QOTD category archive

Humphry Davy:

The art galleries of Paris contain the finest collection of frames I ever saw.

Abbie Hoffman:

Expedience, not justice, is the rule of contemporary American law.

Richard Wagner:

I hate this fast growing tendency to chain men to machines in big factories and deprive them of all joy in their efforts – the plan will lead to cheap men and cheap products.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

It is not possible to devour me without insisting that I sing praises of my devourer?

Henry Taylor:

He who gives what he would as readily throw away, gives without generosity; for the essence of generosity is in self sacrifice.

John W. Gardner, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

The society which scorns excellence in plumbing, because plumbing is an humble activity, and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy, because philosophy is an exalted activy, will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.

Simeon Strunsky, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

People who want to understand democracy should spend less time in the library with Aristotle and more time on the buses and in the subway.

Franz Kafka:

I do not read advertisements. I would spend all of my time wanting things.

Flannery O’Connor:

Conviction without experience makes for harshness.

George Bernard Shaw, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

Gambling promises the poor what property performs for the rich: something for nothing.

Marcius Porcius Cato, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

Those who steal from private individuals spend their lives in stocks and chains; those who steal from the public treasure go dressed in gold and purple.

George W. Bush:

You can fool some of the people all the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on.

B. F. Skinner:

Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.

Frank Knox:

I believe with all my heart that civilization has produced nothing finer than a man or woman who thinks and practices true tolerance.

Susan Ertz, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Albert Einstein, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

A theory can be proved by experiment; but no path leads from experiment to the birth of a theory.

John F. Kennedy, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

I am sorry to say that there is too much point to the wisecrack that life is extinct on other planets because their scientists were more advanced than ours.

Wernher von Braun, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

Crash programs fail because they are based on the theory that, with nine women pregnant, you can get a baby in a month.

Hugh Downs:

I’ve always thought that the stereotype of the dirty old man is really the creation of a dirty young man who wants the field to himself.

Jim Hightower:

Politics isn’t about left versus right; it’s about top versus bottom.