QOTD category archive

Charlotte Bronte, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

It is not violence that best overcomes hate — nor vengeance that most certainly heals injury.

Thor Heyerdahl:

A civilized nation can have no enemies, and one cannot draw a line across a map, a line that doesn’t even exist in nature and say that the ugly enemy lives on the one side, and good friends live on the other.

Jessamyn West, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

How can you tell whether or not you have had enough until you’ve had a little too much?

H. L. Mencken, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

It was morality that burned the books of the ancient sages, and morality that halted the free inquiry of the Golden Age and substituted for it the credulous imbecility of the Age of Faith. It was a fixed moral code and a fixed theology which robbed the human race of a thousand years by wasting them upon alchemy, heretic-burning, witchcraft and sacerdotalism.

Agatha Christie’s character, Jane Marple:

I always think the worst. What is so sad is that one is so often justified in doing so.

Robert Heinlein, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

The whole principle [of censorship] is wrong. It’s like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can’t have steak.

Benjamin Jowett, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

The real measure of our wealth is how much we’d be worth if we lost all our money.

Moe Howard:

Only fools are positive.

Knute Rockne:

I’ve found that prayers work best when you have big players.

George Orwell:

All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.

Lowell Thomas:

The man who can speak acceptably is usually given credit for an ability out of all proportion to what he really possesses.

Andrew Jackson:

It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their own selfish purposes.

Peter York:

If beauty isn’t genius it usually signals at least a high level of animal cunning.

E. L. Doctorow:

I try to avoid experience if I can. Most experience is bad.

Henry Clay:

Statistics are no substitute for judgment.

Sam Brown:

Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance.

Gertrude Stein:

I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor. It’s better to be rich.

Dave Barry, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

Thus the metric system did not really catch on in the States unless you count the increasing popularity of the 9mm bullet.

W. Somerset Maugham:

I can imagine no more comfortable frame of mind for the conduct of life than a humorous resignation.

John Knox:

You cannot antagonize and influence at the same time.