QUOTES

"...for no man lives in the external truth, among salts and acids, but in the 
warm, phantasmagoric chamber of his brain, with the painted windows and the 
storied walls." 
-- Robert Louis Stevenson

"Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes 
genius."
--Arthur Conan Doyle

"After all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is 
always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a 
fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no 
voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is 
easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the 
peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works 
the same in any country." 
-- Hermann Goering

"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an 
exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."
--John Steinbeck

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

"It's a very sobering feeling to be up in space and realize that one's safety 
factor was determined by the lowest bidder on a government contract." 
-- Alan Shepard

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

"Wealth, in even the most improbable cases, manages to convey the aspect of 
intelligence." 
-- John Kenneth Galbraith

"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the 
work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless 
sea." 
-- Antoine de Saint Exupery

"As democracy is perfected, the office of the President represents, more and 
more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the 
plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White 
House will be occupied by a downright fool and a complete narcissistic moron." 
-- H.L. Mencken (1920)

"It is much easier to put existing resources to better use, than to develop 
resources where they do not exist."
-- George Soros

"Wall Street makes its money on activity. You make your money on inactivity."
-- Warren Buffett

"If I had a thousand sons, the first humane principle I would teach them should 
be, to forswear thin potations and to addict themselves to sack."
-- Sir John Falstaff

"The simple step of a simple courageous man is not to partake in falsehood, not 
to support false actions. Let that enter the world, let it even reign in the 
world - but not with my help. Falsehood can hold out against much in this world, 
but not against art."
-- Alexandr Solzhenitsyn

"I hate that man. I must get to know him better."
-- Abraham Lincoln

"When you lose your head, you lose your behind."
-- Leo Durocher

"Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral?  It is because we 
are not the person involved."
-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"

"No, I can live with it. Everybody has to live with it [COVID-19] and I'm no 
exception. I do the most aggression against the virus by hunkering down. Which 
sounds like a paradox, because hunkering down is defensive. But we have to 
starve the fucker."
-- Werner Herzog

"As the vilest writer hath his readers, so the greatest liar hath his believers: 
and it often happens, that if a lie be believed only for an hour, it hath done 
its work."
-- Jonathan Swift

"Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked."
-- Warren Buffett

"When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows 
 unprofitable, sleep."
-- Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

"There are no foolish questions and no man becomes a fool until he has stopped 
 asking questions." 
-- Charles Proteus Steinmetz

"Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious." 
-- George Orwell

"The nice thing about standards is that you have so many to choose from; 
furthermore, if you do not like any of them, you can just wait for next year's 
model."
-- Andrew Tanenbaum

"Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your 
mouth shut." 
-- Ernest Hemingway

"I write so slowly, I could write with my own blood and not hurt myself."
-- Fran Lebowitz

"I would prefer to live forever in perfect health, but if I must at some time 
leave this life, I would like to do so ensconced on a chaise longue, perfumed, 
wearing a velvet robe and pearl earrings, with a flute of champagne beside me 
and having just discovered the answer to the last problem in a British cryptic 
crossword."
-- Olivia de Havilland

"Confidence is the prize given to the mediocre."
-- Robert Hughes

"When photosynthesis entered the picture, life connected up to the cosmos."
-- Wolfgang Andreas Nitschke

"If we assume the existence of an omniscient and omnipotent being, one that 
knows and can do absolutely everything, then to my own very limited self, it 
would seem that existence for it would be unbearable. Nothing to wonder about? 
Nothing to ponder over? Nothing to discover? Eternity in such a heaven would 
surely be indistinguishable from hell."
-- Isaac Asimov, "X" Stands for Unknown, 1984

"The man who has not anything to boast of but his illustrious ancestors is like 
a potato - the only good belonging to him is under ground."
-- Sir Thomas Overbury

"Be humble for you are made of earth. Be noble for you are made of stars..."
--- Serbian proverb

"Simple is better than complex. Complex is better than complicated. And the one 
you are used to is the best of them all."
--- emacs developer

"The three golden rules to ensure computer security are: do not own a computer; 
do not power it on; and do not use it."
--- Robert Morris (cryptographer)

"In every good marriage it helps sometimes to be a little deaf."
--- Ruth Bader Ginsburg

"If I were going to construct a God I would furnish Him with some ways and 
qualities and characteristics which the Present (Bible) One lacks... He would 
spend some of His eternities in trying to forgive Himself for making man unhappy 
when He could have made him happy with the same effort and He would spend the 
rest of them in studying astronomy." 
--- Mark Twain

"Musick has Charms to sooth a savage Breast,
To soften Rocks, or bend a knotted Oak."
--- The Mourning Bride, William Congreve, 1697

"October 25, 2066. Confiscatory? IRS insists that new 99% Wealth Tax applies 
only to those millions that were made with help of highways, public education, 
internet or US Treasury services. All others tax-exempt."
--- Terry Bisson

"Defeat is worse than death because you have to live with defeat."
--- Bill Musselman 

"No group of professionals meets except to conspire against the public at 
large."
--- Mark Twain

"The possession of a book becomes a substitute for reading it."
--- Anthony Burgess

"The first rule of all intelligent tinkering is to keep all the parts."
--- Aldo Leopold

"[Flaubert] didn't just hate the railway as such; he hated the way it flattered 
people with the illusion of progress. What was the point of scientific advance 
without moral advance? The railway would merely permit more people to move 
about, meet and be stupid together."
--- Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot

"Reality is that which continues to exist even when you stop believing in it." 
--- Philip K. Dick

"I believe that only scientists can understand the universe. It is not so much 
that I have confidence in scientists being right, but that I have so much in 
nonscientists being wrong."
--- Isaac Asimov

"My mother once said to me, 'Elwood,' (she always called me Elwood) 'Elwood, in 
this world you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant.' For years I tried smart.  
I recommend pleasant."
--- Elwood P. Dowde, "Harvey"

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

"It is my heart-warm and world-embracing Christmas hope and aspiration that all 
of us - the high, the low, the rich, the poor, the admired, the despised, the 
loved, the hated, the civilized, the savage - may eventually be gathered 
together in a heaven of everlasting rest and peace and bliss - except the 
inventor of the telephone."
--- Mark Twain

"We were all used to the heat; but whereas the desert was dry, Sicily was humid. 
I well remember an incident that occurred one day as I was driving in my open 
car up to the front. I saw a lorry coming towards me with a soldier apparently 
completely naked in the driver's seat, wearing a silk top hat. As the lorry 
passed me, the driver leant out from his cab and took off his hat to me with a 
sweeping and gallant gesture. I just roared with laughter. However, while I was 
not particular about dress so long as the soldiers fought well and we won our 
battles, I at once decided that there were limits. When I got back to my 
headquarters I issued the only order I ever issued about dress in the Eighth 
Army; it read as follows: Top hats will not be worn in the Eighth Army."
--- The Memoirs of Field Marshal Montgomery, 1958

"Well, look, Americans are deeply committed to their retributive impulses. The 
United States has become a gigantic revenge factory. So obviously, people are 
falling back on these impulses - imagining justice as a question of punishment. 
Imagining that accountability is going to be measured in years of 
incarceration."
--- Alex Vitale

Soon after Franklin Roosevelt was inaugurated in 1933, a visitor assessed the 
stakes of his New Deal proposal. "Mr. President, if your program succeeds, 
you'll be the greatest president in American history," the visitor told him. "If 
it fails, you will be the worst one."

"If it fails," Roosevelt responded, "I'll be the last one."
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