QOTD category archive

James Thurber:

The animals that depend on instinct have an inherent knowledge of the laws of economics and of how to apply them; Man, with his powers of reason, has reduced economics to the level of a farce which is at once funnier and more tragic than Tobacco Road.

James Baldwin:

I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.

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B. R. Ambedkar:

History shows that where ethics and economics come in conflict, victory is always with economics. Vested interests have never been known to have willingly divested themselves unless there was sufficient force to compel them.

Image via Down with Tyranny.

Fiorello LaGuardia, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

Politics is very much like taxes – everybody is against them, or everybody is for them as long as they don’t apply to him.

Ashleigh Brilliant, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I’m right.

Noam Chomsky, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it’s from Neptune.

James Thurber, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy, wealthy and dead.

Edsger Dijkstra, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

(I)t is impossible to sharpen a pencil with a blunt axe. It is equally vain to try to do it with ten blunt axes instead.

George Washington:

Over grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.

Gertrude Stein:

Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.

Samuel Butler, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

People in general are equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, and at seeing it practiced.

Lee Trevino, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

The older I get the better I used to be!

C. S. Lewis, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.

I remind my atheist friends that faith is the evidence of things unseen and that, if I’m wrong, I’m just as dead.

Mark Twain, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect.

Rita Mae Brown, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

I think the reward for conformity is that everyone likes you except yourself.

Charlie Chan, in The Black Camel:

Obnoxious Rich Person: You need a lie detector.

Chan: Lie detector?

Obnoxious Rich Person: Yes, a device which can tell instantly whether someone is lying.

Chan: Oh. You mean wife. Already have one.

Thanksgiving has become a day for family.

George Carlin:

The other night I ate at a real nice family restaurant. Every table had an argument going.

Jonathan Swift, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

Lord, I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing!

Margaret Atwood, from the Quotemaster (subscribe here):

Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results.

Afterthought:

When evil and stupidity ally themselves, all bets are off.

Elizabeth Taylor:

The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they’re going to have some pretty annoying virtues.