Quotes to inspire and reflect

There are only two ways of telling the complete truth--anonymously and posthumously.

The Romans would never have found time to conquer the world if they had been obliged first to learn Latin.

Behind the phony tinsel of Hollywood lies the real tinsel.

To disagree with three-fourths of the British public is one of the first requisites of sanity.

Know how to ask. There is nothing more difficult for some people, nor for others, easier.

If you aspire to the highest place, it is no disgrace to stop at the second, or even the third, place.

A painting in a museum hears more ridiculous opinions than anything else in the world.

It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art.

Before you contradict an old man, my fair friend, you should endeavor to understand him.

The days of the digital watch are numbered.

The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.

The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.

Life is an unbroken succession of false situations.

We think in generalities, but we live in detail.

I think that somehow, we learn who we really are and then live with that decision.

Your first appearance, he said to me, is the gauge by which you will be measured; try to manage that you may go beyond yourself in after times, but beware of ever doing less.

I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me.

Never do anything when you are in a temper, for you will do everything wrong.

Make up your mind to act decidedly and take the consequences. No good is ever done in this world by hesitation. Thomas H.

I was so naive as a kid I used to sneak behind the barn and do nothing.

For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.

Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.

Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.

War is just to those to whom war is necessary.

If we had less statesmanship we could get along with fewer battleships.

Every man is wise when attacked by a mad dog; fewer when pursued by a mad woman; only the wisest survive when attacked by a mad notion.

If men menstruated, they would brag about how much and for how long.

One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing.

And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks anything that is unusual. Schools are maintained in order to bring this uniformity up to the highest possible point. A school is a hopper into which children are heaved while they are still young and tender; therein they are pressed into certain standard shapes and covered from head to heels with official rubber-stamps

Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.

There is an astonishing imagination, even in the science of mathematics... We repeat, there was far more imagination in the head of Archimedes than in that of Homer.

I will not go so far as to say that to construct a history of thought without profound study of the mathematical ideas of successive epochs is like omitting Hamlet from the play which is named after him. . . But it is certainly analogous to cutting out the part of Ophelia. This simile is singularly exact. For Ophelia is quite essential to the play, she is very charming-- and a little mad.

Not till we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize the infinite extent of our relations.

God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically.

We owe a deep debt of gratitude to Adam, the first great benefactor of the human race: he brought death into the world.

No one can build his security upon the nobleness of another person.

The only completely consistent people are the dead.

The real question of government versus private enterprise is argued on too philosophical and abstract a basis. Theoretically, planning may be good. But nobody has ever figured out the cause of government stupidity and until they do (and find the cure) all ideal plans will fall into quicksand.

It is fatal to be right when the rest of the world is wrong.

Where so many hours have been spent in convincing myself that I am right, is there not some reason to fear I may be wrong?

Truth never comes into the world but like a bastard, to the ignominy of him that brought her birth.

The least deviation from truth will be multiplied later.

Political language - and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists - is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

I gather, young man, that you wish to be a Member of Parliament. The first lesson that you must learn is, when I call for statistics about the rate of infant mortality, what I want is proof that fewer babies died when I was Prime Minister than when anyone else was Prime Minister. That is a political statistic.

There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy.

I have a perfect cure for a sore throat: cut it.

Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood.

Chaos is the score upon which reality is written.