Creativity is allowing yourself 
to make mistakes. Art is knowing 
which ones to keep.
--Scott Adams

Originality is unexplored territory. 
You get there by carrying a canoe. 
You can't take a taxi.
--Alan Alda

The difference between the right 
word and almost the right word is 
the difference between lightning 
and the lightning bug.
--Mark Twain 

Your assumptions are your windows on 
the world. Scrub them off every once 
in a while, or the light won't come in.
--Alan Alda

It pays to be obvious, especially 
if you have a reputation for subtlety.
--Isaac Asimov

You are never given a wish without also 
being given the power to make it come true. 
You may have to work for it, however.
--Richard Bach

Go ahead and do the impossible. It's worth 
the look on the faces of those who said you 
couldn't.
--Walter Bagehot

If there's a book you really want 
to read, but it hasn't been written 
yet, then you must write it.
--Toni Morrison 

Any good history book is mainly just a 
long list of mistakes, complete with 
names and dates. It's very embarrassing.
--A. Whitney Brown

Winning isn't everything, but losing 
isn't anything.
--Charlie Brown

Nothing is more dangerous than an 
idea when it is the only one you 
have.
--Emile Chartier

I sometimes wonder if the manufacturers 
of foolproof items keep a fool or two on 
their payroll to test things.
--Alan Coren

The price of greatness is responsibility.
--Winston Churchill

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, 
but most of them pick themselves up and 
hurry off as if nothing had happened.
--Winston Churchill

Patience serves as a protection against wrongs 
as clothes do against cold. For if you put on 
more clothes as the cold increases, it will have 
no power to hurt you. So in like manner you must 
grow in patience when you meet with great wrongs, 
and they will then be powerless to vex your mind.
--Leonardo da Vinci

Only someone who has cried a great 
deal understands why someone else 
wants to stop the tears.
--V. C. Andrews

You may not realize it when it happens, 
but a kick in the teeth may be the best 
thing in the world for you.
--Walt Disney

To punish me for my contempt for authority, 
fate made me an authority myself.
--Albert Einstein

The problems that exist in the world 
today cannot be solved by the level 
of thinking that created them.
--Albert Einstein

A problem is a chance for you to 
do your best.
--Duke Ellington

Finish each day and be done with it. You have 
done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities 
no doubt crept in, forget them as soon as you can. 
Tomorrow is a new day, you shall begin it well and 
serenely...
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

What concerns me is not the way things 
are, but rather the way people think 
things are.
--Epictetus

When someone demands blind obedience, 
you'd be a fool not to peek.
--Jim Fiebig

Whether you believe you can do 
a thing or not, you are right.
--Henry Ford

I have learned through bitter experience the 
one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, and 
as heat conserved is transmitted into energy, 
even so our anger controlled can be transmitted 
into a power that can move the world.
--Mahatma Gandhi

The society which scorns excellence in plumbing 
because it is a humble activity and tolerates 
shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted 
activity will have neither good plumbing nor good 
philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories 
will hold water.
--John W. Gardner

My definition of a redundancy is an 
air-bag in a politician's car.
--Larry Hagman

There's nothing to winning, really. That 
is, if you happen to be blessed with a 
keen eye, an agile mind, and no scruples 
whatsoever.
--Alfred Hitchcock

The great thing in this world is 
not so much where we are, but in 
what direction we are moving.
--Oliver Wendell Holmes

Man's mind stretched by a new idea 
never goes back to its original 
dimensions.
--Oliver Wendell Holmes

Older men declare war. But it is the youth 
that must fight and die. And it is youth who 
must inherit the tribulation, the sorrow, and 
the triumphs that are the aftermath of war.
--Herbert Clark Hoover

Genius may have its limitations, but 
stupidity is not thus handicapped.
--Elbert Hubbard

In seeking wisdom, the first step is silence, 
the second listening, the third remembering, 
the fourth practicing, the fifth--teaching others.
--Ibn Gabirol, poet and philosopher (c.1022-1058)

Education can be defined as working with people, 
young and old, to prepare them to live in the future. 
The future may be bright. The future may be gray. 
But, most importantly we must insure that there will 
be a future.
--Willard J. Jacobson

A great many people think they 
are thinking when they are merely 
rearranging their prejudices.
--William James:

The constitutions of most of our 
states assert that all power is 
inherent in the people.
--Thomas Jefferson

I like the dreams of the future 
better than the history of the past.
--Thomas Jefferson

The mere absence of war is not peace.
--John F. Kennedy

This problem, too, will look 
simple after it is solved.
--Charles Franklin Kettering

Learn to pause... or nothing worthwhile 
will catch up to you.
--Don King

Freedom has always been an expensive thing.
--Martin Luther King, Jr.

Man must evolve for all human conflict a 
method which rejects revenge, aggression, 
and retaliation.
--Martin Luther King, Jr.

Everybody can be great. Because anybody can 
serve. You don't have to have a college degree 
to serve. You don't have to make your subject 
and your verb agree to serve... You only need a 
heart full of grace... A soul generated by love.
--Martin Luther King, Jr.

The absence of alternatives clears 
the mind marvelously.
--Henry Kissinger

People who are resting on their laurels 
are wearing them on the wrong end.
--Malcolm Kushner

It had never occurred to me before that 
music and thinking are so much alike. In 
fact you could say music is another way 
of thinking, or maybe thinking is another 
kind of music.
--Ursula K. Le Guin

Egotism is the anesthetic that 
dulls the pain of stupidity.
--Frank Leahy

I am a slow walker, but I never walk back.
--Abraham Lincoln

Those who deny freedom to others deserve 
it not for themselves, and, under a just 
God cannot long retain it.
--Abraham Lincoln

Things turn out best for the people 
who make the best out of the way 
things turn out.
--Art Linkletter

It is the greatest shot of adrenaline 
to be doing what you have wanted to do 
so badly. You almost feel like you could 
fly without the plane.
--Charles Lindbergh

Never doubt that a small group of 
thoughtful, committed citizens can 
change the world. Indeed, it is the 
only thing that ever has.
--Margaret Mead

The great composer does not set to 
work because he is inspired, but 
becomes inspired because he is working.
--Ernest Newman

I do not know what I may appear to the world; 
but to myself I seem to have been only like a 
boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself 
now and then finding a smoother pebble or a 
prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great 
ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. 
--Isaac Newton

Slaying sacred cows makes great steaks.
--Dick Nicolosi

Work expands to fill the time available 
for its completion.
--C. Northcote Parkinson

Expenditure rises to meet income.
--C. Northcote Parkinson

Every act of creation is first 
of all an act of destruction.
--Pablo Picasso

Creativity is the power to connect 
the seemingly unconnected.
--William Plomer

Live in such a way that you would not 
be ashamed to sell your parrot to the 
town gossip.
--Will Rogers

No one can make you feel inferior 
without your consent.
--Eleanor Roosevelt

I could not at any age be content 
to take my place in a corner by the 
fireside and simply look on.
--Eleanor Roosevelt

I have seen the agony of mothers and 
wives. I hate war.
--Franklin Delano Roosevelt

The hardest thing to learn in life 
is which bridge to cross and which 
to burn.
--David Russell

I have realized that my real self is 
a greater entity than any possible 
post or title.
--Anwar Sadat

Life is like an onion; you peel off 
one layer at a time, and sometimes 
you weep.
--Carl Sandburg

Nothing happens unless first a dream.
--Carl Sandburg

Being defeated is often a temporary 
condition. Giving up is what makes 
it permanent.
--Marlene Savant

He who walks in the middle of the 
road gets hit from both sides.
--George P. Schultz

An optimist is a person who sees a green 
light everywhere, while a pessimist sees 
only the red stoplight... The truly wise 
person is colorblind.
--Albert Schweitzer

Songs are funny things. They can slip 
across borders. Proliferate in prisons. 
Penetrate hard shells. I always believed 
that the right song at the right moment 
could change history.
--Pete Seeger

The power of accurate observation is 
commonly called cynicism by those who 
haven't got it.
--George Bernard Shaw

To bring up a child in the way he 
should go, travel that way yourself 
once in awhile.
--Henry Wheeler Shaw

We can't leave the haphazard to chance.
--N.F. Simpson

How can they say my life isn't a success? 
Have I not for more than sixty years got 
enough to eat and escaped being eaten?
--Logan Pearsall Smith

Man, unlike any other thing organic 
or inorganic in the universe, grows 
beyond his work, walks up the stairs 
of his concepts, emerges ahead of his 
accomplishments.
--John Steinbeck

The nice thing about standards 
is that there are so many of 
them to choose from.
--Andrew S. Tanenbaum

Unless life is lived for others, 
it is not worthwhile.
--Mother Teresa

I think that maybe if women and 
children were in charge we would 
get somewhere.
--James Thurber

Man invented language to satisfy 
his deep need to complain.
--Lily Tomlin

We think too small. Like the frog at 
the bottom of the well. He thinks the 
sky is only as big as the top of the 
well. If he surfaced, he would have an 
entirely different view.
--Mao Tse-Tung

My mother had a great deal of trouble 
with me, but I think she enjoyed it.
--Mark Twain

A man with a new idea is a crank, 
until the idea succeeds.
--Mark Twain

There is no defense or security 
for any of us except in the highest 
intelligence and development of all.
--Booker T. Washington

There may be times when we are powerless 
to prevent injustice, but there must never 
be a time when we fail to protest.
--Elie Wiesel

No man is rich enough to 
buy back his past.
--Oscar Wilde

Man is a rational animal who always 
loses his temper when he is called 
upon to act in accordance with the 
dictates of reason.
--Oscar Wilde

A doctor can bury his mistakes but an 
architect can only advise his client 
to plant vines.
--Frank Lloyd Wright

We do not what we ought,
What we ought not, we do,
And lean upon the thought
That Chance will bring us through. 
--Matthew Arnold, Empedocles on Etna

Constancy is the foundation of virtues. 
--Francis Bacon

If a man will begin with certainties, 
he shall end in doubts; but if he will 
be content to begin with doubts, he 
shall end in certainties. 
--Francis Bacon, Advancement of Learning

It is sufficiently clear that all 
things are changed, and nothing 
really perishes, and that the sum 
of matter remains absolutely the same. 
--Francis Bacon, De Natura Rerum

Some books are to be tasted, others to be 
swallowed, and some few to be chewed and 
digested; that is some books are to be read 
only in parts; others to be read but not 
curiously; and some few to be read wholly, 
and with diligence and attention. Some books 
may also be read by deputy, and extracts made 
of them by others. 
--Francis Bacon, Essays "Of Studies"

Rugged the breast that 
beauty cannot tame. 
--John Codrington Bampfylde

No bird soars too high if 
he soars with his own wings. 
--William Blake

If you get simple beauty and naught else,
You get about the best thing God invents. 
--Robert Browning, Fra Lippo Lippi

Nake no little plans: they have 
no magic to stir men's blood... 
make big plans, aim hight in hope 
and work. 
-- Daniel H. Burnham

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow'd to taht tender light
Which heaven to gaudy days denies. 
--George Gordon, Lord Byron

You are successful the moment 
you start moving toward a 
worthwhile good. 
--Charles Carlson

A good book is the purest 
essence of a human soul. 
--Thomas Carlyle

The world's a scene of changes, 
and to be Constant, in Nature 
were inconstancy. 
--Abraham Cowley, Inconstancy

Between the mouth and the morsel 
many things may happen. 
(Inter os atque offam multa 
intervenire posse.) 
-Cato the Censor

Abscence is to love what wind is to 
fire; it extinguishes the small, it 
enkindles the great. 
(L'abscence est a l'amour ce qu'est 
au feu le vent; it eteint le petit, 
il allume le grand.) 
--Comte De Bussy-Rabutin

One joy dispels a hundred 
cares. 
--Confucius

The superior man thinks always 
of virtue; the common man things 
of comfort. 
--Confucius

Without music, life is a journey 
through a desert. 
--Pat Conroy

Change is inevitable in a progressive 
country. Change is constant. 
-Benjamin Disraeli

Beware the fury of a patient man. 
-John Dryden

Everything comes to him who 
hustles while he waits. 
--Thomas A. Edison

What counts is not necessarily the 
size of the dog in the fight -- it's 
the size of the fight in the dog. 
--Dwight Eisenhower

Belief consist in accepting the 
affirmations of the soul; unbelief, 
in denying them. 
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

For everything you have missed, you 
have gained something else; and for 
everything you gain, you lose something. 
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Some books leave us free and some 
books make us free. 
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Prevention is better than cure. 
--Erasmus

Chance fights ever on the side 
of the prudent. 
--Euripides, Pirithous

Great actions speak great minds. 
--John Fletcher

But in this world nothing can be said 
to be certain, except death and taxes. 
-Benjamin Franklin

We may be personally defeated, 
but our principles never. 
--William Lloyd Garrison

I abhor vivisection with my whole soul. 
All the scientific discoveries stained 
with blood I count as of no consequence. 
--Mahatma Gandhi

We must either find a way 
or make one. 
--Hannibal

He that does evil that good may 
come, pays a toll to the devil 
to let him into heaven. 
--Hare and Charles

Always listen to experts. They're 
tell you what can't be done and why. 
Then do it. 
--Robert Heinlen

Anger is momentary madness. 
(Ira furor brevis est.) 
--Horace, Epistles

Beauty in things exists in the 
mind which contemplates them. 
--David Hume, Essays "Of Tragedy"

No truth appears to me more evident 
than that beasts are endowed with 
thought and reason as well as men. 
--David Hume

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. 
--Margaret Wolfe Hungerford

Sit down before fact like a little child, 
and be prepared to give up every preconceived 
notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever 
abyss Nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. 
--Thomas Henry Huxley

There is a certain relief in change, even 
though it be from bad to worse; as I have 
found in travelling in a stagecoach, that 
it is often a comfort to shift one's position 
and be bruised in a new place. 
--Washington Irving

Who longest wait of all surely wins. 
--Helen Hunt Jackson

Victory and defeat are each 
ofht esame price. 
--Thomas Jefferson

When angry, count to ten 
before you speak; if very 
angry, an hundred. 
--Thomas Jefferson

A thing of beauty is a joy forever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health,
and quiet breathing. 
--John Keats

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," 
-- that is all Ye know on earth, 
and all ye need to know. 
--John Keats

Security is mostly a superstitiion. 
It does not exist in nature... life 
is either a daring adventure or nothing. 
--Helen Keller

We act as though comfort and luxury 
were the chief requirements of life, 
when all we need to make us happy is 
something to be enthusiastic about. 
--Charles Kingsley

He who knows much about others may be 
learned, but he who understands himself 
is more intelligent. He who controls 
others may be powerful, but he who has 
mastered himself is mightier still 
--Lao-Tsu. Tao Teh King

Nothing under the sun is accidental. 
--Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

I don't know who my grandfather was; 
I am much more concerned to know what 
his grandson will be. 
--Abraham Lincoln

At first laying down, as a fact fundamental,
New opinions are always suspected, and usually 
opposed, without any other reason but because 
they are not already common. 
--John Locke

That nothing with God 
can be accidental. 
--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labour and to wait. 
--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The thing we long for, that we are
For one transcendent moment. 
--James Russel Lowell

What chance has made yours 
is not really yours. 
(Non est tuum, fortuna quod 
fecit tuum.) 
--Lucilius

Watch out and guard yourselves 
from every kind of greed: because 
a person's true life is not made 
up of the things he owns. 
--Luke 12:15

Every day is a fresh opportunity 
to continue the quest toward out 
mission. 
--Harold McAlindon

Beauty is the purgation of 
superfluities. 
--Michelangelo

Trifles make perfection, and 
perfection is no trifle. 
--Michelangelo

As good almost kill a man as kill a 
good book; who kills a man kills a 
reasonable creature, God's image; but 
he who destroys a good book, kills 
reason itself, kills the image of God, 
as it were, in the eye. 
--John Milton

Books are not absolutely dead things, 
but do contain a progeny of life in them 
to be as active as that soul was whose 
progeny they are; nay, they do preserve 
as in a vial the purest efficacy and 
extraction of that living intellect that 
bred them. 
--John Milton

We do not inherit the earth 
from out parents. We borrow 
it from our children. 
--Native American proverb

Tis now a lip, or eye, we beauty call,
But the joint force and full result of all. 
--Alexander Pope

A soft answer turneth away wrath: 
but grievous words stir up anger. 
--Proverbs XV, 1

When a giftedteam dedicates itself 
to unselfish trust and combines 
instinct with boldness and effort -- 
it is ready to climb. 
--Pat Riley

No one can make you feel 
inferior without your 
consent. 
--Eleanor Roosevelt

Fine art is that in which the 
hand, the head, and the heart 
of man go together. 
--John Ruskin

He who boasts of his descent, 
praises the deeds of another. 
(Qui genus jactat suum, Aliena 
laudat.) 
--Seneca

I have Immortal longings in me. 
--William Shakespeare

There are two things to aim at 
in life: first to get what you 
want; and after that, to enjoy 
it. Only the wisest of mankind 
achieve the second. 
--Logan Pearsall Smith

You cannot define talent. All you 
can do is build the greenhouse and 
see if it grows. 
--Willian P. Steven

What I have learned is but a handful 
of earth, what is left unlearned is 
the Earth itself. 
--Tamil proverb

Win without boasting. 
Lose without excuse. 
--Albert Payson Terhune

A good book is the best of 
friends, the same to-day and 
forever. 
--Martin Farquhar Tupper

Be careful about reading health books. 
You might die of a misprint. 
--Mark Twain

Wisdom is the reward you get for 
a lifetime of listening when you 
would rather have talked. 
--Mark Twain

Chance is a word void of sense; 
nothing can exist without a cause. 
--Voltaire

There are two ways of spreading 
light: to be the candle or the 
mirror that reflects it. 
--Edith Wharton

The thing always happen that you 
really believe in; and the belief 
in a thing makes it happen. 
--Frank Lloyd Wright

The Earth laughs in flowers. 
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

What I have learned is but a 
handful of earth. What is left 
unlearned is the earth itself. 
--Tamil proverb

The Child is father of the Man 
--Wordsworth

To see a world in a grain of sand
And heaven in a wildflower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour
--Blake

Happiness is a perfume which you 
cannot pour on someone without 
getting some on yourself. 
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Hitch your wagon to a star. 
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

The softest things in the 
world overcome the hardest 
things in the world. 
--Taoist sage Lao-tzu

If you want a place in the sun you've 
got to put up with a few blisters.
--Abigal Van Buren

The only limits are, as always, those 
of vision.
--James Broughton

If you see a bandwagon, it's too late...
--Sir James Goldsmith

In three words I can sum up everything 
I've learned about life. It goes on.
--Robert Frost

There is a time in the life of every 
problem when it is big enough to see, 
yet small enough to solve.
--Mike Leavitt

Better to be occasionally cheated than 
perpetually suspicious.
--B. C. Forbes

All the things I really like to do are 
either immoral, illegal or fattening.
--Alexander Woollcott

To get something done a committe should 
consists of no more than three people, 
two of whom are absent.
--Robert Copeland

The absolute fundamental aim is to make 
money out of satisfying customers.
--Sir John Egan

I wear my wife's eyeglasses because 
she wants me to see things her way.
--Jayson Feinburg

Without music, life is a journey 
through a desert.
--Pat Conroy

Think big thoughts but relish small pleasures.
--H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Success is how high you bounce 
when you hit bottom.
--Gen. George Patton

The reputation of a thousand years may be 
determined by the conduct of one hour.
--Japanese proverb

The manner in which it is given is worth 
more than the gift.
--Pierre Corneille

If your want to test your memory, try 
to remember what you were worrying about 
one year ago today.
--E. Joseph Cossman

Knowledge is gained by learning; 
trust by doubt; skill by practice; 
and love by love.
--Thomas Szasz

If it weren't for the last minute, 
a lot of things wouldn't get done.
--Michael S. Traylor

Once you get people laughing, they're 
listening and you can tell them almost 
anything.
--Herb Gardner

I never learn anything talking. I only 
learn things when I ask questions.
--Lou Holtz

Learn a new language and get 
a new soul.
--Czech proverb

A man's greatest strength develops 
at the point where he overcomes his 
greatest weakness.
--Elmer G. Letterman

It's hard to detect good luck - it 
looks so much like something you've 
earned.
--Fred A. Clark

Babies are always more trouble than 
you thought - and more wonderful.
--Charles Osgood

Your friend is the man who knows all 
about you, and still likes you.
--Elbert Hubbard

There's nothing to match curling up 
with a good book when there's a repair 
job to be done around the house.
--Joe Ryan

The best bridge between despair and 
hope is a good night's sleep.
--E. Joseph Cossman

Between two evils, I always pick 
the one I never tried before.
--Mae West

What the world really needs is more 
love and less paperwork.
--Pearl Bailey

If you want to trully understand 
something, try to change it.
--Kurt Lewis

The more original a discovery, the 
more obvious it seems afterwards.
--Arthur Koestler