Steve's Great Quotations Page, favorite site of readers, writers and public speakers...
created in 1999 and last updated on 3-7-2010, arranged by author
Brooks Adams
A man must not swallow more beliefs than he can digest.
Fred Allen
Committee: A group of men who individually can do nothing, but as a group decide that nothing can be done.
Woody Allen
I’m not afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.
I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.
Someday the lion is going to lie down with the lamb, but the lamb isn’t going to get much sleep.
Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.
Eighty percent of success is showing up.
Anonymous
The biggest trouble with a sure thing is the uncertainty.
If you steal, you will be hailed as a great man, provided you steal everything in sight.
Conscience: A little voice that tells you what other people should do.
The same fire that melts iron forges steel.
Hard work never killed a man, but it sure has scared a lot of them.
He must be a good man
because he’s so hard to find.
Numbers are like people; torture them enough and they’ll tell you anything.
Armenian
Proverb
Always tell the truth in the form of a joke.
Isaac Asimov
Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right.
Ken Askew
If You chase two rabbits, both will escape.
- in The Toastmaster - September 2002
Jane Austin
I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle.
Honore de Balzac
Behind every fortune there is a crime.
Armigar Barkley
People only think a
thing’s worth believing in if it’s hard to believe.
Basho
Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old, seek what they sought.
Charles
Barsotti
What if they gave a war and nobody profited? –
in The New Yorker (2006)
Sir Cecil Beaton
Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-iot-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.
Henry
Ward Beecher
All words are pegs to hand ideas on.
-Proverbs from
Saul Bellow
The great weight of the unspoken left them little to talk about.
- Seize the Day (1956)
Yogi Berra
Nobody goes there anymore; it’s too crowded.
You can observe a lot just by watching.
If people don’t want to come out to the ball park, nobody’s going to stop them.
Always go to other people's funeral, otherwise they won't go to yours.
The Bible
Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?
- The Sermon on the Mount
So persecuted they the prophets which were before you.
- The Sermon on the Mount
Whosovever shall compel thee to go a mile,
Go with him twain.
- The Sermon on the Mount
Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known.
- Luke 12:2
Ask the very beasts and they will teach you;
Ask the wild birds and they will tell you;
Crawling creatures will instruct you;
Fish in the sea will inform you.
For which of them all
knows not that this is the
In whose control lies every living soul
And the whole life of man.
- Job 12: 7-10
If your brother becomes poor and cannot maintain himself with you, you shall maintain him; as a stranger and a sojourner he shall live with you. Take no interest from him or increase, but fear your God, that your brother may live beside you. You shall not lend him your money at interest, nor give him your food for profit.
- Leviticus 25:33-37
He who is greatest among you shall be your servant; whoever exalts himself will be humbled and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.
- Matthew 23:11-12
In all things I have shown you one must help the weak, remembering the words of the Lord Jesus, how He said, "It is more blessed to give than to receive."
- Acts
If you pour yourself out for the hungry
And satisfy the desire of the afflicted,
Then shall your light rise in the darkness
And your gloom be as the
And the Lord will guide you continually
And satisfy your desire with good things
And make your bones strong;
And you shall be like a watered garden,
Like a spring of water
Whose waters fail not.
- Isaiah 58:10-11
If anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or speech, but in deed and in truth.
- 1 John 3:17-18
Jesus sat over by the treasury and beheld how the people were casting money into it and many who were rich cast much in. And there came a poor wido who threw in two mites, which makes a farthing and Jesus called unto him his disciples and said unto them, 'Verifly I say unto you that this poor widow hath cast in more than all the others for all they did cast in was out of their abundance, but she of her want did cast in all that she had.
- Mark
Ambrose Bierce
To the small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify, we give the name knowledge.
There's nothing new under ths sun, but there are lots of old things we still don't know.
Elizabeth
Bishop
Must we dream our dreams and have them too?
- Question of Travel
William Blake
The true method of knowledge is experiment.
Mel
Brooks
Everything we do in life is based on fear,
especially love.
Dick Brown - CEO of EDS
Beware of perfect people. They will never propel your enterprise to greatness. They're too cautious. You've got to be fast to be good.
Marcus Buckingham
Companies don't have one culture. They have as many as they have supervisors or managers. You want to build a strong culture? Hold every manager accountable for the culture that he or she builds.
Warren
Buffet
To invest successfully over a lifetime does not
require a stratospheric IQ, unusual business insights or inside information.
What’s needed is a sound intellectual framework for making decisions and
the ability to keep emotions from corroding that framework.
Robert Burns
O wad some pow’r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us!
It wad frae many a blunder free us
And foolish notion.
- To a Mouse (1786)
Joseph Campbell
The ultimate dragon is within you.
John Cassidy
As the demand for skeptical reporting dropped, the supply fell back to match it. - in The New Yorker (2002)
Raymond Chandler
There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself. - The Long Goodbye
The faster I write the better my output. If I'm going slow I'm in trouble. It means I'm pushing the words instead of being pulled by them.
Chinese Proverbs
That the birds of worry and care fly over your head, this you cannot change, but that they build nests in your hair, this you can prevent.
Cliff Claven (of "Cheers")
Well, ya see, Norm, it's like this. A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. And when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole because the general speed and health of the group keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members.
In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells. Excessive intake of alcohol, as we know, kills brain cells. But naturally, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine. That's why you always feel smarter after a few beer.
Arthur Coleman (Sun Microsystems)
The term management comes from the Italian word, maneggio, which pertained to training a horse to do repetitive tasks. Our current concept of managing people may be a bit broader than its Italian antecedent, but it still implies control. Managers have historically worked by recruiting, developing and controlling budgets, processes, tasks and people. The notion that you should "set a person free to see if they fly back to you" (or in this case, bring new ideas back to you ) is difficult for many managers to grasp. In fact, fundamentally different approaches to managing employees are needed in order to build a successful electronic corporation.
Confucius
Forget injuries, never forget kindnesses.
John Connolly
You can't bluff someone who isn't paying attention. - Every Dead Thing (1999)
Cynthia
Cooper (MCI VP of Internal Audits and 2002 Time Magazine Person of the Year)
There was only one right path to take and I would
take it again.
John & Joyce Corrington
It’s hard to believe those
names. I've wondered most of my life who made them up and why.
- A Project Named Desire (1987)
Steven
Covey
Live out of your imagination, not your history .
e.e. cummings
what if a much of a which of a wind
gives the truth to summer’s lie;
bloodies with dizzying leaves the sun
and yanks immortal stars away?
blow king to beggar and queen to seem
(blow friend to fiend: blow space to time)
--- when skies are hanged and oceans drowned,
the single secret will be man.
what if a keen of a lean wind flays
screaming hills with sleet and snow:
strangles valleys by ropes of thing
and stifles forests in white ago?
blow hope to terror; blow seeing to blind
(blow pity to envy and soul to mind)
--- whose hearts are mountains, roots are trees,
it’s they shall cry hello to spring.
what if a dawn of a doom of a dream
bites this universe in two,
peels forever out of his grave
and sprinkles nowhere with me and you?
blow soon to never and never to twice
(blow life to isn’t: blow death to was)
--- all nothing’s only our hugest home;
the most who die, the more we life.
- e.e. cummings
i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue, true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again, today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any --- lifted from the no
of all nothing --- human merely being
doubly unimaginable you?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
- e.e. cummings
Rodney
Dangerfield
If it weren’t for pickpockets, I’d have
no sex at all.
Tom Daschle
History is full of politicians whose rhetoric is out of step with reality, who promise something and then fail to deliver. But the Bush administration offers a credibility gap with a new twist. This is a White House that promises one thing knowing full well that it is delivering another.
Deep
Throat
Follow the money.
Ellen
DeGeneris
Procrastinate now --- don’t put it off.
Peter
DeVries
What I hate about writing is the paper work.
John Dewey
Education is not preparation for life, education is life itself.
Doctor
John
John Donne
No man is an island entire of itself;
Everyone is a piece of a continent, a part of the main.
If a clod be washed away
by the sea,
As well as if a manor or the friend’s or of thine own were.
Anyone’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
from Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions
Finley Peter Dunne
Don’t jump on a man unless he’s down.
Bob Dylan
A poem is a naked person.
Bringing It All Back Home
You don’t need a weatherman to tell which way the wind blows.
Subterranean Homesick Blues
My love, she’s like some raven
At my window with a broken wing.
Love Minus Zero
I wish I was on some Australian mountain range,
I wish I was on some Australian mountain range.
I have no reason to be there, but I imagine it might
Be some kind of change.
-Outlaw Blues
Don’t ask me nothin’ about nothin’
I just might tell you the truth.
Outlaw Blues
Don’t follow leaders
Watch the parking meters.
-Subterranean Homesick Blues
Well, it’s hard to stumble
And land in some muddy lagoon
When it’s nine below zero
And three o’clock in the afternoon.
-Outlaw Blues
He gives you a nickel, he gives you a dime
He asks you with a grin if you’re having a good time
Then he fines you every time you shut the door
I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s brother no more.
- Maggie's Farm
The losers now will be later to win
For the times they are a-changing
- The Times Are A-Changing
Roger
Ebert
I believe that if, at the
end of it all, according to our abilities, we have done something to make
others a little happier and something to make ourselves a little happier, that
is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make
ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to
the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our
circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this and I am happy that
I lived long enough to find it out.
- on “The Oprah
Winfrey Show” 2010
Egyptian
Proverb
Learn politeness from the impolite.
Barbara
Ehrenreich
Albert Einstein
Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.
I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.
Dwight Eisenhower
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of laborers, the genius of scientists, the hopes of its children ... This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from an iron cross.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The primary wisdom is intuition.
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
Carly Fiorina (CEO of Hewlett Packard)
The pace of change is so great, there is always something else going on. What that says to me is that you have to have strategic vision and peripheral vision. Strategic vision is the ability to look ahead and peripheral vision is the ability to look around, and both are important.
in The Wall Street Journal (2002)
Arthur Fonzarelli
Organizations are not cool. People are cool.
on Happy Days (1977)
Anatone
The law ... allows rich as well as poor to sleep under bridges.
Benjamin Franklin
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
Loretta
Gage
Faced with two evils, I picked one every time.
Mahatma Gandhi
There is more to life than increasing its speed.
Learn as if you were going to live forever. Live as if you were going to die tomorrow.
W.
S. Gilbert
It isn’t so much what’s on the table as
what’s on the chairs.
Goethe
Everything has been thought of before, but the problem is to think of it again.
Adam Gopnik
-in The New Yorker (2001)
Ed Gorman
They're always accusing liberals of wanting to legislate morality --- especially with civil rights --- but they don't have any problem telling you when and where you can buy liquor, whom you can have sex with (technically, adultery is still punishable by jail time), and what you can read.
- Save the Last Dance for Me (2002)
She had thrilling flesh.
- Save the Last Dance for Me (2002)
Fitzgerald was always doing that in his stories. Having some guy think about some girl who'd deserted or betrayed him long, long years ago. But when he though of her the pain was still fresh as a knife slash.
- Save the Last Dance for Me (2002)
... every once in a while you see somebody the way they really are --- it only takes a second of seeing them that way --- and then you can't hate them quite as much as you did. It's a curse.
- Save the Last Dance for Me (2002)
... the deserted baseball park where you could see advertisements on the fence for businesses that didn't exist anymore.
- Save the Last Dance for Me (2002)
Andrew Greeley
My songs will pass and be forgotten. What counts, however, is that I sang them.
Letters to a Loving God
Fannie
Lou Hamer
Nobody’s free ‘til everybody’s
free.
Steven Hawking
Why do we remember the past, but not the future?
-A Brief History of Time
Ernest
Hemingway
Poor Faulkner … thinks I don’t know the
ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and
better words, and those are the ones I use.
-Papa Hemingway
Hazel
Henderson
Individuals learn faster than institutions.
Heraclitus
There is nothing permanent except change.
Thomas Heywood
O God! O God! that it were possible
To undo things done; to call back yesterday ...
- A Woman Killed with Kindness
Darcy Hitchcock
Employees are professional "boss watchers." What managers say means nothing unless thier actions model what they say.
John Lee Hooker
"…the blues was here the day that the world was born. Sadness, loneliness; it come from man and woman. A woman gets sad 'bout her man done left her, man gets sad 'bout his woman done left him … started hummin' sad songs. Somethin' 'bout a woman. You can't say nothin' … a man can't say nothin' that ain't about a woman. A woman can't say nothin' without sayin' somethin' about a man. That's what it come from, now, 'cause even Adam was in the garden. It's no sin. Do you see in the Bible anywhere where singin' is a sin? This leads into what I'm going to say. God, if there is such a thing as God, because we all believe in a Supreme Being: he wants you to do right, love people all over the world, and that's what I'm doing. I'm serving people all over. I'm serving people, I'm reachin' out, getting' people, helpin' people. I do benefits, I gives 'em. That's treatin' 'em as God want. And I never see 'em, I never will see 'em. But my voice is all over the world. John Lee Hooker on a record. I'll be here for ever, but my body won't. Accordin' to the Bible, you doin' what God want you to do: help people . People that need help: the sick, the needy, crippled kids. I do's all of that. I study givin'. I'm a Christian, but I just don't run to church. I don't believe in runnin' to church. I don't believe in getting' on my knees prayin'. I don't believe in that."
"…I don't know nothin' that'll stop me from playin' the blues. I'll never retire. I'll be doing this until God Jehovah call me to the next world, and I'm hopin' I can play there. Once you a blues singer in your blood, you can retire from the public, but in your heart and in your blood you never retire 'til you gone. You know I wrote that song --- me and Van Morrison did it --- called 'Never Get Out of These Blues Alive?' I'll never --- I'll never get out of these blues alive. Yeah."
"I never build myself us. I let the people do that. I'm the most laid-back person, and I let them build me up. If you ask me, I say, 'I''m just a guy playin' some blues."
in Boogie Man by Charles Murray (2000)
Kin Hubbard
Every now and then an innocent man gets sent to the legislature.
The fellow who owns his own home is always just coming out of a hardware store.
Some fellers get credit for being conservative, when they’re really just stupid.
Don’t take life too seriously, you’ll never get out of it alive.
Langston Hughes
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore ---
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over ---
Like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just lays
Like a heavy load ...
Or does it explode?
Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951)
I play it cool
And dig all jive
That’s the reason
I stay alive.
My motto
As I live and learn
Is:
Dig and be dug
In return.
Motto (1959)
Thomas H. Huxley
Try to learn something
about everything and everything about something.
Jean
Claude Izzo
I’d spent half of my life crying, the other
half refusing to cry.
Chuormo (1996)
Jesse Jackson
When I was a boy we were poor and we had to make do with what we had. So my grandma used to make us quits that we used for blankets. She couldn't afford to go to the store and buy a blanket --- so she’d take scraps of cloth and sew them together. there’d be different colors and different patterns and different types of cloth --- but they all went together to make that big quilt to keep us warm.
That’s just like
-Grandma’s Quilt
(quoted by Marshall Frady in The New Yorker (1992)
Thomas Jefferson
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
-The Declaration of
I sincerely believe ... that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.
Franklin Jones
The trouble with being punctual is that nobody’s there to appreciate it.
Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance or a stranger.
Experience enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.
Jackie
Joyner-Kersee
I always had something to shoot for each year: to
jump one inch further.
Carl Jung
The term intuition does not denote something contrary to reason, but something outside of the province of reason.
Stuart Kaminsky
Everybody lies, but it doesn’t matter because nobody listens.
- Lieberman’s Law
It was the promise of a good day, but Rostnikov had learned from experience that the sun was indifferent to the petty crimes of man.
- Murder on the Trans-Siberian Express (2001)
Be wary of your own ambition. Temper your vision with an understanding of the value of survival.
- Murder on the Trans-Siberian Express (2002)
Rosabeth Kanter
The best way for business to move out of the Hall of Shame is to demonstrate a commitment to social causes. This also makes business sense. A focus on solving social problems has motivational benefits in a lean economy.
- in Business 2.0 Magazine
John F. Kennedy
Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.
In the haze of afternoon, while the air flowed saffron, I played my game for keeps --- for love, for poetry, and for eternal life
- The Testing Tree (1971)
My concept was to transform the events of my life into legend.
Darling, do you remember the man you married? Touch me, remind me who I am. (1995)
Let it happen the way it wants to go. That's the way I always feel about my poems.
Ann Landers
Opportunities are usually disguised as hard work so most people don't recognize them.
Tom Landry
I've learned something constructive from every defeat.
Emma Lazarus
Not unlike the brazen Giant of Greek Fame
With conquering limbs astride
From land to land;
Here, at our sea-washed,
Sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch,
Whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning
And her name
Mother of Exiles
From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome;
Her mild eyes command
The air bridge harbor that
Twin cities frame
"Keep ancient lands, your storied
pomp!" Cries she
With silent lips. "Give me you
Tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to
Breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your
Teeming shore.
Sent these, the homeless,
Tempest-tost to me.
I lift my lamp beside the Golden door.
- The New Colossus
John Lennon
Love is the flower you've got to let grow.
Life is what happens while you're making other plans.
Elmore Leonard
Frank Ryan’s 10-rules for success:
1. Always be polite on the job. Say please and thank you.
2. Never say more than is necessary.
3. Never call your partner by name --- unless you use a made-up name.
4. Dress well. Never look suspicious or like a bum.
5. Never use your own car.
6. Never count the take in the car.
7. Never flash money in a bar or with women.
8. Never go back to an old bar or hangout once you have moved up.
9. Never tell anyone your business. Never tell a junkie even your name.
10. Never associate with people known to be in crime.
- Swag (1976)
Thomas J. Leonard
The Top 10 Most Effective Things That You Can Say:
1. Thank you very much. 2, You are so right. 3. How can I help you right now? 4. I ask that you ... 5. I apologize for for what has happened. 6. Why is that? 7. Are you willing to ...? 8. I love you. 9. Will you help me? 10. Yes.
Abraham Lincoln
You can fool some of the
people all of the time and you can fool all the people some of the time, but
you can't fool all the people all the time.
That [man] can compress
the most words in the fewest ideas of any man I ever knew.
-Life
on the circuit with
Vince Lombardi
Run to daylight.
- Vince Lombardi
Ferdinand Lundberg
Crime, carefully planned and
executed, is demonstrably the royal high road to pecuniary success in the
- The Rich and the Super Rich (1964)
John Lutz
During daylight hours there are several telephone numbers that phone company repairmen and installers use to test equipment. But in the late night and early morning hours, these lines are used by people who somehow get the numbers. They get to know each other without seeing the other party. Then, maybe they make an appointment to meet somewhere, usually in a crowded public place, like a shopping mall. When they get there, they look each other over as strangers without being absolutely sure who they’re looking at.
If they like what they see, they make or accept overtures; if not, they simply walk away without making contact. It’s nothing new; it’s been going on in most big cities for years. There are people who have met through the lines and later married.
Technically, it’s illegal, but the phone company puts up with it. They don’t use the lines during those hours anyway and if they prosecuted these people, there would be nothing in it for them other than some bad publicity. People in trouble who need someone they can pour their problems to, someone who can’t even find out who they are, use the lines.
- Night Lines (1984)
Og Mandino
I will persist until I succeed. Always will I take another step. If that is of no avail, I will take another, and yet another. In truth, one step at a time is not too difficult ... I know that small attempts, repeated, will complete any undertaking.
Beginning
today, treat
everyone you meet as if they are going to be dead by
Orison Swett Marden
Achievement is not always success, while reputed failure often is. It is honest endeavor, persistent effort to do the best possible under any and all circumstances.
Groucho Marx
Either this man is dead or my watch has stopped.
There’s one way to find out if a man is honest --- ask him. If he says, "yes," you know he is a crook.
The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made.
I have had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn't it.
If I held you any tighter, I'd be behind you.
If you can’t see the door that has opened, it
may be because you’re still standing in front of the one that has closed.
(2006)
Tug McGraw
You gotta believe!
Thomas
McGuane
I like young girls. Their stories are shorter.
William McIllvanney
Just as the apparent openness of rectitude will have its hidden places where foul things moulder in the dark, so, in the shadowed lives of those outside the law may sometimes be found concealed honesty and naive ideals.
- Strange Loyalties (1991)
So now I do my job. It has a purpose. It’s all right. But I had intended to do more.
- William McIlvanney
Strange Loyalties (1991)
Four experts had an appointment with an ordinary man. They needed him to ratify their findings, or anything they achieved would be meaningless. As they drove to meet him, they knocked down a man on the road. He was dying. If they tried to save him, they might miss their appointment. They decided that their appointment, which concerned all of us, was more important than the life of one man. They drove on to keep their appointment. They did not know that the man they were to meet was the man they had left to die.
-Strange Loyalties (1991)
Mignon
McLaughlin
Youth is not enough. And love is not enough. And
success is not enough. And, if we could achieve it, enough would not be enough.
A. A. Milne
One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.
Joni Mitchell
By the time we got to
We were half a million strong
And everywhere there was song and celebration
And I dreamed I saw the bombers
Riding shotgun in the sky
And they were turning into butterflies
Above our nation.
-
Michel de Montaigne
What do I know?
Michael
Moore
You can’t debate satire --- either you get it
or you don’t.
In The New Yorker (2004)
J. P. Morgan
A man always has two reasons for doing anything --- a good reason and the real reason.
Walter Mosley
He took a secretary-type wallet from a desk drawer and produced a stack of bills. He counted out ten of them, licking his square thumb for every other one and placed them in a neat stack next to the whiskey. I couldn’t see why it shouldn’t be my one hundred dollars.
- "Easy" Rawlins
in Devil in a Blue Dress (1989)
“Do you know how to sew, Officer? I don’t mean darn,” I said, “I mean could you piece together a pattern and stitch the seams of a shirt or a pair of pants?”
“Can you bake a cake from scratch or lay a floor in an unfinished room?” I continued “Or lay bricks or tan leather from a dead animal?”
“I can do all those things,” I said. “I can tell you when a man’s about to go crazy or when a thug’s really a coward or blowhard. I can glance around a room and tell you if you have to worry about getting robbed. All that I get from being poor and black in this country you so proud saving from the Koreans and Vietnamese. Where I come from they don’t have dark-skinned private detectives. If a man needs a helping hand, he goes to someone who does it on the side. I’m that man, Colonel. That’s why you sent Detective Knorr to my house. That’s why you talk to me when I come by. What I do I do because it’s a part of me. I studied in the streets and back alleys. What I know most cops would give their eyeteeth to understand. So don’t worry about how I got here or how to explain what I do. Just listen to me and you might learn something.”
- “Easy” Rawlins in Bad Boy Brawley Brown (2002)
“…one kind of man in another kind of world.” –
Mother
Jones
Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. (in
reply to the judge who asked her who gave her permission to speak on the
streets.)
Anne Mulcahy (CEO of Xerox Corporation)
What do you really believe makes a difference in the company? For me it's clear. It's about customers and employees. Everything else follows. If you take care of your customers and you have motivated employees, everything else follows.
- in
Jim Mullen (CEO of Biogen)
Sometimes you get more creativity when you're in a box than when you can do anything. In really difficult situations, sometimes, you get the most interesting thinking.
in Fast Company (2002)
William
Murray
Most of the disputes of the world arise from words.
Morgan vs. Jones (1773)
Freidrich Neitzche
One repays a teacher badly by remaining a pupil.
Clifford
Odets
Well, maybe I don’t know a thing; maybe I
fell outa the cradle when I was a kid and ain’t been right since …
Maybe I got a glass eye, but it come from working in a factory at the
age of eleven. They hooked it out because they didn’t have a shield on
the works. But I wear it like a meal ‘cause it tells the world where I
belong --- deep down in the working class! … This is you life and mine!
It’s skull and bones every incha the road! Christ, we’re dyin’
by inches! For what? For the debutant-ees to have their sweet comin’ out
parties in the Ritz! Poppa’s got a daughter she’s gotta get he
picture in the papers. Christ, they make ‘em with our blood! … Slow
death or fight. It’s war! – Waiting for Lefty
Georgia O'Keefe
Nobody see a flower really; it is so small. We haven't time, and to see takes time --- like to have a friend takes time.
A.M. O'Shaughnesy
We are the music makers
We are the dreamers of dreams
Wandering by lone sea breakers
Resting by desolate streams
World losers and world forsakers
In the pale moon beams
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world forever it seems.
Thomas Paine
The accumulation of great wealth is, in many instances, the effect of paying too little for the labor that produced it, the consequence of which is that the working people perish in old age and the employer abounds in affluence.
Robert
Parker
It was a little past five-thirty in the evening and
the bar was lined with people. Made you wonder about the work people did if
they had to get drunk when they finished.
- Paper Doll (1993)
Rosa Parks
I did not get on that bus to get arrested. I got on the bus to go home.
- Quiet Strength (1994)
Ellen Parr
The cure for boredome is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.
George S. Patton
Never tell people how to
do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their
ingenuity.
Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom.
Irene
Peter
Just because everything is different doesn’t
mean that anything has changed.
Max Planck
(The scientist must have) a vivid intuitive imagination for new ideas that are not generated by deduction, but by artistically creative imagination.
Plato
At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet.
Kurt Rambis
I'm in favor of it as long as it's multiple choice.
-on his opinion of drug tests
Jeanette
Rankin
We’re half the people; we should be half the
Congress.
Susan Reid
That is what taxes are for. If you have forgotten, be reminded. We have pooled our resources to get the services we all need but can't afford on our own. None of us needs all of them, but all of us need many of them.
- in
the
Will
There’s no trick to being a humorist, when you have the whole government working for you.
The income tax has made liars out of more people than golf.
Franklin Roosevelt
We have nothing to fear but fear itself.
Harriet Rubin
Advice is overrated. Before you learn what others know, you need to learn what YOU know.
in Fast Company magazine
John Ruskin
The question is not what a man can scorn or disparage or find fault with, but what he can love and value and appreciate.
Bertrand
Russell
The trouble with the world is the stupid are so
cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.
J.D. Salinger
I thought it was ‘If a body catch a body," I said. "Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids and nobody’s around --- nobody big, I mean --- except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff --- I mean, if they’re running and they don't look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be. I know it’s crazy."
The Catcher in the
Carl
Sandburg
Slang is language that
takes off its coat, spits on its hands and goes to work.
-The Dictionary of American Slang (1934)
Tim Sanders (Chief solutions officer at Yahoo)
The less you expect in return for acts of professional generosity, the more you will receive.
Knowledge sharing is the basis of everything. Share knowledge with reckless abandon.
Diane Sawyer
It's in the preparation --- in those dreary pedestrian virtues they taught you in 7th grade and you didn't believe. It's making the extra call and caring a lot.
Charles Schultz
There’ nothing wrong with being crabby! I’ proud of being crabby! The crabby little girls of today are the crabby old women of tomorrow!!
- Lucy
William Shakespeare
Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered
-Cymbeline
Have not a furnace for your foe so hot that it do singe yourself.
-King Henry VIII
Cowards die many times; a brave man dies but once.
-Julius Caesar
What
wound did ever heal but by degrees
-Othello
There
is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes is so.
I
wasted time and now doth time waste me.
To
climb steep hills requires slow pace at first.
The
miserable have no other medicine but only hope.
Men at some time are masters of their fates: the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.
-Julius Caesar
Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak whispers the over fraught heart and bids it break.
We know what we are, but know not what we may become.
Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good that we oft may win, by fearing to attempt.
How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world!
This above all --- to thine own self be true.
Georges Simenon
He patiently tried to understand, never forgetting that the most obvious motives are not always the most important. If he hadn’t a very high opinion of men and their capabilities, he went on believing in man himself. He looked for his weak points and when, in the end, he put his finger on them, he didn’t crow with joy, but on the contrary, felt a certain sadness.
- Georges Simenon
Maigret in Society (1960)
Jim Sinegal (CEO of COSTCO)
It's improper for one person to take credit when it takes so many people to build a successful organization. When you try to be top dong, you don't create loyalty. It you can't give credit (and take blame), you will drown in you inability to inspire.
Martha Sinetar
Rather than denying problems, focus inventively, intentionally on what solutions might look or feel like. Our mind is meant to generate ideas that help us escape circumstantial traps --- if we trust it to do so.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Not everything has a name. Some things lead us into a realm beyond words.
Sophocles
One word frees us of all the weight and pain in life. That word is love.
Carl Spaatz
He thinks things through very clearly before going off half-cocked.
John Steinbach
Every man in a bank hates what the bank does and yet the bank does it.
Grapes of Wrath
Kino heard the little splash of morning waves on the beach. It was very good --- Kino closed his eyes again to listen to his music.
The
Jody felt very sad. "If you’d like a glass of lemonade, I could make it for you."
Grandfather was about to refuse and then he saw Jody’s face. "That would be nice." he said, "Yes, it would be nice to drink a lemonade."
Jody ran into the kitchen where his mother was wiping the last of the breakfast dishes. "Can I have a lemon to make a lemonade for grandfather?"
His mother mimicked, "And another lemon to make a lemonade for you."
"No, ma’am. I don’t want one."
"Jody! You’re sick!" Then she stopped suddenly. "Take a lemon out of the cooler," She said softly. Here, I’ll reach the squeezer down to you."
The Red Pony (1937)
Casey Stengel
Good hitting always stops good pitching and vice-versa.
Adlai Stevenson
Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion, but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.
I feel like the boy who stubbed his toe. I’m too old to cry, but it hurts too much to laugh. -Concession Speech
Some in
All progress has resulted from people who took unpopular positions.
As scarce as truth is, the supply seems greater than the demand.
We have to serve the truth as candidates for public office and not mislead, misguide or misdirect the people merely to provoke emotional responses and win votes. (1958)
Let’s talk sense to the American people. Let’s tell them the truth ... better we lose the election than mislead the people. - Acceptance Speech (1952)
It is a common heresy and its graves are to be found all over the earth. It is the heresy that says you can kill an idea by killing a man, defeat a principle by defeating a person, bury truth by burying its vehicle. (1952)
Man does not live by words alone, even though he sometimes has to eat them.
Man may burn his brother at the stake, but he cannot reduce truth to ashes;
He may murder his fellow man with a shot, but he does not murder justice;
He may slay armies of men, but, as it is written,
Truth beareth off the
victory. (1952)
If they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them.
Paul Stoltz
Without adversity, we can never unleash our greatness.
In Costco Connection
William Strunk
Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise.
-The Elements of Style (1918)
Robert Sutton (Professor of Management Science - Stanford)
Managers consistently delude themselves about how much good they're doing. The oath for managers should be the same as physicians. First do no harm.
Edward Teller
When you get to the end of all the light, you know it's time to step into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things will happen: either you will be given something solid to stand on or you will be taught how to fly.
Alfred Lord Tennyson
It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
Studs Terkel
Once you wake up the human animal, you can’t put it back to sleep again.
-Working (1972)
When you got your hand in the lion’s mouth, don’t do nothin’ til you get it out.
- Big Bill Broonzy
in Talking to Myself (1973)
Fuck it! It’s only a car.
- Gary Bryner, Union President
in Working (1972)
I done the same job twenty-two years, twenty-three years. Everybody else on that job is dead.
- Ned Williams, stock chaser
in Working
I have brought home a forty-hour paycheck for Lord knows how long and that’s why I work.
- Hobart Foote, Utility man
in Working
When I put the plate down, you don’t hear a sound. When I pick up a glass, I want it to be just right. When someone says, "How come you’re just a waitress?" I say, "Don’t you think you deserve being served by me?"
- Dolores Dante, Waitress
in Working
To be remembered was the wish, spoken and unspoken, of the heroes and heroines of this book.
- Studs Terkel
Working (1972)
... a Monday through Friday sort of dying.
- Terkel
To survive the day is triumph enough.
- Terkel
This book, being about work, is, by its very nature, about violence --- to the spirit as well as to the body.
- Terkel
On the evening bus, the tense, pinched faces of young file clerks and elderly secretaries tell us more than we care to know. On the expressways, middle management men pose without grace behind their wheels as they flee city and job.
- Terkel
Jobs ... are too small for our spirit. Jobs are not big enough for people.
- Nora Watson, Editor
in Working
One night a guy hit his head on a welding gun. He went to his knees. He was bleeding like a pig, blood was oozing out. So I stopped the line for a second and ran over to help him. The foreman turned the line on again, he almost stepped on the guy. That’s the first thing they always do. They didn’t even call an ambulance. The guy walked to the medic department --- that’s about half a mile --- he had about five stitches put in his head. The foreman didn’t say anything. He just turned the line on. You’re nothing to any of them.
- Jim Grayson, Spot-welder
in Working
You can work next to a guy for months without even knowing his name.
- Grayson
I began to see how everything was so wrong --- when growers can have an intricate watering system to irrigate their crops, but they can’t have running water inside the houses of workers. Veterinarians tend to the needs of domestic animals, but they can’t have adequate unemployment compensation for the workers. They treat him like a farm implement. In fact, they treat their implements better and their domestic animals better. They have heat and insulated barns for the animals, but the workers live in beat-up shacks with no heat at all.
- Roberto Acuna, Farm worker
in Working
Sonny Terry
In them days I just as soon died --- except for my harmonica. It was like a frined who didn't give a damn if I could see or not.
William Makepeace Thackery
The world is a looking glass and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face.
Henry David Thoreau
Nations are possessed with an insane ambition to perpetuate the memory of themselves by the amount of hammered stone they leave. What if equal pains were taken to smooth and polish their manners? One piece of good sense would be more memorable than a monument as high as the moon.
Walden
If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life...
We are determined to be starved before we are hungry. Men say that a stitch in time saves nine, and so they take a thousand stitches today to save nine tomorrow.
A man needs only to be turned around once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost.
Why should not a poet’s cat be winged as well as his horse?
In a pleasant spring morning all men’s sins are forgiven. Such a day is a truce to vice.
Thank God, men cannot as yet fly and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.
Some can be patriotic who have no self-respect, and sacrifice the greater to the less. They love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their day. Patriotism is a maggot in their heads.
I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. - Walden
Only that day dawns
To which we are awake.
Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life, are, not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple and meager life than the poor. The ancient philosophers, Chinese, Hindoo, Persian and Greek, were a class than which none has been poorer in outward riches, none so rich in inward. We know not much about them. It is remarkable that we know so much of them as we do. The same is true of the more modern reformers and benefactors of their race. None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life, but from the vantage ground of what we shall call voluntary poverty. - Walden
The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation.
I went into the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I wanted to live deep and suck all the marrow out of life.
Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
Go confidently in the
direction of your dreams. Live the life you've imagined.
I have now a library of
nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred of which I wrote myself.
Literary criticism is “the
art of navigation by those who have never been out of the sight of land.
The truly efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure.
James Thurber
You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.
Lily Tomlin
Ninety-eight per cent of the adults in this country are decent, hard-working, honest Americans. It’s the other lousy two per cent that get all the publicity. But then --- we elected them.
They could be in three places at the same time and still be at one with the universe.
We’re giving jobs to people who would otherwise be out of work if we weren’t exploiting cheap labor.
If life is so meaningless, then why are we always bringing it up?
Mark Twain
In a museum in
It’s easy to endure adversity --- if it happens to someone else.
Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities, but truth isn’t.
Crank: A man with a new idea, until it succeeds.
I have never let schooling interfere with my education.
There are several good protections against temptation, but the surest is cowardice.
Once of the striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat only has nine lives.
The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money.
Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one is listening. Love like you've never been hurt and live like it's heaven on earth.
The only way to keep your
health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like and do what
you'd rather not.
I would rather go to bed
with Lillian Russell stark naked than Ulysses S. Grant in full battle regalia.
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect.
Hal Varian
It isn't that information is exploding, but accessibility is. There's just about as much information this year as there was last year; it's been growing at a steady rate. It's just that now it's so much more accessible because of information technology. The consensus is that a Web crawler could get to a terabyte of publicly accessible HTML. A terabyte is about a million books. The UC Berkeley library has about 8 million books, and the Library of Congress has 20 million books.
Gore
Vidal
The people don’t matter to this gang. They
pay no attention. They think in totalitarian terms. They’ve got the
troops. They’ve got the army. They’ve got Congress. They’ve
got the judiciary. Why should they worry? Let the chattering classes chatter.
Bush is a thug. I think there is something really wrong with him.
Pancho
Villa
Don’t let it end
like this. Tell them I said something. (Last words)
Virgil
Love conquers all.
Hugh Walpole
"What’s all this
about one man, one vote?" asked the
"Why, one bloody man, one bloody vote!" Bill replied.
"Well, why the hell can’t they say so?"
William Arthur Ward
If you can imagine it, you can achieve it.
If you can dream it, you can become it.
Charles Dudley Warner
I am convinced that the majority of people would be generous from selfish motives, if they had the opportunity.
Earl Warren
It is doubtful that congress would pass the Bill of Rights if it were introduced today.
Jack Welch
The idea flow from the human spirit is absolutely unlimited. All you have to do is tap into the well. I don't like to use the word efficiency. It's creativity. It's a belief that every person counts.
Mae
West
I never loved another person the way I loved
myself.
Oscar Wilde
A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed person.
Alcohol, taken in sufficient quantities, produces all the effects of intoxication.
I can resist anything except temptation.
When the Gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.
Nothing worth knowing can be taught.
Ted Williams
People always told me that my natural ability and good eyesight were the reasons for my success as a hitter. They never talk about the practice, practice, practice.
Flip Wilson
The cost of living is going up and the chance of living is going down.
Woodrow
Wilson
If you want to make
enemies, try to change something.
Yukiso Yamamoto
Through teaching others, we find out how little we really know.
Elizabeth Clarkson Zwart
The older I grow, the less important the comma becomes. Let the reader catch his own breath.