown people
."
CHARLES
LAMB
"Children have never been very good at
listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them ."
JAMES
BALDWIN
"If you bungle raising your children, I
don't think whatever else you do matters ."
JACQUELINE
BOUVIER KENNEDY
ONASSIS
"The dread of loneliness is greater than
the fear of bondage, so we get married ."
CYRIL
CONNOLLY
"Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real
thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished ."
GOETHE
"My advice to you is get married: if you
find a good wife you'll be happy; if not, you'll become a philosopher ."
SOCRATES
"The laws that Charondas gave to Catana,...
A man might divorce his wife, or a wife her husband, said Charondas, but
then he or she must not marry anyone younger than the divorced mate ."
WILL
DURANT
"As we acquire more knowldege, things do
not become more comprehensible, but more mysterious ."
ALBERT
SCHWEITZER
"If people knew how hard I worked to get
my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful at all ."
MICHELANGELO
"Doing a thing well is often a waste of
time."
ROBERT
BYRNE
"Truth; n. An ingenious compound of
desirability and appearance."
AMBROSE
BIERCE
"One should never put on one's best
trousers to go out to battle for freedom and truth ."
HENRIK
IBSEN
"That which has been believed by
everyone, always and everywhere, has every chance of being false."
PAUL
VALÉRY
"Some lies are so well disguised to
resemble truth, that we should be poor judges of the truth not to believe
them ."
ANONYMOUS
"Just as the human eye sees only a small
part of the light spectrum and the human ear can detect only a fraction of
nature's sounds so that which is comprehensible to the human mind is only a
small fraction of our reality."
RICHARD
"The subtlety of nature is greater many
times over than the subtlety of the senses and understanding ."
FRANCIS
BACON
"My own suspicion is that the universe
is not only stranger than we suppose, but stranger than we can suppose."
JOHN
HALDANE
"Not to know what has been transacted in
former times is to be always a child. If no use is made of the labors of
past ages, the world must remain always in the infancy of knowledge."
CICERO
"I could be content that we might
procreate, without conjunction, or that there were any way to perpetuate the
world without this trivial and vulgar way of coition; it is the most foolish
act a wise man commits in all his life ."
SIR
THOMAS BROWNE
"The orgasm has replaced the cross as
the focus of longing and fulfillment. "
MALCOLM
MUGGERIDGE
" The pleasure is momentary, the
position rediculous, and the expense damnable." On sex
LORD
CHESTERFIELD
"Pleasure is the carrot dangled to lead
the ass to market; or the precipice."
ROBINSON
JEFFERS
"Do not bite at the bait of pleasure
till you know there is no hook ."
THOMAS
JEFFERSON
"The Net interprets censorship as
damage, and routes around it ."
JOHN
GILMORE
"I watch a man shoot pool for an hour.
If he misses more than one shot I know I can beat him."
LUTHER
LASSITER, pool hustler
"The strongest principle of growth lies
in human choice ."
GEORGE
ELIOT
"I was a stricken deer that left the
herd long since."
WILLIAM
COWPER
"On the whole, age comes more gently to
those who have some doorway into an abstract world-art, or philosophy, or
learning-regions where the years are scarcely noticed and the young and old
can meet in a pale truthful light ."
FREYA
STARK
"Two roads diverged in a wood, and
I..... I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the
difference."
ROBERT
FROST The Road Not Taken
"Life is not so bad if you have plenty
of luck, a good physique and not too much imagination."
CHRISTOPHER
ISHERWOOD
"You can fool too many of the people too
much of the time ."
JAMES
THURBER
"There is no absurdity so palpable but
that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to
inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air
of great solemnity ."
SCHOPENHAUER
"To succeed in the world it is not
enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered."
VOLTAIRE
"Nothing is more conducive to peace of
mind than not having any opinions at all."
GEORG
CHRISTOPHER LICHTENBERG
"The public is wonderfully tolerant. It
forgives everything except genius."
OSCAR
WILDE
"When a true genius appears in this
world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy
against him."
JONATHAN
SWIFT Thoughts on Various Subjects
"We want the facts to fit the
preconceptions. When they don't, it is easier to ignore the facts than to
change the preconceptions."
JASSAMYN
WEST
"I do not believe that any writer has
ever exposed this bovaryisme, the human will to see things as they
are not, more clearly than Shakespeare ."
T. S. ELLIOT
"Two things are infinite: the universe
and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."
Albert Einstein
"Nothing is as terrible to see as
ignorance in action ."
GOETHE
"Nothing can be made foolproof because
fools are so ingenious ."
ANONYMOUS
"What more felicitie can fall to
creature
Than to enjoy delight with libertie ."
EDMUND
SPENSER
"While democracy must have its
organizations and controls, its vital breath is individual liberty."
CHARLES
EVANS HUGHES
1908 U.S. Supreme Court Justice
" Society attacks early when the
individual is helpless."
B. F. SKINNER
"The whole aim of practical politics is
to keep the populace alarmed -- and hence clamorous to be led to safety --
by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary
."
H. L. MENCKEN
"In framing a government which is to be
administered by men over men the great difficulty lies in this: You must
first enable the government to control the governed, and in the next place,
oblige it to control itself ."
ALEXANDER
HAMILTON The Federalist Feb.8, 1788
"Nothing is more damaging to a state
than that cunning men pass for wise ."
FRANCIS
BACON
"When small men cast long shadows the
sun is going down ."
VENITA
CRAVENS
"It is dangerous to be right when the
government is wrong."
VOLTAIRE
"Under any conditions, anywhere,
whatever you are doing, there is some ordinance under which you can be
booked."
ROBERT
D. SPRECHT
"To live outside the law you must be
honest ."
BOB
DYLAN
"The savage bows down to idols of wood
and stone: the civilized man to idols of flesh and blood."
GEORGE
BERNARD SHAW
"The art of government is the
organization of idolatry ."
GEORGE
BERNARD SHAW
"Politics is the entertainment branch of
industry ."
ANONYMOUS
"In times of tumult and discord bad men
have the most power; mental and moral excellence require peace and quiteness
."
TACITUS
"Reverence for life affords me my
fundamental principle of morality ."
ALBERT
SCHWEITZER
"There would be no society if living
together depended upon understanding each other."
ERIC
HOFFER
"Civilization is a limitless
multiplication of unnecessary necessities."
MARK
TWAIN
"The thin and precarious crust of
decency is all that separates any civilization, however impressive, from the
hell of anarchy or systematic tyranny which lie in wait beneath the surface
."
ALDOUS
HUXLEY
" . . .the basic delusion that men may
be governed and yet be free."
MENCKEN
" if you want to get laid go to college,
if you want to learn something go to the
library ."
FRANK
ZAPPA
"Most people are willing to pay more to
be amused than to be educated ."
ANONYMOUS
"Universities are of course hostile to
geniuses, which, seeing and using ways of their own, discredit the routine:
as churches and monasteries persecute youthful saints ."
RALPH
WALDO EMERSON
"The best education consists in
immunizing people against systematic attempts at education ."
PAUL
KARL FEYERABEND
"It is the mark of an educated mind to
be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
ARISTOTLE
"Society produces rogues, and education
makes one rogue more clever than another ."
OSCAR
WILDE
"I have never let my schooling interfere
with my education ."
MARK
TWAIN
"Education is an admirable thing, but it
is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can
be taught ."
OSCAR
WILDE
"Whoever ceases to be a student has
never been a student ."
GEORGE
ILES
"By three methods we may learn wisdom:
First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is
easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest ."
CONFUCIUS
"Knowledge becomes wisdom only after it
has been put to practical use ."
ANONYMOUS
"Work to survive, survive by consuming,
survive to consume; the hellish cycle is complete ."
RAOUL
VANEIGEM
" . . . the original quest for salvation
has been transformed into one for consumption without end through the
mechanisms of the science, technology and capitalist economy created by the
modern cogito: "I consume therefore I am ."
DANIEL
R. WHITE and GERT
HELLERICK Nietzsche at the Mall: Deconstructing the
Consumer
"The trouble with the rat race is that
even if you win you're still a rat ."
JANE
WAGNER
"When childhood dies, its corpses are
called adults and they enter society, one of the politer names of hell. That
is why we dread children, even if we love them, they show us the state of
our decay ."
BRIAN
ALDISS
"Irony is the hygiene of the mind ."
ELIZABETH
BIBESCO
"Humor brings insight and tolerance.
Irony brings a deeper and less friendly understanding ."
AGNES
REPPLIER
"Whom the gods would destroy, they first
call 'promising' ."
CYRIL
CONNOLLEY
"The basis of optimism is sheer terror
."
OSCAR
WILDE
"A great many people think they are
thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices ."
WILLIAM
JAMES
"Either you think--or else others have
to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your
natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you ."
F. SCOTT
FITZGERALD
"Those who cannot think for themselves
are emotionally unequipped to spend time alone ."
-ANONYMOUS
"Children who know how to think for
themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming where
everyone is interdependent ."
JOHN
DEWEY
"The aim of public education is not to
spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as
possible to the same safe level, to breed a standard citizenry, to put down
dissent and originality ."
H.L. MENCKEN
". . . the inability to view the
validations of unpopular views, because the focus of their casuistry has
been reduced to mindless invalidation ."
ELI
KHAMAROV
"...Two and two are four . Sometimes,
Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they
are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane
."
GEORGE
ORWELL 1984
"The strongest bulwark of authority is
uniformity; the least divergence from it is the greatest crime ."
EMMA
GOLDMAN
"Do as most do, and men will speak well
of you ."
THOMAS
FULLER
"Anyone who challenges the prevailing
orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely
unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing ."
GEORGE
ORWELL
" Mad; adj. Affected with a high degree
of intellectual independence; not conforming to standards of thought,
speech, and action derived by the conformants from study of themselves; at
odds with the majority; in short, unusual. It is noteworthy that persons are
pronounced mad by officials destitute of evidence that they themselves are
sane.
AMBROSE
BIERCE
"The vast majority of human beings
dislike and even dread all notions with which they are not familiar. Hence
it comes about that at their first appearance innovators have always been
derided as fools and madmen."
ALDOUS
HUXLEY
"The extreme limit of wisdom--that is
what the public calls madness ."
JEAN
COCTEAU
" The surest way to corrupt a youth is
to instruct him to hold in higher regard those who think alike than those
who think differently ."
NIETZCHE
"Everything that is really great and
inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom ."
ALBERT
EINSTEIN
"The individual will always be a
minority. If a man is in a minority of one, we lock him up ."
OLIVER
WENDELL HOLMES
"That so few now dare to be eccentric,
marks the chief danger of our time ."
JOHN
STUART MILL
On Liberty
"To be nobody but yourself in a world
which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to
fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop
fighting ."
E. E. CUMMINGS
"Whenever you find that you are on the
side of the majority, it is time to reform ."
MARK
TWAIN
"He who trims himself to suit everyone
will soon whittle himself away ."
RAYMOND
HULL
"Part of the power of Emerson's
individualism is his insistence, at crucial moments, that individualism does
not mean isolation or self-sufficiency. This is not a paradox, for it is
only the strong individual who can frankly concede the sometimes surprising
extent of his own dependence ."
ROBERT
D. RICHARDSON
"A great step toward independence is a
good humored stomach ."
SENECA
"Forgive him, for he believes that the
customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!"
GEORGE
BERNARD SHAW
"Many people would rather die than
think; in fact, most do."
BERTRAND
RUSSELL
"To think is to differ ."
CLARENCE
DARROW
"The conventional view serves to protect
us from the painful job of thinking ."
JOHN
KENNETH GALBRAITH
"Rough work, iconoclasm, but the only
way to get at truth ."
OLIVER
WENDELL HOLMES
"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
"What I like in a good author is not
what he says, but what he whispers ."
LOGAN
PEARSALL SMITH
"The need to write comes from the need
to make sense of one's life and discover one's usefulness ."
JOHN
CHEEVER
"Art.....the end result of perception,
wisdom, intelligence, discipline, hard work, passion, luck, accident, and
coincidence ."
ANONYMOUS
"Art is one of the means whereby man
seeks to redeem a life which is experienced as chaotic, senseless, and
largely evil ."
ALDOUS
HUXLEY
" The finest works of art are precious,
among other reasons, because they make it possible for us to know, if only
imperfectly and for a little while, what it actually feels like to think
subltly an feel nobly ."
ALDOUS
HUXLEY
"If art is to nourish the roots of our
culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it
takes him ."
JOHN
FITZGERALD KENNEDY
"So cheat your landlord if you can and
must, but do not try to shortchange the Muse. It cannot be done. You can't
fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal ."
WILLIAM
BURROUGHS
"The eagle soaring majestically
Beholds the lion prowling
From now until eternity
The philosopher shall be howling
And the hoi polloi shall be scowling "
- ANONYMOUS
"More doctors smoke Camels than any
other cigarrette."
from Radio ad circa 1948
"Here I sit
so broken hearted
come to shit
but only farted ."
grafitti on bathroom wall
"I never saw a purple cow,
I never hope to see one;
But I can tell you anyhow
I rather see than be one ."
GELETT
BURGESS
"A crusader's wife slipped from the
garrison
And had an affair with a Saracen.
She was not oversexed,
Or jealous or vexed,
She just wanted to make a comparison. "
ANONYMOUS
"It's astonishing how many people equate
the simple posession of wealth with intelligence and dignity ."
ANONYMOUS
"Wealth and rank are what people desire,
but unless they be obtained in the right way they may not be possessed."
CONFUCIUS
"Most people seek after what they do not
possess and are enslaved by the very things they want to acquire ."
ANWAR
EL- SADAT
"Adolescence is a dirty joke God played
on humanity ."
-ANONYMOUS
"Natural selection is a euphemism for
behaving like an asshole ."
-ANONYMOUS
"I find that a great part of the
information I have was acquired by looking up something and finding
something else on the way ."
FRANKLIN
P. ADAMS
"Infancy: n. The period of our lives
when, according to Wordsworth, 'Heaven lies about us.' The world begins
lying about us pretty soon afterward ."
AMBROSE
BIERCE
"I want to stay as close to the edge as
I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you
can't see from the center ."
KURT
VONNEGUT
"Insanity in individuals is something
rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule ."
FRIEDRICH
NIETZSCHE
"To be great is to be misunderstood ."
RALPH
WALDO EMERSON
"Identity would seem to be the garment
with which one covers the nakedness of the self, in which case, it is best
that the garment be loose, a little like the robes of the desert, through
which one's nakedness can always be felt, and, sometimes, discerned. This
trust in one's nakedness is all that gives one the power to change one's
robes ."
JAMES
BALDWIN
"What do you take me for, an idiot?"
GENERAL
CHARLES DE
GAULLE
when a reporter asked him if he was happy
"The tendancy of liberals is to create
bodies of men and women-of all classes-detached from tradition, alienated
from religion, and susceptible to mass suggestion-mob rule. And a mob will
be no less a mob if it is well fed, well clothed, well housed, and well
disciplined ."
T.S. ELIOT
"Royalty has always been an unconscious
but all-consuming goal of the European immigrant ."
VINE
DELORIA JR.
"I will not criticize another until I
have walked a mile in his mocassins ."
native american quote
"One is not idle because one is
absorbed. There is both visible and invisible labor. To contemplate is to
toil. To think is to do."
VICTOR
HUGO
"Being busy does not always mean real
work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either
of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and
honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing ."
THOMAS
EDISON
"Far and away the best prize that life
offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing ."
THEODORE
ROOSEVELT
"The quality of a person's life is in
direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their
chosen field of endeavor ."
