Various quotes that I have found amusing or inspirational. If you know the source for one that I don't, please let me know. Last updated 4/19/98
Dance like nobody is watching, sing like no one can hear, love like you've never been hurt. -- Source Unknown
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. -- Mark Twain
Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die today. -- James Dean
If everything's under control, you're going too slow. -- Mario Andretti
He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice. -- Mark Twain
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. -- William James
Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance. -- Confucius
I don't necessarily agree with everything I say. -- Marshall McLuhan
Freedom is being able to live with the consequences of your decisions. -- James X. Mullen
An it harm none, do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law --Aleister Crowley
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. -- Albert Einstein
The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud. -- Coco Chanel
The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity. -- Ellen Parr
Ideals are like stars: you will not succeed in touching them with your hands, but like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you reach your destiny. -- Carl Schurz
No matter how far you have gone on the wrong road, turn back. -- Turkish Proverb
You can't hold a man down without staying down with him. -- Booker T. Washington
The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense. --Tom Clancy
Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind. --Rudyard Kipling
Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep. -- Scott Adams
Efficiency is intelligent laziness. -- David Dunham
Don't take life too seriously. You'll never get out alive. --Bugs Bunny
It may be that the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong--but that is the way to bet. --Damon Runyon (a native of the town I used to live in, Manhattan, KS, USA)
The one who says it cannot be done should never interrupt the one who is doing it. -- Dr. Stephen Franklin, "Babylon 5" : "Exogenesis"
Do, or do not. There is no try. -- Yoda
Of course, the easiest way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it. -- John D. Spangler
No matter how cynical you get, you can't keep up. -- Lily Tomlin
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. -- George Bernard Shaw
People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in the world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can't find them, make them. -- George Bernard Shaw
Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the goal. -- Hannah More
Patience and perserverence have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish. -- John Quincy Adams
The important thing is this: To be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become. -- Charles DuBois
If you think you can or you think you can't, you're right. -- Henry Ford
When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt
He has achieved success who has worked well, laughed often, and loved much. -- Elbert Hubbard
The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated. -- William James
To love and win is the best thing. To love and lose, the next best. -- William M. Thackeray
Too much of a good thing is wonderful. -- Mae West
Love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction.-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
The most precious possession that ever comes to a man in this world is a woman's heart. -- Josiah G. Holland
There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved. -- George Sand
I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him. -- Booker T. Washington
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws. -- Plato
Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names. -- John F. Kennedy
Always forgive your enemies. Nothing annoys them more -- Oscar Wilde
If you judge people, you have no time to love them. -- Mother Teresa
Politicians are people who, when they see light at the end of the tunnel, they go out and buy more tunnel.
In politics stupidity is not a handicap. -- Napoleon Bonaparte
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. -- Martin Luther King Jr.
As long as people will accept crap, it will be financially profitable to dispense it. -- Dick Cavett
We do not inherit the land, we borrow it from our children. -- Native
American Proverb
I sincerely believe... that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale. --Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1816.
The conclusion then, is, that neither the representatives of a nation, nor the whole nation itself assembled, can validly engage debts beyond what they may pay in their own time. --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1789.
It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world. --Thomas Jefferson to A. L. C. Destutt de Tracy, 1820.
It is a wise rule and should be fundamental in a government disposed
to cherish its credit and at the same time to restrain the use of it within
the limits of its faculties, "never to borrow a dollar without laying a
tax in the same instant for paying the interest annually and the principal
within a given term; and to consider that tax as pledged to the creditors
on the public faith." On such a pledge as this, sacredly observed, a government
may always command, on a reasonable interest, all the lendable money of
their citizens, while the necessity of an equivalent tax is a salutary
warning to them and their constituents against oppressions, bankruptcy,
and its inevitable consequence, revolution. --Thomas Jefferson to John
Wayles Eppes, 1813.
Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government
of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or
have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer
this question. -- First Inaugural Address.
It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own. -- Letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush, with a Syllabus, Washinton, Apr. 21, 1803
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it. --Thomas Jefferson to Archibald Stuart, 1791.
"When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans ... And so a lot of people say there's too much personal freedom. When personal freedom's being abused, you have to move to limit it. That's what we did in the announcement I made last weekend on the public housing projects, about how we're going to have weapon sweeps and more things like that to try to make people safer in their communities." -- President Bill Clinton, 3-22-94, MTV's "Enough is Enough"
Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest men in national government too. -- Richard M. Nixon
I think there is a world market for maybe five computers. -- Thomas Watson, IBM
There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home. -- Ken Olson, Digital Equipment Corp.
640K ought to be enough for anybody. -- Bill Gates, Microsoft
Smoking kills. If you're killed, you've lost a very important part of your life. -- Brooke Shields
Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country. -- Mayor Marion Barry, Washington, D.C
As a mother, I know that homosexuals cannot biologically reproduce children; therefore, they must recruit our children. -- Anita Bryant
I have opinions of my own -- strong opinions -- but I don't always agree with them. -- George Bush
[Note: there are so many to choose from, the problem is deciding
which quotes by Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and Dan Quayle to include
here.]
Quote sites of people I know:
Karen Lee