Quotes to inspire and reflect

Personally I rather look forward to a computer program winning the world [chess] championship. Humanity needs a lesson in humility.

We are survival machines - robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes.

You can never get the smell of smoke out. Like the smell of failure in life.

I could not say I believe. I know! I have had the experience of being gripped by something that is stronger than myself, something that people call God.

I have lived some thirty years on this planet and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors.

Is it better to be the lover or the loved one? Neither, if your cholesterol is over six hundred. By love, of course, I refer to romantic love -- the love between man and woman, rather than between mother and child, or a boy and his dog, or two headwaiters.

Doing abominations is against the law, particularly if the abominations are done while wearing a lobster bib.

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DOE Unbearably lovely music is heard as the curtain rises, and we see the woods on a summer afternoon. A fawn dances on and nibbles slowly at some leaves. He drifts lazily through the soft foliage. Soon he starts coughing and drops dead.

To be conservative at 20 is heartless and to be a liberal at 60 is plain idiocy.

Thought: why does man kill? He kills for food. And not only for food: frequently there must be a beverage.

A mind forever voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone.

All Bibles are man-made. Thomas A.

The peasants of the Asturias believe that in every litter of wolves there is one pup that is killed by the mother for fear that on growing up it would devour the other little ones.

If a cluttered desk signs a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?

God is the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, the miserable. They find not only sanctuary in His arms, but also a kind of superiority, soothing to their macerated egos; He will set them above their betters

Trapped, like a trap in a trap.

Anyone who has got a book collection and a garden wants for nothing.

If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything.

Politics is no exact science.

A candour affected is a dagger concealed.

To stand up -- or be setup?

A man does not sin by commission only, but often by omission.

A little flesh, a little breath, and a Reason to rule all - that is myself.

To refrain from imitation is the best revenge.

Where life is possible at all, a right life is possible; life in a palace is possible; therefore, even in a palace a right life is possible.

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

I call that a scumhead.

A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education.

Coolidge is dead"How could they tell?

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other.

She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit. W.

God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.

Words ought to be a little wild for they are the assaults of thought on the unthinking.

Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.

Everything is funny as long as it is happening to Somebody Else. Will Rogers, Illiterate Digest (1924), "Warning to Jokers: lay off the prince" An ardent supporter of the hometown team should go to a game prepared to take offense, no matter what happens.

One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.

The public will believe anything, so long as it is not founded on truth.

Everything in the world may be endured except continued prosperity.

There are more fools in the world than there are people.

Illusion is the first of all pleasures.

Parents were invented to make children happy by giving them something to ignore.

Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.

There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it.

Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.

All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it

It is by universal misunderstanding that all agree. For if, by ill luck, people understood each other, they would never agree.

In times of joy, all of us wished we possessed a tail we could wag. W.H.

Why is it that our memory is good enough to retain the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not good enough to recollect how often we have told it to the same person?