QOTD category archive

Alfred North Whitehead:

I have always noticed that deeply and truly religious persons are fond of a joke, and I am suspicious of those who aren’t.

Jules Feiffer:

Maturity is only a short break in adolescence.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

Madness is rare in individuals – but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule.

Upton Sinclair:

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

Addendum:

In an appropriate coincidence, today’s QOTD is cited in this item in the Inky.

And it is quite on target, to boot.

John Cleese, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

I find it rather easy to portray a businessman. Being bland, rather cruel, and incompetent comes naturally to me.

Johnny Carson, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

People will pay more to be entertained than educated.

Carrie Fisher, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

As you get older, the pickings get slimmer, but the people don’t.

Lewis Grizzard, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

As best as I can tell, God was undefeated in all sports last year. Anybody who won thanked Him, and I never heard a single loser blame Him.

William Gibson:

If you read the Victorians writing about themselves, they’re describing something that never existed. The Victorians didn’t think of themselves as sexually repressed, and they didn’t think of themselves as racist. They didn’t think of themselves as colonialists. They thought of themselves as the crown of creation. Of course, we might be Victorians, too.

A. J. Liebling, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

People everywhere confuse what they read in newspapers with news.

Erasmus, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

A good prince will tax as lightly as possible those commodities which are used by the poorest members of society.

Johnny Carson:

I know a man who gave up smoking, drinking, sex, and rich food. He was healthy right up to the day he killed himself.

Barbara Jordan:

But this is the great danger America faces. That we will cease to be one nation and become instead a collection of interest groups: city against suburb, region against region, individual against individual. Each seeking to satisfy private wants.

Lu Xun:

To be suspicious is not a fault. To be suspicious all the time without coming to a conclusion is the defect.

Xenophon:

Fast is fine, but accuracy is everything.

Eleanor Roosevelt, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

Un-American activity cannot be prevented or routed out by employing un-American methods; to preserve freedom we must use the tools that freedom provides.

Lech Walesa:

The thing that lies at the foundation of positive change, the way I see it, is service to a fellow human being.

Calvin Coolidge:

I have never been hurt by what I have not said.

Molly Ivins:

Next time I tell you someone from Texas should not be president of the United States, please pay attention.