Quotes to inspire and reflect

God created sex. Priests created marriage.

You ask, What is our policy? I will say; "It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us: to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy." You ask, what is our aim? I can answer with one word: Victory - victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.

Men are equal; it is not birth but virtue that makes the difference.

The friendly cow all red and white, I love with all my heart: She gives me cream with all her might; to eat with apple tart.

When one is trying to do something beyond his known powers it is useless to seek the approval of friends. Friends are at their best in moments of defeat.

Truth, springs from argument amongst friends.

There is as much difference between us and ourselves as there is between us and others.

Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it.

Man is never honestly the fatalist, nor even the stoic. He fights his fate, often desperately. He is forever entering bold exceptions to the rulings of the bench of gods. This fighting, no doubt, makes for human progress, for it favors the strong and the brave. It also makes for beauty, for lesser men try to escape from a hopeless and intolerable world by creating a lovelier one of their own

Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages

Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they translate into their own language, and forthwith it is something entirely different.

All [zoos] actually offer to the public in return for the taxes spent upon them is a form of idle and witless amusement, compared to which a visit to a penitentiary, or even to a State legislature in session, is informing, stimulating and ennobling

Who can believe that there is no soul behind those luminous eyes!

Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.

You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.

Earthly minds, like mud walls, resist the strongest batteries; and though, perhaps, sometimes the force of a clear argument may make some impression, yet they nevertheless stand firm, keep out the enemy, truth, that would captivate or disturbed them.

What a glorious garden of wonders the lights of Broadway would be to anyone lucky enough to be unable to read. G.K.

Although the whole of this life were said to be nothing but a dream and the physical world nothing but a phantasm, I should call this dream or phantasm real enough, if, using reason well, we were never deceived by it. Baron Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.

Nature gets credit which should in truth be reserved for ourselves: the rose for its scent, the nightingale for its song; and the sun for its radiance. The poets are entirely mistaken. They should address their lyrics to themselves and should turn them into odes of self-congratulation on the excellence of the human mind.

He who will not economize will have to agonize.

That all our knowledge begins with experience, there is indeed no doubt. But although our knowledge originates WITH experience, it does not all arise OUT OF experience.

The most merciful thing in the world . . . is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. H.P.

Do not commit your poems to pages alone, sing them I pray you.

Poetry is to hold judgment on your soul.

Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it. I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.

A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.

Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event.

Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.

This coffee plunges into the stomach...the mind is aroused, and ideas pour forth like the battalions of the Grand Army on the field of battle.... Memories charge at full gallop...the light cavalry of comparisons deploys itself magnificently; the artillery of logic hurry in with their train of ammunition; flashes of wit pop up like sharp-shooters.

Time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.

I would rather see the portrait of a dog that I know, than all the allegorical paintings they can show me in the world.

On thinking about Hell, I gather My brother Shelley found it was a place Much like the city of London. I Who live in Los Angeles and not in London Find, on thinking about Hell, that it must be Still more like Los Angeles.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

Through and through the world is infested with quantity. To talk sense is to talk quantities, It is no use saying the nation is large- how large? It is no uses aying that radium is scarce- how scarce? You cannot evade quantity. You may fly to poetry and music and quantity and number will face you in your rhythms and your octaves.

For after all what is man in nature? A nothing in relation to infinity, all in relation to nothing, a central point between nothing and all and infinitely far from understanding either. The ends of things and their beginnings are impregnably concealed from him in an impenetrable secret. He is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness out of which he was drawn and the infinite in which he is engulfed.

Nobel prize money is a lifebelt thrown to a swimmer who has already reached the shore in safety.

We all live in the protection of certain cowardices which we call our principles.

Do not fear death so much but rather the inadequate life.

Put out the light.

More light! Give me more light!

Chief of the Army.

Jefferson still survives.

They can conquer who believe they can.

Drink to me.

Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need.

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.

It is by acts and not by ideas that people live.