In Memoriam: Christian Hart 1961-2009

[Christian collected the following 413 quotations and posted them on his Santa Monica College web page. We believe that these quotes are messages that he wanted to pass along to us. The following warning was written by him.]

Please note:

The quotes I have gathered over the years reflect at base their ability to evoke a response in me. The response may have been agreement, astonishment, amusement, sadness, guilty pleasure, skepticism, etc., though I think the best quotes evoke multiple reactions at different levels. Consequently, you should expect neither internal agreement of perspective, nor agreeable attitudes (or even tact). So if you are particularly sensitive or easily offended, turn away. Now.

If you continue, understand that simply because you find a discernable theme expressed, it does not follow that my perspective necessarily agrees in every respect or instance. On the other hand, Mark Twain said ‘sacred cows make the best hamburger’ (with apologies to my Hindu students).

Memorable Quotations

1. If the triangles had a God, He would have three sides. —Baron de Montesquieu

2. A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness…A word is not the object it represents. —Alfred Korzybski, 1933

3. The only rational way of educating is to be an example–if one can’t help it, a warning example. —Albert Einstein, 1934.

4. Once at a social gathering, Gladstone said to Disraeli, “I predict, sir, that you will die either by hanging or of some vile disease.” Disraeli replied, “That all depends, sir, upon whether I embrace your principles or your mistress.”

5. They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. —Benjamin Franklin, 1759

6. The environment is everything that isn’t me. —Albert Einstein

7. I figure you have the same chance of winning the lottery whether you play or not —Fran Lebowitz

8. Politics is for the moment. An equation is for eternity. —Albert Einstein

9. If humanity is to progress, Gandhi is inescapable. —Martin Luther King, Jr.

10. Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth. —Einstein on Gandhi

11. I think animal testing is a terrible idea; they get all nervous and give the wrong answers. —A Bit of Fry and Laurie

12. The hypothalamus is one of the most important parts of the brain, involved in many kinds of motivation, among other functions. The hypothalamus controls the “four F’s”:
1. fighting
2. fleeing
3. feeding; and
4. mating
—Psychology professor in neuropsychology intro course

13. Technology sufficiently advanced enough is indistinguishable from magick.—Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law

14. What is a committee? A group of the unwilling, picked from the unfit, to do the unnecessary. —Richard Harkness, The New York Times, 1960

15. With every passing hour our solar system comes forty-three thousand miles closer to globular cluster M13 in the constellation Hercules, and still there are some misfits who continue to insist that there is no such thing as progress. —Ransom K. Ferm

16. Madness takes its toll. Please have exact change.

17. The graduate with…
…a Science degree asks, “Why does it work?”
…an Engineering degree asks, “How does it work?”
…an Accounting degree asks, “How much will it cost?”
…a Liberal Arts degree asks, “Do you want fries with that?”

18. I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; I am a vegetarian because I hate plants. —A. Whitney Brown

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

20. We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it—and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again—and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore. —Mark Twain

21. I am sick unto death of obscure English towns that exist seemingly for the sole accommodation of these so-called limerick writers—and even sicker of their residents, all of whom suffer from physical deformities and spend their time dismembering relatives at fancy dress balls. —Editor of the Limerick Times (Limerick, Ireland)

22. Lazlo’s Chinese Relativity Axiom: No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats—approximately one billion Chinese couldn’t care less.

23. 668: The Neighbor of the Beast

24. Some mornings, it’s just not worth chewing through the leather straps. —Emo Phillips

25. Writing about music is like dancing about architecture. —Unknown

26. Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again. —F.P. Jones

27. Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.—Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See

28. As your attorney, it is my duty to inform you that it is not important that you understand what I’m doing or why you’re paying me so much money. What’s important is that you continue to do so. —Hunter S. Thompson’s Samoan attorney

29. When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, “Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don’t believe?” —Quentin Crisp

30. boundary, n. In political geography, an imaginary line between two nations, separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary rights of another.—Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary

31. I think that all right-thinking people in this country are sick and tired of being told that ordinary, decent people are fed up in this country with being sick and tired. I’m certainly not! But I’m sick and tired of being told that I am! —Monty Python

32. May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house. —George Carlin

33. Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. —John F. Kennedy

34. In America, anyone can become president. That’s one of the risks you take.—Adlai Stevenson

35. Life may have no meaning. Or even worse, it may have a meaning of which I disapprove. —Ashleigh Brilliant

36. My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right. —Ashleigh Brilliant

37. Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth.—Benjamin Disraeli

38. When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck. —Richard Cardinal Cushing [unwittingly provides denotational definition of the representativeness heuristic; predictably, neglects mention of the base-rate caveat for same–CBH]

39. An Animated Cartoon Theology:
People are animals.
The body is mortal and subject to incredible pain.
Life is antagonistic to the living.
The flesh can be sawed, crushed, frozen, stretched, burned, bombed, and plucked for music.
The dumb are abused by the smart and the smart destroyed by their own cunning.
The small are tortured by the large and the large destroyed by their own momentum.

40. We are able to walk on air, but only as long as our illusion supports us.—E. L. Doctorow, The Book of Daniel

41. Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress… But I repeat myself. —Mark Twain

42. The overwhelming majority of people have more than the average (mean) number of legs. —E. Grebenik

43. The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled. —Plutarch

44. The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad. —Salvador Dali

45. What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult. —Sigmund Freud

46. I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me. —Hunter S. Thompson

47. Sacred cows make the best hamburger. —Mark Twain

48. Our lives end the day we become silent about things that matter. —Martin Luther King, Jr.

49. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. —Aristotle

50. The height of your accomplishments will equal the depth of your convictions.—William F. Scolavino

51. Everything you’ve learned in school as “obvious” becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the universe. There’s not even a suggestion of a solid. There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines.
—R. Buckminster Fuller

52. You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself.—Galileo

53. I do not feel obliged to believe that same God who endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect had intended for us to forego their use. —Galileo

54. Being right too soon is socially unacceptable. —Robert A. Heinlein

55. I hope my achievements in life shall be these:
That I will have fought for what was right and fair,
that I will have risked for that which mattered, that
I will have given help to those who were in need…
That I will have left the earth a better place for what
I’ve done and who I’ve been.
—C. Hoppe

56. The great tragedy of Science—the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly truth. —Thomas Huxley

57. If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. —Thomas Jefferson

58. The stakes are much too high for government to be a spectator sport.—Barbara Jordan

59. An age is called Dark, not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it. —James Michener

60. It is far easier to be wise for others than to be so for oneself.—Francois de la Rochefoucauld

61. Not all those who know their minds know their hearts as well.—Francois de la Rochefoucauld

62. Two step formula for handling stress:
1. Don’t sweat the small stuff.
2. Remember that it’s all small stuff.
—Anthony Robbins

63. A good idea will keep you awake during the morning, but a great idea will keep you awake during the night. —Marilyn Mach vos Savant

64. To find in ourselves what makes life worth living is risky business, for it means that once we know we must seek it. It also means that without it, life will be valueless.—Marsha Sinetar

65. We do not walk on our legs, but on our Will. —Sufi proverb

66. I have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat. —Rebecca West, in 1913

67. Advice to young writers who want to get ahead without any annoying delays: don’t write about Man, write about ‘a’ man. —E.B. White

68. Communism doesn’t work because people like to own stuff. —Frank Zappa

69. History is a vast early warning system. —Norman Cousins

70. Of all the things which wisdom provides to make us entirely happy, much the greatest is the possession of friendship. —Epicurus

71. The purpose of education is to replace an empty mind with an open one. —Malcolm Forbes

72. Yesterday is but today’s memory, and tomorrow is today’s dream. —Kahlil Gibran

73. Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.—Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

74. Nothing endures but change. —Heraclitus

75. It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation. —Herman Melville

76. That which seems the height of absurdity in one generation often becomes the height of wisdom in the next. —John Stuart Mill

77. You don’t understand anything until you learn it more than one way. —Marvin Minsky

78. How glorious it is—and also how painful—to be an exception. —Alfred de Musset

79. Everyone takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world.—Arthur Schopenhauer

80. A Freudian slip is when you say one thing but mean your mother. —Unknown

81. Never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. —Hanlon’s Razor

82. When all is said and done, more is said than done. —Dr. Glen Shinn [attribution unverified]

83. I consider myself an average man, except in the fact that I consider myself an average man. —Michel de Montaigne

84. Anything you’re good at contributes to happiness. —Bertrand Russell

85. They are able because they think they are able. —Virgil

86. The best way out is always through. —Robert Frost

87. A slight touch of friendly malice and amusement towards those we love keeps our affections for them from turning flat. —Logan P. Smith

88. Age—that period of life in which we compound for the vices that we still cherish by reviling those that we no longer have the enterprise to commit.
—Ambrose Bierce

89. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. —Frederick Douglass

90. We grow small trying to be great. —E. Stanley Jones

91. Hitch your wagon to a star. —Ralph Waldo Emerson

92. You can’t hold a man down without staying down with him. —Booker T. Washington

93. Ambition is so powerful a passion in the human breast, that however high we reach we are never satisfied. —Niccolò Machiavelli

94. He who surpasses or subdues mankind, must look down on the hate of those below. —Lord Byron

95. Americans are like a rich father who wishes he knew how to give his son the hardships that made him rich. —Robert Frost

96. You will find the Americans much like the Greeks found the Romans: great, big, vulgar, bustling people more vigorous than we are and also more idle, with more unspoiled virtues but also more corrupt. —Harold Macmillan

97. America and its demons; Europe and its ghosts. —Le Monde [America and its racism; Europe and its antisemitism. —CBH]

98. American youth attributes much more importance to arriving at driver’s license age than at voting age. —Marshall McLuhan

99. A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy but won’t cross the street to vote in a national election. —Bill Vaughan

100. America is a large, friendly dog in a very small room. Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a chair. —Arnold Joseph Toynbee

101. The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colors breaking through. —Alexis de Tocqueville

102. We, in this generation, will not only have to apologize for the hateful words and actions of the bad people, but also for the appalling silence of the good people. —Martin Luther King, Jr. [Silence is not support. Silence is merely silence. —my friend Randolph Meredyth-Drake’s addendum to King’s warning]

103. Beware the fury of a patient man. —John Dryden

104. The greatest remedy for anger is delay. —Seneca

105. Anybody can become angry—that is easy; but to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, and for the right purpose, and in the right way—that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy. —Aristotle

106. Most people are on the world, not in it—having no conscious sympathy or relationship to anything about them—undiffused, separate, and rigidly alone like marbles of polished stone, touching but separate. —John Muir

107. You are only what you are when no one is looking. —Robert C. Edwards

108. A long dispute means both parties are wrong. —Voltaire

109. To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe.—Marilyn Mach vos Savant

110. Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber. —Plato

111. The forest understands what the garden cannot. —Christian B. Hart

112. There is no distinctly criminal class—except Congress. —Mark Twain

113. You don’t stop laughing because you grow old; you grow old because you stop laughing—Michael Pritchard

114. Joy, unspeakable joy…‘cause they did not give it, they cannot take it away.—Kim English, lyric from Joy [dance anthem]

115. Let no one come to you without leaving better. —Mother Theresa

116. Children are natural mimics who act like their parents despite every effort to teach them good manners. —Anonymous

117. Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect.—Mark Twain

118. Reality is merely an illusion…albeit a very persistent one. —Albert Einstein

119. Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws. —Plato

120. Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.—Albert Einstein

121. The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. —George Bernard Shaw

122. The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.—Groucho Marx

123. The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them. —Albert Einstein

124. 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

125. To do is to be. —Descartes
To be is to do. —Voltaire
Do be do be do. —Frank Sinatra
—Men’s restroom graffito

126. The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his. —General George Patton

127. Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt. —H.L. Mencken

128. Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education. —Bertrand Russell

129. I respect faith, but doubt is what gives you an education. —Wilson Mizner

130. They told me I was gullible … and I believed them!

131. Intelligence without character is a dangerous thing. —Gloria Steinem

132. Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there. —Will Rogers

133. Paralysis through analysis.

134. In a literature class, the students were given an assignment to write a short story involving all the important ingredients—nobility, emotion, sex, religion and mystery. One student allegedly handed in the following story: “My god!” cried the duchess. “I’m pregnant. Who did it?”

135. When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail. —Abraham Maslow

136. The world is a book, and those who do not travel, read only one page. —St. Augustine

137. I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand. —Chinese Proverb

138. Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism. —Carl Jung

139. When the atomic bomb was tested in Jornada del Muerto (Journey of Death) valley near Alamogordo, New Mexico at 05:29:45 July 16, 1945, J. Robert Oppenheimer, then project leader, said “I am become death, the shatterer of worlds” a quotation from ancient Hindu scripture. Kenneth Bainbridge, test director later said: “Oppie, now we’re all sons of bitches.”

140. Two behaviorists meet in the morning and one says to the other, “You’re fine. How am I?”

141. Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so. —Bertrand Russell

142. Wit is educated insolence. —Aristotle

143. There are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations. —James Madison, founding father

144. Egotist: a person more interested in himself than in me. —Ambrose Bierce

145. A narcissist is someone better looking than you are. —Gore Vidal

146. Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?

147. Moderation in temper is always a virtue, but moderation in principle is always a vice. —Thomas Paine

148. Morality cannot be legislated but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless. —Martin Luther King, Jr.

149. What is morality in any given time or place? It is what the majority then and there happen to like, and immorality is what they dislike. —Alfred North Whitehead

150. To act from pure benevolence is not possible for finite beings. Human benevolence is mingled with vanity, interest, or some other motive. —Samuel Johnson

151. Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. —Isaac Asimov, Foundation

152. The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. —H.P. Lovecraft

153. Opinion—knowledge without the hindrance of silly facts. —attribution unknown

154. Buddha left a road map, Jesus left a road map, Krishna left a road map, Rand McNally left a road map. But you still have to travel the road yourself.
—Stephen Levine

155. The young know the rules; the old know the exceptions —Unknown

156. Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain. —Mark Twain

157. When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you. —African proverb

158. In times of profound change, the learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists. —Eric Hoffer

159. The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem. —Theodore Rubin

160. The first measure of a free society is not that its government performs the will of the majority. We had that in 1930s Germany and in the South until the ‘60s. The first measure of a free society is that its government protects the just freedoms of its minorities. The majority is quite capable of protecting itself. —Jim Warren

161. You only have power over people so long as you don’t take everything away from them. But when you’ve robbed a man of everything, he’s no longer in your power—he’s free again. —A. Solzhenitsyn

162. The future has already arrived; it just isn’t evenly distributed. —William Gibson

163. To believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonest. —Mohandas K. Gandhi

164. Integrity is what we do, what we say, and what we say we do. —Don Galer

165. Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful. —Samuel Johnson

166. No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. —Booker T. Washington

167. Semper Gumby [always flexible] —Anonymous (joking aside, perhaps the single best, succinct, guideline for increasing/maintaining good mental health; but typically the hardest to follow when needed the most.)

168. Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great. —Mark Twain

169. National hatred is something peculiar. You will always find it strongest and most violent where there is the lowest degree of culture. —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

170. The failure to grok is often due to failure to understand the correct abstractions. Understanding a thing requires understanding the context in which that thing lives. If one cannot step out of a traditional context in order to regard a thing within the proper context, one cannot grok it. For example, many people have trouble grok the layering of network protocol because they can only see what the protocols do for them, not what the protocols do in general. Therefore, when they look at protocols, all they see is large amounts of inscrutable unnecessary complexity. —Robert Graham

171. Every man is the architect of his own fortune. —Appius Claudius

172. Put your trust in Allah, but don’t forget to tie up your camel. —Sufi proverb

173. Do not call to a dog with a whip in your hand. —Zulu proverb

174. A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops. —Henry Adams

175. Fate succumbs many a species: one alone jeopardizes itself. —W.H. Auden

176. Love each other or perish. —W.H. Auden

177. Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest. —Mark Twain

178. A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do. —Bob Dylan

179. The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their field of endeavor. —Vince Lombardi

180. If I had a dollar for every million-dollar idea I’ve had, I’d be rich. —Greg Meyer

181. There’s nothing that will change someone’s moral outlook quicker than cash in large sums. —Larry Flynt

182. I have great faith in fools. Self-confidence, my friends call it. —Edgar Allen Poe

183. The point of all this is to be able to spend more time at the beach! —Nils Nilsson

184. Being famous has its benefits, but fame isn’t one of them. —Larry Wall

185. It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. —Aristotle

186. Believe, if thou wilt, that mountains change their place, but believe not that man changes his nature. —Mohammed

187. In the beginning, the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. —Douglas Adams

188. Space isn’t remote at all. It’s only an hour’s drive away if your car could go straight upwards. —Fred Hoyle

189. Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft… and the only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor. —Wernher von Braun

190. Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former. —Albert Einstein

191. There are 1011 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it’s only a hundred billion. It’s less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers. —Richard Feynman

192. For all our conceits about being the center of the universe, we live in a routine planet of a humdrum star stuck away in an obscure corner … on an unexceptional galaxy which is one of about 100 billion galaxies. … That is the fundamental fact of the universe we inhabit, and it is very good for us to understand that. —Carl Sagan

193. Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea. —Douglas Adams

194. Power corrupts, and obsolete power corrupts obsoletely. —Ted Nelson, on DOS

195. Nothing is destroyed until it is replaced. —Auguste Comte (1798-1857) on the need for new theories

196. Belief is no substitute for arithmetic. —Henry Spencer

197. Computers are useless. They can only give you answers. —Pablo Picasso

198. I do not believe in things. I believe only in their relationships. —George Braque

199. I don’t paint things. I only paint the difference between things. —Henri Matisse

200. All models are wrong. Some models are useful. —George E.P. Box [attribution unverified]

201. Errors using inadequate data are much less than those using no data at all. —Charles Babbage

202. There are three principal ways to lose money: wine, women, and engineers. While the first two are more pleasant, the third is by far the more certain. —Baron Rothschild

203. I have often thought that if there had been a good rap group in those days, I might have chosen a career in music instead of politics. —Richard Nixon

204. If I have made myself clear, you must have misunderstood me. —Alan Greenspan

205. Science is like sex: sometimes something useful comes out, but that is not the reason we are doing it —Richard Feynman

206. Literature is mostly about having sex, and not much about having babies; life is the other way round. —David Lodge

207. When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. —Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

208. Lord, give us the wisdom to utter words that are gentle and tender, for tomorrow we may have to eat them. — Senator Morris Udall

209. It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds. —Samuel Adams

210. I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work … I want to achieve it through not dying. —Woody Allen

211. I am a man of fixed and unbending principles, the first of which is to be flexible at all times. —Senator Everett Dirksen

212. When I face an issue of great import that cleaves both constituents and colleagues, I always take the same approach. I engage in deep deliberation and quiet contemplation. I wait to the last available minute and then I always vote with the losers. Because, my friend, the winners never remember and the losers never forget. — Senator Everett Dirksen

213. In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. —Martin Luther King, Jr.

214. In the end, everything is a gag. —Charlie Chaplin

215. Truth will set you free. —John 8:31-32, King James’ Bible

216. When I have a little money I buy books; if any is left I buy food and clothes. —Sheila Waters

217. We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. —Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900)

218. I am not young enough to know everything. —Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900)

219. The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. —Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900)

220. What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing. —Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900)

221. To see ourselves as others see us is a most salutary gift. Hardly less important is the capacity to see others as they see themselves. —Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1964)

222. Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. —Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1964)

223. A nation’s greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members. —Mohandas K. Gandhi

224. You should be open minded, but not so open minded that your brains fall out. —Jacob Needleman

225. I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent. —Mohandas K. Gandhi

226. Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. —Blaise Pascal

227. One who condones evil is just as guilty as the one who perpetrates it. —Martin Luther King, Jr.

228. To overcome evil with good is good, to resist evil by evil is evil. —Mohammed

229. The man who does evil to another does evil to himself, and the evil counsel is most evil for him who counsels it. —Hesiod

230. The eye sees more than the heart knows. —William Blake, Visions of the Daughters of Albion

231. Le cœur a ses raisons, que la raison ne connait point. —French aphorism [The Heart has its reasons of which Reason knows naught.]

232. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. —French aphorism [The more things change, the more they stay the same.]

233. People only see what they are prepared to see. —Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals

234. Who knows only his own generation remains always a child —inscribed over the portal of the library at University of Colorado

235. When the ax entered the forest, the trees said, ‘The handle is one of us!’ —Turkish Proverb

236. Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures. —Ralph Waldo Emerson

237. There is no truth. There is only perception. —Gustave Flaubert

238. The words of truth are always paradoxical. —Lao Tzu

239. Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t. —Mark Twain

240. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. —paraphrased (or bastardized, if you prefer) from the original: “Remember how in that communion only, beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may.” —Plato, Symposium

241. You’ve gotta’ dance like there’s nobody watching,
Love like you’ll never be hurt.
Sing like there’s nobody listening,
And live like it’s heaven on earth.
—William W. Purkey

242. May the earth lie softly upon you.
[From the original in Latin: Sit tua terra levis. Literally, ‘May the earth rest lightly on thee’ was an inscription used on tombs in Roman times, often abbreviated as S.T.T.L.] —Seneca, Epigram (II, Ad Corsican)

243. I love sleep because it is both pleasant and safe to use. —Fran Lebowitz

244. So true is it that unnatural generally means only uncustomary and that everything which is usual appears natural —John Stuart Mill

245. An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind. —Mohandas K. Gandhi

246. Security, the chief pretense of civilization, cannot exist where the worst of dangers, the danger of poverty, hangs over everyone’s head. —George Bernard Shaw

247. I am somehow less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops. —Stephen Jay Gould

248. All truth goes through three stages. First it is ridiculed. Then it is violently opposed. Finally, it is accepted as self-evident. —Schopenhauer

249. Contrary to today’s stereotypes, racists do not always chew tobacco and drive pickup trucks with gun racks. They wear silk shirts, treat women as possessions, and talk about human rights at cocktail parties far from communities of people of color. The men in pickup trucks are just as likely to be as warm and caring as the high minded liberals are to be racists. —Wilma Mankiller (Former Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation)

250. Once upon a time there was a magnet, and in its close neighborhood lived some steel filings. One day two or three filings felt a sudden desire to go and visit the magnet, and they began to talk of what a pleasant thing it would be to do. Other filings nearby overheard their conversation, and they, too, became infected with the same desire. Still others joined them, till at last all the filings began to discuss the matter, and more and more their vague desire grew into an impulse. “Why not go today?” said some of them; but others were of the opinion that it would be better to wait until tomorrow. Meanwhile, without their having noticed it, they had been involuntarily moving nearer to the magnet, which lay there quite still, apparently taking no heed of them. And so they went on discussing, all the time insensibly drawing nearer to their neighbor; and the more they talked, the more they felt the impulse growing stronger, till the more impatient ones declared that they would go that day, whatever the rest did. Some were heard to say that it was their duty to visit the magnet, and that they ought to have gone long ago. And, while they talked, they moved always nearer and nearer, without realizing they had moved. Then, at last, the impatient ones prevailed, and, with one irresistible impulse, the whole body cried out, “There is no use waiting. We will go today. We will go now. We will go at once.” And then in one unanimous mass they swept along, and in another moment were clinging fast to the magnet on every side. Then the magnet smiled—for the steel filings had no doubt at all but that they were paying that visit of their own free will. —Oscar Wilde

251. The illusion that we are separate from one another is an optical delusion of our consciousness. —Albert Einstein

252. When we should have been planning switches to smaller, more fuel efficient, lighter cars in the late 1960s, in response to a growing demand in the marketplace, GM refused because ‘we make more money on big cars.’ It mattered not that customers wanted the smaller cars, or that a national balance of payments deficit was being built…. Refusal to enter the small car market when the profits were better on bigger cars, despite the needs of the public and the national economy, was not an isolated case of corporate insensitivity. It was typical. —John DeLorian, former head of the Pontiac division at General Motors

253. All who are not lunatics are agreed about certain things. That it is better to be alive than dead, better to be adequately fed than starved, better to be free than a slave. Many people desire those things only for themselves and their friends; they are quite content that their enemies should suffer. These people can be refuted by science: Humankind has become so much one family that we cannot insure our own prosperity except by insuring that of everyone else. If you wish to be happy yourself, you must resign yourself to seeing others also happy. —Bertrand Russell

254. What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index into his desires — desires of which he himself is often unconscious. If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way. —Bertrand Russell, Roads to Freedom

255. One cannot in the nature of things expect a little tree that has been turned into a club to put forth leaves. —Martin Buber

256. Toleration is not the opposite of intolerance but the counterfeit of it. Both are despotisms: the one assumes to itself the right of withholding liberty of conscience, the other of granting it. —founding father Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man

257. All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish [Muslim], appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit. I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine. But it is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe. It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime. He takes up the profession of a priest for the sake of gain, and in order to qualify himself for that trade he begins with a perjury. Can we conceive anything more destructive to morality than this? —founding father Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

258. Deorum injuriae Diis curae. —Tacitus [Leave offenses against the gods to the care of the gods.]

259. We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we are sure, stifling it would be an evil still. —John Stuart Mill, British philosopher and economist (1806-1873)

260. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. —Thomas Paine, political theorist and founding father (1737-1809)

261. If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all. —Noam Chomsky, American linguist and philosopher (1928–); on 11/25/92, The Late Show (BBC2; England)

262. Mother is the name of God in the lips and hearts of children. —William Makepeace Thackeray, English novelist

263. Everything you know is wrong – but some of it is a useful approximation. —Unknown

264. The condition of man is already close to satiety and arrogance, and there is danger of destruction of everything in existence. —a Brahmin to Onesicritus, 327 B.C.E., reported in Strabo’s Geography (the Jones translation)

265. The sons of Hermes love to play,
And only do their best when they
Are told they oughtn’t;
Apollo’s children never shrink
From boring jobs but have to think
Their work important.
—W.H. Auden, Upon Which Lyre

266. The art of handling university students is to make oneself appear, and this almost ostentatiously, to be treating them as adults, while keeping them in invisible harness and even, when necessary, giving them a flick of the whip. —Arnold Toynbee, Experiences [one brilliant but scary mofo]

267. The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe. —Albert Einstein, reported in the New York Times, 1946

268. Neither the Smithsonian Institution or its successors, nor any museum or other agency, bureau or facilities administered for the United States of America by the Smithsonian Institution or its successors shall publish or permit to be displayed a statement or label in connection with or in respect of any aircraft model or design of earlier date than the Wright Aeroplane of 1903, claiming in effect that such aircraft was capable of carrying a man under its own power in controlled flight. —clause in the agreement to allow the Smithsonian to display the Wrights’ plane

269. Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad. —James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, May 13, 1798

270. [The clergy] believe that any portion of power confided in me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly: for I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: and enough too in their opinion. —founding father Thomas Jefferson

271. It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so. —Mark Twain

272. It is not only the juror’s right, but his duty to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment and conscience, though in direct opposition to the instruction of the court. —founding father John Adams

273. It’s absurd to divide people into good or bad. People are either charming or tedious. —Oscar Wilde

274. You must be the change that you hope for in the world. —Mohandas K. Gandhi

275. The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best—and therefore never scrutinize or question. —Stephen Jay Gould

276. Look in the mirror, and don’t be tempted to equate transient domination with either intrinsic superiority or prospects for extended survival. —Stephen Jay Gould

277. I will take you places where you’ve never been,
I will show you things that you have never seen,
And I will see the life run out of you.
—Eva Galleon/Alma, in the film Ghost Story (1981)

278. “We’ve secretly switched the dilithium crystals in the Enterprise warp core with new Folger’s Crystals… let’s watch what happens.” —author unknown, from a user post on ThinkGeek.com

279. Logic—The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding. —Ambrose Bierce

280. I’d rather go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company. —Mark Twain

281. I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature. —Thomas Jefferson

282. The real purpose of [the] scientific method is to make sure Nature hasn’t misled you into thinking you know something you actually don’t know. —Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

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

284. To announce that 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, “Editorial,” Kansas City Star, May 7, 1918

285. The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple. —Oscar Wilde

286. Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes. —Oscar Wilde

287. Only the shallow know themselves. —Oscar Wilde

288. Always forgive your enemies. Nothing annoys them more. —Oscar Wilde

289. To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up. —Oscar Wilde

291. The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything. Except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesman-like habits, supplies their demands. —Oscar Wilde

292. The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about. —Oscar Wilde

293. In America the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience. —Oscar Wilde

294. All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his. —Oscar Wilde

295. The supreme object of life is to live. Few people live. It is true life only to realize one’s own perfection, to make one’s every dream a reality. —Oscar Wilde

296. The final mystery is oneself. —Oscar Wilde

297. The sick do not ask if the hand that smoothes their pillow is pure, nor the dying care if the lips that touch their brow have known the kiss of sin. —Oscar Wilde

298. If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn’t. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism. —Oscar Wilde

299. Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attraction of others. —Oscar Wilde

300. When we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy. —Oscar Wilde

301. To regret one’s own experiences is to arrest one’s own development. To deny one’s own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one’s life. It is no less than a denial of the soul. —Oscar Wilde

302. To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose both seems like carelessness. —Oscar Wilde

303. Life is one fool thing after another whereas love is two fool things after each other. —Oscar Wilde

304. Life imitates art far more than art imitates life. —Oscar Wilde

305. It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you place the blame. —Oscar Wilde

306. Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go. —Oscar Wilde

307. Skepticism is the beginning of Faith. —Oscar Wilde

308. Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness. —Mark Twain

309. If you tell the truth you don’t have to remember anything. —Mark Twain

310. I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position. —Mark Twain

311. Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul. —Mark Twain

312. Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed. —Mark Twain

313. 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

314. A classic is a book which people praise and don’t read. —Mark Twain

315. There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. —Mark Twain

316. Few things are harder to put up with than a good example. —Mark Twain

317. We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don’t know anything and can’t read. —Mark Twain

318. It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt. —Mark Twain

319. He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever:
I was wrong.
—W.H. Auden

320. When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you. —African Proverb

321. There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing. —Maya Angelou

322. Most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise. —Maya Angelou

323. Without justice, there can be no peace. He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it…. Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter… Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love… Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed…. The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. —Martin Luther King, Jr.

324. Neither prosperity nor empire nor heaven can be worth winning at the price of a virulent temper, bloody hands, an anguished spirit, and a vain hatred of the rest of the world. —John Milton

325. If you are a terror to many, then beware of many. —Ausonius

326. Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them? —Abraham Lincoln

327. First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. —Mohandas K. Gandhi

328. Grand Master Turing once dreamed that he was a machine. When he awoke he exclaimed: “I don’t know whether I am Turing dreaming that I am a machine, or a machine dreaming that I am Turing!” —from “Book 2-The Ancient Masters” in The Tao of Programming
[It’s often noted that many a great artist goes unrecognized during his or her lifetime. Alan Turing would fall into this class…except for the fact that he was a scientist. And except for the fact that his crucial role in helping the Allies—us—win WWII wasn’t exactly unrecognized, so much as it was actively hidden: his contribution (cracking the Nazi’s Enigma code) was “classified” by the British as an issue of national security, so he never received much acknowledgment for being a war hero. And also except, I suppose, for the fact that Turing’s contributions to computer science (e.g., the Turing test) are mostly known just to those immersed in said field; the general public remains largely unfamiliar with him. So given all this, I think Turing might have appreciated the homage above—as weighty and pretentious as it may be…no, because of that. (Or maybe he would have thought it wasn’t “over the top” enough.) Why? Because what many histories gloss over or leave out altogether is this: people who met this war hero and computer genius typically, if cheerfully, described him as the most outrageous, flaming queen they had ever met. And it is this ridiculous fact combined with an overweaning concern with national image that led to the concerted—and sometimes aggressive—efforts by the Brits to keep Turing out of the public eye for the rest of his unnaturally shortened life. —CBH]

329. “God kills, and so shall we; indiscriminately He takes the richest and the poorest, and so shall we; for no creatures under God are as we are, none so like Him as ourselves…” —the vampire Lestat to Louis, in Interview with the Vampire by Ann Rice

330. Merciful Father, I have squandered my days with plans of many things.
This was not among them.
But at this moment, I beg only to live the next few minutes well.
For all we ought to have thought and have not thought;
All we ought to have said and have not said;
All we ought to have done and have not done:
I pray thee, God, for forgiveness.
—Ahmed Ibn Fahdlan, in the film The 13th Warrior (1999)

331. Lo, there do I see my mother,
And my sisters, and my brothers.
Lo, there do I see the line of my people,
Back to the beginning,
Lo, they do call to me,
They bid me take my place among them,
In the Halls of Valhalla,
Where the brave may live…Forever!
—chanted by the Vikings at funerals and before battle in the film The 13th Warrior (1999)

332. Logic cannot model causal systems, and paradox is generated when time is ignored [as in logic]. —Gregory Bateson

333. Youth is wasted on the young. —George Bernard Shaw

334. The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it’s stranger than we can imagine. —J.B.S. Haldane

335. “Husbands die. Husbands die every day, Delores. Why…there’s probably one dying this very minute. They die—and leave their wives their money. An accident, Delores, can be an unhappy woman’s best friend. —Vera Donovan in the film Delores Claiborne (1995)

336. “Sometimes, Delores…sometimes you have to be a high-riding bitch to survive. Sometimes being a bitch is all a woman has to hang on to.” —Vera Donovan in the film Delores Claiborne (1995)

337. “The ‘Continuum Transfunctioner’ is a very mysterious and powerful device…and its mystery is only exceeded by its power.” —line from the comedy, Dude, Where’s My Car? (2000)
“The Ford Navigator—as luxurious as it is powerful…and as powerful as it is luxurious.” —narration from an actual television advertisement from Ford Motor Company (2005)

338. Tout est poison. Rien n’est poison. La poison c’est la dose. —Paracelsus [Everything is poison. Nothing is not poison. The poison is the dose.]

339. The function of science fiction is not always to predict the future but sometimes to prevent it. —Frank Herbert, author of Dune

340. Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious. —Oscar Wilde

341. To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs. —Aldous Huxley

342. The word “genius” isn’t applicable in football. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein. —Joe Theisman, former NFL quarterback & sports analyst

343. Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please. —Mark Twain

344. Why of course the people don’t want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don’t want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, 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 Göring, second in command during Hitler’s Third Reich

345. All the old knives that have rusted in my back, I drive in yours, ma semblable, ma soeur! —Adrienne Rich, Snapshots Of A Daughter-In-Law [Rich appended the French post-script to a phrase originally found in the writings of Phaedrus, circa early 1st century.]

346. Peras imposuit Jupiter nobis duas. Propriis repletam vitiis post tergum dedit; Alienis ante pectus supendit gravem. —Phaedrus (15 BCE – 50 CE) [This seems to anticipate Freudian “projection” by nearly two thousand years: ‘Jupiter has placed upon us two wallets. Hanging behind each person’s back he has given one full of his own faults; in front he has hung a heavy one full of other people’s.’ Incidentally, whether the possessive case for “his own” refers to Jupiter or each person doesn’t alter the meaning; Romans and Greeks saw their gods as possessing human faults such as jealousy, envy, selfishness, and vanity (cf. quote #1 this list).]

347. “Hey, look at that car. It’s wedged in there just like a…um…wedge.” —My friend George Sablich, pointing to an old, rusted auto body standing on end within the cliffs at Black’s Beach in San Diego, mid-1980s. I haven’t a clue why I find this endlessly funny, but let the South keep its colorful (albeit more creative) characterizations involving cats, tin roofs, and junebugs!

348. [For men], living up to Caesar is an immensely heavy burden to bear, but…trying to be a sensitive new age guy at the same time is pretty well impossible. If women are trapped by the whore/Madonna complex, men are equally trapped by this warrior/minstrel complex. —Norah Vincent, Self-Made Man

349. No man is an island, entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is
the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man’s death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind; and
therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
—John Donne, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, I624, no. 17

350. Religion is for people who want to avoid going to Hell. Spirituality is for those who’ve been there. —attribution unknown

351. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool. —Richard Feynman, physicist and Nobel laureate, here demonstrating a surprising facility with psychology (except that Feynman was famous for such “surprises” in many fields).

352. All is One. —common claim reported by those recounting a mystical experience. (cf. Donne in #349 above)

353. The Three Laws of Robotics:
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
—Isaac Asimov (cf. Asimov’s “Zeroeth Law”)

354. He is all fault who has no fault at all. —Lord Alfred Tennyson

355. A man does not look behind the door unless he has stood there himself. —DuBois [W.E.B.?]

356. We must respect the other fellow’s religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children are smart. —H.L. Mencken

357. The plumber’s faucet always leaks. —attribution unknown
[Parallel proverb in Sranan Tongo (Suriname): Temreman oso no abi bangi. A carpenter’s house has no benches.]

358. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. —Marcello Truzzi

359. “The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long.” —Eldon Tyrell explaining the physics of longevity to Roy Batty—an android of his design—whereupon the disappointed android returns the favor by murdering him; in the film classic Blade Runner (1982)

360. Tsze-kung asked [Confucius] about government. The Master said, “The requisites of government are that there be sufficiency of food, sufficiency of military equipment, and the confidence of the people in

their ruler.” Tsze-kung said, “If it cannot be helped, and one of these must be dispensed with, which of the three should be foregone first?” “The military equipment,” said the Master.
Tsze-kung again asked, “If it cannot be helped, and one of the remaining two must be dispensed with, which of them should be foregone?” The Master answered, “Part with the food. From of old,
death has been the lot of men; but if the people have no faith in their rulers, there is no standing for the state.” —from The Confucian Analects, circa 500 BCE (translated by James Legge, 1873)

361. In ancient times, cats were worshiped as gods. They have not forgotten this. —Terry Pratchett

362. Si vis pacem para bellum. [If you seek peace, prepare for war. Common paraphrase of the original, Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum: Therefore, he who desires peace, let him prepare
for war.] —Vegetius (Roman general) Epitoma Rei Militaris

363. Silent enim leges inter arma. [In times of war, the law falls silent.] —Cicero, Pro Milone

364. It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so. —Mark Twain

365. Removal of the somewhat milky plastic barrier causes the individual nuggets of Cap’n Crunch to resolve, under the halogen light, with a kind of preternatural crispness and definition that makes the roof of Randy’s mouth glow and throb in trepidation. …

The gold nuggets of Cap’n Crunch pelt the bottom of the bowl with a sound like glass rods being snapped in half. Tiny fragments spall away from their corners and ricochet around on the white porcelain surface. World-class cereal-eating is a dance of fine compromises. The giant heaping bowl of sodden cereal, awash in milk, is the mark of the novice. Ideally one wants the bone-dry cereal nuggets and the cryogenic milk to enter the mouth with minimal contact and for the entire reaction between them to take place in the mouth. Randy has worked out a set of mental blueprints for a special cereal-eating spoon that will have a tube running down the handle and a little pump for the milk, so that you can spoon dry cereal up out of a bowl, hit a button with your thumb, and squirt milk into the bowl of the spoon even as you are introducing it into your mouth. The next best thing is to work in small increments, putting only a small amount of Cap’n Crunch in your bowl at a time and eating it all up before it becomes a pit of loathsome slime, which, in the case of Cap’n Crunch, takes about thirty seconds. …

He pours the milk with one hand while jamming the spoon in with the other, not wanting to waste a single moment of the magical, golden time when cold milk and Cap’n Crunch are together but have not yet begun to pollute each other’s essential natures–two Platonic ideals separated by a boundary a molecule wide. Where the flume of milk splashes over the spoon-handle, the polished stainless steel fogs with condensation. Randy of course uses whole milk, because otherwise why bother? Anything less is indistinguishable from water, and besides he thinks that the fat in whole milk acts as some kind of a buffer that retards the dissolution-into-slime process. The giant spoon goes into his mouth before the milk in the bowl has even had time to seek its own level. A few drips come off the bottom and are caught by his freshly washed goatee (still trying to find the right balance between beardedness and vulnerability, Randy has allowed one of these to grow). Randy sets the milk-pod down, grabs a fluffy napkin, lifts it to his chin, and uses a pinching motion to sort of lift the drops of milk from his whiskers rather than smashing and smearing them down into the beard. Meanwhile all his concentration is fixed on the interior of his mouth, which naturally he cannot see, but which he can imagine in three dimensions as if zooming through it in a virtual reality display. Here is where a novice would lose his cool and simply chomp down. A few of the nuggets would explode between his molars, but then his jaw would snap shut and drive all of the unshattered nuggets straight up into his palate where their armor of razor-sharp dextrose crystals would inflict massive collateral damage, turning the rest of the meal into a sort of pain-hazed death march and rendering him Novocain-mute for three days. But Randy has, over time, worked out a really fiendish Cap’n Crunch eating strategy that revolves around playing the nuggets’ most deadly features against each other. The nuggets themselves are pillow-shaped and vaguely striated to echo piratical treasure chests. Now, with a flake-type of cereal, Randy’s strategy would never work. But then, Cap’n Crunch in a flake form would be suicidal madness; it would last about as long, when immersed in milk, as snowflakes sifting down into a deep fryer. No, the cereal engineers at General Mills had to find a shape that would minimize surface area, and, as some sort of compromise between the sphere that is dictated by Euclidean geometry and whatever sunken-treasure-related shapes that the cereal-aestheticians were probably clamoring for, they came up with this hard-to-pin-down striated pillow formation. The important thing, for Randy’s purposes, is that the individual pieces of Cap’n Crunch are, to a very rough approximation, shaped kind of like molars. The strategy, then, is to make the Cap’n Crunch chew itself by grinding the nuggets together in the center of the oral cavity, like stones in a lapidary tumbler. —Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon (1999)

366. That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die. —H.P. Lovecraft, The Nameless City (1921)

367. There is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity. —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

368. There were elder gods in those days; kings and queens they were. —Stephen King, Duma Key (2008)

369. “I don’t like him. I’ll think of a reason later.” —Bogart as Ed Hutcheson in Deadline—USA (1952)

370. Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain. —Friedrich von Schiller

371. Ordinarily he was insane, but he had lucid moments when he was merely stupid. —Heinrich Heine

372. “This will not be over quickly. You will not enjoy this. I am not your queen!” —Queen Gorgo [the words she spoke to Theron as he was dying from the sword she thrust into him—reprising what he said to her earlier when he coerced her into sex] in the film 300 (2006)

373. Captain [grief-stricken]: I have lived my entire life without regret until now. It’s not that my son gave up his life for his country. It’s just I never told him that I loved him the most. That he stood by me with honor. That he was all that was best in me.
King Leonidas: My heart is broken for your loss.
Captain: Heart? …I have filled my heart with hate.
King Leonidas: Good.
—from the film 300 (2006)

374. Laissez les bon temps roulet! [Let the good times roll!] —Cajun expression

375. Sometimes, when I look at my children, I say to myself, ‘Lillian, you should have remained a virgin.’ —Lillian Carter (mother of Jimmy Carter)

376. I had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalog: ‘No good in a bed, but fine against a wall.’ —Eleanor Roosevelt

377. Last week, I stated 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

378. Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint. —Mark Twain

379. I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury. —Groucho Marx

380. I have never hated a man enough to give his diamonds back. —Zsa Zsa Gabor

381. Only Irish coffee provides in a single glass all four essential food groups: alcohol, caffeine, sugar and fat. —Alex Levine

382. I don’t feel old. I don’t feel anything until noon. Then it’s time for my nap. —Bob Hope

383. I never drink water because of the disgusting things that fish do in it. —W.C. Fields

384. We could certainly slow the aging process down if it had to work its way through Congress. —Will Rogers

385. Don’t worry about avoiding temptation. As you grow older, it will avoid you. —Winston Churchill

386. The cardiologist’s diet: If it tastes good spit it out.

387. Insanity in individuals is something rare—but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. —Friedrich Nietzsche

388. Last night it did not seem
as if today it would be raining. —from the AIDS Memorial Quilt

389. Rachael: Do you like our owl?
Deckard: It’s artificial?
Rachael: Of course it is.
Deckard: Must be expensive.
Rachael: Very.
—from the film classic Blade Runner (1982)

390. “Poppies. Poppies will put them to sleep. Sleep. Now they’ll sleep!” —Wicked Witch of the West, Wizard of Oz (1939)
[My favorite line from the film perhaps because ya gotta love the audacity of a reference to opiates in a children’s story. CBH]

391. Galinda [the good witch]: You’re still riding that old thing?
Elphaba [wicked witch of the west]: Well, we can’t all come and go by bubble!
—from the stage musical Wicked (2003)

392. “My name is Talky Tina, and I’m going to kill you.” —doll to Daddy (Telly Savalas) in “Living Doll” (1963) Twilight Zone

393. Shadow had noticed that you only ever catch one episode of shows you don’t watch, over and over, years apart; he thought it must be some kind of cosmic law. —Neil Gaiman, American Gods (2001)

394. The quality of mercy is not strain’d,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven. —The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare

395. The future ain’t what it used to be. —Yogi Berra

396. Wherever he steps, whatever he touches, whatever he leaves, even unconsciously, will serve as a silent witness against him. Not only his fingerprints or his footprints, but his hair, the fibers from his clothes, the glass he breaks, the tool mark he leaves, the paint he scratches, the blood or semen he deposits or collects. All of these and more, bear mute witness against him. This is evidence that does not forget. It is not confused by the excitement of the moment. It is not absent because human witnesses are. It is factual evidence. Physical evidence cannot be wrong, it cannot perjure itself, it cannot be wholly absent. Only human failure to find it, study and understand it, can diminish its value. —Dr. Edmond Locard (1877–1966) [Locard’s exchange principle: Every contact leaves a trace. To this, I say ‘way cool.’ And yet…taking this to its logical end, with the aid of some future technology, perhaps—think Star Trek tricorder—where does one draw the line vis-à-vis signal-to-noise ratio? Because if every contact leaves a trace, it seems the next question would have to be ‘how much and for how long?’ CBH]

397. There are people who…tell you that the light in your heart is a weakness. Don’t believe it! It’s an old tactic of cruel people to kill kindness in the name of virtue. —John Patrick Shanley, Doubt: A Parable (2004)

398. “Hey, I don’t mean to rush you, but you are keeping two civilizations waiting!” —Cavil (Dean Stockwell) to the final five in the finale “Daybreak” (2009) Battlestar Galactica

399. He will kill mice and he will be kind to Babies when he is in the house, just as long as they do not pull his tail too hard. But when he has done that, and between times, and when the moon gets up and night comes, he is the Cat that walks by himself, and all places are alike to him. Then he goes out to the Wet Wild Woods or up the Wet Wild Trees or on the Wet Wild Roofs, waving his wild tail and walking by his wild lone. —Rudyard Kipling; excerpt from “The Cat That Walked By Himself” in Just So Stories (1902)

400. My favorite animal is steak. —Fran Lebowitz

401. Ask your child what he wants for dinner only if he’s buying. —Fran Lebowitz

402. I never took hallucinogenic drugs because I never wanted my consciousness expanded one unnecessary iota. —Fran Lebowitz

403. 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

404. What do they do in these [private] clubs, anyway? Sit around saying things like ‘Thank God I’m here. No Jews! What fun! This is living, huh? Look! No Jews! I don’t know when I’ve had a better time. And no women! Just men! And no blacks! Just whites! White men! White men who are not Jewish! It doesn’t get any better than this.’ To some people, apparently, this is a perfect description of injustice. To me, this is a perfect description of a gay bar in Iceland. —Fran Lebowitz, Vanity Fair magazine, July, 1997

405. Success didn’t spoil me, I’ve always been insufferable. —Fran Lebowitz

406. A Gay Vietnam Veteran: When I was in the military they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one. —epitaph on the tombstone of Sgt. Leonard Matlovich (1943-1988)

407. The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. —Edmund Burke

408. By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes. —Macbeth, Shakespeare

409. Here lies a toppled god—
His fall was not a small one.
We did but build his pedestal,
A narrow and a tall one. —“Tleilaxu Epigram” from Frank Herbert’s Dune Messiah (1969)

410. Pretentious…moi? —attribution seems to be either Mr. Johnson of Fawlty Towers or Miss Piggy of The Muppet Show

411. “It’s wrong, shockingly wrong!” —Mary Haines to her mother on infidelity in the 1939 comedy classic The Women [The near-cult status of this film partly stems from such campy lines, but it often
takes a couple viewings before a contemporary person can even make out all the dialogue given the upper-class Britishy accent, the under-the-breath muttering, and rapid delivery.]

412. “We die and the world will be poorer for it.” —Prince Nuada in Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008) by Guillermo del Toro

413. So long, and thanks for all the fish. —Douglas Adams

#

Enough procrastination…