19 More Quotes

1.      You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created. — Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

2.      You can never understand one language until you understand at least two. — Ronald Searle (1920- )

3.     You can only give what you have. If you don't love yourself, you can't love other people. — Elizabeth Kubler-Ross (1926-2004)

4.      You can out-distance that which is running after you, but not what is running inside you. — Rwandan Proverb

5.      You can preach a better sermon with your life than with your lips. — Oliver Goldsmith (1730-1774)

6.      You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do. — Anne Lamott (1954- )

7.      You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions. — Naguib Mahfouz (1911-2006)

8.     You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late. — Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

9.      You cannot lay bare your private soul and look at it... It is too disgusting. — Mark Twain (1835-1910)

10.  "I quite realized," said Columbus, / "That the earth was not a rhombus, / But I am a little annoyed / To find it an oblate spheroid." — E. Clerihew Bentley (1875-1956)

11.  "Susaddad!" exclaimed Ibsen, / "By dose is turdig cribson! / I'd better dot kiss you. / Atishoo! Atishoo!" — E. Clerihew Bentley (1875-1956)

12.  Life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer it gets to the end, the faster it goes. — Hector D. Cantu (1961- ) and Carlos Castellanos in Baldo Cartoon Strip

13. Life is like an onion; you peel off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep. — Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)

14. However richly inspired by love, marriage is a high-wire act that is usually attempted by two nervous wrecks who just go for it, reeling with bliss. The rest is work, faith and destiny which carries with it, as does everything from God, the possibility of plunging from great heights. — Richard Atcheson (1934-2006)

15. However subtly, if you pay for access to a book, it does affect the way you use that book. I suspect that this is nearly always true. I also suspect it is true of many library services besides the borrowing of books. — John Berry

16.  Human felicity is produced not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen, as by little advantages that occur every day. — Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

17. Censorship has never been known to stop with one book or category of book. Once the backing down begins, censorship spreads like a brush fire. — from Tennessee Librarian, Volume 22, p. 58

18. Chance is perhaps the pseudonym of God when he does not wish to sign his work. — Anatole France (1844-1924)

19. Chances are, if you and a rabbit want the same thing [from your garden], the rabbit will get it. — Hortense Miller (1908-2008)

List of Quotes from Albert Einstein

• "Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction."
• "Imagination is more important than knowledge."
• "Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love."
• "I want to know God's thoughts; the rest are details."
• "The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax."
• "Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."
• "The only real valuable thing is intuition."
• "A person starts to live when he can live outside himself."
• "I am convinced that He (God) does not play dice."
• "God is subtle but he is not malicious."
• "Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character."
• "I never think of the future. It comes soon enough."
• "The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility."
• "Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing."
• "Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind."
• "Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."
• "Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds."
• "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
• "Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen."
• "Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it."
• "The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
• "The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education."
• "God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically."
• "The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking."
• "Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal."
• "Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding."
• "The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible."
• "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."
• "Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school."
• "The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing."
• "Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater."
• "Equations are more important to me, because politics is for the present, but an equation is something for eternity."
• "If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut."
• "Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe."
• "As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."
• "Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods."
• "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
• "In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep."
• "The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there's no risk of accident for someone who's dead."
• "Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves."
• "Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them!"
• "No, this trick won't work...How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?"
• "My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind."
• "Yes, we have to divide up our time like that, between our politics and our equations. But to me our equations are far more important, for politics are only a matter of present concern. A mathematical equation stands forever."
• "The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking...the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker."
• "Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence."
• "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."
• "A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeeded be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death."
• "The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge."
• "Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."
• "You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat."
• "One had to cram all this stuff into one's mind for the examinations, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect on me that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year."
• "...one of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one's own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought."
• "He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action. It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder."
• "A human being is a part of a whole, called by us _universe_, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
• "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts." (Sign hanging in Einstein's office at Princeton)

[Note: This list of Einstein quotes was being forwarded around the Internet, so I decided to put it on my blog. I'm afraid I can't vouch for its authenticity, tell you where it came from, who compiled the list, or anything like that. Still, the quotes are interesting and enlightening.]

Witty and Funny Quotes

1. When bosses talk about improving productivity, they are never talking about themselves.
2. When I hear somebody sigh "Life is hard" I'm always tempted to ask "Compared to what?"
3. When tempted to fight fire with fire, keep in mind that the Fire Department usually uses water.
4. When you do not know what you are doing, do it neatly.
5. Whoever said money can't buy happiness simply didn't know where to go shopping.
6. You cannot achieve the impossible without attempting the absurd.
7. You have to run as fast as you can just to stay where you are. If you want to get anywhere, you'll have to run much faster.
8. You never truly understand something until you can explain it to your grandmother. --Albert Einstein
9. It's not what you say in your argument, it's how loud you say it.
10. It's your right to be stupid, but it doesn't mean you should be.
11. Keep that sense of humor; it's critical.
12. Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens.
13. Laws are like bones; they're made to be broken.
14. Life isn't weird; it's the people in it.
15. Life may have no meaning. Or even worse, it may have a meaning of which I disapprove.
16. Life would be much simpler and things would get done much faster if it weren't for other people
17. Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at math.
18. Love isn't only blind, it's also deaf, dumb, and stupid.
19. A bad day at Disneyland is still better than a good day at work.
20. A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining and wants it back the minute it begins to rain.
21. A candidate is a person who gets money from the rich and votes from the poor to protect them from each other.
22. A celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness.
23. A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won't cross the street to vote in a national election.
24. A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read
25. A consultant is a person who borrows your watch, tells you what time it is, pockets the watch, and sends you a bill for it.
26. A diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you will look forward to the trip.
27. Nothing is illegal until you get caught.
28. Once the toothpaste is out of the tube, it's hard to get it back in.
29. Only adults have difficulty with childproof caps.
30. Opportunity only knocks once (if at all).
31. People who say it can't be done, should not interrupt those of us who are doing it.
32. People who think they know what they're doing are especially annoying to those of us who do.
33. Plagiarism is copying from one source; research is copying from many.
34. Please excuse my bad English; I'm American.
35. Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S relativity. -- Albert Einstein

About Society

"The price of liberty is eternal vigilance."
- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

"The percent likelihood of a society becoming physically violent if it is physically affectionate towards its infants and tolerant of premarital sexual behavior is 2 percent. The probability of this relationship occurring by chance is 125,000 to one. I am not aware of any other developmental variable that has such a high degree of predictive validity."
- James W. Prescott, 1975

"All for one; one for all."
- Alexander Dumas (1824-1895)

"You laugh at me because I am different, but I laugh at you because you are all the same."
- Unknown

"Vote early and vote often."
- Al Capone (1899-1947)

"If you haven’t got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me."
- Alice Roosevelt Longworth (1884-1980)

"The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"Men have become the tools of their tools."
- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

"When they took the Fourth Amendment, I was silent because I don’t deal drugs. When they took the Sixth Amendment, I kept quiet because I know I’m innocent. When they took the Second Amendment, I said nothing because I don’t own a gun. Now they’ve come for the First Amendment, and I can’t say anything at all."
- Tim Freeman

"A great many people think they are thinking when they are acutally rearranging their prejudices."
- William James (1842-1910)

In a boat at sea one of the men began to bore a hole in the bottom of the boat. On being remonstrating with, he answered, "I am only boring under my own seat." "Yes," said his companions, "but when the sea rushes in we shall all be drowned with you."
- Talmud

"The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841-1935)

"Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions - it only guarantees equality of opportunity."
- Irving Kristol (1920-)

"I think it would be a good idea."
- Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948), when asked what he thought of Western civilization