31/07/2016
I n this posting you will find my selection of the
very best 60 quotes, from nearly a decade of
collecting them. They range from the profound
to the intriguing to the just plain funny.
One way or the other, you’ll surely find many of
them to be thought-provoking and entertaining.
This selection is, of course, based solely on my
personal taste (and even that varies largely from
day to day according to my mood). You are
welcome to browse the entire collection and look
for your own favorite ones or contribute new
quotes from your own personal collection.
Wisdom Quotes
1. You can do anything, but not everything.
—David Allen
2. Perfection is achieved, not when there is
nothing more to add, but when there is nothing
left to take away.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
3. The richest man is not he who has the most,
but he who needs the least.
—Unknown Author
4. You miss 100 percent of the shots you never
take.
—Wayne Gretzky
5. Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather
the judgement that something else is more
important than fear.
—Ambrose Redmoon
6. You must be the change you wish to see in
the world.
—Gandhi
7. When hungry, eat your rice; when tired, close
your eyes. Fools may laugh at me, but wise men
will know what I mean.
—Lin-Chi
8. The third-rate mind is only happy when it is
thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind
is only happy when it is thinking with the
minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when
it is thinking.
—A. A. Milne
9. To the man who only has a hammer,
everything he encounters begins to look like a
nail.
—Abraham Maslow
10. We are what we repeatedly do; excellence,
then, is not an act but a habit.
—Aristotle
11. A wise man gets more use from his enemies
than a fool from his friends.
—Baltasar Gracian
12. Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the
men of old; seek what they sought.
—Basho
13. Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.
—Lao-Tze
14. Everyone is a genius at least once a year.
The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas
closer together.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
15. What we think, or what we know, or what we
believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The
only consequence is what we do.
—John Ruskin
16. The real voyage of discovery consists not in
seeking new lands but seeing with new eyes.
—Marcel Proust
17. Work like you don’t need money, love like
you’ve never been hurt, and dance like no one’s
watching
—Unknown Author
18. Try a thing you haven’t done three times.
Once, to get over the fear of doing it. Twice, to
learn how to do it. And a third time, to figure out
whether you like it or not.
—Virgil Garnett Thomson
19. Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get
run over if you just sit there.
—Will Rogers
20. People often say that motivation doesn’t last.
Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we
recommend it daily.
—Zig Ziglar
Funny Quotes
21. Before I got married I had six theories about
bringing up children; now I have six children and
no theories.
—John Wilmot
22. What the world needs is more geniuses with
humility, there are so few of us left.
—Oscar Levant
23. Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys
them so much.
—Oscar Wilde
24. I’ve gone into hundreds of [fortune-teller’s
parlors], and have been told thousands of things,
but nobody ever told me I was a policewoman
getting ready to arrest her.
—New York City detective
25. When you go into court you are putting your
fate into the hands of twelve people who weren’t
smart enough to get out of jury duty.
—Norm Crosby
26. Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my
hand.
—Kurt Vonnegut
27. Just the fact that some geniuses were
laughed at does not imply that all who are
laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at
Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed
at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at
Bozo the Clown.
—Carl Sagan
28. My pessimism extends to the point of even
suspecting the sincerity of the pessimists.
—Jean Rostand
29. Sometimes I worry about being a success in
a mediocre world.
—Lily Tomlin
30. I quit therapy because my analyst was trying
to help me behind my back.
—Richard Lewis
31. We’ve heard that a million monkeys at a
million keyboards could produce the complete
works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the
Internet, we know that is not true.
—Robert Wilensky
32. If there are no stupid questions, then what
kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they
get smart just in time to ask questions?
—Scott Adams
33. If the lessons of history teach us anything it
is that nobody learns the lessons that history
teaches us.
—Anon
34. When I was a boy I was told that anybody
could become President. Now I’m beginning to
believe it.
—Clarence Darrow
35. Laughing at our mistakes can lengthen our
own life. Laughing at someone else’s can
shorten it.
—Cullen Hightower
36. There are many who dare not kill themselves
for fear of what the neighbors will say.
—Cyril Connolly
37. There’s so much comedy on television. Does
that cause comedy in the streets?
—Dick Cavett
38. All men are frauds. The only difference
between them is that some admit it. I myself
deny it.
—H. L. Mencken
39. I don’t mind what Congress does, as long as
they don’t do it in the streets and frighten the
horses.
—Victor Hugo
40. I took a speed reading course and read ‘War
and Peace’ in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.
—Woody Allen
Otherwise Intelligent Quotes
41. The person who reads too much and uses
his brain too little will fall into lazy habits of
thinking.
—Albert Einstein
42. Believe those who are seeking the truth.
Doubt those who find it.
—André Gide
43. It is the mark of an educated mind to be
able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
—Aristotle
44. I’d rather live with a good question than a
bad answer.
—Aryeh Frimer
45. We learn something every day, and lots of
times it’s that what we learned the day before
was wrong.
—Bill Vaughan
46. I have made this letter longer than usual
because I lack the time to make it shorter.
—Blaise Pascal
47. Don’t ever wrestle with a pig. You’ll both get
dirty, but the pig will enjoy it.
—Cale Yarborough
48. An inventor is simply a fellow who doesn’t
take his education too seriously.
—Charles F. Kettering
49. Asking a working writer what he thinks about
critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels
about dogs.
—Christopher Hampton
50. Better to write for yourself and have no
public, than to write for the public and have no
self.
—Cyril Connolly
51. Never be afraid to laugh at yourself, after all,
you could be missing out on the joke of the
century.
—Dame Edna Everage
52. I am patient with stupidity but not with those
who are proud of it.
—Edith Sitwell
53. Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you
buy for work and driving through traffic in a car
that you are still paying for – in order to get to
the job you need to pay for the clothes and the
car, and the house you leave vacant all day so
you can afford to live in it.
—Ellen Goodman
54. The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is
no cure for curiosity.
—Ellen Parr
55. Advice is what we ask for when we already
know the answer but wish we didn’t.
—Erica Jong
56. Some people like my advice so much that
they frame it upon the wall instead of using it.
—Gordon R. Dickson
57. The trouble with the rat race is that even if
you win, you’re still a rat.
—Lily Tomlin
58. Never ascribe to malice, that which can be
explained by incompetence.
—Napoleon (Hanlon’s Razor)
59. Imagination was given to man to compensate
him for what he is not, and a sense of humor
was provided to console him for what he is.
—Oscar Wilde
60. When a person can no longer laugh at
himself, it is time for others to laugh at him.
—Thomas Szasz
