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Famous Speeches	All Topics	Fill-In Quotations

Adele ultimately did well in such a large way because she affects everybody, and the way that she writes seems to be popular music, not because of her skin color but because she writes great music, and it's popular in that way.
Babyface

But a lot of the old fans are listening to a lot of the younger music. So I gotta keep moving forward, and they'll move forward too.
Babyface

Collaboration is about trust. If you don’t trust the person you’re working with, it’s not going to work.
From a 2020 interview with Rolling Stone on his creative process.
Babyface

I could easily not be the person that people know.
Babyface

I don't claim to be a great vocalist, but I know how to work my voice with its limitations. My talent is I know how to work what I have. It might not always be a picture-perfect performance, but what we look for is the emotion.
Babyface

I don't go to that many Broadway shows, so I can't really say anything.
Babyface

I don't necessarily want people to know all my intimate feelings about Tracey.
Babyface

I enjoy music that is commercial. I think that in order for music to be heard in a lot of different situations, you have to always consider that. Commercial music, for the most part, is popular music, and you always have to keep that in mind. It's not so much financial as making sure it gets the shot and is heard on the radio.
Babyface

I kind of just stumbled into producing. It was more that I was a writer, and the only way you were going to get your songs done was to do them yourself.
Babyface

I like people, and I like listening to them because something that'll happen out of that conversation could be the title or the subject of the song.
Babyface

I still write the same way and have the same perspective.
Babyface

I think it's not really difficult to write about love. We've been saying the same thing over and over for so many years. But it depends on how honest it is and how good you make it feel. You can say I love you in a trillion ways, and it can always sound different or feel different.
Babyface

I think that in order for music to be heard in a lot of different situations you have to always consider that.
Babyface

I think that whenever there's a good script we try to make that happen, but it's all based off of a good story, a good script, but I don't believe you should do it just because it's African-American.
Babyface

I usually prepare a track and then I work with the artist when it's time to do the vocals.
Babyface

I was always falling in love at a very young age - kindergarten is when I can remember. There was always a crush. And when I was in sixth grade, I started picking up guitar, so I started wanting to write about it and sing about it.
Babyface

I was always too afraid to slow dance. But I do remember watching people slow dance. I was the guy on the sidelines. At the school dance, I was usually in the band, playing.
Babyface

I would say that I've been lucky. Being blessed and not really ever giving up.
Babyface

I'm continuing to produce and will start a new record soon, as well.
Babyface

If my life depended on being a social-media person in terms of talking myself up, I probably would be in trouble because - not that I wouldn't be able to step up to it - but I wouldn't love it. I wouldn't want to be that person; that wouldn't be my natural thing.
Babyface

It might be a huge hit, it might not; but you learn something doing it.
Babyface

It's about finding great artists and being part of their careers.
Babyface

It's like spicy food - sometimes you have to tone it down so more people can enjoy it.
Babyface

Love hurts the most when you really love. Sometimes you think you're in love, and then you find out that you're not because you're not really hurting. But when it's real love, then it's gonna hurt. It's supposed to hurt because it's real.
Babyface

Lyrics can be important, but ultimately, what pulls people in on a song is melody and the tracks and the way music feels.
Babyface

Melody is king. If the melody isn’t there, nothing else matters.
On songwriting, quoted in Billboard (2015).
Babyface

Michael Jackson, he used to chase relevancy all the time. He always wanted to go a little bigger and better and keep that audience. There was never a point where Michael was going to feel like, I've got to play the Nokia, and that's all I'm going to pull in is the Nokia. That would not have been acceptable.
Babyface

Music is the one thing that can cross all boundaries. It doesn’t care about race, religion, or politics.
From a 2017 TED Talk on the universality of music.
Babyface

Music was what I always wanted to do and I was one of the lucky few to achieve my ambition and earn a living from it for which I'm very grateful.
Babyface

R&B is the one thing that has influenced every kind of music. Every artist that there is, from those that are sung the most to Adele - you know, she was so influenced by so many R&B artists and soul music - it's clear in her writing that that's where it comes from.
Babyface

Some people can sing, and they can sing sing, but Brandy can not only sing sing, but she has a voice and a tone that is unlike any other.
Babyface

The blessing of being able to write music and let music speak for itself is you let the melodies and let the lyrics and the groove talk to people instead of me talking to people.
Babyface

The first song I wrote was called Here I Go Falling In Love I wrote it in the sixth grade.
Babyface

The Internet is a whole new world opening up.
Babyface

The most exciting thing for all of us is movies and movie stars.
Babyface

The one thing about The Weeknd is that he's gone between the world of trap music and pop music and blended them together, so it makes it interesting in that way. That's what I like about him.
Babyface

The reality is, some people don't want you to change or go anywhere different.
Babyface

The whole idea is whatever you do, have fun with it; try to make sure that it's quality and something you don't mind putting your name on.
Babyface

The whole process of this record was an education for me as a musician.
Babyface

There are people that bring artists to me to look at it and it's a question of whether I like their music and their look and if I think there's something they have that makes them different and commercial.
Babyface

There's artists that I'm working with on a new label of mine. Foxy Nova and Supa Nova.
Babyface

Unfortunately, a lot of executives aren't like producers, and can't hear the diamond in the rough.
Babyface

When I was in top 40 bands, I always had to learn new material and new styles.
Babyface

You can find a diamond in the rough a lot of times.
Babyface

You have to stay hungry. The moment you think you’ve made it, you stop growing.
Advice to aspiring artists, The Guardian (2018).
Babyface

A famous love story is hard to maintain when you both live in the spotlight.
Lauren Bacall

A man's illness is his private territory and, no matter how much he loves you and how close you are, you stay an outsider. You are healthy.
Lauren Bacall

A woman isn't complete without a man. But where do you find a man - a real man - these days?
Lauren Bacall

Acting is a life of rejection.
Lauren Bacall

Actors today go into TV, which I don't consider has a lot to do with acting.
Lauren Bacall

All the Warner actors were real actors. They started in theater and led very straightforward lives - you never saw entourages around. The MGM girls were the glamour girls, and they always had the makeup and hair people with them and all that.
Lauren Bacall

Fashion is not frivolous. It is a part of being alive today.
From a 1966 interview with Vogue.
Lauren Bacall

Film is not a woman's medium. If you weren't the hottest kid in town, men stayed away from you.
Lauren Bacall

Find me a man who's interesting enough to have dinner with and I'll be happy.
Lauren Bacall

For my peculiar face, I look best when I look as though I'm not wearing make-up.
Lauren Bacall

God - if the press ever quoted anyone correctly, it would be brilliant.
Lauren Bacall

I adored Breaking The Waves, so when Lars von Trier wanted me in Dogville, I was beside myself with joy. He works in a way that nobody I've ever worked with works.
Lauren Bacall

I always wanted to work with Spencer Tracy, which never happened, although I knew him well. And I never worked with Cary Grant.
Lauren Bacall

I am essentially a loner.
Lauren Bacall

I am not a has-been. I am a will be.
From a 1979 interview with People magazine.
Lauren Bacall

I called my business manager in California and said, Sell all of my stock - what little of it I had - and it's the only smart financial move I ever made.
Lauren Bacall

I don't consider myself a great actress. I'm just trying to stay alive, actually. I think I'm good, and I've learned a lot, certainly, mostly in the theater. I've been sloughed off movies for years. But what can you do? That's life.
Lauren Bacall

I don't have an entourage. In fact, I have no live-in help.
Lauren Bacall

I don't look in the mirror; don't like what I see; never have. I am not my idea of a beauty. Never was. This is not false modesty. I've just never been enamoured of my face, which of course is magnified umpteen times on screen.
Lauren Bacall

I don't sit around thinking that I'd like to have another husband; only another man would make me think that way.
Lauren Bacall

I figure if I have my health, can pay the rent and I have my friends, I call it content.
Lauren Bacall

I finally felt that I came into my own when I went on the stage.
Lauren Bacall

I happen to watch public television more than anything else. I'm also a news junkie, so I watch a lot of CNN.
Lauren Bacall

I hope I'm thought of as not just a showbiz personality, but as someone who has lived a life and who has hopefully made a contribution to something along the way - someone who is a human being as well as an actress.
Lauren Bacall

I like to work with really good professional people - anyone with real talent.
Lauren Bacall

I love being Jewish; I have no problem with it at all. But it did become like a scar, with all these people saying you don't look it.
Lauren Bacall

I never believed marriage was a lasting institution. I thought that to be married for five years was to be married forever.
Lauren Bacall

I put my career in second place throughout both my marriages and it suffered. I don't regret it. You make choices. If you want a good marriage, you must pay attention to that. If you want to be independent, go ahead. You can't have it all.
Lauren Bacall

I remember my oldest son, Steve, saying to me once, I don't ever remember seeing you with an apron on. And I thought, that's right, honey, you did not. That was his concept of what a mother should be.
Lauren Bacall

I studied dancing for 13 years. And loved to dance. Always wanted to dance with Fred Astaire.
Lauren Bacall

I suppose there are times when I can't believe that I've lived the way that I have and done the things that I've done. Life's a joke anyway. It's all ridiculous. It's all so short.
Lauren Bacall

I think your whole life shows in your face and you should be proud of that.
From her autobiography By Myself and Then Some (2005).
Lauren Bacall

I loved reading Grimm's fairy tales and Hans Christian Andersen, and I loved to dream about other worlds and other lives. Maybe that has something to do with having an incomplete family, being an only child. All I know is I loved to pretend, and all that was in tandem with my wanting to be an actress.
Lauren Bacall

I used to dream of being other places, other people. It was an escape for me.
Lauren Bacall

I used to tremble from nerves so badly that the only way I could hold my head steady was to lower my chin practically to my chest and look up at Bogie. That was the beginning of The Look.
Lauren Bacall

I was always a little unsteady in my self-belief. Then there was the Jewish thing. I love being Jewish, I have no problem with it at all. But it did become like a scar, with all these people saying you don't look it.
Lauren Bacall

I was never my favourite subject.
Lauren Bacall

I was this kid, and I was scared to death of all these pros around me... My head would shake, and my hands would shake, and I discovered if I kept my head down and looked up, my head would not shake, so I started to do that when I could, when it was appropriate in a scene.
Lauren Bacall

I wasn't brought up as a society girl to go to balls and be a debutante and marry the social set and money and go to parties. No one in my family lived like that. And I never wanted to live like that. I was brought up to believe in work. I always wanted a career. Always.
Lauren Bacall

I wish Frank Sinatra would just shut up and sing.
Lauren Bacall

I would hate now to be married. It does occur to me on occasion that, if I fall and hit my head, there will be no one to make the phone call. But who wants to think about that disaster, I'd prefer not to.
Lauren Bacall

I'm a big fan of Daniel Day-Lewis. He's a marvelous actor. He stands alone, I think.
Lauren Bacall

I'm a total Democrat. I'm anti-Republican. And it's only fair that you know it... I'm liberal. The L word!
Lauren Bacall

I'm not a sedentary person. I've always been active.
Lauren Bacall

I'm not tough, and I never have been. I suppose over the years I've built up kind of a veneer to protect myself because I have functioned on my own for a long, long time, and I have never had a lot of flunkies preceding me to clear the way.
Lauren Bacall

I've always felt that work - learning from people who know more than I know - is what keeps you going.
Lauren Bacall

If I could have lived as an actress in any period, it would have been the 1920s - I would have loved to have been part of that speakeasy era.
Lauren Bacall

Imagination is the highest kite one can fly.
Cited in a 2011 interview with The Telegraph.
Lauren Bacall

In actual fact, I've never been one, even from childhood, to kind of analyze myself very much.
Lauren Bacall

In Hollywood, an equitable divorce settlement means each party getting fifty percent of publicity.
Lauren Bacall

It was Howard Hawks who changed my life.
Lauren Bacall

It's inappropriate and vulgar and absolutely unacceptable to use your private life to sell anything commercially.
Lauren Bacall

It's just a fact of life that I don't think I've ever been taken particularly seriously in movies by movie makers. I don't know why.
Lauren Bacall

Legends are all to do with the past and nothing to do with the present.
Lauren Bacall

Looking at yourself in a mirror isn't exactly a study of life. Life is about looking out, not looking in.
From a Vanity Fair interview.
Lauren Bacall

Men need to feel important. They feel better when they're with younger girls or unknown girls.
Lauren Bacall

Movies are great fun and wonderful when they're good. But you never get to see them till six months after they're finished. So you never get a sense of whether they're really well liked or how good they are. And you don't really know what the finished product is going to be like, because it's a director's medium.
Lauren Bacall

My definition of a star is someone who really lasts for a very long time.
Lauren Bacall

My feeling about the movies is that most of them are terrible. If you don't have a decent script and a decent director, forget it.
Lauren Bacall

My mother was the greatest example to me of anyone I've ever known. She didn't have an easy life. I adored her. She worked hard all her life, and she was the one who set my values. She was quite an amazing woman, although she wasn't tough at all.
Lauren Bacall

Patience was not my strong point.
Lauren Bacall

Standing still is the fastest way of moving backwards in a rapidly changing world.
Cited in a 2011 interview with The Telegraph.
Lauren Bacall

Stardom isn't a profession, it's an accident.
Lauren Bacall

Stupidity is not my favourite thing; I cannot deal with it.
Lauren Bacall

That was my original dream, anyway, to be on stage. I think the stage is an actor's place because actors, it belongs to you.
Lauren Bacall

The big rule is that you must never get mixed up with a married man - never even look sideways at another woman's fella. Boy, I really was terrific at obeying that rule, wasn't I?
Lauren Bacall

The biggest misconception people have about me is that I'm in control of every situation. I'm rarely in control of any situation.
Lauren Bacall

The world is not always a kind place. That's something all of us learn sooner or later, whether we want to or not.
From her autobiography "By Myself and Then Some" (2005).
Lauren Bacall

There were times, sure, I wanted my career to go better. But once it starts to go downhill, you can never get back, or only to some degree.
Lauren Bacall

They're guys who want to screw around all the time, which interests me not at all. God knows we've done that, been there, and we don't want to do that any more.
Lauren Bacall

We live in an age of mediocrity.
Lauren Bacall

What is the point of working all your life and then stopping?
Lauren Bacall

When a person who is very ill decides to treat it like a slight virus, you play that game. If you make a big scene, I think it is yourself you are doing it for, not the person who's ill.
Lauren Bacall

When a woman reaches twenty-six in America, she's on the slide. It's downhill all the way from then on. It doesn't give you a tremendous feeling of confidence and well-being.
Lauren Bacall

When everything happens to you when you're so young, you're very lucky, but by the same token, you're never going to have that same feeling again. The first time anything happens to you - your first love, your first success - the second one is never the same.
Lauren Bacall

When I was a kid, it was Bette Davis. She was my idol. I used to cut school and sit in the back of the theater; of course, I would have snuck in because I couldn't afford a ticket.
Lauren Bacall

When you talk about a great actor, you're not talking about Tom Cruise. His whole behavior is so shocking. It's inappropriate and vulgar and absolutely unacceptable to use your private life to sell anything commercially, but I think it's kind of a sickness.
Lauren Bacall

You are welcoming to everyone when you're a liberal. You do not have a small mind.
Lauren Bacall

You can't acquire a voice. Either you have it, or you don't.
Lauren Bacall

You can't always be a leading lady.
Lauren Bacall

You can't start worrying about what's going to happen. You get spastic enough worrying about what's happening now.
Lauren Bacall

You don't always win your battles, but it's good to know you fought.
From her autobiography By Myself (1978).
Lauren Bacall

You learn to rise above a lot of bad things that happen in your life. And you have to keep going.
Lauren Bacall

You realize yourself when you start reflecting - because I don't live in the past, although your past is so much a part of what you are - that you can't ignore it. But I don't look at scrapbooks.
Lauren Bacall

Young people, even in Hollywood, ask me, Were you really married to Humphrey Bogart? Well, yes, I think I was, I reply.
Lauren Bacall

A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.
Richard David Bach

Aerodynamics is mathematics for those who haven't learned to do calculus. In my case, too, for one who hasn't learned to add or multiply, at least the first time.
Richard David Bach

Allow the world to live as it chooses, and allow yourself to live as you choose.
Richard David Bach

Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they're yours.
Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
Richard David Bach

Ask yourself the secret of your success. Listen to your answer, and practice it.
Richard David Bach

Avoid problems, and you'll never be the one who overcame them.
Richard David Bach

Bad things are not the worst things that can happen to us. Nothing is the worst thing that can happen to us!
Richard David Bach

Can miles truly separate you from friends... If you want to be with someone you love, aren't you already there?
Richard David Bach

Civilization... wrecks the planet from seafloor to stratosphere.
Richard David Bach

Don't be dismayed by good-byes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends.
Richard David Bach

Don’t believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding, find out what you already know, and you’ll see the way to fly.
Jonathan Livingston Seagull
Richard David Bach

Don't turn away from possible futures before you're certain you don't have anything to learn from them.
Richard David Bach

Every gift from a friend is a wish for your happiness.
Richard David Bach

Every person, all the events of your life are there because you have drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you.
Richard David Bach

Get this in mind early: We never grow up.
Richard David Bach

Happiness is the reward we get for living to the highest right we know.
Richard David Bach

Here is the test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished: If you’re alive, it isn’t.
Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
Richard David Bach

I don't want to do business with those who don't make a profit, because they can't give the best service.
Richard David Bach

I gave my life to become the person I am right now. Was it worth it?
Richard David Bach

I know there's a principle of spirit. It works without space-time. I am subject to that principle, in spirit and in belief of body. Learn how spirit works, a few simple rules, living a perfect spiritual life is easy.
Richard David Bach

I want to be very close to someone I respect and admire and have somebody who feels the same way about me.
Richard David Bach

I've owned 41 airplanes. A few of them would talk with me. This little seaplane, though, we've had long conversations in flight. There's a spirit in anything, I think, into which we weave our soul. Not many pilots talk about it, but they think about it in the quiet dark of a night flight.
Richard David Bach

If it's never our fault, we can't take responsibility for it. If we can't take responsibility for it, we'll always be its victim.
Richard David Bach

If you love someone, set them free. If they come back, they're yours; if they don't, they never were.
Often attributed to Bach (popularized in Illusions), though variations exist elsewhere.
Richard David Bach

If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats.
Richard David Bach

If your happiness depends on what somebody else does, I guess you do have a problem.
Richard David Bach

In order to live free and happily you must sacrifice boredom. It is not always an easy sacrifice.
Richard David Bach

In order to win, you must expect to win.
Richard David Bach

It is by not always thinking of yourself, if you can manage it, that you might somehow be happy. Until you make room in your life for someone as important to you as yourself, you will always be searching and lost.
Richard David Bach

Jonathan is that brilliant little fire that burns within us all, that lives only for those moments when we reach perfection.
Richard David Bach

Kindle Singles is publishing on skates. It prints like lightning; our book meets readers in hours. I've spent so many years waiting for publishers to consider whether they wanted to print a book of mine, making contracts, taking months to fit it into the Fall list or the Spring list, fitting it into an advertising plan.
Richard David Bach

Learning is finding out what you already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you. You are all learners, doers, and teachers.
Richard David Bach

Listen to what you know instead of what you fear.
Richard David Bach

Live never to be ashamed if anything you do or say is published around the world, even if what is published is not true.
Jonathan Livingston Seagull
Richard David Bach

Not being known doesn't stop the truth from being true.
Richard David Bach

One of the great cosmic laws, I think, is that whatever we hold in our thought will come true in our experience. When we hold something, anything, in our thought, then somehow coincidence leads us in the direction that we've been wishing to lead ourselves.
Richard David Bach

Our soulmate is the one who makes life come to life.
Richard David Bach

Rarely do members of the same family grow up under the same roof.
Richard David Bach

Same with anyone who's been flying for years and loves it still... we're part of a world we deeply love. Just as musicians feel about scores and melodies, dancers about the steps and flow of music, so we're one with the principle of flight, the magic of being aloft in the wind!
Richard David Bach

Some choices we live not only once but a thousand times over, remembering them for the rest of our lives.
Richard David Bach

Strong beliefs win strong men, and then make them stronger.
Richard David Bach

The best way to pay for a lovely moment is to enjoy it.
Richard David Bach

The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other’s life.
Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
Richard David Bach

The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.
Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
Richard David Bach

The meaning I picked, the one that changed my life: Overcome fear, behold wonder.
Richard David Bach

The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.
Richard David Bach

The simplest questions are the most profound. Where were you born? Where is your home? Where are you going? What are you doing? Think about these once in a while and watch your answers change.
Richard David Bach

The simplest things are often the truest.
Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
Richard David Bach

The worst lies are the lies we tell ourselves. We live in denial of what we do, even what we think. We do this because we're afraid.
Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
Richard David Bach

There are no mistakes. The events we bring upon ourselves, no matter how unpleasant, are necessary in order to learn what we need to learn; whatever steps we take, they're necessary to reach the places we've chosen to go.
Richard David Bach

To bring anything into your life, imagine that it's already there.
Richard David Bach

To fly as fast as thought, you must begin by knowing that you have already arrived.
Richard David Bach

True love stories never have endings.
Richard David Bach

You are always free to change your mind and choose a different future, or a different past.
Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
Richard David Bach

You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it true.
Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
Richard David Bach

You don't want a million answers as much as you want a few forever questions. The questions are diamonds you hold in the light. Study a lifetime and you see different colors from the same jewel.
Richard David Bach

You teach best what you most need to learn.
Richard David Bach

Your conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness. Listen to it carefully.
Richard David Bach

Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself.
Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
Richard David Bach

Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years.
Richard David Bach

Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself. Being true to anyone else or anything else is not only impossible, but the mark of a fake messiah.
Richard David Bach

A bachelor's life is a fine breakfast, a flat lunch, and a miserable dinner.
Francis Bacon

A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.
Essays: Of Atheism
Francis Bacon

A man must make his opportunity, as oft as find it.
Francis Bacon

A man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well.
Essays: Of Revenge
Francis Bacon

A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.
Francis Bacon

A sudden bold and unexpected question doth many times surprise a man and lay him open.
Francis Bacon

A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.
Francis Bacon

Acorns were good until bread was found.
Francis Bacon

Age appears to be best in four things; old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.
Francis Bacon

Anger is certainly a kind of baseness, as it appears well in the weakness of those subjects in whom it reigns: children, women, old folks, sick folks.
Francis Bacon

Anger makes dull men witty, but it keeps them poor.
Francis Bacon

Antiquities are history defaced, or some remnants of history which have casually escaped the shipwreck of time.
Francis Bacon

As the births of living creatures are at first ill-shapen, so are all innovations, which are the births of time.
Francis Bacon

Beauty itself is but the sensible image of the Infinite.
Francis Bacon

Books must follow sciences, and not sciences books.
Proposition Touching Amendment of Laws
Francis Bacon

But men must know, that in this theatre of man's life it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers on.
Francis Bacon

By indignities men come to dignities.
Francis Bacon

Certainly, in taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy, but in passing it over, he is superior; for it is a prince's part to pardon.
Francis Bacon

Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried, or childless men.
Francis Bacon

Children sweeten labours, but they make misfortunes more bitter.
Francis Bacon

Choose the life that is most useful, and habit will make it the most agreeable.
Francis Bacon

Discretion of speech is more than eloquence, and to speak agreeably to him with whom we deal is more than to speak in good words, or in good order.
Francis Bacon

Fame is like a river, that beareth up things light and swollen, and drowns things weighty and solid.
Francis Bacon

Fashion is only the attempt to realize art in living forms and social intercourse.
Francis Bacon

For my name and memory I leave to men's charitable speeches, and to foreign nations and the next ages.
Francis Bacon

Fortitude is the marshal of thought, the armor of the will, and the fort of reason.
Francis Bacon

Fortune is like the market, where, many times, if you can stay a little, the price will fall.
Francis Bacon

Friends are thieves of time.
Francis Bacon

Friendship increases in visiting friends, but in visiting them seldom.
Francis Bacon

God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures.
Francis Bacon

God hangs the greatest weights upon the smallest wires.
Francis Bacon

God has placed no limits to the exercise of the intellect he has given us, on this side of the grave.
Francis Bacon

God's first creature, which was light.
Francis Bacon

Good fame is like fire; when you have kindled you may easily preserve it; but if you extinguish it, you will not easily kindle it again.
Francis Bacon

He that gives good advice, builds with one hand; he that gives good counsel and example, builds with both; but he that gives good admonition and bad example, builds with one hand and pulls down with the other.
Francis Bacon

He that hath knowledge spareth his words.
Francis Bacon

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.
Francis Bacon

He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator.
Francis Bacon

Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.
Apothegms
Francis Bacon

Houses are built to live in, and not to look on: therefore let use be preferred before uniformity.
Francis Bacon

I do not believe that any man fears to be dead, but only the stroke of death.
Francis Bacon

I had rather believe all the Fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a Mind.
Francis Bacon

I will never be an old man. To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am.
Francis Bacon

If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world.
Francis Bacon

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.
The Advancement of Learning
Francis Bacon

If a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics.
Francis Bacon

If we do not maintain justice, justice will not maintain us.
Francis Bacon

Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is.
Francis Bacon

In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present.
Francis Bacon

In taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior.
Essays: Of Revenge
Francis Bacon

It is a strange desire to seek power and to lose liberty, or to seek power over others and to lose power over a man's self.
Francis Bacon

It is a true rule that love is ever rewarded, either with the reciproque or with an inward and secret contempt.
Francis Bacon

It is as hard and severe a thing to be a true politician as to be truly moral.
Francis Bacon

It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.
Francis Bacon

It is impossible to love and to be wise.
Francis Bacon

It is in life as it is in ways, the shortest way is commonly the foulest, and surely the fairer way is not much about.
Francis Bacon

It is natural to die as to be born.
Francis Bacon

Judges must beware of hard constructions and strained inferences, for there is no worse torture than that of laws.
Francis Bacon

Judges ought to be more leaned than witty, more reverent than plausible, and more advised than confident. Above all things, integrity is their portion and proper virtue.
Francis Bacon

Knowledge and human power are synonymous.
Francis Bacon

Knowledge itself is power.
Meditationes Sacrae (Sacred Meditations)
Francis Bacon

Lies are sufficient to breed opinion, and opinion brings on substance.
Francis Bacon

Life, an age to the miserable, and a moment to the happy.
Francis Bacon

Many a man's strength is in opposition, and when he faileth, he grows out of use.
Francis Bacon

Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased by tales, so is the other.
Francis Bacon

Money is like manure, of very little use except it be spread.
Francis Bacon

Natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience.
Francis Bacon

Nature is often hidden, sometimes overcome, seldom extinguished.
Francis Bacon

Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.
Novum Organum
Francis Bacon

Next to religion, let your care be to promote justice.
Francis Bacon

No body can be healthful without exercise, neither natural body nor politic, and certainly, to a kingdom or estate, a just and honourable war is the true exercise.
Francis Bacon

Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise.
Francis Bacon

Nothing is pleasant that is not spiced with variety.
Francis Bacon

Of all virtues and dignities of the mind, goodness is the greatest, being the character of the Deity; and without it, man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing.
Francis Bacon

Opportunity makes a thief.
Francis Bacon

People have discovered that they can fool the devil; but they can't fool the neighbors.
Francis Bacon

People usually think according to their inclinations, speak according to their learning and ingrained opinions, but generally act according to custom.
Francis Bacon

Pictures and shapes are but secondary objects and please or displease only in the memory.
Francis Bacon

Prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue.
Essays: Of Adversity
Francis Bacon

Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; adversity not without many comforts and hopes.
Francis Bacon

Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament; adversity is the blessing of the New.
Francis Bacon

Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted... but to weigh and consider.
Francis Bacon

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.
Essays: Of Studies
Francis Bacon

Rebellions of the belly are the worst.
Francis Bacon

Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more man's nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.
Francis Bacon

Riches are a good hand maiden, but a poor mistress.
Francis Bacon

Science is but an image of the truth.
Francis Bacon

Seek ye first the good things of the mind, and the rest will either be supplied or its loss will not be felt.
Francis Bacon

Silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.
Francis Bacon

Silence is the virtue of fools.
Francis Bacon

Small amounts of philosophy lead to atheism, but larger amounts bring us back to God.
Francis Bacon

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.
Essays: Of Studies
Francis Bacon

Studies perfect nature and are perfected still by experience.
Francis Bacon

Studies serve for delight, for ornaments, and for ability.
Francis Bacon

The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express.
Francis Bacon

The correlative to loving our neighbors as ourselves is hating ourselves as we hate our neighbors.
Francis Bacon

The desire of excessive power caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge caused men to fall.
Francis Bacon

The fortune which nobody sees makes a person happy and unenvied.
Francis Bacon

The genius, wit, and the spirit of a nation are discovered by their proverbs.
Francis Bacon

The great end of life is not knowledge but action.
Francis Bacon

The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.
Francis Bacon

The joys of parents are secret, and so are their griefs and fears.
Francis Bacon

The momentous thing in human life is the art of winning the soul to good or evil.
Francis Bacon

The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power.
Francis Bacon

The pencil of the Holy Ghost hath labored more in describing the afflictions of Job than the felicities of Solomon.
Francis Bacon

The place of justice is a hallowed place.
Francis Bacon

The quarrels and divisions about religion were evils unknown to the heathen. The reason was because the religion of the heathen consisted rather in rites and ceremonies than in any constant belief.
Francis Bacon

The remedy is worse than the disease.
Essays: Of Seditions and Troubles
Francis Bacon

The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits, but not when it misses.
Francis Bacon

The subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of the senses and understanding.
Francis Bacon

The virtue of prosperity is temperance; the virtue of adversity is fortitude.
Francis Bacon

The way of fortune is like the milkyway in the sky; which is a number of small stars, not seen asunder, but giving light together: so it is a number of little and scarce discerned virtues, or rather faculties and customs, that make men fortunate.
Francis Bacon

The worst men often give the best advice.
Francis Bacon

The worst solitude is to be destitute of sincere friendship.
Essays: Of Friendship
Francis Bacon

The worst solitude is to have no real friendships.
Francis Bacon

There is a difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man is really so; but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool.
Francis Bacon

There is a wisdom in this beyond the rules of physic: a man's own observation what he finds good of and what he finds hurt of is the best physic to preserve health.
Francis Bacon

There is as much difference between the counsel that a friend giveth, and that a man giveth himself, as there is between the counsel of a friend and of a flatterer. For there is no such flatterer as is a man's self.
Francis Bacon

There is no comparison between that which is lost by not succeeding and that which is lost by not trying.
Francis Bacon

There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.
Francis Bacon

There is nothing makes a man suspect much, more than to know little.
Francis Bacon

Therefore if a man look sharply and attentively, he shall see Fortune; for though she be blind, yet she is not invisible.
Francis Bacon

They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.
The Advancement of Learning
Francis Bacon

They that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils.
Francis Bacon

Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly.
Francis Bacon

This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge keeps his wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well.
Francis Bacon

Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience.
Francis Bacon

Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion.
Francis Bacon

Truth is a good dog; but always beware of barking too close to the heels of an error, lest you get your brains kicked out.
Francis Bacon

Truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible.
Francis Bacon

Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.
Novum Organum
Francis Bacon

Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set.
Francis Bacon

We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.
Francis Bacon

We cannot command Nature except by obeying her.
Francis Bacon

What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer.
Francis Bacon

When a man laughs at his troubles he loses a great many friends. They never forgive the loss of their prerogative.
Francis Bacon

Who ever is out of patience is out of possession of their soul.
Francis Bacon

Who questions much, shall learn much, and retain much.
Francis Bacon

Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.
Francis Bacon

Wise men make more opportunities than they find.
Francis Bacon

Wives are young men's mistresses, companions for middle age, and old men's nurses.
Essays: Of Marriage and Single Life
Francis Bacon

Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable.
Francis Bacon

Young people are fitter to invent than to judge; fitter for execution than for counsel; and more fit for new projects than for settled business.
Francis Bacon

A good director creates an environment, which gives the actor the encouragement to fly.
Kevin Bacon

A moustache is actually the one thing I really can grow. One of the bad parts about my facial hair situation is that I can't grow sideburns. I'm happy to still have my own hair on my head, but I can't grow any sideburns. If you ever see me with sideburns, they're not real.
Kevin Bacon

Animal House was my first movie, so I didn't have anything to compare it to. I was a sight gag more than anything else. So I can't say it was one of those things where your life changes. When the movie came out, I had to ask for the night off at the bar.
Kevin Bacon

Any idiot can get laid when they're famous. That's easy. It's getting laid when you're not famous that takes some talent.
Kevin Bacon

As I was coming up on the stage, there was one source that could make or break you, the New York Times. Inevitably there would be one actor singled out for a better review, or worse, than somebody else. The effect of that was cancerous, divisive.
Kevin Bacon

Before Footloose, the things I'd done weren't cute. In Diner I was an alcoholic.
Kevin Bacon

Being with Kyra is so natural for me; it's the easiest aspect of my life. I know that I don't need a beach or room service to be happy.
Kevin Bacon

Certainly, network television in general relies a little bit too much on keeping people focused and emotional and scared and pushing the envelope by building wall-to-wall music.
Kevin Bacon

Clint Eastwood has always been a hero.
Kevin Bacon

Clothing is one of the external things about a character. Take away the Gucci or Levi's and we're all the same.
Kevin Bacon

Critics can be your most important friend. I don't read criticism of my stuff only because when it's bad, it's rough-and when it's good, it's not good enough.
Kevin Bacon

Do you want to be the guy with a game named after you or be the one with 18 Oscar nominations?
Kevin Bacon

Doing funny scary is something that is rarely good and rarely works, and it's also something that's incredibly hard to market.
Kevin Bacon

Fame is something that is tough when it comes. It's a weird thing to take on in real life. I was a little bit afraid and, as a result, kind of turned my back on it. You should embrace it because it's going to be a part of who you are, and it's going to be a part of what this business is about.
Kevin Bacon

Fame is very much a double-edged sword.
Kevin Bacon

For my wife and I, for so many years, a lot of our identity was based on being Hollywood haters. We were like, We're east-coast. We're New Yorkers. This is just a place that we have to come to, but not by choice.
Kevin Bacon

For years and years, people would say, The business is changing. And I would say, The business is not changing. It's exactly the same as it was in the '70s, the '80s and the '90s. But all of a sudden, the business changed, and it really did change.
Kevin Bacon

From an acting standpoint, when I was a kid, I thought I knew everything there was to know. As the years go by, this craft becomes more intensive as I get older. You realize how much more there is to know and to learn, and how much better you can get, if you really work at it.
Kevin Bacon

From the time I signed on to The Following, things have already vastly changed in the entertainment world in general. It's an adjustment for me.
Kevin Bacon

Gary Oldman is impossible to steal a movie from. He's such a great actor, he's off the hook. I love him.
Kevin Bacon

Gogglebox is a show where you watch people watch television.
Kevin Bacon

Great writing makes great television.
Kevin Bacon

Here's the thing - I mean, I don't act for statues. I really don't. The great thing about winning an award is that it creates opportunities.
Kevin Bacon

I always have a suitcase ready to go. My wife and I are both very much like this. We're both vagabonds, and we have been since the time we were married.
Kevin Bacon

I always have to make it as clear as I possibly can that fame is 99.9 percent good.
Kevin Bacon

I always wanted, and still aspire, to be something more than just one thing, just one performance.
Kevin Bacon

I always wanted to be a movie star. I didn't want to be an actor. I wanted to be a star.
Kevin Bacon

I did a year of Guiding Light, and I was going to be a movie actor or a stage actor, but not a TV actor. That just wasn't going to happen. And obviously, things changed so remarkably.
Kevin Bacon

I did all the dialect work, all my character work completely by myself.
Kevin Bacon

I didn't get into this so I could talk about my work, my movies. You become an actor to act.
Kevin Bacon

I do better on the first three takes; I won't be better at 20 takes.
Kevin Bacon

I do struggle with how much and in which way, as an artist or celebrity, that you voice your political views.
Kevin Bacon

I don't have any plans of slowing down. I love being an actor.
Kevin Bacon

I don't have to do the lead. If I dig a part, I'll do it.
Kevin Bacon

I don't read my own reviews and I haven't for probably 15 years. I read other people's reviews, though.
Kevin Bacon

I don't really worry so much about image. I try to just live my own life, my personal life, to my own sense of morality.
Kevin Bacon

I don't want to stop acting, but acting in some ways is a young man's game.
Kevin Bacon

I don't watch the movies I make, so I haven't seen Footloose since it came out. You see this young, hungry actor, it's pretty fun. I was the only one they screen tested. It was an attempt by the director and producer to talk the head of the studio into hiring me because they didn't want me.
Kevin Bacon

I feel like my responsibility as an actor is to make characters as compelling and believable as possible.
Kevin Bacon

I have a natural swagger.
Kevin Bacon

I have fond memories of Chris Penn, who's sadly not with us. He always made me laugh - it was great to be with him.
Kevin Bacon

I just let the work speak for itself. An actor is not afraid to take risks; to put on different hats; to be a good guy, a bad guy, a victim, an abuser. There are all kinds of people in the world, and playing them is what acting is all about.
Kevin Bacon

I like directing. It takes a lot out of you, but I'd like to do it again - I just have to find a story I want to tell.
Kevin Bacon

I like playing complex, interesting characters. Sometimes I don't think there's much of a strong line between right and wrong for a character. Every character is somewhere on a moral spectrum.
Kevin Bacon

I like to hike and cook. I enjoy furniture and design - not making it, just looking at it. I'm always kind of trying to spread my interests around and try new things.
Kevin Bacon

I like to play characters, man. I almost don't even think of them as good guys or bad guys. I know that's a hard thing to realize, but I really just think of them as characters.
Kevin Bacon

I really believe that all of us have a lot of darkness in our souls. Anger, rage, fear, sadness. I don't think that's only reserved for people who have horrible upbringings. I think it really exists and is part of the human condition. I think in the course of your life you figure out ways to deal with that.
Kevin Bacon

I started making movies in 1977, and I didn't even think about the idea that I would ever be on a television show. Once I finished the Guiding Light, I was like, I'm done with television!
Kevin Bacon

I started working in the mid-to-late Seventies, when television was not what it is now.
Kevin Bacon

I think of being an actor as kind of a young man's gig. It's emasculating, in a way, people messing with you and putting make-up on you and telling you when to wake up and when to go to sleep, holding your hand to cross the street. I can do it up to a certain point, and then I start to feel like a puppet.
Kevin Bacon

I think of myself more as a workhorse actor. It will be hot and cold and up and down, but no one will kick me out of the business.
Kevin Bacon

I think one of the most pervasive evils in this world is greed and acquiring money for money's sake. Once you have six houses and a plane, it's just about a number. It's never been anything I understood.
Kevin Bacon

I think there is a puritanical wind that is blowing.
Kevin Bacon

I think we all have a lot of darkness in our bellies. As an actor, the challenge of tapping into that, reaching down into that sadness or anger, is very therapeutic.
Kevin Bacon

I try to show compassion to people I come into contact with and try to put good out, as much good as I can. But that's my life; that's not my work. With my work, my job is to walk in another man's shoes.
Kevin Bacon

I used to be irritated by the whole Six Degrees thing, but now I think it's kind of cool.
Kevin Bacon

I used to live on Riverside Park in New York, on the Upper West Side.
Kevin Bacon

I still want to make Kyra proud of the person I am - father, husband, actor, musician.
Kevin Bacon

I want to see the numbers that prove that show-business marriages are any less successful than other marriages. It's just very public when they fail.
Kevin Bacon

I wanted to do something heroic if I was going to be on TV. And the first thing that appeals to me once I have decided I don't want to be the bad guy is to find things that are not black and white.
Kevin Bacon

I was in the first Friday The 13th, and that was a microbudget horror film.
Kevin Bacon

I wasn't going off to New York to be more famous than my father, but in retrospect, that certainly was driving me. He was famous in Philadelphia, but it was also really important to him to be famous. And to a certain extent, I got some of that, even though there were parts of it that horrified me.
Kevin Bacon

I would say invisibility would be sort of a fun power to have just to see what it was like to move through the world and not be looked at.
Kevin Bacon

I'd always tried not to worry about the size of the role or the size of the film.
Kevin Bacon

I'd love to be a pop idol. Of course, my groupies are now between 40 and 50.
Kevin Bacon

I'd really like to get the girl, shoot the gun, drive the car, have fun. I even have these kind of action dreams, where I'm the action guy.
Kevin Bacon

I'll be honest with you. My kids don't watch my movies and never have. I can maybe name a film one hand that they've seen, actually, all the way through.
Kevin Bacon

I'm a vagabond. I have a suitcase that is ready to go at a moment's notice. The thought of being in one place for a long time, or playing one character for a long time, is terrifying for me.
Kevin Bacon

I'm a very physical person. I like to be in motion.
Kevin Bacon

I'm always happier and a better actor when I can really lose myself in a character and become somebody else.
Kevin Bacon

I'm an actor. It's what I do. It's what I chose to do with my life when I was a little boy, and that's what I'm still doing. I like to work. I came up with a work ethic, and that's just what I do.
Kevin Bacon

I'm new to this TV thing, at least as an actor. It's a challenge. The thing I have to adjust to is the changing directors every week. That's new for me. I tend to establish with a director - and then two days later, he's gone.
Kevin Bacon

I'm not someone who comes onstage and says, I'm rewriting this now. I don't think it's fair to the writers or the director, or the other actors.
Kevin Bacon

I'm obsessed with zombies. I like watching zombie movies and I read zombie books.
Kevin Bacon

I'm very comfortable being married to an extremely strong, opinionated, and driven woman. But I also sit at the head of the table. I have both of those sides to me.
Kevin Bacon

I've been in silly movies and romantic movies and historic movies.
Kevin Bacon

I've made three studio albums and one live one with my brother. It's melodic singer-songwriter acoustic-rock music.
Kevin Bacon

I've played a lot of bad guys, and I'm pretty good at leaving my work at the office. And I look at acting as having a certain sort of therapeutic nature to it.
Kevin Bacon

If I'm in a situation where someone doesn't recognize me and treats me like everyone else, I'm not used to it.
Kevin Bacon

If you look at films about becoming a man, coming-of-age movies are made with 12-, 16-, 40-, 50-year-olds... For a guy to feel like he's a 100 percent grown-up is almost like giving up. Like admitting that you're on your way into the grave.
Kevin Bacon

If you look at my movie career, I do switch it up a lot. I'm always looking for a lot of different parts. It's been a while since I've been in a situation that was romantic.
Kevin Bacon

If you take me out of it, I find Six Degrees to be a beautiful concept that we should try to live by. It's about compassion and responsibility for everyone on the planet.
Kevin Bacon

If you're an actor, even a successful one, you're still waiting for the phone to ring.
Kevin Bacon

In my movie work, if I do one guy, the next guy I do, I want to do something kind of different. Even in terms of genre - it's really great to mix it up a little.
Kevin Bacon

It does get old to have to always be a monkey in a zoo. I don't know what it's like any more to be anonymous.
Kevin Bacon

Keep doing what you're doing. Don't be afraid of fame.
Kevin Bacon

Kevin's mind goes to extremely interesting places. Every time we get a script, I go, Oh my God, I really didn't see that coming.
Kevin Bacon

Kung Fury! I mean, Jesus, that thing is amazing.
Kevin Bacon

L.A. kind of scares me.
Kevin Bacon

My brother is the lifelong musician; he made the choice to do that when we were very, very young kids. I remember him playing in bands and listening to the music he was writing in the house - he's nine years older than me.
Kevin Bacon

My dad was an architect, and he wasn't a rich guy, but in our little world in Philadelphia, he was famous. He loved to see his picture in the paper. I wanted to be more famous than him.
Kevin Bacon

My father was into fame and leaving his mark. He was a city planner, sort of a genius in that world, the Robert Moses of Philadelphia. He was on the cover of Time once, and I remember going to his office and seeing, like, two hundred copies, which he would hand out to people.
Kevin Bacon

My kids don't watch my movies. What I want to do is go home and hug my kids, talk to them and engage with them.
Kevin Bacon

Ninety-five percent of celebrity is good.
Kevin Bacon

One of the top comments I get from people is, Oh my God, you're like a regular person! That's kind of a bizarre thing to live with. I know a lot of famous people, and their lives may not be regular, but they are regular people.
Kevin Bacon

Part of being a man is learning to take responsibility for your successes and for your failures. You can't go blaming others or being jealous. Seeing somebody else's success as your failure is a cancerous way to live.
Kevin Bacon

People work so hard, and I want to keep that energy up, and you can spread that if you're the actor. But I'm also not able to turn it on and off like a faucet. A lot of what I'm called upon to play is violent or angry. When I'm messing around with the crew and making jokes, I remember, Oh, this is the guy I normally am.
Kevin Bacon

Seeing somebody else's success as your failure is a cancerous way to live.
Kevin Bacon

Show me an actor who doesn't want to be famous, and I'll show you a liar. Later, you realise that there's more to it than just the acquisition of fame, and money and girls. But that is what drives them and was what drove me, initially.
Kevin Bacon

Some people have therapy, some people are alcoholics or they're in AA. Some people jump out of planes on weekends or find ways to release this kind of thing. And for me, it's acting. I find acting very therapeutic for whatever it is.
Kevin Bacon

Somebody with a billion followers can tweet, See my movie, and it can still tank. Followers don't always translate into success because I think people are too savvy. When something takes off, it's because people are connecting to it - not because someone with a lot of followers says to care about it.
Kevin Bacon

The business that people do in LA on the social level is amazing. You go to a restaurant, bump into this guy or that guy. The next day you get a call, and they want you in their movie.
Kevin Bacon

The greats are The Shining, Rosemary's Baby, Don't Look Now, The Exorcist - those movies were not really slashers: they were about psychological terror and had very deep emotional backdrops. If we do our best, 6 Miranda Drive can be that kind of a movie.
Kevin Bacon

The most challenging work and the best work I've ever done was in a thing I did for PBS called Lemon Sky, a play by Lanford Wilson. I think it's the rawest, most complex work that I've had to do, and the thing I'm most proud of.
Kevin Bacon

The River Wild was great, with Meryl Streep. That guy was really a bad dude who was ultimately sort of fundamentally impotent in a weird way. That was kind of interesting.
Kevin Bacon

The secret to a happy partnership? Keep the fights clean and the sex dirty.
Kevin Bacon

The way I analyze a script, I don't look at how many days I have off. I see how far they're going to push me. That's just the way I am.
Kevin Bacon

The whole industry is changing because so many people watch things on DVR, and they watch things on other platforms, and I think everybody is kind of scratching their heads about how this is going to play out.
Kevin Bacon

Theater is my first love... It's where I feel most at home.
Kevin Bacon

There are people who tell you to shut up because you're just a celebrity, but pundits, talking heads, they're every bit the celebrity and a lot of them aren't any more qualified than the average man on the street.
Kevin Bacon

There are some actor secrets you keep sometimes, and you want to keep.
Kevin Bacon

There are two things that create opportunities. One is being involved with something that makes money, and the other is winning awards. And the reason that winning the awards creates the opportunities is because it gives the people who are selling the picture the opportunity to make more money.
Kevin Bacon

There are two types of actors: those who say they don't want to be famous, and those who are liars.
Kevin Bacon

There are very few things that are purely conceptual without any hard content.
Kevin Bacon

There is a lesson there about greed and it is a lesson I am willing to learn as well. Has it made me a distrustful person? I don't think so. But we probably look a bit more carefully at our financial situation now.
Kevin Bacon

There is this idea that your social media platform is the secret to success, but no one has quite proven that to be true, if you ask me.
Kevin Bacon

There's the most resistance to an actor singing. It's like I'm being disloyal to my industry.
Kevin Bacon

There's this American dream to put enough away that you can golf and build a birdhouse or just be in a Barcalounger watching football all day. I'll never be that guy. And I'm not really sure the people who have that are all that happy. Our desires as a man are to work, plow ahead, and overcome conflict.
Kevin Bacon

There's something therapeutic about nudity.
Kevin Bacon

Things could be worse. You remember that, and you go on with your life.
Kevin Bacon

To me, the struggle is to try to make a less-well-written or less-well-rounded character and find who they are. If you really get it, and it's all on the page, then it's really just gonna pop out at you.
Kevin Bacon

We are being choked to death by the amount of plastic that we throw away. It's killing our oceans. It's entering into our bodies in the fish we eat.
Kevin Bacon

We're all connected. That’s the point of the whole six degrees thing, right?
Kevin Bacon

When I go home, I try to raise my children with honesty and integrity and teach them to take care of the world and of each other.
Kevin Bacon

When it comes to music, it's my clothes, it's my guitar, it's my voice, it's my song.
Kevin Bacon

When it happened to us and it was all gone overnight, we said, We are in this together, we are healthy, our children are healthy and we can work.
Kevin Bacon

Whether it's my age or my misspent youth, sometimes I forget whether I've worked with somebody or not.
Kevin Bacon

With a lot of actors, you've got to chip through the surface to see who the real person is.
Kevin Bacon

With Transparent. When Amazon put Transparent up, along with Bosch and a few other things, I watched them, and I thought it was an interesting exercise. I didn't comment on them, but I was like, Okay, this is kind of cool.
Kevin Bacon

X-Men: First Class was fun.
Kevin Bacon

You can sit around and complain that Hollywood doesn't make any good movies. But you can generate your own material. So I read books. I come up with ideas. I was the producer on The Woodsman to help get that off the ground. Sometimes that extends itself to directing.
Kevin Bacon

You have to be willing to fail. If you’re not failing, you’re not pushing yourself.
Kevin Bacon

You have to have something in your life that's more important than the work. People don't really like to admit that. They say, Oh, my work is my most important thing.
Kevin Bacon

A celebrity is a person who works hard all his life to become well known, then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized.
Arthur Baer

A committee is a group that keeps minutes and loses hours.
Arthur Baer

A conference is a gathering of important people who singly can do nothing, but together can decide that nothing can be done.
Arthur Baer

A diplomat is a person who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you actually look forward to the trip.
Arthur Baer

A good neighbor is a fellow who smiles at you over the back fence, but doesn't climb over it.
Arthur Baer

A movie star is a bit player with a press agent.
Arthur Baer

A newspaper is a circulating library with high blood pressure.
Arthur Baer

A plumber is an adventurer who traces leaky pipes to their source.
Arthur Baer

A yawn is a silent shout.
Arthur Baer

About a veteran player thrown out trying to steal second: There was larceny in his heart, but his legs were honest.
Arthur Baer

Alimony is like buying oats for a dead horse.
Arthur Baer

His head was full of larceny, but his feet were honest.
Arthur Baer

His insomnia was so bad, he couldn't sleep during office hours.
Arthur Baer

If you do big things they print your face, and if you do little things they print only your thumbs.
Arthur Baer

If you laid all our laws end to end, there would be no end.
Arthur Baer

It is impossible to tell where the law stops and justice begins.
Arthur Baer

It was as helpful as throwing a drowning man both ends of the rope.
Arthur Baer

It was so quiet, you could hear a pun drop.
Arthur Baer

Lefty Grove could throw a lamb chop past a wolf.
Arthur Baer

Liquor – you can make it illegal but you can't make it unpopular.
Arthur Baer

Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.
Arthur Baer

[History is] petrified imagination.
Arthur Baer

She used to diet on any kind of food she could lay her hands on.
Arthur Baer

She's generous to a fault - if it's her own.
Arthur Baer

The ladies looked one another over with microscopic carelessness.
Arthur Baer

There is no such thing as an attention span. People have infinite attention if you are entertaining them.
Arthur Baer

Action is the antidote to despair.
Joan Baez

As we know, forgiveness of oneself is the hardest of all the forgivenesses.
Joan Baez

Don’t confuse having a career with having a life.
Joan Baez

During the ballad years for me, the politics was latent; I was just falling in love with the ballads and my boyfriend. And there was the beauty of the songs.
Joan Baez

Hypothetical questions get hypothetical answers.
Joan Baez

I came to a nonviolence position through a gradual process.
Joan Baez

I didn't go through the routine of singing in small clubs and doing open mics and working so hard the way a lot of people do and did. It was just an overnight kind of thing.
Joan Baez

I have hope in people, in individuals. Because you don't know what's going to rise from the ruins.
Joan Baez

I have never had a humble opinion. If you've got an opinion, why be humble about it?
Joan Baez

I see a young man playing Plaisir d'Amour on guitar. I knew I didn't want to go to college; I was already playing a ukulele, and after I saw that, I was hooked. All I wanted to do was play guitar and sing.
Joan Baez

I spend a lot of time with Buddhists. I'm not a Buddhist, but their relationship with death interests me.
Joan Baez

I think music has the power to transform people, and in doing so, it has the power to transform situations—some large and some small.
Joan Baez

I think the term non-violent is much more positive, since it says we are non-violent against other people.
Joan Baez

I'm lucky to have met so many people who have been involved in peace and who have been peace prize winners.
Joan Baez

I'm not a folksinger. I'm a journalist's nightmare.
Joan Baez

I've never been an optimist.
Joan Baez

I've never had a humble opinion. If you've got an opinion, why be humble about it?
Joan Baez

If it's natural to kill, how come men have to go into training to learn how?
Joan Baez

If people have to put labels on me, I'd prefer the first label to be human being, the second label to be pacifist, and the third to be folk singer.
Joan Baez

If you're gonna sing meaningful songs, you have to be committed to living a life that backs that up.
Joan Baez

Instead of getting hard ourselves and trying to compete, women should try and give their best qualities to men - bring them softness, teach them how to cry.
Joan Baez

It seems to me that those songs that have been any good, I have nothing much to do with the writing of them. The words have just crawled down my sleeve and come out on the page.
Joan Baez

Mostly what I listen to when I turn on my little iPod is opera.
Joan Baez

My dread is for my show to be a nostalgia act. So the key to it is how do we keep it fresh?
Joan Baez

My father was a physicist and also an activist. My first public protest was with my dad at Stanford. I came by all that honestly.
Joan Baez

Nonviolence is a flop. The only bigger flop is violence.
Joan Baez

Only you and I can help the sun rise each coming morning. If we don't, it may drench itself out in sorrow.
Joan Baez

Peace might sell, but who's buying?
Joan Baez

People say I'm such a pessimist, but I always was. It never stopped me from doing what I had to do. I would say I'm a realist.
Joan Baez

Someone had to change the world. And obviously I was the one for the job.
Joan Baez

That's all nonviolence is - organized love.
Joan Baez

The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery...
Joan Baez

The easiest kind of relationship for me is with ten thousand people. The hardest is with one.
Joan Baez

The foundation of my beliefs is the same as it was when I was 10. Non-violence.
Joan Baez

The hardest song to write is a protest song, a topical song with meaning.
Joan Baez

The longer you practice nonviolence and the meditative qualities of it that you will need, the more likely you are to do something intelligent in any situation.
Joan Baez

The older I get, the more I'm conscious of ways very small things can make a change.
Joan Baez

The only thing that's been a worse flop than the organization of non-violence has been the organization of violence.
Joan Baez

That's all nonviolence is—organized love.
Joan Baez

War is obsolete. It's just that men haven't evolved to that knowledge yet.
Joan Baez

We all have to be told to grow up at different times in our lives. It happens to me still.
Joan Baez

We were raised with that discussion about violence and non-violence, and we all pretty much came up on the side of non-violence. That became my foundation with politics and my livelihood.
Joan Baez

You don't get to choose how you're going to die, or when. You can only decide how you're going to live. Now.
Joan Baez

You may not know it, but at the far end of despair, there is a white clearing where one is almost happy.
Joan Baez

A cabinet is a combining committee-a hyphen which joins, a buckle which fastens, the legislative part of the State to the executive part of the State.
The English Constitution
Walter Bagehot

A constitutional statesman is in general a man of common opinions and uncommon abilities.
Walter Bagehot

A democratic despotism is like a theocracy: it assumes its own correctness.
Walter Bagehot

A family on the throne is an interesting idea. It brings down the pride of sovereignty to the level of petty life.
Walter Bagehot

A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
Walter Bagehot

A man's mother is his misfortune, but his wife is his fault.
Walter Bagehot

A Parliament is nothing less than a big meeting of more or less idle people.
Walter Bagehot

A schoolmaster should have an atmosphere of awe, and walk wonderingly, as if he was amazed at being himself.
Walter Bagehot

A severe though not unfriendly critic of our institutions said that the cure for admiring the House of Lords was to go and look at it.
Walter Bagehot

A slight daily unconscious luxury is hardly ever wanting to the dwellers in civilization; like the gentle air of a genial climate, it is a perpetual minute enjoyment.
Walter Bagehot

All the best stories in the world are but one story in reality - the story of escape. It is the only thing which interests us all and at all times, how to escape.
Walter Bagehot

All the inducements of early society tend to foster immediate action; all its penalties fall on the man who pauses.
Walter Bagehot

An ambassador is not simply an agent; he is also a spectacle.
Walter Bagehot

An element of exaggeration clings to the popular judgment: great vices are made greater, great virtues greater also; interesting incidents are made more interesting, softer legends more soft.
Walter Bagehot

An inability to stay quiet is one of the conspicuous failings of mankind.
Walter Bagehot

An influential member of parliament has not only to pay much money to become such, and to give time and labour, he has also to sacrifice his mind too - at least all the characteristics part of it that which is original and most his own.
Walter Bagehot

Banking is a very delicate business.
Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market
Walter Bagehot

Behind every man's external life, which he leads in company, there is another which he leads alone, and which he carries with him apart.
Walter Bagehot

By the structure of the world we often want, at the sudden occurrence of a grave tempest, to change the helmsman - to replace the pilot of the calm by the pilot of the storm.
Walter Bagehot

Conquest is the missionary of valor, and the hard impact of military virtues beats meanness out of the world.
Walter Bagehot

Constitutions are easily copied, temperaments are not.
The English Constitution
Walter Bagehot

Dullness in matters of government is a good sign, and not a bad one - in particular, dullness in parliamentary government is a test of its excellence, an indication of its success.
Walter Bagehot

Every banker knows that if he has to prove that he is worthy of credit, however good may be his arguments, in fact his credit is gone.
Walter Bagehot

Honor sinks where commerce long prevails.
Walter Bagehot

In every particular state of the world, those nations which are strongest tend to prevail over the others; and in certain marked peculiarities the strongest tend to be the best.
Walter Bagehot

It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations.
Walter Bagehot

It is often said that men are ruled by their imaginations; but it would be truer to say they are governed by the weakness of their imaginations.
Walter Bagehot

Life is a compromise of what your ego wants to do, what experience tells you to do, and what your nerves let you do.
Walter Bagehot

Life is a school of probability.
Walter Bagehot

Men who do not make advances to women are apt to become victims to women who make advances to them.
Walter Bagehot

Money will not manage itself.
Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market
Walter Bagehot

No great work has ever been produced except after a long interval of still and musing meditation.
Walter Bagehot

No real English gentleman, in his secret soul, was ever sorry for the death of a political economist.
Walter Bagehot

Nothing is more unpleasant than a virtuous person with a mean mind.
Walter Bagehot

One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.
Physics and Politics
Walter Bagehot

Poverty is an anomaly to rich people; it is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell.
Walter Bagehot

Progress would not have been the rarity it is if the early food had not been the late poison.
Walter Bagehot

Public opinion is a permeating influence, and it exacts obedience to itself; it requires us to drink other men's thoughts, to speak other men's words, to follow other men's habits.
Walter Bagehot

So long as there are earnest believers in the world, they will always wish to punish opinions, even if their judgment tells them it is unwise and their conscience that it is wrong.
Walter Bagehot

So long as war is the main business of nations, temporary despotism - despotism during the campaign - is indispensable.
Walter Bagehot

The being without an opinion is so painful to human nature that most people will leap to a hasty opinion rather than undergo it.
Walter Bagehot

The best history is but like the art of Rembrandt; it casts a vivid light on certain selected causes, on those which were best and greatest; it leaves all the rest in shadow and unseen.
Walter Bagehot

The best reason why Monarchy is a strong government is, that it is an intelligible government. The mass of mankind understand it, and they hardly anywhere in the world understand any other.
Walter Bagehot

The cure for admiring the House of Lords is to go and look at it.
Walter Bagehot

The dignified parts of Government are those which bring it force, which attract its motive power. The efficient parts only employ that power.
The English Constitution
Walter Bagehot

The efficient secret of the English Constitution may be described as the close union, the nearly complete fusion of the executive and legislative powers.
Walter Bagehot

The essence of a bank is to be a place for loanable money.
Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market
Walter Bagehot

The greatest mistake is trying to be more agreeable than you can be.
Walter Bagehot

The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
Walter Bagehot

The habit of common and continuous speech is a symptom of mental deficiency. It proceeds from not knowing what is going on in other people's minds.
Walter Bagehot

The real essence of work is concentrated energy.
Walter Bagehot

The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.
Walter Bagehot

The secret of success is continuity of purpose.
Walter Bagehot

The Sovereign has, under a constitutional monarchy such as ours, three rights—the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn.
Walter Bagehot

The throne is the apex of the system; it is the symbol of the unity of the nation.
The English Constitution
Walter Bagehot

The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards.
Walter Bagehot

The worst families are those in which the members never really speak their minds to one another; they maintain an atmosphere of unreality, and everyone always lives in an atmosphere of suppressed ill-feeling.
Walter Bagehot

We must not let daylight in upon the magic.
The English Constitution
Walter Bagehot

What impresses men is not mind, but the result of mind.
Walter Bagehot

Woman absent is woman dead.
Walter Bagehot

Writers like teeth are divided into incisors and grinders.
Walter Bagehot

You may talk of the tyranny of Nero and Tiberius; but the real tyranny is the tyranny of your next-door neighbor.
The English Constitution
Walter Bagehot

Ray Stannard Baker - See David Grayson

Tammy Faye Bakker - See Tammy Faye Messner

A child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him, and a child cannot afford to be fooled.
James Baldwin

American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.
James Baldwin

An identity would seem to be arrived at by the way in which the person faces and uses his experience.
James Baldwin

Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent.
James Baldwin

Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.
James Baldwin

Be careful what you set your heart upon - for it will surely be yours.
James Baldwin

But the relationship of morality and power is a very subtle one. Because ultimately power without morality is no longer power.
James Baldwin

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.
Nobody Knows My Name
James Baldwin

Confronted with the impossibility of remaining faithful to one's beliefs, and the equal impossibility of becoming free of them, one can be driven to the most inhuman excesses.
James Baldwin

Education is indoctrination if you're white - subjugation if you're black.
James Baldwin

Europe has what we do not have yet, a sense of the mysterious and inexorable limits of life, a sense, in a word, of tragedy. And we have what they sorely need: a sense of life's possibilities.
James Baldwin

Every legend, moreover, contains its residuum of truth, and the root function of language is to control the universe by describing it.
James Baldwin

Everybody's journey is individual. If you fall in love with a boy, you fall in love with a boy. The fact that many Americans consider it a disease says more about them than it does about homosexuality.
James Baldwin

Fires can't be made with dead embers, nor can enthusiasm be stirred by spiritless men. Enthusiasm in our daily work lightens effort and turns even labor into pleasant tasks.
James Baldwin

Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be.
The Price of the Ticket
James Baldwin

Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law.
James Baldwin

I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all.
James Baldwin

I can't believe what you say, because I see what you do.
Cambridge Union Debate vs. William F. Buckley
James Baldwin

I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.
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.
James Baldwin

I want to be an honest man and a good writer.
James Baldwin

I've always believed that you can think positive just as well as you can think negative.
James Baldwin

If the relationship of father to son could really be reduced to biology, the whole earth would blaze with the glory of fathers and sons.
James Baldwin

If you're treated a certain way you become a certain kind of person. If certain things are described to you as being real they're real for you whether they're real or not.
James Baldwin

It is a great shock at the age of five or six to find that in a world of Gary Coopers you are the Indian.
James Baldwin

It is a very rare man who does not victimize the helpless.
James Baldwin

It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.
No Name in the Street
James Baldwin

It is only in his music, which Americans are able to admire because a protective sentimentality limits their understanding of it, that the Negro in America has been able to tell his story.
James Baldwin

It is very nearly impossible... to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.
James Baldwin

It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.
James Baldwin

Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.
The Price of the Ticket
James Baldwin

Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time.
James Baldwin

Love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters?
James Baldwin

Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.
James Baldwin

Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex, you thought of nothing else if you didn't have it and thought of other things if you did.
James Baldwin

Most of us are about as eager to be changed as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.
James Baldwin

No one can possibly know what is about to happen: it is happening, each time, for the first time, for the only time.
James Baldwin

No people come into possession of a culture without having paid a heavy price for it.
James Baldwin

Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.
James Baldwin

Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.
As Much Truth As One Can Bear
James Baldwin

Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.
James Baldwin

People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.
James Baldwin

People can cry much easier than they can change.
The Fire Next Time
James Baldwin

People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead.
James Baldwin

People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.
The Price of the Ticket
James Baldwin

Pessimists are the people who have no hope for themselves or for others. Pessimists are also people who think the human race is beneath their notice, that they're better than other human beings.
James Baldwin

The face of a lover is an unknown, precisely because it is invested with so much of oneself. It is a mystery, containing, like all mysteries, the possibility of torment.
James Baldwin

The future is like heaven, everyone exalts it, but no one wants to go there now.
James Baldwin

The making of an American begins at the point where he himself rejects all other ties, any other history, and himself adopts the vesture of his adopted land.
James Baldwin

The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.
James Baldwin

The noblest spirit is most strongly attracted by the love of glory.
James Baldwin

The only thing that white people have that black people need, or should want, is power-and no one holds power forever.
James Baldwin

The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.
James Baldwin

The place in which I'll fit will not exist until I make it.
James Baldwin

The power of the white world is threatened whenever a black man refuses to accept the white world's definitions.
James Baldwin

The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.
The Fire Next Time
James Baldwin

The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid; the state of being alone.
James Baldwin

The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers.
James Baldwin

The question of sexual dominance can exist only in the nightmare of that soul which has armed itself, totally, against the possibility of the changing motion of conquest and surrender, which is love.
James Baldwin

The questions which one asks oneself begin, at least, to illuminate the world, and become one's key to the experience of others.
James Baldwin

The reason people think it's important to be white is that they think it's important not to be black.
James Baldwin

The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.
James Baldwin

The South is very beautiful but its beauty makes one sad because the lives that people live here, and have lived here, are so ugly.
James Baldwin

The world is before you and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.
James Baldwin

The writer's greed is appalling. He wants, or seems to want, everything and practically everybody, in another sense, and at the same time, he needs no one at all.
James Baldwin

The young think that failure is the Siberian end of the line, banishment from all the living, and tend to do what I then did - which was to hide.
James Baldwin

There are few things more dreadful than dealing with a man who knows he is going under, in his own eyes, and in the eyes of others. Nothing can help that man. What is left of that man flees from what is left of human attention.
James Baldwin

There is a sanctity involved with bringing a child into this world: it is better than bombing one out of it.
James Baldwin

There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now.
James Baldwin

Those who say it can't be done are usually interrupted by others doing it.
James Baldwin

To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger.
James Baldwin

To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.
James Baldwin

To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the making of bread.
James Baldwin

Voyagers discover that the world can never be larger than the person that is in the world; but it is impossible to foresee this, it is impossible to be warned.
James Baldwin

We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.
James Baldwin

We have all had the experience of finding that our reactions and perhaps even our deeds have denied beliefs we thought were ours.
James Baldwin

When a man asks himself what is meant by action he proves that he isn't a man of action. Action is a lack of balance. In order to act you must be somewhat insane. A reasonably sensible man is satisfied with thinking.
James Baldwin

When one begins to live by habit and by quotation, one has begun to stop living.
James Baldwin

You know, it's not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does to you, if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do to yourself.
James Baldwin

You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me the most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.
The Fire Next Time
James Baldwin

A platitude is simply a truth repeated till people get tired of hearing it.
Stanley Baldwin

A statesman must be a patriot, but he must also be a realist.
Stanley Baldwin

A statesman wants courage and a statesman wants vision; but believe me, after six months' experience, he wants first, second, third and all the time - patience.
Stanley Baldwin

Democracy is a system of government which makes it possible for people to get rid of the government and try another without violence.
Often cited in discussions about democratic governance, though the exact source is debated.
Stanley Baldwin

Had the employers of past generations all of them dealt fairly with their employees there would have been no unions.
Stanley Baldwin

I am not struck so much by the diversity of testimony as by the many-sidedness of truth.
Stanley Baldwin

I am one of those who would rather sink with faith than swim without it.
Stanley Baldwin

I would rather be an opportunist and float than go to the bottom with my principles around my neck.
From a 1931 speech defending his pragmatic approach to the Indian independence movement.
Stanley Baldwin

I would rather trust a woman's instinct than a man's reason.
Stanley Baldwin

Let us never forget this: since the day of the air, the old frontiers are gone. When you think of the defense of England you no longer think of the chalk cliffs of Dover; you think of the Rhine. That is where our frontier lies.
Stanley Baldwin

Power without responsibility — the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.
From a 1931 speech criticizing press barons Beaverbrook and Rothermere. Baldwin attributed the phrase to his cousin Rudyard Kipling.
Stanley Baldwin

Since the day of the air, the old frontiers are gone.
Stanley Baldwin

The bomber will always get through.
From a 1932 speech on disarmament, highlighting the vulnerability of civilians to air attacks.
Stanley Baldwin

The greatest crime to our own people is to be afraid to tell the truth.
Stanley Baldwin

The intelligent are to the intelligentsia what a gentleman is to a gent.
From a 1927 speech critiquing pretentious intellectualism.
Stanley Baldwin

The only defense is offense, which means that you have to kill more women and children more quickly than the enemy if you wish to save yourselves.
Stanley Baldwin

The real need of the day is moral and spiritual rearmament. God's Living Spirit can transcend conflicting political systems, can reconcile order and freedom.
Stanley Baldwin

War would end if the dead could return.
Stanley Baldwin

You will find in politics that you are much exposed to the attribution of false motive. Never complain and never explain.
Stanley Baldwin

Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Balkhi - See Rumi

Accessible design is good design.
Steve Ballmer

All companies of any size have to continue to push to make sure you get the right leaders, the right team, the right people to be fast acting, and fast moving in the marketplace. We've got great leaders, and we continue to attract and promote great new leaders.
Steve Ballmer

And then you take a look at Spaces, there is this great innovation that came out of nowhere. We have the number one blogging site in the world because of the innovation that's there.
Steve Ballmer

Anybody who ever left Microsoft to Amazon, we could count on them coming back within a year or two, because it's not a great place to work to do innovative stuff as an engineer.
Steve Ballmer

Apple is a failure because they missed social? Nobody would say that, because they are having great success.
Steve Ballmer

As a businessman, if you ask me what I'm proud of, I'm proud of the fact that I made $250 billion under my watch as CEO.
Steve Ballmer

Bing is a decision engine.
Steve Ballmer

Certainly, we continue to bring in new people. We'll hire, net new, over 4,000 people this year, and attract great people into the company. I'm very bullish about the employee base and what it can accomplish.
Steve Ballmer

Computer science is the operating system for all innovation.
Steve Ballmer

Developers, developers, developers!
A passionate chant from a 2000s event highlighting Microsoft’s focus on developer support.
Steve Ballmer

Diversity of form factor matters, and not compromising either form factor. You need diversity of price point. That's quite important.
Steve Ballmer

From a client perspective, I really think the work Microsoft's doing with Surface, with HoloLens, with Xbox, that stuff's absolutely essential to the company's future. Because innovation in the future will either be from the cloud out to all devices, or from devices as supported by software in the cloud.
Steve Ballmer

Google's not a real company. It’s a house of cards.
A controversial remark about Google's business model during Microsoft's competition with the search giant.
Steve Ballmer

Great companies have high cultures of accountability, it comes with this culture of criticism I was talking about before, and I think our culture is strong on that.
Steve Ballmer

Great companies in the way they work, start with great leaders.
Steve Ballmer

I come back to the same thing: We've got the greatest pipeline in the company's history in the next 12 months, and we've had the most amazing financial results possible over the last five years, and we're predicting being back at double-digit revenue growth in fiscal year '06.
Steve Ballmer

I don't know what a monopoly is until somebody tells me.
Steve Ballmer

I have lots of sources of information about what's going on at the company. I think I have a pretty good pulse on where we are and what people are thinking.
Steve Ballmer

I have a hard time with businesses that don't make money at some point.
Steve Ballmer

I have never, honestly, thrown a chair in my life.
Steve Ballmer

I like to tell people that all of our products and business will go through three phases. There's vision, patience, and execution.
Steve Ballmer

I liked football a lot, too, but basketball clearly is my first love.
Steve Ballmer

I love Los Angeles. I love Seattle, too, which is where we have our home. But the notion of spending a lot of time in Los Angeles has been exciting to me for years. The community down there is great.
Steve Ballmer

I love this company!
Steve Ballmer

I loved every minute of my time at Microsoft, but I had always envisioned having another phase of life just because I thought that would be interesting. It had never been my plan to work until I literally didn't want to do anything and then hang it up.
Steve Ballmer

I think Amazon is a place where people don't want to work.
Steve Ballmer

I think it would be absolutely reckless and irresponsible for anyone to try and break up Microsoft.
Steve Ballmer

I think our leadership team is a highly accountable leadership team.
Steve Ballmer

I'm all in on the Los Angeles Clippers. We're moving forward. We've got to work to be the best we can be to take advantage of all the assets in the community.
Steve Ballmer

I'm not sure blogs are necessarily the best place to get a pulse on anything. People want to blog for a variety of reasons, and that may or may not be representative.
Steve Ballmer

I'm very, very bullish about our prospects, and as I tell our board, as I tell our employees, this is the time to invest. There's so much opportunity. Let's just invest in that opportunity, and really get after it.
Steve Ballmer

I've got my kids brainwashed: You don't use Google, and you don't use an iPod.
Steve Ballmer

If we see an opportunity in the software/hardware seam, we're going to take it.
Steve Ballmer

If you look at companies with upside potential, Twitter's right there. They've established a brand in a world where it's extremely difficult to establish a brand. It's a global brand, people recognize it, people want to let you know what their Twitter handles are, etc.
Steve Ballmer

In the case of music, Apple got out early. They were the first to really recognize that you couldn't just think about the device and all the pieces separately. Bravo.
Steve Ballmer

Life is nothing without passion.
Steve Ballmer

Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches.
A 2001 criticism of open-source software and the GNU GPL license.
Steve Ballmer

Look at the product pipeline, look at the fantastic financial results we've had for the last five years. You only get that kind of performance on the innovation side, on the financial side, if you're really listening and reacting to the best ideas of the people we have.
Steve Ballmer

Microsoft is an enterprise company.
Highlighting Microsoft’s focus on business customers and enterprise solutions.
Steve Ballmer

Microsoft's culture is very strong.
Steve Ballmer

My children - in many dimensions they're as poorly behaved as many other children, but at least on this dimension I've got my kids brainwashed: You don't use Google, and you don't use an iPod.
Steve Ballmer

One capability every business is expected to have is the capability to make money. It requires a certain kind of discipline, a certain kind of mindset.
Steve Ballmer

Our company has to be a company that enables its people.
Steve Ballmer

Our mail product, Hotmail, is the market leader globally.
Steve Ballmer

Our people, our shareholders, me, Bill Gates, we expect to change the world in every way, to succeed wildly at everything we touch, to have the broadest impact of any company in the world.
Steve Ballmer

So, I think the output of our innovation is great. We have a culture of self-improvement. I know we can continue to improve. There is no issue. But at the same time, our absolute level of output is fantastic.
Steve Ballmer

Success is not a one-time event; it's a continuous process.
Steve Ballmer

The Clippers are more valuable in Los Angeles. It's a phenomenal city, a phenomenal market, phenomenal everything.
Steve Ballmer

The Clippers are the L.A. Clippers, and they will remain the L.A. Clippers. There is no question about that. I live in Seattle. I will continue to live in Seattle.
Steve Ballmer

The NBA has made it clear they want fan bases to be able to keep their teams.
Steve Ballmer

The number one benefit of information technology is that it empowers people to do what they want to do. It lets people be creative. It lets people be productive. It lets people learn things they didn't think they could learn before, and so in a sense it is all about potential.
Reflecting his belief in technology's role in enabling productivity.
Steve Ballmer

The truth is that you can't really tell how anybody's doing in the tech business for at least five or 10 years.
Steve Ballmer

There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance.
A 2007 prediction about the iPhone's potential failure, later proven inaccurate.
Steve Ballmer

We can believe that we know where the world should go. But unless we're in touch with our customers, our model of the world can diverge from reality. There's no substitute for innovation, of course, but innovation is no substitute for being in touch, either.
Steve Ballmer

We don't have a monopoly. We have market share. There's a difference.
Steve Ballmer

We will make our products work out of the box.
Steve Ballmer

We're all in on the cloud.
A statement underscoring Microsoft's commitment to cloud computing under his leadership.
Steve Ballmer

We've grown from 18% of the profits of the top 25 companies in our industry to 23% of the profits of the top 25 companies in our industry over the last five years. Profits are up over 70%, where the industry profit is up about 35%. Pretty good.
Steve Ballmer

What we've gone through in the last several years has caused some people to question Can we trust Microsoft?
Steve Ballmer

When you're running a company, you have employees - lots of them - that can interrupt your schedule. You have customers that can interrupt your schedule. You have a certain obligation to wave the flag because people expect to get out and wave the flag. The number of ways that others can command your time is high.
Steve Ballmer

Windows, Windows, Windows!
A rallying cry emphasizing Microsoft's flagship operating system.
Steve Ballmer

You've got to remember there's intense competition between Microsoft and Amazon.
Steve Ballmer

A flow of words is a sure sign of duplicity.
Honoré de Balzac

A good husband is never the first to go to sleep at night or the last to awake in the morning.
Honoré de Balzac

A grocer is attracted to his business by a magnetic force as great as the repulsion which renders it odious to artists.
Honoré de Balzac

A husband who submits to his wife's yoke is justly held an object of ridicule. A woman's influence ought to be entirely concealed.
Honoré de Balzac

A lover always thinks of his mistress first and himself second; with a husband it runs the other way.
Honoré de Balzac

A man is a poor creature compared to a woman.
Honoré de Balzac

A mother who is really a mother is never free.
Honoré de Balzac

A mother's happiness is like a beacon, lighting up the future but reflected also on the past in the guise of fond memories.
Honoré de Balzac

A mother's life, you see, is one long succession of dramas, now soft and tender, now terrible. Not an hour but has its joys and fears.
Honoré de Balzac

A woman knows the face of the man she loves as a sailor knows the open sea.
Honoré de Balzac

A woman's heart is a golden bowl in which there is nothing.
La Cousine Bette (Cousin Bette)
Honoré de Balzac

A young bride is like a plucked flower; but a guilty wife is like a flower that had been walked over.
Honoré de Balzac

All happiness depends on courage and work.
Honoré de Balzac

All humanity is passion; without passion, religion, history, novels, art would be ineffectual.
Honoré de Balzac

An unfulfilled vocation drains the color from a man's entire existence.
Honoré de Balzac

At fifteen, beauty and talent do not exist; there can only be promise of the coming woman.
Honoré de Balzac

Behind every great fortune lies a great crime.
Le Père Goriot (Father Goriot)
Honoré de Balzac

Between the daylight gambler and the player at night there is the same difference that lies between a careless husband and the lover swooning under his lady's window.
Honoré de Balzac

Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.
Les Employés (The Government Clerks)
Honoré de Balzac

But reason always cuts a poor figure beside sentiment; the one being essentially restricted, like everything that is positive, while the other is infinite.
Honoré de Balzac

Chance, my dear, is the sovereign deity in child-bearing.
Honoré de Balzac

Children, dear and loving children, can alone console a woman for the loss of her beauty.
Honoré de Balzac

Clouds symbolize the veils that shroud God.
Honoré de Balzac

Conscience is our unerring judge until we finally stifle it.
Honoré de Balzac

Courtesy is only a thin veneer on the general selfishness.
Honoré de Balzac

Death unites as well as separates; it silences all paltry feeling.
Honoré de Balzac

Equality may perhaps be a right, but no power on earth can ever turn it into a fact.
Le Médecin de Campagne (The Country Doctor)
Honoré de Balzac

Excess of joy is harder to bear than any amount of sorrow.
Honoré de Balzac

Finance, like time, devours its own children.
Honoré de Balzac

First love is a kind of vaccination which saves a man from catching the complaint the second time.
Honoré de Balzac

For passion, be it observed, brings insight with it; it can give a sort of intelligence to simpletons, fools, and idiots, especially during youth.
Honoré de Balzac

Great love affairs start with Champagne and end with tisane.
Honoré de Balzac

Hatred is a tonic. It makes one live, it inspires vengeance; but pity kills, it weakens us.
La Cousine Bette (Cousin Bette)
Honoré de Balzac

I do not regard a broker as a member of the human race.
Honoré de Balzac

Ideas devour the ages as men are devoured by their passions. When man is cured, human nature will cure itself perhaps.
Honoré de Balzac

If those who are the enemies of innocent amusements had the direction of the world, they would take away the spring, and youth, the former from the year, the latter from human life.
Honoré de Balzac

If we could but paint with the hand what we see with the eye.
Honoré de Balzac

Ignorance is the mother of all crimes.
Le Cousin Pons (Cousin Pons)
Honoré de Balzac

In diving to the bottom of pleasure we bring up more gravel than pearls.
Honoré de Balzac

It is as absurd to say that a man can't love one woman all the time as it is to say that a violinist needs several violins to play the same piece of music.
Honoré de Balzac

It is easier to be a lover than a husband for the simple reason that it is more difficult to be witty every day than to say pretty things from time to time.
Honoré de Balzac

It is easy to sit up and take notice, What is difficult is getting up and taking action.
Honoré de Balzac

It is only in the act of nursing that a woman realizes her motherhood in visible and tangible fashion; it is a joy of every moment.
Honoré de Balzac

It is the mark of a great man that he puts to flight all ordinary calculations. He is at once sublime and touching, childlike and of the race of giants.
Honoré de Balzac

It would be curious to know what leads a man to become a stationer rather than a baker, when he is no longer compelled, as among the Egyptians, to succeed to his father's craft.
Honoré de Balzac

Laws are spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught.
Le Père Goriot (Father Goriot)
Honoré de Balzac

Love has its own instinct, finding the way to the heart, as the feeblest insect finds the way to its flower, with a will which nothing can dismay nor turn aside.
Honoré de Balzac

Love is a game in which one always cheats.
Honoré de Balzac

Love is like some fresh spring, first a stream and then a river, changing its aspect and its nature as it flows to plunge itself in some boundless ocean, where restricted natures only find monotony, but where great souls are engulfed in endless contemplation.
Honoré de Balzac

Love is the poetry of the senses.
Physiologie du Mariage (The Physiology of Marriage)
Honoré de Balzac

Love may be or it may not, but where it is, it ought to reveal itself in its immensity.
Honoré de Balzac

Love or hatred must constantly increase between two persons who are always together; every moment fresh reasons are found for loving or hating better.
Honoré de Balzac

Lovers have a way of using this word, nothing, which implies exactly the opposite.
Honoré de Balzac

Man is neither good nor bad; he is born with instincts and abilities.
Honoré de Balzac

Manners are the hypocrisy of a nation.
Honoré de Balzac

Many men are deeply moved by the mere semblance of suffering in a woman; they take the look of pain for a sign of constancy or of love.
Honoré de Balzac

Marriage must incessantly contend with a monster that devours everything: routine.
Physiologie du Mariage (The Physiology of Marriage)
Honoré de Balzac

Men die in despair, while spirits die in ecstasy.
Honoré de Balzac

Modesty is the conscience of the body.
Honoré de Balzac

Nature makes only dumb animals. We owe the fools to society.
Honoré de Balzac

No man has ever yet discovered the way to give friendly advice to any woman, not even to his own wife.
Honoré de Balzac

No man should marry until he has studied anatomy and dissected at least one woman.
Honoré de Balzac

Nobody loves a woman because she is handsome or ugly, stupid or intelligent. We love because we love.
Honoré de Balzac

Nothing is a greater impediment to being on good terms with others than being ill at ease with yourself.
Honoré de Balzac

Nothing so fortifies a friendship as a belief on the part of one friend that he is superior to the other.
Honoré de Balzac

Old maids, having never bent their temper or their lives to other lives and other tempers, as woman's destiny requires, have for the most part a mania for making everything about them bend to them.
Honoré de Balzac

One should believe in marriage as in the immortality of the soul.
Honoré de Balzac

Our most bitter enemies are our own kith and kin. Kings have no brothers, no sons, no mother!
Honoré de Balzac

Passion is universal humanity. Without it, religion, history, romance, and art would be useless.
La Peau de Chagrin (The Wild Ass’s Skin)
Honoré de Balzac

Political liberty, the peace of a nation, and science itself are gifts for which Fate demands a heavy tax in blood!
Honoré de Balzac

Power is action; the electoral principle is discussion. No political action is possible when discussion is permanently established.
Honoré de Balzac

Power is not revealed by striking hard or often, but by striking true.
Les Chouans (The Chouans)
Honoré de Balzac

Reading brings us unknown friends.
Honoré de Balzac

Small natures require despotism to exercise their sinews, as great souls thirst for equality to give play to their heart.
Honoré de Balzac

Society bristles with enigmas which look hard to solve. It is a perfect maze of intrigue.
Honoré de Balzac

Solitude is fine, but you need someone to tell you that solitude is fine.
Illusions Perdues (Lost Illusions)
Honoré de Balzac

Study lends a kind of enchantment to all our surroundings.
Honoré de Balzac

Suicide, moreover, was at the time in vogue in Paris: what more suitable key to the mystery of life for a skeptical society?
Honoré de Balzac

The art of motherhood involves much silent, unobtrusive self-denial, an hourly devotion which finds no detail too minute.
Honoré de Balzac

The country is provincial; it becomes ridiculous when it tries to ape Paris.
Honoré de Balzac

The duration of passion is proportionate to the original resistance of the woman.
Physiologie du Mariage (The Physiology of Marriage)
Honoré de Balzac

The fact is that love is of two kinds, one which commands, and one which obeys. The two are quite distinct, and the passion to which the one gives rise is not the passion of the other.
Honoré de Balzac

The habits of life form the soul, and the soul forms the countenance.
Honoré de Balzac

The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness.
La Femme de Trente Ans (A Woman of Thirty)
Honoré de Balzac

The life of a man who deliberately runs through his fortune often becomes a business speculation; his friends, his pleasures, patrons, and acquaintances are his capital.
Honoré de Balzac

The majority of husbands remind me of an orangutan trying to play the violin.
Honoré de Balzac

The man as he converses is the lover; silent, he is the husband.
Honoré de Balzac

The man whose action habitually bears the stamp of his mind is a genius, but the greatest genius is not always equal to himself, or he would cease to be human.
Honoré de Balzac

The more one judges, the less one loves.
Physiologie du Mariage (The Physiology of Marriage)
Honoré de Balzac

The most virtuous women have something within them, something that is never chaste.
Honoré de Balzac

The motto of chivalry is also the motto of wisdom: to serve all, but love only one.
Les Chouans (The Chouans)
Honoré de Balzac

The secret of great fortunes without apparent cause is a crime forgotten, for it was properly done.
Le Père Goriot (Father Goriot)
Honoré de Balzac

The smallest flower is a thought, a life answering to some feature of the Great Whole, of whom they have a persistent intuition.
Honoré de Balzac

There are some women whose pregnancy would make some sly bachelor smile.
Honoré de Balzac

There is no such thing as a great talent without great willpower.
La Muse du Département (The Muse of the Department)
Honoré de Balzac

There is something great and terrible about suicide.
Honoré de Balzac

Those who spend too fast never grow rich.
Honoré de Balzac

Thought is a key to all treasures; the miser's gains are ours without his cares. Thus I have soared above this world, where my enjoyment have been intellectual joys.
Honoré de Balzac

To those who have exhausted politics, nothing remains but abstract thought.
Honoré de Balzac

To kill a relative of whom you are tired is something. But to inherit his property afterward is a real pleasure.
Le Père Goriot (Father Goriot)
Honoré de Balzac

Towns find it as hard as houses of business to rise again from ruin.
Honoré de Balzac

True love is eternal, infinite, and always like itself. It is equal and pure, without violent demonstrations: it is seen with white hairs and is always young in the heart.
Honoré de Balzac

Unintelligent persons are like weeds that thrive in good ground; they love to be amused in proportion to the degree in which they weary themselves.
Honoré de Balzac

Virtue, perhaps, is nothing more than politeness of soul.
Honoré de Balzac

Vocations which we wanted to pursue, but didn't, bleed, like colors, on the whole of our existence.
Honoré de Balzac

We exaggerate misfortune and happiness alike. We are never as bad off or as happy as we say we are.
Honoré de Balzac

What is a child, monsieur, but the image of two beings, the fruit of two sentiments spontaneously blended?
Honoré de Balzac

What is art? Nature concentrated.
Honoré de Balzac

When law becomes despotic, morals are relaxed, and vice versa.
Honoré de Balzac

When Religion and Royalty are swept away, the people will attack the great, and after the great, they will fall upon the rich.
Honoré de Balzac

When women love us, they forgive us everything, even our crimes; when they do not love us, they give us credit for nothing, not even our virtues.
La Vieille Fille (The Old Maid)
Honoré de Balzac

Wisdom is that apprehension of heavenly things to which the spirit rises through love.
Honoré de Balzac

Women are tenacious, and all of them should be tenacious of respect; without esteem they cannot exist; esteem is the first demand that they make of love.
Honoré de Balzac

Bambino - See Babe Ruth

Acting is a form of confusion.
Tallulah Bankhead

Be nice to people on your way up because you'll meet them on your way down.
Tallulah Bankhead

Cocaine habit-forming? Of course not. I ought to know. I've been using it for years.
Famously quoted, reflecting her candidness about her lifestyle.
Tallulah Bankhead

Codeine...bourbon.
Tallulah Bankhead

Fill what is empty, empty what is full, and scratch where it itches.
Tallulah Bankhead

First person to fall asleep is a shit!
Party at her place.
Tallulah Bankhead

Here's a rule I recommend. Never practice two vices at once.
Tallulah Bankhead

Here's to alcohol, the rose-colored glasses of life.
Reflects her notorious love for drinking.
Tallulah Bankhead

I did what I could to inflate the rumor I was on my way to stardom. What I was on my way to, by any mathematical standards known to man, was oblivion, by way of obscurity.
Tallulah Bankhead

I have been absolutely hag-ridden with ambition. If I could wish to have anything in the world it would be to be free of ambition.
Tallulah Bankhead

I have three phobias which, could I mute them, would make my life as slick as a sonnet, but as dull as ditch water: I hate to go to bed, I hate to get up, and I hate to be alone.
Tallulah Bankhead

I read Shakespeare and the Bible, and I can shoot dice. That's what I call a liberal education.
Tallulah Bankhead

I thought I told you to wait in the car.
On seeing a former lover for the first time in years.
Tallulah Bankhead

I'd rather be strongly wrong than weakly right.
Tallulah Bankhead

I'll come up and make love to you at five o'clock. If I'm late, start without me.
Tallulah Bankhead

I'm a nymphomaniac. I'm a compulsive eater. I'm an alcoholic. I'm a drug addict. I'm a homosexual. I'm a genius.
Authenticity questionable.
Tallulah Bankhead

I'm as pure as the driven slush.
One of her most iconic lines, referencing her public persona.
Tallulah Bankhead

I'm the foe of moderation, the champion of excess. If I may lift a line from a die-hard whose identity is lost in the shuffle, I'd rather be strongly wrong than weakly right.
From her autobiography, Tallulah (1952).
Tallulah Bankhead

I've been called many things, but never an intellectual.
Tallulah Bankhead

I've tried several varieties of sex. The conventional position makes me claustrophobic, and the others give me a stiff neck or lockjaw.
Reflects her bold humor and openness about sexuality.
Tallulah Bankhead

If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner.
Tallulah Bankhead

If you really want to help somebody, you help them to help themselves.
Authenticity questionable.
Tallulah Bankhead

If you really want to help the American theater, don't be an actress, dahling. Be an audience.
Tallulah Bankhead

It's one of the tragic ironies of the theatre that only one man in it can count on steady work—the night watchman.
Highlights her wit about the unpredictability of acting.
Tallulah Bankhead

It's the good girls who keep the diaries. The bad girls never have the time.
A quip on her rebellious persona.
Tallulah Bankhead

My father warned me about men and booze, but he never mentioned a word about women and cocaine.
Authenticity questionable.
Tallulah Bankhead

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

Only good girls keep diaries. Bad girls don't have time.
Tallulah Bankhead

Television could perform a great service in mass education, but there's no indication its sponsors have anything like this on their minds.
Tallulah Bankhead

The less I behave like Whistler's mother the night before, the more I look like her the morning after.
Tallulah Bankhead

The only thing I regret about my past is the length of it. If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner.
Tallulah Bankhead

There is less in this than meets the eye.
Reportedly said about a play she starred in.
Tallulah Bankhead

They used to photograph Shirley Temple through gauze. They should photograph me through linoleum.
Tallulah Bankhead

Too many of our countrymen rejoice in stupidity, look upon ignorance as a badge of honor. They condemn everything they don't understand.
Tallulah Bankhead

Bapu - See Mahatma Gandhi

Barbie is more than a doll; she's a cultural icon.
Fortune Magazine interview (1998)
Jill Barad

Breaking the glass ceiling requires not just skill, but the courage to challenge the status quo.
Speech at the Women in Business Conference (2000)
Jill Barad

Innovation is the key to staying relevant in a competitive market.
Business Strategy Journal (1999)
Jill Barad

Inventing toys is like a never-ending treasure hunt – you're always searching for that elusive gem that will captivate the world.
Jill Barad

Leadership is about making the impossible possible.
Keynote speech at a leadership summit (1997)
Jill Barad

Success is the result of relentless effort and unwavering focus.
Commencement address at USC Marshall School of Business (2001)
Jill Barad

The consumer is the ultimate judge of our success.
The New York Times (1997)
Jill Barad

The man who can drive himself further once the effort gets painful is the man who will win.
Jill Barad

When you apply the word power to a man, it means strong and bold - very positive attributes. When you use it to describe a woman, it suggests bitchy, insensitive, hard.
Jill Barad

You can’t be everything to everyone, but you have to be something really important to someone.
The New York Times (1999)
Jill Barad

'Tis not where we lie but whence we fell; the loss of Heaven's the greatest pain in Hell.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

A friar who asks alms for God's sake begs for two.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

A good action is never lost; it is a treasure laid up and guarded for the doer's need.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

A king must be given property and life, but honor is the soul's heritage, and the soul belongs only to God.
El alcalde de Zalamea (Act III).
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

A person's true wealth is measured by the good he does in the world.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

A single act of kindness can have a ripple effect that changes the world.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

A true leader is one who inspires others to greatness.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

All life is a dream, and all dreams are dreams.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

All just laws condemn cruelty.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

All must yield to the weight of years; conquest is not difficult for time.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

And yet, and yet, in these our ghostly lives, Half night, half day, half sleeping, half awake, How if our waking life, like that of sleep, Be all a dream in that eternal life To which we wake not till we sleep in death.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

At the point when affection is not frenzy, it is not adore.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

Beauty is not found in perfection, but in the unique flaws that make us who we are.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

But whether it be dream or truth, to do well is what matters. If it be truth, for truth's sake. If not, then to gain friends for the time when we awaken.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

Courage is not the absence of fear, but the ability to act in spite of it.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

Do not ask God for a lighter burden; ask for broader shoulders to carry the weight.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

Do not judge a man by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

Dreams are rough copies of the waking soul Yet uncorrected of the higher will, So that men sometimes in their dreams confess An unsuspected, or forgotten, self; -Since Dreaming, Madness, Passion, are akin In missing each that salutory rein Of reason, and the grinding will of man.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

Dreams are the wings that allow us to fly beyond our limitations.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

Even in dreams doing good is not wasted.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

Every ending is a new beginning in disguise.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

For all life is a dream, and dreams themselves are only dreams.
La vida es sueño (Act II, Scene XIX).
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

For even in dreams a good deed is not lost.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

For man's greatest crime is to have been born.
La vida es sueño (Act I, Scene II).
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

Great events have sent before them their announcements.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

Green is the prime color of the world, and that from which its loveliness arises.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

Grief has been compared to a hydra; for every one that dies, two are born.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

Happiness resides within ourselves, not in the external world.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

Honor flows like water, never to return.
El médico de su honra (Act III).
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

Honor is the soul's life, and without it, it is better to die.
El alcalde de Zalamea.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

Hope is the flame that keeps us going in the darkest of times.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

How surely a knowledge of the world hardens the heart!
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

I more easily forgive he who takes my property than he who stains my honor and name.
El alcalde de Zalamea.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

If a pretty woman only knew how anger improved her beauty! Her complexion needs no other paint than indignation.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

In love, there are no boundaries, only the limits we impose upon ourselves.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

In this treacherous world, nothing is the truth nor a lie. Everything depends on the color of the crystal through which one sees it.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

Life is a dream, and dreams themselves are only dreams.
La vida es sueño (Act II, Scene XIX).
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

Life is a dream, and dreams, though told by an idiot, often contain truth.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

Life is a game, and the wise player knows when to hold'em and when to fold'em.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

Light-enchanted sunflower, thou
Who gazest ever true and tender
On the sun's revolving splendour.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

Love has a thousand faces, but the truest form is the one that withstands all adversity.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

Love is a flame that burns in the heart, never to be extinguished.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

Love is the only gold.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

Love that is not madness is not love.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

Love, when not guided by reason, can become a thousand ills.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

Never confide your secrets to paper; it is like throwing a stone in the air; and if you know who throws the stone, you do not know where it may fall.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

No glory is lasting, no love is eternal.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

No virtue can be real that has not been tried. The gold in the crucible alone is perfect; the loadstone tests the steel, and the diamond is tried by the diamond, while metals gleam the brighter in the furnace.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

No windows give a better view than those a man brings with him in his head, not asking for tickets of admission, since at all functions, festivals, or feasts he looks out with the same nice self-composure.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

One may know how to gain a victory, and know not how to use it.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

Our treasures trifles seem, and all our life is dreaming, and the dreams themselves are dreams.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

Restless sunflower; cease to move.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

Speak no evil of women; I tell thee the meanest of them deserves respect; for of women do we not all come?
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

The conqueror of others is strong, but the conqueror of oneself is mighty.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

The dower of great beauty has always been misfortune, since happiness and beauty do not agree together.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

The fox is very cunning, but he is more cunning who catches the fox.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

The greatest battle is the one we fight within ourselves.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

The heart is an astrologer that always divines the truth.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

The king dreams he is a king, and in this delusion lives, commanding, arranging, and governing; this applause he borrows writes on the wind, and death turns it all to ashes.
La vida es sueño (Act II, Scene XIX).
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

The only way to truly live is to embrace each moment as it comes.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

The only way to truly understand others is to first understand oneself.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

The road to success is paved with hard work and determination.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

The worst enemy is the one who pretends to be a friend.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

These flowers, which were splendid and sprightly, waking in the dawn of the morning, in the evening will be a pitiful frivolity, sleeping in the cold night's arms.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

They say that the best counsel is that of woman.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

Though the night be brightest... dreams, imaginings, shadows, and visions are but what the soul perceives.
La vida es sueño (Act II).
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

Time is the greatest ally and the fiercest enemy.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

To forgive is to free oneself from the chains of resentment.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

To the King, one must give his possessions and his life; but honour is a possession of soul, and the soul is only God's.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

True wealth is not found in material possessions, but in the richness of the soul.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

We are what we believe we are.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

What is life? A frenzy. What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a fiction; and the greatest good is small; for all life is a dream, and dreams are only dreams.
La vida es sueño (Act II, Scene XIX).
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

What law, what reason can deny that gift so sweet, so natural that God has given a stream, a fish, a beast, a bird?
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

When love is not madness, it is not love.
Casa con dos puertas, mala es de guardar (Act I, Scene I).
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

Wisdom is not measured by age, but by experience.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca

A film about my life? But I am not dead.
Brigitte Bardot

A photograph can be an instant of life captured for eternity that will never cease looking back at you.
Brigitte Bardot

All of my causes, including the most radical, are motivated by the defense of animals.
Brigitte Bardot

Among Muslims, I think there are some who are very good and some hoodlums, like everywhere.
Brigitte Bardot

Animals are my friends... and I don't eat my friends.
Often misattributed to George Bernard Shaw, but Bardot has expressed similar sentiments in her animal rights advocacy.
Brigitte Bardot

Animals are not ours to use, abuse, or exploit. They have their own purpose and place on this earth.
Brigitte Bardot

Animals have never betrayed me. They are an easy prey, as I have been throughout my career. So we feel the same. I love them.
Brigitte Bardot

As for being a little bunny that never says a word, that is truly the opposite of me.
Brigitte Bardot

China once again disgusts the world, portraying the image of a cruel, perverted people devoid of any feelings towards animals.
Brigitte Bardot

Death was like love, a romantic escape.
Brigitte Bardot

Do you have to have a reason for loving?
Brigitte Bardot

Every age can be enchanting, provided you live within it.
Brigitte Bardot

Fame had brought me so much unhappiness.
Brigitte Bardot

Film-making was not at all what I had expected.
Brigitte Bardot

Films have never shown the kind of relationship that can exist between two women.
Brigitte Bardot

French courts are backward and politically correct, which is the height of stupidity.
Brigitte Bardot

Fur is not luxury: it is an industry of death and suffering.
Brigitte Bardot

Fur is only of use to the animal that wears it.
Brigitte Bardot

Have you ever heard of a good marriage growing in front of the cameras?
Brigitte Bardot

I absolutely loathe luxury. It is the one thing I cannot stand.
Brigitte Bardot

I adore my houses - they're my refuge - but I detest more and more Saint-Tropez where it's impossible to live: invaded by tourists, social evenings, all of which I avoid and which terrorises me.
Brigitte Bardot

I am 30, but there are things about me that are still 15.
Brigitte Bardot

I am a native Frenchwoman and proud of it.
Brigitte Bardot

I am a woman that defends animals, right, left, and in the centre. Animals aren’t political.
Brigitte Bardot

I am against marriage, and I don't give a fig for society.
Brigitte Bardot

I am against the Islamisation of France.
Brigitte Bardot

I am all right when I work. I am not superficial and I am not ungrateful.
Brigitte Bardot

I am astonished and surprised that someone could consider making a film about me without talking to me about it.
Brigitte Bardot

I am greatly misunderstood by politically correct idiots.
Brigitte Bardot

I am leaving the town to the invaders: increasingly numerous, mediocre, dirty, badly behaved, shameless tourists.
Brigitte Bardot

I am no mother, and I won't be one.
Brigitte Bardot

I am not an actress. I can only play me - on and off the screen.
Brigitte Bardot

I am not finding pregnancy much of a joy. I am afraid of childbirth, but I am afraid I can't find a way of avoiding it.
Brigitte Bardot

I am really not interested in the cinema. I loathed it when I started six years ago, and I don't enjoy it even now.
Brigitte Bardot

I am shocking, impertinent and insolent that's how it is.
Brigitte Bardot

I am typically French.
Brigitte Bardot

I belong to no party, and I am militant for no one.
Brigitte Bardot

I can no longer walk. I can no longer swim. But I'm lucky when I see how animals suffer.
Brigitte Bardot

I can't do the same thing every night, the same gestures... it's like putting on dirty panties every day.
Brigitte Bardot

I don't feel old or used up, and I don't have time to waste thinking about aging, because I live only for my cause.
Brigitte Bardot

I don't have the time or the desire to gaze at my navel.
Brigitte Bardot

I don't see how a socialist government can tolerate hunting on horseback. The people who do this are snobs; they're very well-to-do.
Brigitte Bardot

I don't think I was a good comedian.
Brigitte Bardot

I don't think when I make love.
Brigitte Bardot

I gave my beauty and my youth to men. I am going to give my wisdom and experience to animals.
Reflects her transition from acting to animal rights activism.
Brigitte Bardot

I have a gruff character.
Brigitte Bardot

I have a slight despising for humanity in general.
Brigitte Bardot

I have been a slave to my freedom.
Commenting on the paradox of fame and personal liberty.
Brigitte Bardot

I have been very happy, very rich, very beautiful, much adulated, very famous and very unhappy.
Brigitte Bardot

I have no private life at all. I am a hunted woman. I can't take a step without being questioned and surrounded.
Brigitte Bardot

I have not always loved wisely, but I was young.
Brigitte Bardot

I have the courage of my convictions.
Brigitte Bardot

I have to live with both my selves as best I may.
Brigitte Bardot

I have understood that the most important things are tenderness and kindness. I can't do without them.
Brigitte Bardot

I knew I had to be the best at something, otherwise I would be nothing. I knew I wanted the world to know about Brigitte Bardot.
Brigitte Bardot

I know it's horrible to have to admit that, but I'm not adult enough to take care of a child.
Brigitte Bardot

I know very few Americans, though I like the way they think. They think big.
Brigitte Bardot

I know what sin is.
Brigitte Bardot

I leave before being left. I decide.
Brigitte Bardot

I left a world in which I was a queen to enter one in which I'm a human being.
Brigitte Bardot

I left the cinema as I entered it: without regrets.
On retiring from acting in 1973.
Brigitte Bardot

I live the life of a farmer. I don't see how I could wear Lagerfeld's designs while feeding my goats. I have respect for Lagerfeld as a man, but I would have so much more for him if he, in turn, respected animals. We do not live in the same world.
Brigitte Bardot

I mourn the fact that my beautiful country has deteriorated in every way.
Brigitte Bardot

I never do anything by chance.
Brigitte Bardot

I never get hung up on the past - the memories are too negative.
Brigitte Bardot

I never had trouble saying what I have to say.
Brigitte Bardot

I never knowingly wanted to hurt anybody.
Brigitte Bardot

I never left France for Hollywood nor stashed my money in Switzerland.
Brigitte Bardot

I only live in the world of animal protection. I speak only of that. I think only of that. I am obsessed.
Brigitte Bardot

I only want to protect animals from barbarous, cruel, inhuman and backward rituals.
Brigitte Bardot

I really am a cat transformed into a woman.
Brigitte Bardot

I really wanted to die at certain periods in my life.
Brigitte Bardot

I regret nothing.
Brigitte Bardot

I say what I think and I think what I say.
Brigitte Bardot

I started out as a lousy actress and have remained one.
Brigitte Bardot

I stopped making films to look after animals.
Brigitte Bardot

I tried to make myself as pretty as possible and even then I thought I was ugly. I found it madly difficult to go out, to show myself.
Brigitte Bardot

I wanted to be myself. Only myself.
Brigitte Bardot

I was afraid of not living up to what people expected me to be.
Brigitte Bardot

I was just a cheap little starlet hardly acting at all in a very mediocre film.
Brigitte Bardot

I wasn't scandalous - I didn't want to be.
Brigitte Bardot

I would like, before I die, to see the changes I've always fought for being made. If not, my life will have been worth nothing.
Brigitte Bardot

I'm a girl from a good family who was very well brought up. One day I turned my back on it all and became a bohemian.
Brigitte Bardot

I'm not an extremist, you know.
Brigitte Bardot

I'm not difficult. I just want things to be perfect.
Attributed to her during her film career, emphasizing her professionalism.
Brigitte Bardot

I'm not made to be a mother.
Brigitte Bardot

I'm too impatient.
Brigitte Bardot

If I go to a restaurant, other people stare. The meal is ruined.
Brigitte Bardot

If I upset some notions and went against established rules, that wasn't part of what I wanted to do. It wasn't my goal.
Brigitte Bardot

If only every man who sees my films did not get the impression he can make love to me, I would be a lot happier.
Brigitte Bardot

If this fame, which people call my lucky break, were to stop tomorrow, I shouldn't care.
Brigitte Bardot

In a democracy one must have the right to express oneself and that's what I do, even if it displeases.
Brigitte Bardot

It is better to be unfaithful than to be faithful without wanting to be.
Brigitte Bardot

It is sad to grow old but nice to ripen.
Brigitte Bardot

It's better to be unfaithful than faithful without wanting to be.
Brigitte Bardot

It's sad to grow old, but nice to ripen.
On aging and personal growth.
Brigitte Bardot

It's the decomposition that gets me. You spend your whole life looking after your body. And then you rot away.
Brigitte Bardot

James Stewart was so kind and considerate and had such personal integrity.
Brigitte Bardot

Men are beasts and even beasts don't behave as they do.
Brigitte Bardot

My country, France, my homeland, my land is again invaded by an overpopulation of foreigners, especially Muslims.
Brigitte Bardot

My favourite animals are dogs.
Brigitte Bardot

My life as a star was a prelude to my true destiny: the defense of animals.
Summarizing her shift from Hollywood to activism.
Brigitte Bardot

My mother wanted me to be friends only with children she considered socially suitable.
Brigitte Bardot

My parents gave me a strict upbringing, which at times has caused me to suffer distress but today I am grateful to them for it.
Brigitte Bardot

My private life became public.
Brigitte Bardot

My soul is not my own any more. I cannot live like I want to. I am going to give up films.
Brigitte Bardot

My wild and free side unsettled some, and unwedged others.
Brigitte Bardot

No matter whether it's someone from the political left or right, we just need a voice to stand up and defend animal rights.
Brigitte Bardot

Nobody has any security in loving me.
Brigitte Bardot

Now, if there was one woman in the world who didn't need publicity, who always had too much publicity, it was me.
Brigitte Bardot

Only idiots refuse to change their minds.
Brigitte Bardot

People are forever finding something wrong with you.
Brigitte Bardot

People have already dirtied my name too much.
Brigitte Bardot

Percentages are why I am rich.
Brigitte Bardot

Politics disgusts me.
Brigitte Bardot

Romania will not be able to evolve if it continues to take cruel decisions against sensitive creatures, which are under the protection of European law.
Brigitte Bardot

Swallows have disappeared, bees are dying out because of pesticides that should have been banned long ago - it's a scandal.
Brigitte Bardot

The more I know about humans, the more I love my dogs.
A common sentiment in her animal rights work.
Brigitte Bardot

The more I see of humans, the more I love animals.
Brigitte Bardot

The woman who made those movies, that's not me. She's someone else.
Brigitte Bardot

The world today doesn't please me.
Brigitte Bardot

There is a certain dignity to being French.
Brigitte Bardot

They may call me a sinner, but I am at peace with myself.
Brigitte Bardot

Vadim changed my mind about acting. Vadim was the only man who was certain I had something special to offer.
Brigitte Bardot

Vadim was both my teacher and my husband. I placed myself entirely in his hands.
Brigitte Bardot

We have abolished the death penalty for humans, so why should it continue for animals?
Brigitte Bardot

We have to convince the people of Bucharest, who are dog lovers, to treat dogs like they treat their children and not just let them roam the streets.
Brigitte Bardot

We must boycott fur coats as well as all the accessories.
Brigitte Bardot

What could be more beautiful than a dear old lady growing wise with age? Every age can be enchanting, provided you live within it.
Brigitte Bardot

What does it mean, being a woman?
Brigitte Bardot

When I love, I do it without counting. I give myself entirely. And each time, it is the grand love of my life.
Brigitte Bardot

Women get more unhappy the more they try to liberate themselves.
Brigitte Bardot

Yes, I've often been threatened by hunters, by horsemeat butchers, and seal murderers... I am still alive!
Brigitte Bardot

You can be barefoot and have worries.
Brigitte Bardot

A plateau is a place of apparent safety and comfort, but it is actually a place where vitality is lost and growth is replaced by routine.
Judith M. Bardwick

Change is stressful. But the stress of change is also the energy of growth.
Judith M. Bardwick

Fear of failure is the greatest single impediment to success in adult life.
Judith M. Bardwick

For workaholics, all the eggs of self-esteem are in the basket of work.
Judith M. Bardwick

In the end, leadership is not intellectual or cognitive. Leadership is emotional.
Judith M. Bardwick

Nothing creates more self-respect among employees than being included in the process of making decisions.
Judith M. Bardwick

People are motivated by the tension between comfort and risk.
Danger in the Comfort Zone (1995).
Judith M. Bardwick

Plateauing occurs when an employee has reached a position where the likelihood of further promotion is very low.
The Plateauing Trap (1986).
Judith M. Bardwick

Real confidence comes from knowing and accepting yourself—your strengths and your limitations—in contrast to depending on affirmation from others.
Judith M. Bardwick

Real growth and learning occur when you step outside of your comfort zone.
Paraphrased from her concept of the comfort zone in Danger in the Comfort Zone (1995).
Judith M. Bardwick

The comfort zone is a behavioral state where a person operates in an anxiety-neutral condition, using a limited set of behaviors to deliver a steady level of performance, usually without a sense of risk.
Central thesis of Danger in the Comfort Zone (1995).
Judith M. Bardwick

The greatest enemy of success is the fear of failure—and the complacency of success itself.
Judith M. Bardwick

When you’re in the comfort zone, you’re not taking risks, but you’re also not growing.
Summary of her ideas in Danger in the Comfort Zone (1995).
Judith M. Bardwick

With air travel there is no distance, there is only time.
Judith M. Bardwick

A Beethoven symphony or a Schubert sonata is not a hammock; it is a workout.
On the intellectual and emotional demands of classical music.
Daniel Barenboim

A musician cannot communicate if he is not in a state of ecstasy.
Everything is Connected (2008).
Daniel Barenboim

An hour of violin lessons in Berlin is an hour where you get the child interested in music. An hour in a violin lesson in Palestine is an hour away from violence, is an hour away from fundamentalism.
Daniel Barenboim

Anti-Semitism has no historical, political and certainly no philosophical origins. Anti-Semitism is a disease.
Daniel Barenboim

Any conductor who tells you that if he is approached for the directorship of the Chicago Symphony that he's not interested in it, you know perfectly well he's lying.
Daniel Barenboim

Beethoven was a deeply political man in the broadest sense of the word. He was not interested in daily politics, but concerned with questions of moral behaviour and the larger questions of right and wrong affecting the entire society.
Daniel Barenboim

Beethoven's importance in music has been principally defined by the revolutionary nature of his compositions. He freed music from hitherto prevailing conventions of harmony and structure.
Daniel Barenboim

Beethoven's music tends to move from chaos to order, as if order were an imperative of human existence.
Daniel Barenboim

Children in schools need to have something to do with music and learn it the way they do literature, geography and biology.
Daniel Barenboim

Controversial means somebody who makes people think. And if you are afraid of people who will be against you, you might as well stay home and do nothing.
Daniel Barenboim

Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.
Paraphrasing C.S. Lewis in discussions on music's moral role.
Daniel Barenboim

Either you live by the barometer of the music critics, or you live by your own. I choose the latter.
Daniel Barenboim

Every concert I've finished with the knowledge I've played a fistful of wrong notes.
Daniel Barenboim

Every great work of art has two faces, one toward its own time and one toward the future, toward eternity.
Daniel Barenboim

Every note is a lifetime for itself.
Daniel Barenboim

For many people, music is here to let them forget the daily chores of life.
Daniel Barenboim

For me, music is a way of thinking. Sound is a means of relating to the world.
BBC Reith Lectures (2006).
Daniel Barenboim

For me personally, Elliott Carter was and remains one of the most meaningful composers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries because he represents substance. He was the living proof of uncompromising, complex music, which at first seems inaccessible. But it becomes accessible if one digs in and sees the development through.
Daniel Barenboim

I am convinced that 100 years from now, people will talk about Elliott Carter as one of the most important figures in the second half of 20th-century music.
Daniel Barenboim

I am permanently relaxed.
Daniel Barenboim

I am the conductor for life of the Staatskapelle in Berlin, which fills me with tremendous joy because I feel absolutely at one with them. When we play, I have a feeling that together we manage to create one collective lung for the whole orchestra so that everybody in the stage breathes the music in the same way.
Daniel Barenboim

I believe education is much more important than we assume.
Daniel Barenboim

I can't stand going out to one more dinner with some Mrs. So-and-So who might leave a million dollars to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra when she dies.
Daniel Barenboim

I cannot be music director at La Scala and at Staatsoper. This would be unfair to one of the two institutions.
Daniel Barenboim

I cannot separate the musical, intellectual, and spiritual.
On the holistic nature of musical interpretation.
Daniel Barenboim

I don't believe in changing the unchangeable.
Daniel Barenboim

I don't like possessions.
Daniel Barenboim

I don't think I'm anti-Israeli.
Daniel Barenboim

I feel that the Jews have always had a special connection to this part of the world, which in geographical terms was called Palestine for so many centuries.
Daniel Barenboim

I get no satisfaction just showing myself in every corner of the world every week.
Daniel Barenboim

I have accumulated so many experiences, so much, that I want to be able to realize so many things. This is why I have basically given up most of my positions.
Daniel Barenboim

I have loved Elliott Carter's music for many years.
Daniel Barenboim

I have music in my brain all the time, all sorts.
Daniel Barenboim

I know so many Irish musicians. They're all over, because there has been so much emigration from Ireland. Like the Jews.
Daniel Barenboim

I liked very much when we lived in Hampstead. We would go for walks on the Heath. I liked it better than living in the centre of town.
Daniel Barenboim

I love conducting. What I'm tired of is music administration. I don't want that. I just want to make music.
Daniel Barenboim

I maintain music is not here to make us forget about life. It's also here to teach us about life: the fact that everything starts and ends, the fact that every sound is in danger of disappearing, the fact that everything is connected - the fact that we live and we die.
Daniel Barenboim

I think Sharon is anti-Israeli because it's in the interest of Israel to understand the problems of the other side.
Daniel Barenboim

I think the most important thing for a listener is to realize that he, too, should not listen to music in a passive way; that if you sit in a concert hall and expect to be moved or taken off your seat by the music, it will not happen.
Daniel Barenboim

I think that our civilisation is very much a visual civilisation - television and videos and all this.
Daniel Barenboim

I think what history has done to Jewish people, frankly, cannot be made good by giving them a piece of land.
Daniel Barenboim

I used to conduct the last opera in Berlin on Sunday, get on a plane on Monday to Chicago, and start a rehearsal that same night, if it was a performance week.
Daniel Barenboim

I was never really interested in an operatic post, but I took on the Bastille because it seemed a unique opportunity to build an opera ensemble from scratch, and to deal with all the disciplines that go into opera - the music, the staging and the singing - in an interrelated way.
Daniel Barenboim

I would like to be a terrorist for music education - to make a complete reform, all over the world.
Daniel Barenboim

I'm one of the ones who believed the Iraq War was a complete mistake from the very beginning.
Daniel Barenboim

If you practice slowly, you forget slowly. If you practice quickly, you forget quickly.
Advice to young musicians on disciplined practice.
Daniel Barenboim

In Arab culture, music is for celebration. You don't play music at funerals.
Daniel Barenboim

In my mother's belly, I remember not liking the tempi my father played the Beethoven Sonatas in.
Daniel Barenboim

In order to lift a certain object from the ground, we have to use energy. But then to sustain it at that level, we have to keep on adding energy, or otherwise, the object falls to the ground. It's exactly the same thing with the sound.
Daniel Barenboim

In the beginning, there was silence. And out of the silence came the sound. The sound is not here.
Daniel Barenboim

Israel is in the grip of a ghetto mentality. We have a powerful army. We have the atomic bomb. But the psychology of what comes out of Israel has the tone of the Warsaw Ghetto.
Daniel Barenboim

It is always interesting and sometimes even important to have intimate knowledge of a composer's life, but it is not essential in order to understand the composer's works.
Daniel Barenboim

It's funny, because in 1970 I met the Beatles quite by a chance at a party. It was the Beethoven bicentenary, and I was then also playing the Beethoven Sonatas. And that's all they wanted to hear about - I wanted to talk about them, and all they wanted to talk about was Beethoven.
Daniel Barenboim

Jewish intellectuals contributed a great deal to insure that Europe became a continent of humanism, and it is with these humanist ideals that Europe must now intervene in the Middle East conflict.
Daniel Barenboim

Live life to the full, and become more curious every day. The more you find out about life, the richer your music-making will be.
Daniel Barenboim

More and more, we're used to taking things in through the eyes rather than through the ears, and opera is more of a spectacle.
Daniel Barenboim

Most of the dramatism in Wagner comes from a very close link between the music and the language of the text. So much of the expressivity of Wagner's music dramas comes from the singers' capacity to play with the sound of the language. This kind of thing you can do very well in concert performance.
Daniel Barenboim

Most of the time I spend looking for the 25th hour in the day, the ninth day in the week, the 32nd day in the month and the 367th, eighth or 70th day in the year because I feel I have a very rich life.
Daniel Barenboim

Music has the capacity to create a greater reality.
Daniel Barenboim

Music is a gift we should cherish and share with others.
Daniel Barenboim

Music is an art that touches the depth of human existence; an art of sounds that crosses all borders.
Daniel Barenboim

Music is everything at the same time. Music never laughs or smiles, music never cries, it always smiles and cries at the same time.
Daniel Barenboim

Music is not a profession. Music is a way of life — one that requires much professionalism.
Daniel Barenboim

Music is the art of the invisible, the art of that which cannot be seen or touched.
Reflecting on music's intangible power.
Daniel Barenboim

Music is very abstract. When we talk about music, we're not discussing the music itself but rather how we react to it.
Daniel Barenboim

Music makes time audible and palpable. It allows us to feel time.
Music Quickens Time (2008).
Daniel Barenboim

Music means different things to different people and sometimes even different things to the same person at different moments of his life.
Daniel Barenboim

No one can be an artist without a rich inner life.
Daniel Barenboim

Not only has the eye taken over, but we have anaesthetised the ears through all the muzak that we hear all the time.
Daniel Barenboim

Now the first step has to be taken, the step towards democracy. This step is full of risks, and requires trust on all sides. We don't know where it will lead. But if we just stand still, we will have no chance of escaping the violence.
Daniel Barenboim

Of course there is really vile anti-Semitism in Wagner's writings, but I can't accept the idea that characters like Beckmesser and Alberich are Jewish stereotypes in disguise. Would Beckmesser be a court councillor if he was meant to be a Jewish stereotype? No Jew could occupy such a role.
Daniel Barenboim

On Nov. 5, 2012, my friend Elliott Carter died in New York at the age of 103. For me, he was and remains one of the most interesting figures of music history in the past century.
Daniel Barenboim

Once you start playing a piece, there is a connection between every note. You cannot say, I will not concentrate on this note. You cannot ignore things the way you do in the rest of your life.
Daniel Barenboim

People need to have enough to eat and have work and money. But there are other things that are important.
Daniel Barenboim

Playing and listening to music gives you a sense of fulfilment because you have to put everything in you at its disposal.
Daniel Barenboim

Silence is the basis of music. Without silence, there is no rhythm, no harmony, no music.
Emphasizing the importance of silence in performance.
Daniel Barenboim

Sound is often talked about in a very subjective way, as if it had a colour. This is a bright sound, this is a dark sound. I don't believe in that because I think that is much too subjective.
Daniel Barenboim

The Barenboim Foundation has nothing to do with politics.
Daniel Barenboim

The conductor must make his eyes the ears of the orchestra.
On the role of non-verbal communication in conducting.
Daniel Barenboim

The difference between a good musician and a great one is not accuracy but imagination.
From a masterclass discussion.
Daniel Barenboim

The greatness of a musician is measured by the degree of fanaticism he brings to his playing.
Daniel Barenboim

The historical importance of a composer does not always go hand in hand with the quality of their work.
Daniel Barenboim

The Iranian government still denies the Holocaust - so you can't take them seriously. And the Israeli government spreads rumours and disinformation about Iran - because it needs to for the creation of panic. I find these theological states - and in this respect, Israel and Iran are twin brothers - very, very dangerous.
Daniel Barenboim

The problem with listening to music today is that there's so much of it everywhere. We've got used to hearing music without actually listening to it.
Daniel Barenboim

The tempo is the suitcase. If the suitcase is too small, everything is completely wrinkled. If the tempo is too fast, everything becomes so scrambled you can't understand it.
Daniel Barenboim

The thing about Wagner is we're always wrong about him, because he always embraces opposites. There are things in his operas which viewed one way are naturalistic, and viewed another way are symbolic, but the problem is you can't represent both views on stage at once.
Daniel Barenboim

The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra is a project against ignorance.
On his Israeli-Palestinian youth orchestra fostering dialogue.
Daniel Barenboim

There are many types of silence. There is a silence before the note, there is a silence at the end, and there is a silence in the middle.
Daniel Barenboim

There are many wonderful orchestras in the world, but very few who have a character or personality of their own. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is one of them, and I think it very important to recognize and respect that character.
Daniel Barenboim

There are wonderful restaurants in London. I love Indian food and I like Arab food, and I go very often to the Arab restaurant Noura.
Daniel Barenboim

There is no way Israel will deal with the Palestinians if the Palestinians do not understand the suffering of the Jewish people.
Daniel Barenboim

There is too much employer-employee relationship in America. I wish the musicians would feel that many decisions have to do with them and not delegate everything to management or to the board or to the committee. This is why you get a sense of pride in some of the European orchestras: because they are part of the decision-making.
Daniel Barenboim

To be a musician is not a profession. It is a way of life.
From interviews on dedication to art.
Daniel Barenboim

To have real knowledge, one must understand the essence of things and not only their manifestations.
Daniel Barenboim

To play four hands requires two people who have great affinity for each other.
Daniel Barenboim

Tradition demands that we not speak poorly of the dead.
Daniel Barenboim

Tristan is a very unique case, not just in Wagner's output, but in music in general. It remains contemporary no matter what else surrounds it. There is something self-renewing about it.
Daniel Barenboim

US presidents can make all the commitments and declarations they want until they are blue in the face, in the Muslim world they will always be perceived as partisan.
Daniel Barenboim

Wagner is contrapuntal in a philosophical way as well as a musical way. What I mean by that is that every tendency has its opposite, and you see that in the man himself. He's a metaphysical hermaphrodite - he embraces hard and soft, masculine and feminine.
Daniel Barenboim

We must learn to listen before we can play.
Stressing the importance of attentive listening in music.
Daniel Barenboim

We need a certain amount of energy to produce the sound. But then to sustain it, we have to give more energy, or otherwise, it goes and it dies in silence. And therefore, sound is absolutely, inextricably connected to time, the length of time.
Daniel Barenboim

We need to take music out of the ivory tower - both for musicians and for the public. Otherwise, classical music will not survive the 21st century.
Daniel Barenboim

What the world is saying to us human beings is, Don't stick to the old ways, learn to think anew. And that's what musicians do every day.
Daniel Barenboim

When I played my first concert with an orchestra, I was eight years old in Berlin.
Daniel Barenboim

When playing music, it is possible to achieve a unique sense of peace.
Daniel Barenboim

When we talk about music, we talk about our reaction to it. One person might say that music is so poetic, while another says it's all mathematics. Yet another might say it's about sensuality, and so on. That's all true. But music is not just one of these things. It's everything all at once.
Daniel Barenboim

When you get to be 103, modernism is a very wide concept.
Daniel Barenboim

When you love somebody and they die young and you are young, too, it is very hard.
Daniel Barenboim

You can't expect someone born into a family with no music... to understand when I'm conducting the Schoenberg Variations.
Daniel Barenboim

You can’t make music alone. Even a solo pianist needs the piano, the composer, the audience.
On collaboration and interconnectedness.
Daniel Barenboim

You don't go out and play Beethoven's Opus 111 without having rethought about it every time you play.
Daniel Barenboim

You find Jews, Irish, and Italians in every orchestra.
Daniel Barenboim

You have to really have the will to hang onto the first note as it is being played, and then really stay with it and take the flight, as it were, you know, for the duration of the piece.
Daniel Barenboim

You used to queue for three days and two nights for tickets for Rubinstein. People stayed in the queue for the whole day.
Daniel Barenboim

All bad things are exaggerated in the middle of the night. When you lie awake, you only think of bad things.
Julian Barnes

Art belongs to everybody and nobody. Art belongs to all time and no time. Art belongs to those who create it and those who savor it.
The Noise of Time (2016).
Julian Barnes

As I've explained to my wife many times, you have to kill your wife or mistress to get on the front page of the papers.
Julian Barnes

Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't. I'm not surprised some people prefer books.
Julian Barnes

Books make sense of life. The only problem is that the lives they make sense of are other people’s lives, never your own.
Flaubert’s Parrot (1984).
Julian Barnes

Books say: she did this because. Life says: she did this. Books are where things are explained to you, life where things aren't.
Julian Barnes

Do we tend to recall the most important parts of a novel or those that speak most directly to us, the truest lines or the flashiest ones?
Julian Barnes

Does character develop over time? In novels, of course it does: otherwise there wouldn't be much of a story. But in life? I sometimes wonder.
Julian Barnes

Grief seems at first to destroy not just all patterns, but also to destroy a belief that a pattern exists.
Julian Barnes

History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.
The Sense of an Ending (2011).
Julian Barnes

History isn't what happened, history is just what historians tell us.
Julian Barnes

How often do we tell our own life story? How often do we adjust, embellish, make sly cuts? [...] The longer life goes on, the fewer are those around to challenge our account.
The Sense of an Ending (2011).
Julian Barnes

I am death-fearing. I don't think I'm morbid. That seems to me a fear of death that goes beyond the rational. Whereas it seems to me to be entirely rational to fear death!
Julian Barnes

I don’t believe in God, but I miss Him.
Nothing to Be Frightened Of (2008).
Julian Barnes

I hate the way the English have of not being serious about being serious, I really hate it.
Julian Barnes

I have an instinct for survival, for self-preservation.
Julian Barnes

I was initially planning to write about grief in terms of Eurydice and the myth thereof. By that point the overall metaphor of height and depth and flat and falling and rising was coming into being in my mind.
Julian Barnes

I'm a complete democrat in terms of who buys my books.
Julian Barnes

I'm a novelist, so I can't write about ideas unless they're attached to people.
Julian Barnes

Iconic Paris tells us: here are our three-star attractions, go thou and marvel. And so we gaze obediently at what we are told to gaze at, without exactly asking why.
Julian Barnes

In 1980, I published my first novel, in the usual swirl of unjustified hope and justified anxiety.
Julian Barnes

In an oppressive society the truth-telling nature of literature is of a different order, and sometimes valued more highly than other elements in a work of art.
Julian Barnes

In Britain I'm sometimes regarded as a suspiciously Europeanized writer, who has this rather dubious French influence.
Julian Barnes

It took me some years to clear my head of what Paris wanted me to admire about it, and to notice what I preferred instead. Not power-ridden monuments, but individual buildings which tell a quieter story: the artist's studio, or the Belle Epoque house built by a forgotten financier for a just-remembered courtesan.
Julian Barnes

Love is just a system for getting someone to call you darling after sex.
Talking It Over (1991).
Julian Barnes

Most of us remember adolescence as a kind of double negative: no longer allowed to be children, we are not yet capable of being adults.
Julian Barnes

Often the grind of book promotion wearies you of your own book - though at the same time this frees you from its clutches.
Julian Barnes

Paris is certainly one of the most boastful of cities, and you could argue that it has had a lot to boast about: at various times the European centre of power, of civilisation, of the arts, and (self-advertisingly, at least) of love.
Julian Barnes

Perhaps love is essential because it's unnecessary.
Julian Barnes

Reading and life are not separate but symbiotic. And for this serious task of imaginative discovery and self-discovery, there is and remains one perfect symbol: the printed book.
Julian Barnes

Reading is a majority skill but a minority art. Yet nothing can replace the exact, complicated, subtle communion between absent author and entranced, present reader.
Julian Barnes

The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably, foolishly, viciously.
Letters from London (1995).
Julian Barnes

The land of embarrassment and breakfast.
Julian Barnes

The more you learn, the less you fear. Learn not in the sense of academic study, but in the practical understanding of life.
Julian Barnes

The ways in which a book, once read, stays (and changes) in the reader's mind are unpredictable.
Julian Barnes

There will always be non-readers, bad readers, lazy readers - there always were.
Julian Barnes

To look at ourselves from afar, to make the subjective suddenly objective: this gives us a psychic shock.
Julian Barnes

Very few of my characters are based on people I've known. It is too constricting.
Julian Barnes

We live in a time of great precarity—except that the precarity is not equally shared.
The Noise of Time (2016).
Julian Barnes

We live with such easy assumptions, don't we? For instance, that memory equals events plus time. But it's all much odder than this.
Julian Barnes

Well, to be honest I think I tell less truth when I write journalism than when I write fiction.
Julian Barnes

What is art but a way of seeing?
Julian Barnes

What is taken away is greater than the sum of what was there. This may not be mathematically possible; but it is emotionally possible.
Julian Barnes

What we want is not always the same as what is good for us.
Julian Barnes

When you read a great book, you don't escape from life, you plunge deeper into it.
Julian Barnes

You get towards the end of life—no, not life itself, but of something else: the end of any likelihood of change in that life. […] What else have I done wrong?
The Sense of an Ending (2011).
Julian Barnes

You grew old first not in your own eyes, but in other people's eyes; then, slowly, you agreed with their opinion of you.
Julian Barnes

50 percent of our people should be able to report to a different manager every year without any need for reorganization.
Reflects his emphasis on organizational flexibility and decentralization.
Percy Barnevik

Communication is the oil that keeps the decentralized engine running smoothly.
Highlights the importance of clear communication in decentralized structures.
Percy Barnevik

Everything changes when there is a real customer yelling at you from the other end of the phone.
Percy Barnevik

Give people responsibility and trust them to deliver.
Advocates for empowerment and trust in leadership.
Percy Barnevik

I would define globalization as the freedom for my group of companies to invest where it wants when it wants, to produce what it wants, to buy and sell where it wants, and support the fewest restrictions possible coming from labour laws and social conventions.
Percy Barnevik

Mergers are about combining strengths and eliminating weaknesses.
Stresses strategic intent behind mergers, particularly relevant to his role in ABB's formation.
Percy Barnevik

The biggest challenge in a merger is not the financials, but the integration of cultures.
Underscores cultural integration as a critical merger component.
Percy Barnevik

The key is to get the structure roughly right, fast – not exactly right, slow.
Percy Barnevik

The key to success is to get the best people, give them the best training, and create a strong corporate culture.
Focuses on talent, development, and culture as success drivers.
Percy Barnevik

To be a global leader, you must think globally but act locally.
Encapsulates his approach to balancing global strategy with local execution.
Percy Barnevik

You can't permit a honeymoon of small changes over a year or two. A long series of small changes just prolongs the pain.
Percy Barnevik

You must avoid the investigation trap. You can't postpone tough decisions by studying them to death.
Percy Barnevik

A human soul, that God has created and Christ died for, is not to be trifled with. It may tenant the body of a Chinaman, a Turk, an Arab or a Hottentot - it is still an immortal spirit.
P. T. Barnum

A lovely nook of forest scenery, or a grand rock, like a beautiful woman, depends for much of its attractiveness upon the attendance sense of freedom from whatever is low; upon a sense of purity and of romance.
P. T. Barnum

Advertising is to a genuine article what manure is to land—it largely increases the product.
P. T. Barnum

As a general thing, I have not duped the world nor attempted to do so... I have generally given people the worth of their money twice told.
P. T. Barnum

Clowns are the pegs on which the circus is hung.
P. T. Barnum

Comfort is the enemy of progress.
Reflecting his belief in the necessity of effort and ambition.
P. T. Barnum

Do not think of knocking out another person's brains because he differs in opinion from you.
From his writings on tolerance and civility.
P. T. Barnum

Every crowd has a silver lining.
Relates to his philosophy of monetizing public gatherings, especially in his circus career.
P. T. Barnum

Every man should make his son or daughter learn some useful trade or profession, so that in these days of changing fortunes of being rich today and poor tomorrow they may have something tangible to fall back upon. This provision might save many persons from misery, who by some unexpected turn of fortune have lost all their means.
P. T. Barnum

Fortune always favors the brave, and never helps a man who does not help himself.
P. T. Barnum

He who is without a newspaper is cut off from his species.
P. T. Barnum

How were the receipts today at Madison Square Garden?
P. T. Barnum

In the United States, where we have more land than people, it is not at all difficult for persons in good health to make money.
P. T. Barnum

Literature is one of the most interesting and significant expressions of humanity.
P. T. Barnum

Medicine is the means by which we poor feeble creatures try to keep from dying or aching.
P. T. Barnum

Men, women, and children who cannot live on gravity alone need something to satisfy their gayer, lighter moods and hours, and he who ministers to this want is, in my opinion, in a business established by the Creator of our nature. If he worthily fulfills his mission and amuses without corrupting, he need never feel that he has lived in vain.
P. T. Barnum

Money is a terrible master but an excellent servant.
From his book The Art of Money Getting (1880), emphasizing financial prudence.
P. T. Barnum

Money is in some respects like fire; it is a very excellent servant but a terrible master.
P. T. Barnum

No man has a right to expect to succeed in life unless he understands his business, and nobody can understand his business thoroughly unless he learns it by personal application and experience.
P. T. Barnum

Politeness and civility are the best capital ever invested in business. Large stores, gilt signs, flaming advertisements, will all prove unavailing if you or your employees treat your patrons abruptly. The truth is, the more kind and liberal a man is, the more generous will be the patronage bestowed upon him.
Stresses the importance of interpersonal skills in commerce.
P. T. Barnum

Politics and government are certainly among the most important of practical human interests.
P. T. Barnum

Science is the pursuit of pure truth, and the systematizing of it.
P. T. Barnum

The best kind of charity is to help those who are willing to help themselves.
P. T. Barnum

The foundation of success in life is good health: that is the substratum fortune; it is also the basis of happiness. A person cannot accumulate a fortune very well when he is sick.
P. T. Barnum

The noblest art is that of making others happy.
Highlights his focus on entertainment and joy as a societal good.
P. T. Barnum

The public is more disposed to be amused than excited.
Reflects his understanding of audience psychology.
P. T. Barnum

The show business has all phases and grades of dignity, from the exhibition of a monkey to the exposition of that highest art in music or the drama which secures for the gifted artists a world-wide fame princes well might envy.
P. T. Barnum

There is no such thing in the world as luck. There never was a man who could go out in the morning and find a purse full of gold in the street to-day, and another to-morrow, and so on, day after day: He may do so once in his life; but so far as mere luck is concerned, he is as liable to lose it as to find it.
P. T. Barnum

There is scarcely anything that drags a person down like debt.
P. T. Barnum

There's a sucker born every minute.
Often attributed to Barnum, but no definitive evidence exists. Likely misattributed to him by critics or competitors.
P. T. Barnum

To me there is no picture so beautiful as smiling, bright-eyed, happy children; no music so sweet as their clear and ringing laughter.
From his autobiography, emphasizing his sentimental side.
P. T. Barnum

True economy consists in always making the income exceed the out-go. Wear the old clothes a little longer if necessary; dispense with the new pair of gloves; mend the old dress: live on plainer food if need be; so that, under all circumstances, unless some unforeseen accident occurs, there will be a margin in favor of the income.
P. T. Barnum

Unless a man enters upon the vocation intended for him by nature, and best suited to his peculiar genius, he cannot succeed. I am glad to believe that the majority of persons do find their right vocation.
P. T. Barnum

Whatever you do, do it with all your might. Work at it, early and late, in season and out of season, not leaving a stone unturned, and never deferring for a single hour that which can be done just as well now.
P. T. Barnum

Witchcraft is one of the most baseless, absurd, disgusting and silly of all the humbugs.
P. T. Barnum

Without promotion something terrible happens... Nothing!
Highlights his marketing philosophy and belief in aggressive promotion.
P. T. Barnum

A guy is a lump like a doughnut. So, first you gotta get rid of all the stuff his mom did to him. And then you gotta get rid of all that macho crap that they pick up from beer commercials. And then there's my personal favorite, the male ego.
Roseanne Barr

A lot of people in television who've had successful shows claim the Roseanne show as their starting place, and I'm really proud of that.
Roseanne Barr

Advertising is to a genuine article what manure is to land—it largely increases the product.
Roseanne Barr

After my 1985 appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, I was wooed by producers in Hollywood, who told me they wanted to turn my act into a sitcom.
Roseanne Barr

And, you know, I liked writing humor. Well, I should say, I wanted to write seriously, but it kept turning funny.
Roseanne Barr

Anyone with a show on T.V. will tell you it's backbreaking work. And if you have a big personality, which I have, and you're a perfectionist, there's going to be head-butting.
Roseanne Barr

As a housewife, I feel that if the kids are still alive when my husband gets home from work, then hey, I've done my job.
Roseanne Barr

As Prime Minister of Israel, I will introduce a bill into the Knesset that will simply pay the Arabs not to shoot at the Jews.
Roseanne Barr

Beauty comes in all sizes - not just size 5.
Roseanne Barr

Birth control that really works—every night before we go to bed we spend an hour with our kids.
Roseanne Barr

Both the Democratic and Republican parties are bought and paid for by corporate America and cater to the needs of the highest bidder as opposed to the people they claim to represent. I cannot be bought.
Roseanne Barr

Comedy is the only hope for humanity.
Roseanne Barr

Comedy is the ultimate truth. The reason people laugh is because they’re connecting to the truth. If it wasn’t the truth, they’d go, Huh?
Chicago Tribune (1990).
Roseanne Barr

Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it.
Roseannearchy: Dispatches from the Nut Farm (2012).
Roseanne Barr

Ever since I was a girl, I have written about one to five pages every day - on napkins, on scrap paper, in notebooks and tablets, on the walls in my room as a teenager, and in orange paint on the cheap white plastic blinds in my room.
Roseanne Barr

Everything that's written about me has such a negative taint. It just has a life of its own, like an avalanche, and I don't think there's anything I can do to stop it.
Roseanne Barr

Excuse the mess, but we live here.
Roseanne Barr

Experts say you should never hit your children in anger. When is a good time? When you're feeling festive?
Roseanne Barr

Facts and data, rather than opinion, are the two cornerstones of problem solving, and yet they are consistently withheld from the people by American media. We must have facts and data in order to recognize where there is a problem!
Roseanne Barr

Fortune always favors the brave, and never helps a man who does not help himself.
Roseanne Barr

Growing up in a Jewish matriarchal world inside the patriarchal paradise of Salt Lake City, Utah, gave me increased perspective on gender issues, as it also did my gay brother and my lesbian sister. Our younger sister is the perfect Jewish-American wife and mother, and is fiercely proud of that fact.
Roseanne Barr

Housewives are all the same, they all want to be femme fatales. Then they get married and turn into detectives.
A recurring theme in her stand-up comedy routines during the 1980s.
Roseanne Barr

Humanity is a failed experiment, but I think I'm God and I'd like to start over. I don't want to die, I just want everyone else to. I certainly would not be lonely. It would be exciting never having to listen to another person again but just my own self droning on and on. That's why I write a blog. And I read it, too.
Roseanne Barr

I actually get more conservative when I'm in Vegas.
Roseanne Barr

I actually regard Facebook as a huge bore, but I cannot refrain from participating in it. I guess I crave the feeling of hope it gives me to think that today will be different from yesterday, that I will find an interesting comment or poke or video, and on the extremely rare occasion when that happens, I am just thrilled.
Roseanne Barr

I always felt that it was easier to take a funny person and teach them to write television than to take somebody who was a television writer and make them funny. And I discovered a lot of great writers that went on to do a lot of great shows like Seinfeld, Friends, you know, Three and a Half Men.
Roseanne Barr

I always had a dissociative disorder. But I healed from it over the course of 14 years of big-time therapy. But, you know, I mean, everybody's kind of loony now. So I was kind of a pioneer in the mental illness thing, too.
Roseanne Barr

I always was a writer, but then I wanted to do stand-up because I thought that was a way that I could perform what I wrote.
Roseanne Barr

I am a woman, therefore I am a problem solver.
Roseanne Barr

I am an observant Jew! Now my secret is out.
Roseanne Barr

I can't have cats around me because they try to steal my energy.
Roseanne Barr

I consider myself to be a pretty good judge of people... that's why I don't like any of them.
Roseanne Barr

I do kabbalistic meditation. It's not unlike time travel; it can change the past and not just the future. You can look at what was lost and go beyond the grief of what was lost.
Roseanne Barr

I do say that I am in favor of the return of the guillotine and that is for the worst of the worst of the guilty.
Roseanne Barr

I gave Joss Whedon and Judd Apatow their first writing jobs, as well as many other untried writers who went on to great success.
Roseanne Barr

I had - after I sang the Star Spangled Banner so badly, after my tragic singing accident, after that, you know, all my stuff kind of, like, really got even more full blown and, you know, I got stage fright and, you know, I couldn't do stand-up anymore and let alone sing and all the other things.
Roseanne Barr

I hate every human being on earth. I feel that everyone is beneath me, and I feel they should all worship me. That's what I told my kids.
Roseanne Barr

I know how to do anything, I'm a mom.
Roseanne Barr

I know that I pay 48 percent of my income to taxes. You know, I wouldn't mind so much if it wasn't going just to export war. If it was actually going to help the people of the United States, I would gladly pay more.
Roseanne Barr

I like facts and data because they help me think clearly, beyond the cultural messages that I ingest unwittingly, and sometimes find myself regurgitating almost unconsciously.
Roseanne Barr

I like to get people talking. I am a provocateur, and I do like getting on Twitter and riling people up. You know what, after a while some sane dialogue and sane conclusions come of that kind of thing.
Roseanne Barr

I loved comedy all my life. I think it's a real powerful art form.
Roseanne Barr

I meditate so I know how to find a peaceful place within to be calm and peaceful.
Roseanne Barr

I never do anything fun, because I'm a housewife. I hate that word housewife. I prefer to be called domestic goddess.
Roseanne Barr

I think I'm hysterical. I watch myself on tape and just roar - isn't that weird?
Roseanne Barr

I say I'm the only serious comedian in the presidential race. And I'd like to take this opportunity to ask both Romney and Obama to debate me. Because I think that both of those guys - I think that the American people are being given a false choice, because the choice between the lesser of two evils is a false choice.
Roseanne Barr

I think I should be here alone to rethink the world - I do. I want these lesser humans gone.
Roseanne Barr

I think that all comics or humorists, or whatever we are, ask questions. That's what we're supposed to do. But I not only ask the questions, I offer solutions.
Roseanne Barr

I try to do women's-point-of-view comedy. The joke is, This is what I think; there's the truth. I try to think of stuff that's real broad, but the more personal it is, the more universal it is. All my friends go through the same stuff.
Roseanne Barr

I used to want to be a movie star so I wouldn't have to live in trailers anymore. And now that I make movies, I spend a lot of my life living in trailers.
Roseanne Barr

I want to eat, cook, meet famous people and make fun of them.
Roseanne Barr

I want to say that nobody accuses their parents of abusing them without justification to do that. I didn't just make it up. A lot of things were true and abusive and horrible things that happened to me that my father did.
Roseanne Barr

I was completely nuts for most of my life.
Roseanne Barr

I was not raised a Zionist, but a socialist, as were most Jews before the Holocaust.
Roseanne Barr

I was raised on government cheese. As an adult, in my first marriage, my husband and I worked real hard just to go bankrupt. I happened to write some jokes about it. I did real well for myself.
Roseanne Barr

I will barnstorm American living rooms. Mainstream media will be unable to ignore me, but more importantly they will be unable to overlook the needs of average Americans in the run-up to the 2012 election.
Roseanne Barr

I wish I'd done a tenth year of the Roseanne show.
Roseanne Barr

I'm a comic, and I'm supposed to outrage and make people laugh, Part of makin' people laugh is to shake up their thinkin'. That's what I came here to do.
Roseanne Barr

I'm a farmer now, and it's fantastic. My goal is to be totally self-sufficient and grow everything that I eat. There's something about earning your dinner that's cool.
Roseanne Barr

I'm either mentally ill or Jewish. I can't sometimes tell the difference.
Roseanne Barr

I'm enjoying my life, post-menopause, so much. It's just so great to grow into yourself, and not be bothered with all that tyranny of biology.
Roseanne Barr

I'm God because I have the power to control my mind.
Roseanne Barr

I'm kosher except for times where I eat pork and shellfish.
Roseanne Barr

I'm never going to get married again. Three strikes, you're out. I think if I would try to get married again in California, I have to go to prison, don't I? I think you only get three.
Roseanne Barr

I'm not a domestic goddess unless you consider takeout a form of worship.
Roseanne: My Life as a Woman (1989).
Roseanne Barr

I'm not a politician. I think that uniquely qualifies me to become president of the U.S.
Roseanne Barr

I'm not going to vacuum 'til Sears makes one you can ride on.
Roseanne Barr

I'm tired of watching as men destroy all the world. Everything used to be beautiful when women were in charge, and now I, working as the physical manifestation of the goddess Isis and the reincarnation of Cleopatra, have decided to save the world.
Roseanne Barr

I'm very introspective, and I mostly don't talk to people. I get into a real quiet, meditative place.
Roseanne Barr

Imitation is the sincerest form of show business.
Roseanne Barr

In America, the majority rules, but the minority are such poor losers they have to take to the streets.
Tweet from July 2017, commenting on political protests.
Roseanne Barr

In order to be able to write a good joke, you have to find the truth.
Roseanne Barr

It's not really the job of a public servant to inspire, but to get the job that the people demand done. The Democrats think that if they have hope and are inspired, things will get better, but they actually won't.
Roseanne Barr

It's okay to be fat. So you're fat. Just be fat and shut up about it.
Roseanne Barr

Judaism is one of the last of the world's matrilineal philosophies. Matriarchies are always the cultures that patriarchy attacks and decimates, because they don't spend all their money on the military like patriarchy does. They are easy prey.
Roseanne Barr

Just ten of the Jewish billionaires on this Earth have more than enough to transform the occupied territories into heaven. We can put the pal back in Palestinian.
Roseanne Barr

Meditation state is a place of deep relaxation where you can pinpoint the things you do and to set a paradigm switch from effect to cause. So how to be a cause in your own life.
Roseanne Barr

Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj.
Controversial tweet from May 29, 2018, referencing Valerie Jarrett, which led to the cancellation of her show Roseanne.
Roseanne Barr

My hope is that gays will be running the world, because then there would be no war. Just a greater emphasis on military apparel.
Roseanne Barr

My husband and I didn't sign a pre-nuptial agreement. We signed a mutual suicide pact.
Roseanne Barr

My real life is funnier than anything on TV.
Roseanne Barr

Nobody wanted the Roseanne show. I heard from agents that there was no interest in a show about a fat woman and her family.
Roseanne Barr

Nothing real or truthful makes its way to TV unless you are smart and know how to sneak it in, and I would tell you how I did it, but then I would have to kill you.
Roseanne Barr

One of the first things I bought when I made Roseanne Show money was a farm in Iowa.
Roseanne Barr

Patriarchy is a bully notion, which if you will notice never attacks a nation that can defend itself. Zionism is patriarchal and sets Judaism on its head.
Roseanne Barr

Patriarchy is impotent and qualitatively unable to solve even the most simple problems in the cosmos such as picking up their own socks or placing a carton of milk back in the refrigerator after drinking from it.
Roseanne Barr

Politeness and civility are the best capital ever invested in business.
Roseanne Barr

Since I had my gastric bypass surgery in 1998, I eat like a bird. Unfortunately, that bird is a California condor.
Roseanne Barr

Take this marriage thing seriously—it has to last all the way to the divorce.
Roseanne Barr

The American people are sick and tired of this lesser evil garbage they get fed every election year. Both the Democrats and the Republicans do the same evils once they're in office.
Roseanne Barr

The best kind of charity is to help those who are willing to help themselves.
Roseanne Barr

The day I worry about cleaning my house is the day Sears comes out with a riding vacuum cleaner.
Roseanne Barr

The end of my addiction to fame happened at the exact moment Roseanne dropped out of the top ten, in the seventh of our nine seasons. It was mysteriously instantaneous!
Roseanne Barr

The fact that my grown kids like to hang out with me, I mean, it just - I don't think it really can get any better than that, I don't think.
Roseanne Barr

The foundation of success in life is good health: that is the substratum fortune; it is also the basis of happiness.
Roseanne Barr

The noblest art is that of making others happy.
Roseanne Barr

The quickest way to a man's heart is through his chest.
Roseanne Barr

The real truth is, I just want to keep the voice of dissent alive in all of our elections. I don't really want to hang out with politicians.
Roseanne Barr

The thing women have yet to learn is nobody gives you power. You just take it.
People Magazine (1990).
Roseanne Barr

There is no real third party in America. There's this one party that has two sides to it - the Democratic and Republican side. It's one party that has two heads.
Roseanne Barr

There's a lot more to being a woman than being a mother, but there's a hell of a lot more to being a mother than most people suspect.
Roseanne Barr

They've said Roseanne's nuts for years, and now I'm going to make that a reality - I'm all about nuts now, macadamia nuts!
Roseanne Barr

To say that I have an undisciplined mind would not be incorrect overall, but it's a little off the mark because I have great discipline when I write - but only for about ten minutes.
Roseanne Barr

TV family sitcoms have always been about fathers who know best and mothers who are so enchanted with everything they do. I wanted to be the first mom to be a mom on TV. I wanted to sent out a message about how us women really feel.
Roseanne Barr

We're not meant to be parents when we're 50.
Roseanne Barr

When I used to watch comedians with my dad, he laid it all out for me. He wanted to be a comedian himself, and he was so funny. We'd watch stand-up on TV, and he'd tell me the subtext of what they were saying.
Roseanne Barr

Why have I been chosen to deliver the message of female intelligence and its divinity to a deaf world of males? I have asked my god that question and She answered, Hey, why not you Roseanne? Indeed, why not each of us?
Roseanne Barr

Winning in Hollywood means not just power, money, and complimentary smoked-salmon pizza, but also that everyone around you fails just as you are peaking.
Roseanne Barr

Without promotion, something terrible happens... nothing!
Roseanne Barr

Women complain about PMS, but I think of it as the only time of the month when I can be myself.
Roseanne Barr

Women of this planet need some essential resources: wells, seeds and roads. That is primarily all we have ever needed. Added to that, women need righteous and strong men who will help us to use our most cherished gifts: the ability to multitask and problem solve.
Roseanne Barr

Women should try to increase their size rather than decrease it, because I believe the bigger we are, the more space we'll take up, and the more we'll have to be reckoned with.
Roseanne Barr

You can always get better. Nobody can stop you from getting better, and nobody can stop you from trying to make something right.
Roseanne Barr

You can't break through Hollywood formulaic points of view. I've tried, and I think I was more successful than anybody at doing it.
Roseanne Barr

You kind of restructure your whole personality to be in a healthy relationship.
Roseanne Barr

You know, I'm blessed. Blessed is a better way of saying rich.
Roseanne Barr

You know when you first get rich, and you, like, just buy everything that you see? I did that for several years. And I have sheds full of things, maybe sometimes nine copies of the same thing.
Roseanne Barr

A safe but sometimes chilly way of recalling the past is to force open a crammed drawer. If you are searching for anything in particular you don't find it, but something falls out at the back that is often more interesting.
Margaret Ogilvy (1896).
J. M. Barrie

All children, except one, grow up.
Peter and Wendy (1911).
J. M. Barrie

All the world is made of faith, and trust, and pixie dust.
Peter and Wendy (1911) - Modern adaptation.
J. M. Barrie

Always be a little kinder than necessary.
Rectorial address at St. Andrews University, titled Courage (1922).
J. M. Barrie

Do you believe in fairies? Say quick that you believe. If you believe, clap your hands!
Peter Pan (1904).
J. M. Barrie

Dreams do come true, if only we wish hard enough. You can have anything in life if you will sacrifice everything else for it.
Peter and Wendy (1911).
J. M. Barrie

Every man who is high up loves to feel that he has done it himself; and the wife smiles, and let's it go at that. It's our only joke. Every woman knows that.
What Every Woman Knows (1908).
J. M. Barrie

Every time a child says I don't believe in fairies, there is a fairy somewhere that falls down dead
Peter and Wendy (1911).
J. M. Barrie

Fairies have to be one thing or the other, because being so small they unfortunately have room for one feeling only at a time.
Peter and Wendy (1911).
J. M. Barrie

For several days after my first book was published, I carried it about in my pocket and took surreptitious peeps at it to make sure the ink had not faded.
Margaret Ogilvy (1896).
J. M. Barrie

God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December.
Rectorial address at St. Andrews University, titled Courage (1922).
J. M. Barrie

I'm not young enough to know everything.
The Admirable Crichton (1902).
J. M. Barrie

I'm youth, I'm joy, I'm a little bird that has broken out of the egg.
Peter and Wendy (1911).
J. M. Barrie

If you have it [Love], you don't need to have anything else, and if you don't have it, it doesn't matter much what else you have.
What Every Woman Knows (1908).
J. M. Barrie

It's a sort of bloom on a woman. If you have it, you don't need to have anything else; and if you don't have it, it doesn't much matter what else you have.
What Every Woman Knows (1908).
J. M. Barrie

Let no one who loves be called altogether unhappy. Even love unreturned has its rainbow.
The Little Minister (1891).
J. M. Barrie

Life is a long lesson in humility.
The Little Minister (1891).
J. M. Barrie

Never ascribe to an opponent motives meaner than your own.
Rectorial address at St. Andrews University, titled Courage (1922).
J. M. Barrie

Never is an awfully long time.
Peter Pan (1904).
J. M. Barrie

Never say goodbye because goodbye means going away and going away means forgetting.
Peter and Wendy (1911).
J. M. Barrie

Second to the right, and straight on till morning.
Peter and Wendy (1911).
J. M. Barrie

Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight: always to try to be a little kinder than is necessary?
The Little White Bird (1902).
J. M. Barrie

Stars are beautiful, but they may not take part in anything, they must just look on forever.
Peter and Wendy (1911).
J. M. Barrie

That is ever the way. 'Tis all jealousy to the bride and good wishes to the corpse.
Quality Street (1901).
J. M. Barrie

The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it.
The Little White Bird (1902).
J. M. Barrie

The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for ever to be able to do it.
Peter Pan (1904) - Modern adaptation.
J. M. Barrie

The reason birds can fly and we can't is simply because they have perfect faith, for to have faith is to have wings.
The Little White Bird (1902).
J. M. Barrie

There are few more impressive sights in the world than a Scotsman on the make.
What Every Woman Knows (1908).
J. M. Barrie

Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves.
The Little Minister (1891).
J. M. Barrie

To die would be an awfully big adventure.
Peter Pan (1904) and Peter and Wendy (1911).
J. M. Barrie

To live will be an awfully big adventure.
Peter Pan (1904) - Modern adaptation.
J. M. Barrie

When the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies.
Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (1906).
J. M. Barrie

You must have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by. Yes, but some of them are golden only because we let them slip.
Dear Brutus (1917).
J. M. Barrie

You see, Wendy, when the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies.
Peter and Wendy (1911).
J. M. Barrie

A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person.
Dave Barry

Alligators are evil. They're like snakes, but with legs.
Dave Barry

Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight Protestants, today it's open to anybody who owns hideous clothing.
Dave Barry

American consumers have no problem with carcinogens, but they will not purchase any product, including floor wax, that has fat in it.
Dave Barry

And so by the fifteenth century, on October 8, the Europeans were looking for a new place to try to get to, and they came up with a new concept: the West.
Dave Barry

As a child, I was more afraid of tetanus shots than, for example, Dracula.
Dave Barry

Auto racing is boring except when a car is going at least 172 miles per hour upside down.
Dave Barry

Big business never pays a nickel in taxes, according to Ralph Nader, who represents a big consumer organization that never pays a nickel in taxes.
Dave Barry

Bill Gates is a very rich man today... and do you want to know why? The answer is one word: versions.
Dave Barry

Camping is nature's way of promoting the motel business.
Dave Barry

Dad taught me everything I know. Unfortunately, he didn’t teach me everything he knows.
Dave Barry

Dogs feel very strongly that they should always go with you in the car, in case the need should arise for them to bark violently at nothing right in your ear.
Dave Barry

Don't you wish you had a job like mine? All you have to do is think up a certain number of words! Plus, you can repeat words! And they don't even have to be true!
Dave Barry

Eating rice cakes is like chewing on a foam coffee cup, only less filling.
Dave Barry

Electricity is actually made up of extremely tiny particles called electrons, which you cannot see with the naked eye unless you have been drinking.
Dave Barry

Eugene is located in western Oregon, approximately 278 billion miles from anything.
Dave Barry

Escargot is French for fat crawling bag of phlegm.
Dave Barry

Everyone has a right to be stupid. Some just abuse the privilege.
Dave Barry

Fishing is boring, unless you catch an actual fish, and then it is disgusting.
Dave Barry

For me, the worst part of playing golf, by far, has always been hitting the ball.
Dave Barry

Geographically, Ireland is a medium-sized rural island that is slowly but steadily being consumed by sheep.
Dave Barry

Gravity is a contributing factor in nearly 73 percent of all accidents involving falling objects.
Dave Barry

Guys are simple... women are not simple and they always assume that men must be just as complicated as they are, only way more mysterious. The whole point is guys are not thinking much. They are just what they appear to be. Tragically.
Dave Barry

Have you noticed that whatever sport you're trying to learn, some earnest person is always telling you to keep your knees bent?
Dave Barry

Hobbies of any kind are boring except to people who have the same hobby. This is also true of religion, although you will not find me saying so in print.
Dave Barry

I am not the only person who uses his computer mainly for the purpose of diddling with his computer.
Dave Barry

I believe that we parents must encourage our children to become educated, so they can get into a good college that we cannot afford.
Dave Barry

I have been a gigantic Rolling Stones fan since approximately the Spanish-American War.
Dave Barry

I realize that I'm generalizing here, but as is often the case when I generalize, I don't care.
Dave Barry

I want a pit crew... I hate the procedure I currently have to go through when I have car problems.
Dave Barry

I would not know how I am supposed to feel about many stories if not for the fact that the TV news personalities make sad faces for sad stories and happy faces for happy stories.
Dave Barry

If God had wanted us to be concerned for the plight of the toads, he would have made them cute and furry.
Dave Barry

If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be meetings.
Dave Barry

If you have a big enough dictionary, just about everything is a word.
Dave Barry

If you were to open up a baby's head - and I am not for a moment suggesting that you should - you would find nothing but an enormous drool gland.
Dave Barry

In 1765, Parliament passed the Stamp Act, which, as any American high school student can tell you, was an act that apparently had something to do with stamps.
Dave Barry

In fact, when you get right down to it, almost every explanation Man came up with for anything until about 1926 was stupid.
Dave Barry

It always rains on tents. Rainstorms will travel thousands of miles against prevailing winds for the opportunity to rain on a tent.
Dave Barry

It is a scientific fact that your body will not absorb cholesterol if you take it from another person's plate.
Dave Barry

It is a well-documented fact that guys will not ask for directions. This is a biological thing. This is why it takes several million sperm cells... to locate a female egg, despite the fact that the egg is, relative to them, the size of Wisconsin.
Dave Barry

It was Public Art, defined as art that is purchased by experts who are not spending their own personal money.
Dave Barry

Life is anything that dies when you stomp on it.
Dave Barry

Magnetism, as you recall from physics class, is a powerful force that causes certain items to be attracted to refrigerators.
Dave Barry

My problem with chess was that all my pieces wanted to end the game as soon as possible.
Dave Barry

Never argue with a man who buys ink by the barrel.
Dave Barry

Never assume that the guy understands that you and he have a relationship.
Dave Barry

Never be afraid to try something new. Remember that a lone amateur built the Ark. A large group of professionals built the Titanic.
Dave Barry

Never under any circumstances take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.
Dave Barry

Newspaper readership is declining like crazy. In fact, there's a good chance that nobody is reading my column.
Dave Barry

No matter what happens, somebody will find a way to take it too seriously.
Dave Barry

Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance.
Dave Barry

Not all chemicals are bad. Without chemicals such as hydrogen and oxygen, for example, there would be no way to make water, a vital ingredient in beer.
Dave Barry

Once again, we come to the Holiday Season, a deeply religious time that each of us observes, in his own way, by going to the mall of his choice.
Dave Barry

People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them.
Dave Barry

Scientists now believe that the primary biological function of breasts is to make males stupid.
Dave Barry

Sharks are as tough as those football fans who take their shirts off during games in Chicago in January, only more intelligent.
Dave Barry

Skiers view snowboarders as a menace; snowboarders view skiers as Elmer Fudd.
Dave Barry

Skiing combines outdoor fun with knocking down trees with your face.
Dave Barry

Snowboarding is an activity that is very popular with people who do not feel that regular skiing is lethal enough.
Dave Barry

The Democrats seem to be basically nicer people, but they have demonstrated time and again that they have the management skills of celery.
Dave Barry

The four building blocks of the universe are fire, water, gravel and vinyl.
Dave Barry

The information encoded in your DNA determines your unique biological characteristics, such as sex, eye color, age and Social Security number.
Dave Barry

The Internet is the most important single development in the history of human communication since the invention of call waiting.
Dave Barry

The Internet: transforming society and shaping the future through chat.
Dave Barry

The leading cause of death among fashion models is falling through street grates.
Dave Barry

The major parties could conduct live human sacrifices on their podiums during prime time, and I doubt that anybody would notice.
Dave Barry

The nuclear generator of brain sludge is television.
Dave Barry

The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status, or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we all believe that we are above-average drivers.
Dave Barry

The only kind of seafood I trust is the fish stick, a totally featureless fish that doesn't have eyeballs or fins.
Dave Barry

The problem with winter sports is that - follow me closely here - they generally take place in winter.
Dave Barry

The problem with writing about religion is that you run the risk of offending sincerely religious people, and then they come after you with machetes.
Dave Barry

The real threat to whales is whaling, which has endangered many whale species.
Dave Barry

The simple truth is that balding African-American men look cool when they shave their heads, whereas balding white men look like giant thumbs.
Dave Barry

The Sixties are now considered a historical period, just like the Roman Empire.
Dave Barry

The ultimate camping trip was the Lewis and Clark expedition.
Dave Barry

The word user is the word used by the computer professional when they mean idiot.
Dave Barry

The world is full of strange phenomena that cannot be explained by the laws of logic or science. Dennis Rodman is only one example.
Dave Barry

There is a breed of fashion models who weigh no more than an abridged dictionary.
Dave Barry

Thus the metric system did not really catch on in the States, unless you count the increasing popularity of the nine-millimeter bullet.
Dave Barry

To an adolescent, there is nothing in the world more embarrassing than a parent.
Dave Barry

To better understand why you need a personal computer, let's take a look at the pathetic mess you call your life.
Dave Barry

Violence and smut are of course everywhere on the airwaves. You cannot turn on your television without seeing them, although sometimes you have to hunt around.
Dave Barry

We believe that electricity exists, because the electric company keeps sending us bills for it, but we cannot figure out how it travels inside wires.
Dave Barry

We idolized the Beatles, except for those of us who idolized the Rolling Stones, who in those days still had many of their original teeth.
Dave Barry

We journalists make it a point to know very little about an extremely wide variety of topics; this is how we stay objective.
Dave Barry

We operate under a jury system in this country, and as much as we complain about it, we have to admit that we know of no better system, except possibly flipping a coin.
Dave Barry

We'll try to cooperate fully with the IRS, because, as citizens, we feel a strong patriotic duty not to go to jail.
Dave Barry

What I look forward to is continued immaturity followed by death.
Dave Barry

What may seem depressing or even tragic to one person may seem like an absolute scream to another person, especially if he has had between four and seven beers.
Dave Barry

You can only be young once. But you can always be immature.
Dave Barry

Your modern teenager is not about to listen to advice from an old person, defined as a person who remembers when there was no Velcro.
Dave Barry

At the center of everything we call the arts, and children call play, is something which seems somehow alive.
What It Is
Lynda Barry

But when the thing that is scaring you is already Jesus, who are you supposed to pray to?
Cruddy
Lynda Barry

Cartoonist was the weirdest name I finally let myself have. I would never say it. When I heard it I silently thought, what an awful word.
Lynda Barry

Dear Anyone Who Finds This, Do not blame the drugs.
Cruddy
Lynda Barry

For Picture This, I wanted it to be a drawing book that didn't have any instructions about drawing, beyond the real simple stuff you'd find like in a Bazooka bubblegum wrapper, or in Highlights magazine. I just wanted it to be feelings about looking and seeing and pictures.
Lynda Barry

For the past 25 years, I’ve been a writer and artist for newspapers, which is a little like being a clown in a slaughterhouse.
Lynda Barry

Going on Letterman is like going off the high dive. It's exhilarating, but after a while it wasn't the kind of thrill I enjoyed.
Lynda Barry

Good Times is a story about the loss of innocence, how adults are responsible for their actions but children aren't.
Lynda Barry

Humor is such a wonderful thing, helping you realize what a fool you are but how beautiful that is at the same time.
One! Hundred! Demons!
Lynda Barry

I am about as detailed as a shadow.
One! Hundred! Demons!
Lynda Barry

I am not sure how much I would like being married if I wasn't married to him. A man who likes flea markets and isn't gay? I knew I was lucky.
Lynda Barry

I believe a kid who is playing is not alone. There is something brought alive during play, and this something, when played with, seems to play back.
Lynda Barry

I believe there is something in these old forms that works in a way nothing else can.
Lynda Barry

I do dumb stuff, like playing my favorite dumb Barry White song and lip-synching into the mirror so it looks like his voice is coming out of my mouth.
Lynda Barry

I do love to eavesdrop. It's inspirational, not only for subject matter but for actual dialogue, the way people talk.
Lynda Barry

I found myself compelled - like this weird, shameful compulsion - to draw cute animals.
Lynda Barry

I go to work the minute I open my eyes.
Lynda Barry

I grew up in a house that had a whole lot of trouble. As much trouble as you could imagine.
Lynda Barry

I listen like mad to any conversation taking place next to me just trying to hear why this is funny. Women's restrooms are especially great. I wash my hands twice waiting for people to come in and start talking.
Lynda Barry

I live in constant fear of being fired or dropped for that dark part of my work I can't control.
Lynda Barry

I look crazy. I know I do. Been true since I was a kid!
Lynda Barry

I need to be cheered up a lot. I think funny people are people who need to be cheered up.
Lynda Barry

I remember my comic strips being called new wave. It bugged me.
Lynda Barry

I run a tight ship, but I try and make it seem like I'm not doing that at all.
Lynda Barry

I started doing cartoons when I was about 21. I never thought I would be a cartoonist. It happened behind my back. I was always a painter and drawer.
Lynda Barry

I think of images as an immune system and a transit system.
What It Is
Lynda Barry

I think the arts are the place where the life of the soul is maintained and kept alive.
Lynda Barry

I tried to be like the richer kids as much as I could because I wanted to live on their streets, at least hang out on their streets and eat their amazing food and walk barefoot on their shag carpets. I became something of a pest in that way, and in general, other people's parents didn't like me.
Lynda Barry

I used to live a very social life and never spend much solitary time looking at birds or reading.
Lynda Barry

I was unable to sleep and I would stay up and draw these little cartoons. Then a friend showed them around. Before I knew it I was a cartoonist.
Lynda Barry

I wasn't afraid to be laughed at or be loud.
Lynda Barry

I've gotten a lot of livid letters about the awfulness of my work. I've never known what to make of it. Why do people bother to write if they hate what I do?
Lynda Barry

If I didn't try to eavesdrop on every bus ride I take or look for the humor when I go for a walk, I would just be depressed all the time.
Lynda Barry

If I had had me for a student I would have thrown me out of class immediately.
Lynda Barry

If it is your time, love will track you down like a cruise missile.
One! Hundred! Demons!
Lynda Barry

Imagination is an actual place. It’s the place where you were before you were born and where you’ll go after you die.
Lynda Barry

In life there are always these things happening if you can just get the joke.
Lynda Barry

In my writing class, we never, ever talk about the writing - ever. We never address a story that's been read. I also won't let anyone look at the person who's reading. No eye contact; everybody has to draw a spiral. And I would like to do a drawing class where we could talk about anything except for the drawing. No one could even mention it.
Lynda Barry

In the digital age, don't forget to use your hands!
Lynda Barry

It's much easier to teach writing, because people are less shy about writing. If they're in a group, nobody can see what they're writing. When you're drawing, people get a little more nervous.
Lynda Barry

It's not hard for me to be funny in front of people, but most of that is just horrified nerves taking the form of what makes people laugh, and afterwards I'd always feel dreadfully depressed, kind of self-induced bi-polar disorder.
Lynda Barry

It's one thing to have a relationship, to lay your hands on it, and another to make it continue and last. That's something I haven't talked about much in my comic strips, and it's certainly something I'm interested in.
Lynda Barry

Kids don't plan to play. They don't go: Barbie, Ken, you ready to play? It's gonna be a three-act.
Lynda Barry

Love is an exploding cigar we willingly smoke.
One! Hundred! Demons!
Lynda Barry

Love will make a way out of no way.
One! Hundred! Demons!
Lynda Barry

My childhood is always going to limit me.
Lynda Barry

My goal on my bucket list is to write a romantic comedy movie.
Lynda Barry

My mom didn't want me to go to college. She didn't want me to read - when I read, I may as well have been holding a pineapple.
Lynda Barry

My strips are not always funny, and they can be pretty grim at times, and I know I lose readers because of it, but I can't do anything about it - my work is very much connected to something I need to do in order to feel stable.
Lynda Barry

No one stopped me from playing when I was alone, but there were times when I wasn't able to, though I wanted to... There were times when nothing played back. Writers call it writer's block. For kids there are other names for that feeling, though kids don't usually know them.
Lynda Barry

Part of a horror movie has to be a bit fakey for me to really enjoy it. The new ones are so realistic that they distract me from the ride through the horror.
Lynda Barry

People think that whatever I put into strips has happened to me in my life.
Lynda Barry

Play is what allows us to tolerate the unbearable.
Lynda Barry

Playing and fun are not the same thing, though when we grow up we may forget that and find ourselves mixing up playing with happiness. There can be a kind of amnesia about the seriousness of playing, especially when we played by ourselves.
What It Is
Lynda Barry

Race and class are the easiest divisions. It's very stupid.
Lynda Barry

Remember how you used to be able to feel your bed breathing and the walls spinning when you were a kid?
One! Hundred! Demons!
Lynda Barry

Remember when you were in school and the teacher would put a picture under an overhead projector so you could see it on the wall? God, I loved that. Tellya the truth, I used to look at that beam of light and think it was God.
Lynda Barry

Sometimes I think I'm the craziest person on the planet.
Lynda Barry

The act of writing is the act of discovering what you believe.
Lynda Barry

The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable.
Lynda Barry

The happy ending is hardly important, though we may be glad it's there. The real joy is knowing that if you felt the trouble in the story, your kingdom isn't dead.
Lynda Barry

The library was open for one hour after school let out. I hid there, looking at art books and reading poetry.
Lynda Barry

The minute you understand racism, you're responsible for being racist. It's like eating from the tree of knowledge.
Lynda Barry

The ordinary is extraordinary. The ordinary is the thing we want back when someone we love dies.
What It Is
Lynda Barry

The past, present, and future are all in the same room when you're making something.
Lynda Barry

The strips are nearly effortless unless I am really emotionally upset, a wreck.
Lynda Barry

The thing that really struck me when I went to junior high was class. I grew up on a pretty poor street, but the school district I was in included some fine neighborhoods - so I got to know a couple of the kids from those places and went to their houses and experienced such culture shock.
Lynda Barry

There was a beautiful time in the beginning when I just did it and didn't analyze the consequences, but I think that time ends in everyone's work.
Lynda Barry

We don't create a fantasy world to escape reality. We create it to be able to stay.
One! Hundred! Demons!
Lynda Barry

We don’t create a universe. We are part of its creation.
Lynda Barry

What is an idea made of? Of future, past and also meanwhile.
What It Is
Lynda Barry

What is an image? An image is a place. Not a picture of a place, but a place itself.
Lynda Barry

What It Is was based on this class I've been teaching for 10 years - I wanted to write a book about writing that didn't mention stuff like story structure, protagonists, and all those things that we know about only because they already exist in stories.
Lynda Barry

When I was working on Freddie, I had been trying to write it on a computer for many, many years, but that delete button just won't let anything go forward.
Lynda Barry

When I work on a book, I usually start with a question. And I don't sit around and go I need to write a book. What's a good question? It will be a question that's just clanging around in my head. So for What It Is, it was this idea of What is an image?
Lynda Barry

When I write, I don't think about the reader. I think about the monsters under my bed.
Lynda Barry

When you are little, you will draw pictures for no reason.
Lynda Barry

When you learn about stories in school, you get it backward. You start to think Oh, the reason these things are in stories is because a book said I need to put these things in there. You need a death, as my husband says, and you need a little sidekick with a saying like Skivel-dee-doo!
Lynda Barry

When you start to think of the arts as not this thing that is going to get you somewhere... but rather a way of making being in the world not just bearable, but fascinating, then it starts to get interesting again.
Syllabus
Lynda Barry

When you think about it, giving up your real personality is a small price to pay for the richness of living happily ever after with an actual man!
Lynda Barry

Whenever I do a book, I'm usually guided by a question or something that I'm trying to tease out.
Lynda Barry

You can't know what a book is about until the very end. This is true of a book we're reading or writing.
Syllabus
Lynda Barry

You can't think yourself into an idea. You have to write yourself into it.
Lynda Barry

For an actress to be a success, she must have the face of Venus, the brains of Minerva, the grace of Terpsichore, the memory of Macaulay, the figure of Juno, and the hide of a rhinoceros.
Ethel Barrymore

Fundamentally I feel that there is as much difference between the stage and the films as between a piano and a violin. Normally you can't become a virtuoso in both.
Ethel Barrymore

I always want to be the first violinist, not the second.
Ethel Barrymore

I never let them cough. They wouldn't dare.
Ethel Barrymore

Insecurity is the mother of fear. The more secure you feel in yourself, the braver you will be.
Ethel Barrymore

Is everybody happy? I want everybody to be happy. I know I'm happy.
Ethel Barrymore

Love is the thing that enables a woman to sing while she mops up the floor after her husband has walked across it in his barn boots.
Ethel Barrymore

Our achievements speak for themselves. What we have to keep track of are our failures, discouragements, and doubts. We tend to forget the past difficulties, the many false starts, and the painful groping.
Ethel Barrymore

That's all there is, there isn't any more.
The Corn Is Green
Ethel Barrymore

The arts are not just instantaneous pleasure - if you don't like it, the artist is wrong. I belong to the generation which says if you don't like it, you don't understand and you ought to find out.
Ethel Barrymore

The best time to make friends is before you need them.
Ethel Barrymore

The face of Garbo is an Idea, that of Hepburn an Event.
Ethel Barrymore

The great actors are the luminous ones. They are the great conductors of the stage.
Ethel Barrymore

The more things you love, the more you are interested in, the more you enjoy, the more you are indignant about, the more you have left when anything happens.
Ethel Barrymore

To fulfill a dream, to be allowed to sweat over lonely labor, to be given the chance to create, is the meat and potatoes of life. The money is the gravy.
Ethel Barrymore

When life knocks you to your knees, and it will, why, get up! If it knocks you to your knees again, as it will, well, isn't that the best position from which to pray?
Ethel Barrymore

You grow up the day you have your first real laugh at yourself.
Ethel Barrymore

You must learn day by day, year by year to broaden your horizon. The more things you love, the more you are interested in, the more you enjoy, the more you are indignant about, the more you have left when anything happens.
Ethel Barrymore

A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams.
Often cited as a reflection on aging and ambition.
John Barrymore

America is the country where you can buy a lifetime supply of aspirin For one dollar and use it up in two weeks.
John Barrymore

An actor is only as good as the roles he chooses to play.
John Barrymore

Busy yourselves with this, you damned walruses, while the rest of us proceed with the libretto.
John Barrymore

Death is a low-budget production, and I’m the star.
A darkly humorous remark about mortality, possibly from his later years.
John Barrymore

Die? I should say not, dear fellow. No Barrymore would allow such a conventional thing to happen to him.
John Barrymore

Dying is the last thing I will ever do.
John Barrymore

Happiness often sneaks in through a door you didn't know you left open.
A poetic observation on unexpected joy.
John Barrymore

I am a drinker with a writing problem.
John Barrymore

I am thinking of taking a fifth wife. Why not? Solomon had a thousand wives and he is a synonym for wisdom.
John Barrymore

I have spent most of my life searching out the boundaries of my limitations—and trying to exceed them.
Reflects his relentless pursuit of artistic growth.
John Barrymore

I would like to find a stew that will give me heartburn immediately, instead of at three o'clock in the morning.
John Barrymore

I've read some of your modern free verse and wonder who set it free.
John Barrymore

If it isn't the sheriff, it's the finance company; I've got more attachments on me than a vacuum cleaner.
John Barrymore

In Genesis, it says that it is not good for a man to be alone; but sometimes it is a great relief.
John Barrymore

Love is the delightful interval between meeting a beautiful girl and discovering that she looks like a haddock.
A sardonic take on fleeting romance.
John Barrymore

Method acting? There are quite a few methods. Mine involves a lot of talent, a glass, and some cracked ice.
John Barrymore

My head is buried in the sands of tomorrow, while my tail feathers are singed by the hot sun of today.
John Barrymore

My only regret in life is that I did not drink enough Champagne.
John Barrymore

My only regret in the theater is that I could never sit out front and watch me.
John Barrymore

My wife is the kind of girl who will not go anywhere without her mother, and her mother will go anywhere.
John Barrymore

My wife was too beautiful for words, but not for arguments.
John Barrymore

Sex: the thing that takes up the least amount of time and causes the most amount of trouble.
John Barrymore

The good die young, because they see it’s no use living if you have to be good.
A playful jab at morality and conformity.
John Barrymore

The greatest tragedy in life is not death, but a life unlived.
John Barrymore

The trouble with life is that there are so many beautiful women and so little time.
John Barrymore

The world is a stage, and we are all merely players.
John Barrymore

There is no such thing as a happy ending. I want that on my tombstone.
John Barrymore

When archaeologists discover the missing arms of Venus de Milo, they will find she was wearing boxing gloves.
John Barrymore

Why is there so much month left at the end of the money?
John Barrymore

You can only be as good as you dare to be bad.
John Barrymore

You can't drown yourself in drink. I've tried, you float.
John Barrymore

You never hear of a ghost wanting to live alone; spooking is a group activity.
A whimsical quip about camaraderie, even in the supernatural.
John Barrymore

You never realize how short a month is until you pay alimony.
John Barrymore

Balancing global integration and local responsiveness is the defining challenge of transnational corporations.
Managing Across Borders: The Transnational Solution
Christopher Bartlett

Beyond strategy to purpose.
Harvard Business Review (1994).
Christopher Bartlett

Building a matrix organization is less about structure and more about fostering a matrix of mindsets.
On shifting from rigid hierarchies to flexible, collaborative organizational cultures.
Christopher Bartlett

Building Competitive Advantage Through People.
MIT Sloan Management Review (2002).
Christopher Bartlett

Effective global leaders act as social architects, creating contexts where innovation and learning flourish.
From his research on leadership in decentralized organizations.
Christopher Bartlett

Innovation in multinationals thrives when subsidiaries are empowered as centers of excellence, not just operational satellites.
Advocating for decentralized innovation hubs within global firms.
Christopher Bartlett

The multinational corporation as an interorganizational network.
Managing Across Borders: The Transnational Solution
Christopher Bartlett

The role of headquarters is not to control, but to cultivate capabilities and coordinate knowledge flows.
A critique of traditional top-down management in global corporations.
Christopher Bartlett

Transnational strategy requires relinquishing the myth of central omnipotence and embracing distributed leadership.
From his critiques of centralized decision-making.
Christopher Bartlett

Ultimately, the job of the manager is to get ordinary people to create extraordinary results.
Christopher Bartlett

We must continually challenge the past so that we can renew ourselves each day.
Managing Across Borders: The Transnational Solution
Christopher Bartlett

A man may be down, but he is never out.
Bruce Barton

Action and reaction, ebb and flow, trial and error, change—this is the rhythm of living. Out of our over-confidence, fear; out of our fear, clearer vision, fresh hope. And out of hope, progress.
Reflects his views on adaptability and progress.
Bruce Barton

Advertising is the very essence of democracy.
Emphasizes the role of advertising in democratic societies.
Bruce Barton

As a profession advertising is young; as a force it is as old as the world. The first four words ever uttered, ‘Let there be light,’ constitute its charter.
Bruce Barton

Before you give up hope, turn back and read the attacks that were made on Lincoln.
Bruce Barton

Cereal eating is almost a marker for a healthy lifestyle. It sets you up for the day, so you don't overeat.
Bruce Barton

Christ would be a national advertiser today, I am sure, as He was a great advertiser in His own day. He thought of His life as business.
Bruce Barton

Conceit is God's gift to little men.
Bruce Barton

Don't tell me how hard you work. Tell me how much you get done.
Focuses on productivity over effort.
Bruce Barton

Every time you open your mouth you let men look into your mind.
Bruce Barton

Give advertising time. That is the thing that it needs most.
Bruce Barton

If you can give your child only one gift, let it be enthusiasm.
Bruce Barton

If you have anything really valuable to contribute to the world it will come through the expression of your own personality, that single spark of divinity that sets you off and makes you different from every other living creature.
Bruce Barton

In good times people want to advertise; in bad times they have to.
Highlights the necessity of advertising in all economic climates.
Bruce Barton

It takes a real storm in the average person's life to make him realize how much worrying he has done over the squalls.
Bruce Barton

It would do the world good if every man would compel himself occasionally to be absolutely alone. Most of the world s progress has come out of such loneliness.
Bruce Barton

Jesus picked up twelve men from the bottom ranks of business and forged them into an organisation that conquered the world.
Bruce Barton

Many a man who pays rent all his life owns his own home; and many a family has successfully saved for a home only to find itself at last with nothing but a house.
Bruce Barton

Most successful men have not achieved their distinction by having some new talent or opportunity that was at hand.
Bruce Barton

No sex, age, or condition is above or below the absolute necessity of modesty; but without it one vastly beneath the rank of man.
Bruce Barton

Not eating breakfast is the worst thing you can do, that's really the take-home message for teenage girls.
Bruce Barton

Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside of them was superior to circumstance.
Stresses the power of self-belief and resilience.
Bruce Barton

Sometimes when I consider what tremendous consequences come from little things, I am tempted to think there are no little things.
Bruce Barton

The essential element in personal magnetism is a consuming sincerity - an overwhelming faith in the importance of the work one has to do.
Bruce Barton

The faults of advertising are only those common to all human institutions.
Bruce Barton

The five steps in teaching an employee new skills are preparation, explanation, showing, observation and supervision.
Bruce Barton

The most important thing about getting somewhere is starting right where we are.
Bruce Barton

The most successful men in the end are those whose success is the result of steady accretion… It is the man who carefully advances step by step, with his mind becoming wider and wider – and progressively better able to grasp any theme or situation – persevering in what he knows to be practical, and concentrating his thought upon it, who is bound to succeed in the greatest degree.
Advocates for incremental growth and focused perseverance.
Bruce Barton

The successful man respects decision so long as it is arrived at by others.
Bruce Barton

The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.
Bruce Barton

There are no little things.
Bruce Barton

What a curious phenomenon it is that you can get men to die for the liberty of the world who will not make the little sacrifice that is needed to free themselves from their own individual bondage.
Bruce Barton

When you are through changing, you are through.
A well-known aphorism on the importance of adaptability.
Bruce Barton

When you have something for breakfast, you're not going to be starving by lunch.
Bruce Barton

When you're through changing, you're through.
Bruce Barton

When you're through working, you’re through.
Encourages sustained engagement and passion in one’s endeavors.
Bruce Barton

A political leader must keep looking over his shoulder all the time to see if the boys are still there. If they aren't, he’s no longer a political leader.
On the fragility of political power.
Bernard Baruch

A speculator is a man who observes the future, and acts before it occurs.
Bernard Baruch

Age is only a number, a cipher for the records. A man can't retire his experience. He must use it. Experience achieves more with less energy and time.
Bernard Baruch

Always do one thing less than you think you can do.
Bernard Baruch

America has never forgotten—and never will forget—the nobler things that brought her into being and that light her path.
From his public addresses, emphasizing American ideals.
Bernard Baruch

Approach each new problem not with a view of finding what you hope will be there, but to get the truth, the realities that must be grappled with.
Bernard Baruch

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.
Bernard Baruch

Do not blame anybody for your mistakes and failures.
Bernard Baruch

Don't try to buy at the bottom and sell at the top. It can't be done except by liars.
Bernard Baruch

During my eighty-seven years I have witnessed a whole succession of technological revolutions. But none of them has done away with the need for character in the individual or the ability to think.
Bernard Baruch

Every man has a right to his own opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts.
Bernard Baruch

I made my money by selling too soon.
Bernard Baruch

I will never be an old man. To me, old age is always fifteen years older than I am.
A humorous take on aging and perspective.
Bernard Baruch

If a speculator is correct half of the time, he is hitting a good average. Even being right 3 or 4 times out of 10 should yield a person a fortune if he has the sense to cut his losses quickly on the ventures where he is wrong.
Bernard Baruch

If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Often attributed to Baruch, though similar concepts appear in psychology. He popularized this metaphor in political/economic contexts.
Bernard Baruch

If the history of the past fifty years teaches us anything, it is that peace does not follow disarmament - disarmament follows peace.
Bernard Baruch

If you get all the facts, your judgment can be right; if you don't get all the facts, it can't be right.
Bernard Baruch

In the last analysis, our only freedom is the freedom to discipline ourselves.
Bernard Baruch

Let us not be deceived we are today in the midst of a cold war.
Bernard Baruch

Let us not deceive ourselves; we must elect world peace or world destruction.
Bernard Baruch

Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton was the one who asked why.
Highlighting curiosity and critical thinking.
Bernard Baruch

Most of the successful people I've known are the ones who do more listening than talking.
Emphasizes humility and learning from others.
Bernard Baruch

Never follow the crowd.
Bernard Baruch

Never pay the slightest attention to what a company president ever says about his stock.
Bernard Baruch

No man should think himself a zero, and think he can do nothing about the state of the world.
Bernard Baruch

Nobody ever lost money taking a profit.
Bernard Baruch

Old books that have ceased to be of service should no more be abandoned than should old friends who have ceased to give pleasure.
Bernard Baruch

One of the secrets of a long and fruitful life is to forgive everybody everything everynight before you go to bed.
Bernard Baruch

Only as you do know yourself can your brain serve you as a sharp and efficient tool. Know your own failings, passions, and prejudices so you can separate them from what you see.
Bernard Baruch

The ability to express an idea is well nigh as important as the idea itself.
Bernard Baruch

The art of living lies less in eliminating our troubles than in growing with them.
Reflects his philosophy on resilience and adaptability.
Bernard Baruch

The greatest blessing of our democracy is freedom. But in the last analysis, our only freedom is the freedom to discipline ourselves.
Bernard Baruch

The main purpose of the stock market is to make fools of as many men as possible.
Bernard Baruch

There are no such things as incurable, there are only things for which man has not found a cure.
Bernard Baruch

There is something about inside information which seems to paralyse a man's reasoning powers.
Bernard Baruch

Those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.
Bernard Baruch

Two things are bad for the heart - running up stairs and running down people.
Bernard Baruch

Unless each man produces more than he receives, increases his output, there will be less for him than all the others.
Bernard Baruch

Vote for the man who promises least; he'll be the least disappointing.
A cynical yet pragmatic view of politics.
Bernard Baruch

We can't cross that bridge until we come to it, but I always like to lay down a pontoon ahead of time.
Bernard Baruch

We did not all come over on the same ship, but we are all in the same boat.
A call for unity in diversity, often cited in discussions of American identity.
Bernard Baruch

We grow neither better or worse as we get old, but more like ourselves.
Bernard Baruch

Whatever failures I have known, whatever errors I have committed, whatever follies I have witnessed in private and public life have been the consequence of action without thought.
Bernard Baruch

Whatever task you undertake, do it with all your heart and soul. Always be courteous, never be discouraged.
Bernard Baruch

When good news about the market hits the front page of the New York Times, sell.
Bernard Baruch

You can overcome anything if you don't bellyache.
Bernard Baruch

You can talk about capitalism and communism and all that sort of thing, but the important thing is the struggle everybody is engaged in to get better living conditions, and they are not interested too much in government.
Bernard Baruch

Mr. Basketball - See Bill Raftery

A black sheep is a biting beast.
Chrestoleros: Seven Bookes of Epigrams, published in 1598.
Thomas Bastard

Age is deformed, youth unkind,
We scorn their bodies, they our mind.
Chrestoleros: Seven Bookes of Epigrams, published in 1598.
Thomas Bastard

Content feeds not one glory, nor one pelf,
Content can be contented with herself.
Chrestoleros: Seven Bookes of Epigrams, published in 1598.
Thomas Bastard

He that is taught by his own art, By others' errors mends his part.
Chrestoleros: Seven Bookes of Epigrams, published in 1598.
Thomas Bastard

Marriage is a desperate thing: The frogs in Aesop are extreme, they needs must marry, though they in the water dwell.
Chrestoleros: Seven Bookes of Epigrams, published in 1598.
Thomas Bastard

My little book: who will thou please, tell me?
All which shall read thee? No that cannot be.
Whom then, the best? But few of these are known.
How shall thou know to please, thou know’st not whom?
The meaner sort commend not poetry;
And sure the worst should please themselves for thee:
But let them pass, and set by most no store,
Please thou one well, thou shall not need please more.
Chrestoleros: Seven Bookes of Epigrams, published in 1598.
Thomas Bastard

Neighbours I marvel much to see your strife,
Since ye are so well matched, so like of life,
A most vile husband, a most wicked wife.
Chrestoleros: Seven Bookes of Epigrams, published in 1598.
Thomas Bastard

Our fathers did but use the world before,
And having used did leave the same to us.
We spill whatever resteth to their store.
What can our heirs inherit but our curse?
Chrestoleros: Seven Bookes of Epigrams, published in 1598.
Thomas Bastard

Sextus, upon a spleen, did rashly swear,
That no new fashion he would ever wear,
He was forsworn for see what did ensue,
He wore the old, till the old was the new.
Chrestoleros: Seven Bookes of Epigrams, published in 1598.
Thomas Bastard

The sea hath fish for every man, And what would you have more?
Chrestoleros: Seven Bookes of Epigrams, published in 1598.
Thomas Bastard

The world is full of care, much like unto a bubble; Women and care, and care and women, and women and care and trouble.
Chrestoleros: Seven Bookes of Epigrams, published in 1598.
Thomas Bastard

They that govern the most make the least noise.
Chrestoleros: Seven Bookes of Epigrams, published in 1598.
Thomas Bastard

Whose life is a bubble, and in length a span; I conceive it is duty to be honest to man.
Chrestoleros: Seven Bookes of Epigrams, published in 1598.
Thomas Bastard

A negative judgment gives you more satisfaction than praise, provided it smacks of jealousy.
Jean Baudrillard

Abstraction today is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror, or the concept. Simulation is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal.
Simulacra and Simulation (1981).
Jean Baudrillard

Advertising is the simplest form of propaganda.
The Consumer Society (1970).
Jean Baudrillard

America is a giant hologram, in the sense that information concerning the whole is contained in each of its elements.
America (1986).
Jean Baudrillard

America is the original version of modernity. We are the dubbed or subtitled version.
Jean Baudrillard

Americans may have no identity, but they do have wonderful teeth.
Jean Baudrillard

At male strip shows, it is still the women that we watch, the audience of women and their eager faces. They are more obscene than if they were dancing naked themselves.
Jean Baudrillard

Cowardice and courage are never without a measure of affectation. Nor is love. Feelings are never true. They play with their mirrors.
Jean Baudrillard

Deep down, no one really believes they have a right to live. But this death sentence generally stays tucked away, hidden beneath the difficulty of living. If that difficulty is removed from time to time, death is suddenly there, unintelligibly.
Jean Baudrillard

Deep down, the US, with its space, its technological refinement, its bluff good conscience, even in those spaces which it opens up for simulation, is the only remaining primitive society.
Jean Baudrillard

Democracy is the menopause of Western society, the Grand Climacteric of the body social. Fascism is its middle-aged lust.
Jean Baudrillard

Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, when in fact all of Los Angeles and the America surrounding it are no longer real, but of the order of the hyperreal and simulation.
Simulacra and Simulation (1981).
Jean Baudrillard

Driving is a spectacular form of amnesia. Everything is to be discovered, everything to be obliterated.
Jean Baudrillard

Executives are like joggers. If you stop a jogger, he goes on running on the spot. If you drag an executive away from his business, he goes on running on the spot, pawing the ground, talking business.
Jean Baudrillard

Fashion is the pure speculative stage of the aesthetic, where forms are pushed to their limit and beyond.
The System of Objects (1968).
Jean Baudrillard

Forget Foucault. Forget Baudrillard. Forget all of us. If you haven't understood by now, you never will.
Forget Foucault (1977).

Jean Baudrillard

Governing today means giving acceptable signs of credibility. It is like advertising and it is the same effect that is achieved - commitment to a scenario.
Jean Baudrillard

History is our lost referential, that is to say our myth.
The Illusion of the End (1992).
Jean Baudrillard

History that repeats itself turns to farce. Farce that repeats itself turns to history.
Jean Baudrillard

I hesitate to deposit money in a bank. I am afraid I shall never dare to take it out again. When you go to confession and entrust your sins to the safe-keeping of the priest, do you ever come back for them?
Jean Baudrillard

If you say, I love you, then you have already fallen in love with language, which is already a form of break up and infidelity.
Jean Baudrillard

In the absence of God, everything is permitted.
Jean Baudrillard

In the end, the Gulf War did not take place.
The Gulf War Did Not Take Place (1991).
Jean Baudrillard

In the same way that we need statesmen to spare us the abjection of exercising power, we need scholars to spare us the abjection of learning.
Jean Baudrillard

It is always the same: once you are liberated, you are forced to ask who you are.
Jean Baudrillard

It is always there, that violence, that intensity, that evil religion which is the consumer society.
The Consumer Society (1970).
Jean Baudrillard

It only takes a politician believing in what he says for the others to stop believing him.
Jean Baudrillard

Like dreams, statistics are a form of wish fulfillment.
Jean Baudrillard

Modernity is the transient, the fleeting, the contingent; it is one half of art, the other being the eternal and the immovable.
Cool Memories (1987).
Jean Baudrillard

Never resist a sentence you like, in which language takes its own pleasure and in which, after having abused it for so long, you are stupefied by its innocence.
Jean Baudrillard

Nothing is wholly obvious without becoming enigmatic. Reality itself is too obvious to be true.
Jean Baudrillard

Objects are a reflection of the soul. They speak. They are a mirror.
The System of Objects (1968).
Jean Baudrillard

Perhaps the world's second worst crime is boredom. The first is being a bore.
Jean Baudrillard

Reality itself founders in hyperrealism, the meticulous reduplication of the real, preferably through another, reproductive medium, such as photography.
Simulacra and Simulation (1981).
Jean Baudrillard

Santa Barbara is a paradise; Disneyland is a paradise; the U.S. is a paradise. Paradise is just paradise. Mournful, monotonous, and superficial though it may be, it is paradise. There is no other.
Jean Baudrillard

Seduction is always more singular and sublime than sex and it commands the higher price.
Jean Baudrillard

Seduction is stronger than power because it is reversible and mortal, while power seeks to be irreversible and immortal.
Seduction (1979).
Jean Baudrillard

Television knows no night. It is perpetual day. TV embodies our fear of the dark, of night, of the other side of things.
Jean Baudrillard

The abjection of our political situation is the only true challenge today. Only facing up to this situation in all its desperation can help us get out of it.
Jean Baudrillard

The consumer society is a society of excess. But it is also a society of exhaustion.
The Transparency of Evil (1990).
Jean Baudrillard

The great person is ahead of their time, the smart make something out of it, and the blockhead, sets themselves against it.
Jean Baudrillard

The mass is a matrix. Every particle of it is pregnant with the entire structure.
In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities (1978).
Jean Baudrillard

The order of the world is always right - such is the judgment of God. For God has departed, but he has left his judgment behind, the way the Cheshire Cat left his grin.
Jean Baudrillard

The sad thing about artificial intelligence is that it lacks artifice and therefore intelligence.
Jean Baudrillard

The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth—it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true.
Simulacra and Simulation (1981).
Jean Baudrillard

The very definition of the real becomes: that of which it is possible to give an equivalent reproduction. The real is not only what can be reproduced, but that which is always already reproduced. The hyper real.
Simulacra and Simulation (1981).
Jean Baudrillard

The world is not dialectical - it is sworn to extremes, not to equilibrium, sworn to radical antagonism, not to reconciliation or synthesis. This is also the principle of evil.
Jean Baudrillard

There exists, between people in love, a kind of capital held by each. This is not just a stock of affects or pleasure, but also the possibility of playing double or quits with the share you hold in the other's heart.
Jean Baudrillard

There is no aphrodisiac like innocence.
Jean Baudrillard

There is nothing funny about Halloween. This sarcastic festival reflects, rather, an infernal demand for revenge by children on the adult world.
Jean Baudrillard

There is nothing more mysterious than a TV set left on in an empty room. It is even stranger than a man talking to himself or a woman standing dreaming at her stove. It is as if another planet is communicating with you.
Jean Baudrillard

To love someone is to isolate him from the world, wipe out every trace of him, dispossess him of his shadow, drag him into a murderous future. It is to circle around the other like a dead star and absorb him into a black light.
Jean Baudrillard

We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning.
Simulacra and Simulation (1981).
Jean Baudrillard

We shall never resolve the enigma of the relation between the negative foundations of greatness and that greatness itself.
Jean Baudrillard

Welcome to the desert of the real.
Jean Baudrillard

What is a society without a heroic dimension?
Jean Baudrillard

What you have to do is enter the fiction of America, enter America as fiction. It is, indeed, on this fictive basis that it dominates the world.
Jean Baudrillard

When the real is no longer what it used to be, nostalgia assumes its full meaning.
Simulacra and Simulation (1981).
Jean Baudrillard

You are born modern, you do not become so.
Jean Baudrillard

You are information, a message, a signal, a noise, a disturbance, a scandal.
The Ecstasy of Communication (1987).
Jean Baudrillard

And I also serve on a caucus that addresses financial literacy for young people in this country. And it is so hypocritical that we want to talk to these kids about how to better manage their money when we are not doing a good job with our Nation's resources.
Melissa Bean

And yet, if we don't, first and foremost, act responsibly with the national tax dollars that we have, we can't properly address those regional priorities that we would like to.
Melissa Bean

As a member of the House Committee on Small Business and because of my own experience as a small business owner, I am appreciative of the impact these small businesses have on our local economies.
Melissa Bean

As part of my efforts to fight identity theft, I worked with my colleagues on the Financial Services Committee to strengthen consumer protection with a reasonable notification requirement.
Melissa Bean

But in Congress, accountability is just a catch phrase, usually directed elsewhere. Demands to personal responsibility or corporate accountability abound, but rarely congressional accountability or fiscal responsibility.
Melissa Bean

By overhauling current rules and speeding the entry of competitors in the market, we encourage competition and provide our constituents with new choices and cheaper bills.
Melissa Bean

During a trip to Iraq last fall, I visited our theater hospital at Balad Air Force Base and witnessed these skilled medical professionals in action and met the brave soldiers whose lives they saved.
Melissa Bean

Even the best data security systems can't protect private taxpayer information from entrepreneurial foreign businesses than can make huge profits selling U.S. taxpayer information.
Melissa Bean

For the last 4 years, our Federal Government has produced the four biggest deficits in history, and the estimated 2006 deficit of $423 billion is projected to be the largest of all.
Melissa Bean

I am excited to rise today to support National Mom and Pop Business Owners Day. This celebration honors the husband and wife business owner teams whose work helps drive the economy and fuel job growth.
Melissa Bean

I am the parent of teenagers, my daughters are 13 and 15, so the issue of Internet safety has been an important issue. I have been visiting middle schools to talk about some of the challenges that they face.
Melissa Bean

Identity theft is one of the fastest-growing crimes in the nation — especially in the suburbs.
Melissa Bean

If we want to truly regain the public's trust, we can provide greater accountability and transparency with a simple step. Let's start by communicating to our constituents about the votes we take.
Melissa Bean

In fact, 80 percent of our domestic job growth comes from the small- and medium-sized business community.
Melissa Bean

Many of our constituents have one option for cable TV and one price. Our constituents desire choice.
Melissa Bean

Many seventh graders I know in Illinois, as well as around the Nation, are studying the Constitution. I was pretty impressed with the quality of education our children are receiving because they had not expected me to ask them about it.
Melissa Bean

Married couples who work together to build and maintain a business assume broad responsibilities. Not only is their work important to our local and national economies, but their success is central to the well-being of their families.
Melissa Bean

Mr. Speaker, democracy works best when the American electorate is engaged and informed.
Melissa Bean

My Eighth District, like others, counts on these family businesses and their teams working hard to support their families and aid their communities. As retailers, these teams often bring different or unique products to the marketplace.
Melissa Bean

Oftentimes, small business owners are unable to obtain reasonably priced financing and instead turn to higher priced forms of capital, such as credit cards.
Melissa Bean

Reports also suggest that Ernst and Young and other large tax preparation firms are sending tax returns overseas for processing. But the IRS has no control over tax information once it's been sent to India or another country.
Melissa Bean

Small businesses are the economic drivers of our country, providing the stimulus our communities need.
Melissa Bean

Social security, bank account, and credit card numbers aren't just data. In the wrong hands they can wipe out someone's life savings, wreck their credit and cause financial ruin.
Melissa Bean

Taxpayers should not be coerced into giving up their privacy rights just to file their taxes.
Melissa Bean

The American people expect more from Congress. They expect fiscal responsibility and common sense. They expect us to return to the pay-as-you-go budget rules that we had enacted in the past that helped us establish a surplus, however briefly.
Melissa Bean

The budget enforcement rules of the 1990s were an important part of getting the budget back into balance. It was done on a bipartisan basis. Those pay-as-you-go rules were tested and they worked. We are now in a one-party system, and we have thrown them out.
Melissa Bean

The IRS is currently considering a rule that would make it easier for tax preparers to disclose the private information contained in tax returns - including name, address, Social Security number, employer, income, and charitable donations.
Melissa Bean

Under the Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star Program, homes are independently verified to be measurably more energy efficient than average houses.
Melissa Bean

We're all proud of the communities that we've built and are a part of, but we shouldn't accept lost time and unnecessary stress when traveling in them.
Melissa Bean

When I came to Congress, I came to bring what I thought was a real-world business perspective to government because, in the business world, I spent over 20 years in the high-tech industry, but it certainly was not unique.
Melissa Bean

Polar Bear - See Hugh Rowland

A gourmet who thinks of calories is like a tart who looks at her watch.
James Beard

A recipe is only a theme, which an intelligent cook can play each time with a variation.
James Beard

Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all.
James Beard

Be simple. Be honest. Don't overcook and don't undercook, but it's better to undercook than overcook.
James Beard

Food is our common ground, a universal experience.
James Beard

Good bread is the most fundamentally satisfying of all foods; and good bread with fresh butter, the greatest of feasts.
James Beard

Grilling, broiling, barbecuing—whatever you want to call it—is an art, not just a matter of building a pyre and throwing on a piece of meat as a sacrifice to the gods of the stomach.
James Beard

I am still convinced that a good, simple, homemade cookie is preferable to all the store-bought cookies one can find.
James Beard

I believe that if ever I had to practice cannibalism, I might manage if there were enough tarragon around.
James Beard

I don't like gourmet cooking or this cooking or that cooking. I like good cooking.
James Beard

If I had to narrow my choice of meats down to one for the rest of my life, I am quite certain that meat would be pork.
James Beard

The kitchen is a sacred space—the heart of the home, where nourishment and creativity meet.
James Beard

The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking, you've got to have a what-the-hell attitude.
James Beard

The only thing that will make a soufflé fall is if it knows you're afraid of it.
James Beard

The preparation of good food is merely another expression of art, one of the joys of civilized living.
James Beard

The secret of good cooking is, first, having a love of it… If you're convinced that cooking is drudgery, you're never going to be good at it, and you might as well warm up something frozen.
James Beard

There is no such thing as a new recipe. All recipes are built on other recipes.
James Beard

Too few people understand a really good sandwich.
James Beard

When you cook, you never stop learning. That's the fascination of it.
James Beard

Wine is a part of civilized life, a part of the hospitality of the home, and a part of the joy of eating.
James Beard

Between the uprightness of my conscience and the hardness of my lot, I know not how either to show respect to my feelings or to the times. The bitterness of my mind urges me at all hazards to speak what I think, whereas the necessity of the times prompts me, however unbecomingly, to keep silence. Good God! Which way shall I turn myself?
Thomas Becket

Could I anticipate the enmity of those for whom I encountered such opposition? If they had been willing, I should have gained the victory. But the head faints when it is abandoned by the other members. If they had been wise they would have seen that in attacking me they were attacking their own privileges and serving princes to their own servitude.
Thomas Becket

Do you not know that the largest trees, which have required years to grow, are cut down in one hour? It is foolish to look for their fruits and yet to be unprepared for their fall. Let it be your consolation, then, that God's enemies, however honorable and exalted they may have been, shall nevertheless fade away like the smoke.
Thomas Becket

For the Name of Jesus and the protection of the Church I am ready to embrace death.
Recorded by Edward Grim, an eyewitness to Becket's martyrdom in 1170.
Thomas Becket

How carefully would I atone, if I might, for the time I have lost!
Thomas Becket

I accept death for the name of Jesus and for the Church.
From Grim's account of Becket's final words during his assassination.
Thomas Becket

I am ready to die for my Lord, that in my blood the Church may obtain liberty and peace.
Thomas Becket

I was called before the king's tribunal like a layman and was deserted in the quarter where I had looked for support. My brethren, the bishops, sided with the court and were ready to pronounce judgment against me.
Thomas Becket

In truth, we have delayed to pass sentence on the person of our lord the king, waiting, if perhaps he may, by God's grace, repent; but we will pass it ere long unless he does repent.
Thomas Becket

It is important that the Church of London, which has now lost its ruler, should receive for its new bishop a man whose personal merit, attainments in learning, and prudence in managing public business shall not be unworthy of the dignity of that see.
Thomas Becket

Let it be your care to guard the rights of the Church... For it is better to perish in body than to allow the laws of the Heavenly King to be violated.
From letters written by Becket to fellow clergy, emphasizing his commitment to ecclesiastical independence.
Thomas Becket

Many are needed to plant and water what has been planted now that the faith has spread so far and there are so many people... No matter who plants or waters, God gives no harvest unless what is planted is the faith of Peter and unless he agrees to his teachings.
Thomas Becket

My beloved brethren, why do you not rise together with me against the malignants? Why do you not stand up with me to oppose those who work iniquity? Do you not know how that God will scatter the bones of those who strive to oppress Him? They shall be confounded, because the Lord hath despised them.
Thomas Becket

My hopes are laid up within my own bosom, for he is not alone with whom the Lord is; when he falls, he shall not be dashed to pieces, for the Lord sustains him in his hand.
Thomas Becket

Remember the sufferings of Christ, the storms that were weathered... the crown that came from those sufferings which gave new radiance to the faith... All saints give testimony to the truth that without real effort, no one ever wins the crown.
Thomas Becket

The Church of Christ is constituted in two orders, the clergy and the people, the one having the care of the Church that all may be ruled for the salvation of souls; the other contains kings, princes, and nobles who have to carry on secular government that all things may lead to the peace and unity of the Church.
Thomas Becket

The king is so subtle with his words that he would confound the apostolic religion itself. He will find the weak points of the pope's character and will trip him up to his destruction.
Thomas Becket

The king, you say, desires to do what is right. My clergy are banished, my possessions are taken from me, the sword hangs over my neck. Do you call this right?
Thomas Becket

The more I loved the king, the more I opposed his injustice until his brow fell lowering upon me. He heaped calumny after calumny on my head, and I chose to be driven out rather than to subscribe.
Thomas Becket

The peace of the Church has always been my sole object; I have desired the liberty of the Church, and for that I am prepared to die.
Found in correspondence with Pope Alexander III, reflecting his resolve during his conflict with Henry II.
Thomas Becket

The rashness of the persecutor hath overspread the rights of the persecuted so that punishment is awarded to him that has gained the victory, the inglorious triumphs, and the man who deserved bonds has carried off the prize.
Thomas Becket

There has been no satisfaction, and I will not absolve them.
Thomas Becket

Those who tread among serpents, and along a tortuous path, must use the cunning of the serpent.
Thomas Becket

Thou knowest how long and loyally I served the king in his worldly affairs. For that cause, it pleased him to promote me to the office which now I hold. When I consented, it was for the sake of the king alone. When I was elected, I was formally acquitted of my responsibilities for all that I had done as a chancellor.
Thomas Becket

To Him I look as my judge, to Him as the avenger of my wrongs, firm in my own good conscience and secure in the sincerity of my devotion, rooted in faith and confident that those who in the love of justice suffer injury can never be confounded, nor those who break the horns of the persecutors of the Church be deprived of their everlasting reward.
Thomas Becket

Until they make satisfaction to the Church, I cannot absolve them.
Spoken in defiance of bishops who supported Henry II's encroachments on Church authority.
Thomas Becket

Wait the end with joy. It is the end which characterizes everything and which tests a man's expectations.
Thomas Becket

We know that no trust can be placed on princes and that cursed is the man who placeth his reliance on an arm of flesh.
Thomas Becket

We ought to obey God rather than men.
A biblical reference (Acts 5:29) used by Becket to justify his resistance to secular interference in Church matters.
Thomas Becket

When is constancy required, except under persecution. Are not friends then proved? If they always yield, how can they ever succeed? They must, one time or other, make a stand.
Thomas Becket

Who shall resist Anti-Christ when he comes if we show such patience towards the vices and crimes of his precursors? By such leniency, we encourage kings to become tyrants and tempt them to withdraw every privilege and all jurisdiction from the Churches.
Thomas Becket

Whosoever wisely examines the works of God will speedily discover what is next to be done.
Thomas Becket

With shame be it spoken: by her fall, the Church's liberties have been sacrificed for the sake of temporal advantages. The road to her ruin lay through the sinuous paths of riches: she has been prostituted in the streets to princes; she has conceived iniquity and will bring forth oppression to the undeserving.
Thomas Becket

All I know is what the words know, and dead things, and that makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning and a middle and an end, as in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead.
Samuel Beckett

All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
Worstward Ho (1983).
Samuel Beckett

Birth was the death of him.
A Piece of Monologue (1979).
Samuel Beckett

Dance first. Think later. It's the natural order.
Samuel Beckett

Do we mean love, when we say love?
Samuel Beckett

Dublin university contains the cream of Ireland: Rich and thick.
Samuel Beckett

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
Samuel Beckett

Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.
Samuel Beckett

Habit is a great deadener.
Waiting for Godot (1953).
Samuel Beckett

I can't go on, I'll go on.
The Unnamable (1953).
Samuel Beckett

I have my faults, but changing my tune is not one of them.
Samuel Beckett

I shall state silences more competently than ever a better man spangled the butterflies of vertigo.
Samuel Beckett

I write about myself with the same pencil and in the same exercise book as about him. It is no longer I, but another whose life is just beginning.
Samuel Beckett

If I had the use of my body, I would throw it out the window.
Samuel Beckett

If you do not love me I shall not be loved. If I do not love you I shall not love.
Samuel Beckett

In the landscape of extinction, precision is next to godliness.
Samuel Beckett

It is right that he too should have his little chronicle, his memories, his reason, and be able to recognize the good in the bad, the bad in the worst, and so grow gently old down all the unchanging days, and die one day like any other day, only shorter.
Samuel Beckett

James Joyce was a synthesizer, trying to bring in as much as he could. I am an analyzer, trying to leave out as much as I can.
Samuel Beckett

Just under the surface I shall be, all together at first, then separate and drift, through all the earth and perhaps in the end through a cliff into the sea, something of me. A ton of worms in an acre, that is a wonderful thought, a ton of worms, I believe it.
Samuel Beckett

Let me go to hell, that's all I ask, and go on cursing them there, and them look down and hear me, that might take some of the shine off their bliss.
Samuel Beckett

Let's go. / We can't. / Why not? / We're waiting for Godot.
Waiting for Godot (1953).
Samuel Beckett

Memories are killing.
First Love (1946).
Samuel Beckett

No, I regret nothing, all I regret is having been born, dying is such a long tiresome business I always found.
Samuel Beckett

Nothing happens. Nobody comes, nobody goes. It's awful.
Waiting for Godot (1953).
Samuel Beckett

Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that. Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world.
Samuel Beckett

Nothing is more real than nothing.
Malone Dies (1951).
Samuel Beckett

Nothing matters but the writing. There has been nothing else worthwhile... a stain upon the silence.
Samuel Beckett

Nothing to be done.
Waiting for Godot (1953).
Samuel Beckett

Perhaps my best years are gone. When there was a chance of happiness. But I wouldn't want them back. Not with the fire in me now. No, I wouldn't want them back.
Krapp's Last Tape (1958).
Samuel Beckett

Personally I have no bone to pick with graveyards.
Samuel Beckett

Poets are the sense, philosophers the intelligence of humanity.
Samuel Beckett

The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.
Murphy (1938).
Samuel Beckett

The tears of the world are a constant quality. For each one who begins to weep, somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh.
Waiting for Godot (1953).
Samuel Beckett

There's man all over for you, blaming on his boots the faults of his feet.
Samuel Beckett

They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more.
Waiting for Godot (1953).
Samuel Beckett

To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now.
Samuel Beckett

We are all born mad. Some remain so.
Waiting for Godot (1953).
Samuel Beckett

We are not saints, but we have kept our appointment. How many people can boast as much?
Samuel Beckett

What do I know of man's destiny? I could tell you more about radishes.
Samuel Beckett

Where I am, I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on.
Samuel Beckett

Words are all we have.
Samuel Beckett

You're on earth, there's no cure for that!
Endgame (1957).
Samuel Beckett

After dinner I'll catch up with emails. And when I'm lying in bed, I think about the next collection. That makes me sound insane, doesn't it? That I'm getting into bed with David Beckham and thinking about clothes?
Victoria Beckham

Antonio Berardi is one of my good friends.
Victoria Beckham

Bottom line: I can relax in L.A. I think I'm the only person in that town who doesn't want to act. I was an OK singer. I was an OK dancer. But acting? Never could do it.
Victoria Beckham

Clothes have to be simple and comfortable.
Victoria Beckham

Contrary to rumor, sometimes I can be quite a laugh.
Victoria Beckham

Don't play football in the house.
Victoria Beckham

Even if I wouldn't wear something myself, I think I know how women feel, how women want to look. I can really relate to women, I get on very well with women... Some women don't. I want to empower women, make women feel the best version of themselves.
Victoria Beckham

Even if you're not being chased by paparazzi, there will be someone doing selfies, so everybody has to be camera-ready all the time. Whoever you are, everybody has to be ready now!
Victoria Beckham

Everything that I design I would wear myself.
Victoria Beckham

Fashion nowadays is all about product - bags and shoes - and you're kind of a product yourself, aren't you?
Victoria Beckham

Fashion stole my smile! I've created this person.
Victoria Beckham

Fashion will take on added stature one day, but try not to be stifled by it. You will learn, as you mature, to swap heels for Stan Smith trainers, minidresses for crisp white shirts. And you will never be one of those people who just roll out of bed.
Victoria Beckham

First and foremost, I feel very lucky to have the family I have, so I would like my family to stay happy and healthy.
Victoria Beckham

For me, doing a show is great, but I want women to be able to wear the clothes easily as well.
Victoria Beckham

For me to go to America - which I find such a positive place - well, I took to it like a duck to water.
Victoria Beckham

I am a control freak. I am very hands on and pay attention to details.
Victoria Beckham

I am a very driven, ambitious, positive person. But I'm a spiritual person as well.
Victoria Beckham

I am very career minded, and I think my personality is more suited to America. I am a working mother.
Victoria Beckham

I appreciate that young girls look up to me. And I take that very seriously.
Victoria Beckham

I become quite obsessive when I get into something.
Victoria Beckham

I believe in creative visualization.
Victoria Beckham

I believe you can achieve anything if you work hard enough to get it.
Victoria Beckham

I can't concentrate in flats.
Reflecting her preference for high heels, often cited in fashion interviews.
Victoria Beckham

I do like to make things difficult for myself and my team, just from taking on a challenge, if you like.
Victoria Beckham

I don't believe anyone who says they don't care what people say about them. Of course they bloody well do.
Victoria Beckham

I don't have any issues with my age.
Victoria Beckham

I don't have time to be tired.
From a Red Magazine interview on balancing her career and family.
Victoria Beckham

I don't have to work; I need to work.
Victoria Beckham

I don't know much about football. I know what a goal is, which is surely the main thing about football.
Victoria Beckham

I don't like laziness or cutting corners.
Victoria Beckham

I don't like to over-accessorize. I like to keep it simple.
A fashion philosophy shared in various style features.
Victoria Beckham

I don't want to look like everyone else.
On her unique style, as mentioned in Elle Magazine.
Victoria Beckham

I find it odd that people will go to a nice restaurant or to the theater in jeans and T-shirts.
Victoria Beckham

I find that even the simplest of dresses, if it has the correct seaming and the correct fabric, whatever shape or size you are, it can change the way you hold yourself.
Victoria Beckham

I have always been a great believer that women should support women, and my admiration goes out to mothers everywhere, as they constantly put their own needs behind those of their children, embracing daily uncertainties and entering the new uncharted territories that each day brings, to be, in return, rewarded with joy and unending love.
Victoria Beckham

I have always loved fashion since I was a kid and customized my school uniforms.
Victoria Beckham

I have no time for it at all, when women just don't like women. I don't get it.
Victoria Beckham

I have no time for women who don't support other women. It's the ultimate compliment when a woman tells you that you look good.
Victoria Beckham

I just can't do heels any more. At least not when I'm working. I travel a lot.
Victoria Beckham

I keep fit by running after my three boys all day.
Victoria Beckham

I like a man who can be a real friend, has a good sense of humor, a good pair of shoes and a healthy gold card.
Victoria Beckham

I like to consider myself a relatively spiritual person, and I just do my thing. I'm very focused on what I do professionally, and I'm very focused on my family, and I don't really get too stressed out about what people say or what other people think.
Victoria Beckham

I like to make the best of what I have. I'm not a supermodel, clearly. I'm not a makeup artist. I'm a real woman.
Victoria Beckham

I like to think of my customer and make sure that season after season she is getting what she wants. Ultimately, I suppose I have an image of myself. That is the person I am designing for - a woman who loves and appreciates fashion and luxury, and somebody who wants to feel empowered with the best version of themselves.
Victoria Beckham

I looooove Miss Piggy.
Victoria Beckham

I love America. It's such a positive country.
Victoria Beckham

I love Brazilians. Brazilians ought to be made compulsory at 15.
Victoria Beckham

I love fashion, and I love changing my style, my hair, my makeup, and everything I've done in the past has made me what I am now. Not everyone is going to like what I do, but I look back at everything, and it makes me smile.
Victoria Beckham

I love fashion, and that's how I express myself.
Victoria Beckham

I love fashion - I really feel it's where I belong.
Victoria Beckham

I love what I do professionally, I'm really blessed. But my priority is my husband and my children.
Victoria Beckham

I love women's bodies. I love luxury.
Victoria Beckham

I really am into crystals. I'm a real positive thinker. I believe in creative visualisation.
Victoria Beckham

I never try to follow a trend or fashion.
Victoria Beckham

I see a dermatologist in L.A. called Dr. Harold Lancer, who is incredible. I've known him for years - he sorted my skin out.
Victoria Beckham

I swear they're real!
Victoria Beckham

I tell you, the paparazzi would not be sitting outside if they realized I was the most boring person in Hollywood.
Victoria Beckham

I think as I have got older, I have got a bit more relaxed, although you might not think that if you heard me screaming at my kids.
Victoria Beckham

I think I've achieved a lot in 41 years. I like how 41 feels; I feel good. I don't like how it sounds too much.
Victoria Beckham

I think the sexiest thing about a woman is confidence, but confidence in a humble way, not in an arrogant way. Sense of humor is definitely important. And sunglasses always hide a multitude of sins. Sunglasses and a great pair of heels can turn most outfits around.
Victoria Beckham

I very, very rarely get the opportunity to go shopping and actually feel the clothes and try things on. I love shopping, but I do it mostly through Net-a-Porter.
Victoria Beckham

I wake up every morning and I feel like I'm juggling glass balls. I live in Los Angeles, my business is run out of London, and most evenings I'm cuddled up in front of Skype, in my dressing gown, speaking with my studio in London. I travel a lot, my team travel a lot, but I wouldn't have it any other way.
Victoria Beckham

I want a big house with a moat and dragons and a fort to keep people out.
Victoria Beckham

I want my kids to have a good work ethic. I believe you can achieve anything if you work hard enough to get it.
Victoria Beckham

I want to evolve each season. I never want to be one of those brands where people know what they're going to see. I always want an element of surprise. One thing I never want to do is copy what anybody else is doing. I have a signature, and it's very important to me to stay true to that.
Victoria Beckham

I want to reach as many women throughout the world as I can.
Victoria Beckham

I was an okay singer. I was an okay dancer. But acting? Never could do it.
Victoria Beckham

I was never a natural. I got there in the end because I did believe that if you work hard enough, then you can achieve a lot.
Victoria Beckham

I was never going to give Mariah Carey any competition.
Victoria Beckham

I'll admit it: I'm a control freak. I am. If I'm going to do something, I'm going to do it 110% or there's no point in doing it at all, especially if the work takes me away from time with my husband and children.
Victoria Beckham

I'm a very driven, ambitious, positive person. But I'm a spiritual person as well.
Victoria Beckham

I'm a very, very healthy eater. I eat lots of fish, lots of vegetables, lots of fruit. I don't eat junk food.
Victoria Beckham

I'm a working mother, just trying to juggle everything like everyone else.
From a parenting magazine interview about motherhood.
Victoria Beckham

I'm always in flats. Jeans, jumper, flat shoes or a pair of trainers. It would probably surprise people, but I have to be comfortable. It's not about me dressing up and looking good. I've got to get stuff done.
Victoria Beckham

I'm definitely a glass-is-always-half-full, not half-empty, kind of person. Which is why I love living in America.
Victoria Beckham

I'm feminine, but I wouldn't say that I'm girly in any way at all.
Victoria Beckham

I'm living in Beverly Hills. I'm very, very lucky. I wake up every morning and I recognize that I'm blessed.
Victoria Beckham

I'm lucky that I do something I love, and I am proud, as I think it's a positive message to give to young women: if you want to have a career and be married with children, then you can. It's full-on, but it's doable.
Victoria Beckham

I'm more of a picker than an eater.
Discussing her diet habits in Vogue.
Victoria Beckham

I'm not a supermodel. I make the best of what I've got.
Victoria Beckham

I'm not a designer. I'm a stylist.
Commenting on her fashion journey in a Telegraph interview.
Victoria Beckham

I'm not a pop star. I'm not a model. I'm not a conventional celebrity. But I think that's why people relate to me.
From a Glamour interview on her public persona.
Victoria Beckham

I'm not a supermodel. I make the best of what I've got.
Victoria Beckham

I'm not materialistic. I believe in presents from the heart, like a drawing that a child does.
Victoria Beckham

I'm not one of these people that needs to feel loved. I don't need to see my picture everywhere.
Victoria Beckham

I'm not the most talented Spice Girl, but I definitely work the hardest.
A self-reflective quote from her autobiography.
Victoria Beckham

I'm still me even after all that's happened.
Victoria Beckham

I'm very focused on what I do professionally, and I'm very focused on my family, and I don't really get too stressed out about what people say or what other people think. In fact, it's not on my radar at all. If there's anything negative, I don't want to know about it. I just do my own thing and get on with my life.
Victoria Beckham

I'm very lucky to have a job that I love.
Victoria Beckham

I'm very proud to be British, and my brand is British.
Victoria Beckham

I'm very realistic. I know my boundaries - I know what I'm good at and what I'm not good at.
Victoria Beckham

I've always loved makeup. I'm very, very girly. I used to sit and watch my mum get ready. My mum is very glamorous, and I remember sitting on her bed and watching her apply her makeup, get dressed, and do her hair.
Victoria Beckham

I've been in the public eye now for about 15 or 16 years, and I'm very aware that fame is not a given. I have to maintain it. It's not just something that will always be there. But I've always been a worker. I've never expected be given anything.
Victoria Beckham

I've been that celebrity on the red carpet, and I appreciate that something hasn't got to just look good from the front, from the back, it's got to look good at all angles.
Victoria Beckham

I've been to parties in L.A. that are mind-blowing. I mean, quite literally mind-blowing. People get cellphones in the party bag, that sort of thing. Fabulous, fabulous parties.
Victoria Beckham

I've got a lot that I want to do, so I would like to expand my empire, for sure. I love it.
Victoria Beckham

I've got great people who handle my schedule, and everything does revolve around the children. If there's a parents' night or an Easter bonnet parade or a Nativity play, whatever it might be, then I plan everything around that.
Victoria Beckham

I've never been a six-foot-tall, skinny model, so therefore, I want to create an illusion. People always think I'm taller than I am - not just because of the shoes I wear but because of the way I dress. It's all relatively streamlined.
Victoria Beckham

I've only ever tried to be me.
Victoria Beckham

If I'm going to do something, I'm going to do it 110%, or there's no point in doing it at all, especially if the work takes me away from time with my husband and children.
Victoria Beckham

If you have a surreal life like I do, you've got to have fun along the way.
Victoria Beckham

If you haven't got it. Fake it! Too short? Wear big high heels, but do practice walking!
Victoria Beckham

In England, David and I are big fish in a small pond. But in L.A., we are tiny, tiny, tiny fish in a big pond.
Victoria Beckham

It's always so difficult when you've left your kids to go to work every day - you want people to like it. I just agonise over it, but I'm obsessive because I love what I do.
Victoria Beckham

It's great when women support women. We need more women out there supporting women.
Victoria Beckham

It's not healthy to be jealous.
Victoria Beckham

Less is more.
Victoria Beckham

My aim is to create the perfect dress!
Victoria Beckham

My children and my husband make me smile. My work makes me smile.
Victoria Beckham

My children are my priority and always have been.
Victoria Beckham

My dresses are for women of all different shapes and sizes. Actually, the one I tried on yesterday was the one Jennifer wore. And who'd have thought I'd be the same size as Jennifer Lopez!
Victoria Beckham

My first-ever car, my parents bought me a red Fiat Uno. I was 17 and just so happy to have a car, so I was very fortunate that my parents were in a position to get me one - it was a secondhand car, but I was just so happy to have it.
Victoria Beckham

My glasses say a lot about me because I think me in a pair of sunglasses is an image that a lot of people would recognise.
Victoria Beckham

My style is quite minimal. I don't like too much fuss.
Highlighted in Harper's Bazaar as part of her design ethos.
Victoria Beckham

Myself and David, we both love art. We have a lot of respect for Damien Hirst and Julian Schnabel, and we've met them both, and they're very interesting characters. I also have a lot of respect for the working women out there. As you know, it's not easy when you're looking after children and you have a career as well.
Victoria Beckham

People always think I'm taller than I am - not just because of the shoes I wear but because of the way I dress. It's all relatively streamlined.
Victoria Beckham

People are mean on social media, whoever you are. It's a shame people have to be that way.
Victoria Beckham

People have always had an opinion about me and David. They didn't think we'd last.
On her marriage to David Beckham, from a BBC interview.
Victoria Beckham

People I respect complimenting me on my work in fashion is more exciting to me than anything I ever achieved as a Spice Girl. I am now competing in an arena where I can hold my head high. I feel quite confident in what I'm doing now, much more than the singing.
Victoria Beckham

Sexy is about the way you wear something and being confident - the clothes are sexy and flattering. I've said right from the beginning, it's very important clothes are flattering. I want a woman to look and feel like the best version of herself.
Victoria Beckham

Sometimes I really wish that I could sit back and enjoy it, live in the moment more. But I am terrified, and I want to better myself, not that I want to prove anything to anyone other than myself. I am ambitious, and there are many things I want to do. It doesn't get any easier.
Victoria Beckham

Sometimes you've got to know when it's time to leave the party.
Victoria Beckham

Strong women, that's who I really respect.
Victoria Beckham

The Euro-bureaucrats are destroying every bit of national identity and individuality.
Victoria Beckham

The first dress that I wore in the Spice Girls, which everybody thought was a little black Gucci dress, was actually from Miss Selfridge - it wasn't a little black Gucci dress.
Victoria Beckham

The glass is always half full: I have no time for anything negative - and actually, I've bought crystals for all my team, so they all carry crystals as well.
Victoria Beckham

The kind of person who's going to stand on the red carpet and love the attention and have the big grin - I'm just not like that. I want to get in there, do what I've got to do, and get home to my kids.
Victoria Beckham

The older you get, the more comfortable you become with yourself, and you accept what you have physically.
Victoria Beckham

The whole European Federal plan is ridiculous. We are patriotic. The single currency is an outrage. We want the Queen's head - or the King's head, if we have a king - on our own coins.
Victoria Beckham

There are rumors that we want to move back to the U.K., but we're so happy in America I actually can't see us ever leaving... People ask me how long it took to adapt. Twenty minutes.
Victoria Beckham

There are two types of women out there: there's the kind of woman who finds something nice and likes to keep it to herself, and then there's the other type, which is me, who wants to share.
Victoria Beckham

There's nothing wrong with constructive criticism, and I learn from that and better myself. I'm not expecting anyone to be sycophantic in any way; I never expected that.
Victoria Beckham

These people are amazing. It's so emotional I was thinking about wearing waterproof mascara.
Victoria Beckham

This person they make me out to be irritates the hell out of me as well.
Victoria Beckham

Was music my talent really? No, I don't think I was particularly talented.
Victoria Beckham

We are like a traveling circus, our family! We sing, we dance, we do football, we do fashion.
Victoria Beckham

We are still so close, David and I. We were at a party the other day at my mum's house and I was sitting on his lap. We're very affectionate. And I looked at him and thought after being married for 11 years! We were the only couple who were even near each other at that party. We're soul mates.
Victoria Beckham

We're very, very working class. ... OK, in the Eighties, my dad had a Rolls-Royce.
Victoria Beckham

What's David's role? David looks good, that's what David does. David looks good, and I'm the funny one, that's what I hear constantly. But I keep telling him that looks fade.
Victoria Beckham

When I dress in a certain way and do my hair and makeup in a certain way, it's not to get attention.
Victoria Beckham

When I started out in fashion, everything had to be very structured and tight and controlling, and now I'm getting to a point where I think - I could wear a great big parka, that could be quite fabulous. I haven't always got to show off my size, show off my shape. It's a turning point for me.
Victoria Beckham

When I was on stage with the Spice Girls, I thought people were there to see the other four and not me.
Victoria Beckham

When people ask if I have any advice for young designers, the best advice I could ever give to somebody is to work for someone else, when you are playing with someone else's money. It is very expensive when you start doing it on your own.
Victoria Beckham

When you're in a position to be paparazzi-ed just walking down the street, you'd look a little daft if you were smiling all the time.
Victoria Beckham

You have to dress for your body shape. You have to know what suits you.
Fashion advice shared in a Harper's Bazaar feature.
Victoria Beckham

You have to remember that when you are a performer you become a celebrity, but you are not saving lives. It's not that important.
Victoria Beckham

You know, I love America. It's such a positive country.
Victoria Beckham

You've got to trust people. And because I am a control freak, sometimes that's difficult for me, because I want to micro-manage absolutely everything. I can't hand over. But I'm trying to do that more.
Victoria Beckham

Beauty is a passport, but it expires quickly.
La beauté est un passeport, mais il expire vite.
A reflection on her reliance on charm and looks, though no direct historical source confirms this as hers.
Jeanne Becu

It is better to be the mistress of a king than the wife of a bourgeois.
Il vaut mieux être la maîtresse d'un roi que la femme d'un bourgeois.
A sentiment often ascribed to her, reflecting her rise from modest origins to Versailles. However, this phrase is generic and may be conflated with stereotypes about courtesans.
Jeanne Becu

Oh! Mr. Executioner, one moment of grace!
Ah! Monsieur le Bourreau, un instant de grâce!
Purported last words before her execution by guillotine in 1793 during the French Revolution. This dramatic plea is widely cited but debated by historians, as some accounts claim she panicked or resisted.
Jeanne Becu

Why so much hatred?
Pourquoi tant de haine?
Allegedly spoken during her trial in 1793, responding to revolutionary hostility. Documentation is sparse.
Jeanne Becu

A cypress-bough, and a rose-wreath sweet,
A wedding-robe, and a winding-sheet,
A bridal bed and a bier.
The Phantom-Wooer (1842).
Reflects Beddoes' fascination with the interplay of love and death.
Thomas Lovell Beddoes

Do you know what Death is? ... He is the Season,
And Death's cold winds shall blow the roses down.
Death's Jest-Book (Act V, Scene IV).
A meditation on mortality and inevitability.
Thomas Lovell Beddoes

Every apartment devoted to the circulation of the glass, may be regarded as a temple set apart for the performance of human sacrifices.
Thomas Lovell Beddoes

How many times do I love, again?
Tell me how many beads there are
In a silver chain
Of evening rain
Unravelled from the trembling main
And threading the eye of a yellow star:
So many times do I love again.
Song from Torrismond
Thomas Lovell Beddoes

I arise from dreams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low,
And the stars are shining bright.
I Arise From Dreams of Thee
A rare lyrical moment in his otherwise dark oeuvre.
Thomas Lovell Beddoes

I have a bit of fiat in my soul,
And can myself create my little world.
Thomas Lovell Beddoes

If there were dreams to sell,
Merry and sad to tell,
And the crier rung his bell,
What would you buy?
Opening lines of Dream-Pedlary (published posthumously).
One of his most famous verses, exploring longing and imagination.
Thomas Lovell Beddoes

If thou wilt ease thine heart
Of love and all its smart,
Then sleep, dear, sleep.
Death's Jest Book
Thomas Lovell Beddoes

Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.
Death's Jest-Book (Act III, Scene III).
A line admired for its rhythmic force and cosmic imagery.
Thomas Lovell Beddoes

Like mighty eagle soaring light
O'er antelopes on Alpine height.
The anchor heaves, the ship swings free,
The sails swell full. To sea, to sea!
Thomas Lovell Beddoes

Strew not earth's empty floor with such poor madhouse-flowers as thoughts like these.
The Phantom-Wooer
Critiques futile human preoccupations with existential dread.
Thomas Lovell Beddoes

Tell me how many beads there are
In a silver chain
Of evening rain,
Unravelled from the tumbling main,
And threading the eye of a yellow star: -
So many times do I love again.
Thomas Lovell Beddoes

The look of the world's a lie, a face made up
O'er graves and fiery depths, and nothing's true
But what is horrible.
Death's Jest Book
Thomas Lovell Beddoes

The mighty thought of an old world
Fan, like a dragon’s wing unfurled,
The surface of my yearnings deep.
From Lines Written in Switzerland (1825).
Combines grandeur with introspection.
Thomas Lovell Beddoes

There is some secret stirring in the world,
A thought that seeks impatiently its word.
Thomas Lovell Beddoes

We are the fools of time and terror:
Days steal on us and steal from us; yet we live,
Loathing our life, and dreading still to die.
Death's Jest-Book (Act III, Scene iii).
A nihilistic reflection on human existence.
Thomas Lovell Beddoes

What’s the use
Of being a ghost if one can't frighten people?
Death's Jest-Book (Act IV, Scene iv).
Darkly humorous, typical of Beddoes' blending of horror and wit.
Thomas Lovell Beddoes

When soft winds and sunny skies
With the green earth harmonize...
The Swallow Leaves Her Nest
Contrasts nature's beauty with human melancholy.
Thomas Lovell Beddoes

After a long silence, Dodge cleared his throat. I think I speak for all of us when I say, 'Huh?
Seeing Redd
Frank Beddor

And even, if circumstances required, a contingency plan for his contingency plan's contingency plan.
Seeing Redd
Frank Beddor

Creativity isn't just about making things up; it's about seeing the world in a new way.
From social media posts and interviews about the creative process.
Frank Beddor

Every hero has a journey, every journey has a story, and every story has the power to inspire.
Reflects his emphasis on narrative in interviews and discussions.
Frank Beddor

For most of the universe's life is not all gummy wads and tarty tarts; it is a struggle against hardship, unfairness, corruption, abuse, and adversity in all its guises, where even to survive—let alone survive with dignity—is heroic. To soldier through the days in the wake of failure is the courageous act of many.
The Looking Glass Wars
Frank Beddor

For now. But if I ever decide you're useless, you are a dead man. To be killed by you is to be desired more than a life excluded from your service. Bravo. Her Imperial Viciousness laughed with genuine feeling. Bravo!
Seeing Redd
Frank Beddor

Imagination is the key to everything. It’s the secret of life. You have to imagine it before you can do it.
Frequently cited in interviews and articles about his work and philosophy.
Frank Beddor

Most of life is unbearable. It's unbearable but we bear it.
Frank Beddor

Only the previous day, Arch had found him in a spirit-dance corral, blistering the creatures to the point of death, such was his need to touch and destroy.
Seeing Redd
Frank Beddor

Should is my all-time least favorite word. It's this sort of guilt-inducing, finger-wagging word that we use to beat up others and ourselves.
Frank Beddor

Stories are the fabric of our reality. They shape how we see the world and ourselves.
From literary interviews discussing the impact of storytelling.
Frank Beddor

The best way to predict the future is to create it yourself.
Commonly referenced in talks about innovation and authorship.
Frank Beddor

Well now, the scholar went on, I'm just an old fuddy-duddy who could use a tan, so you needn't grant my opinion any authority, but I consider the queendom lucky that a handful of Milliners and their children lived incognito among the population during Redd's tyranny.
Seeing Redd
Frank Beddor

Whatever power I have is nothing if I can't use it to keep safe those who mean the most to me.
Frank Beddor

You can't spend so much time in a place and not carry a bit of it inside you.
The Looking Glass Wars
Frank Beddor

The largest profits go to those businesses which most devotedly follow a policy of insisting on a competitive advantage, no matter how small, for every product or service they market.
R. H. Beeby

A book is good company. It is full of conversation without loquacity. It comes to your longing with full instruction but pursues you never.
Life Thoughts (1858).
Henry Ward Beecher

A Christian is nothing but a sinful man who has put himself to school for Christ for the honest purpose of becoming better.
Henry Ward Beecher

A church debt is the devil's salary.
Henry Ward Beecher

A library is not a luxury but one of the necessities of life.
Henry Ward Beecher

A man that does not know how to be angry does not know how to be good.
Henry Ward Beecher

A man's true state of power and riches is to be in himself.
Henry Ward Beecher

A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs. It's jolted by every pebble on the road.
Henry Ward Beecher

A proud man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves.
Henry Ward Beecher

All ambitions are lawful except those that climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind.
Henry Ward Beecher

All men are tempted. There is no man that lives that can't be broken down, provided it is the right temptation, put in the right spot.
Henry Ward Beecher

Beware of him who hates the laugh of a child.
Henry Ward Beecher

Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.
Henry Ward Beecher

Books are not men and yet they stay alive.
Henry Ward Beecher

Children are the hands by which we take hold of heaven.
Reflecting his views on family and spirituality.
Henry Ward Beecher

Children are unpredictable. You never know what inconsistency they are going to catch you in next.
Henry Ward Beecher

Clothes and manners do not make the man; but, when he is made, they greatly improve his appearance.
Henry Ward Beecher

Compassion will cure more sins than condemnation.
Henry Ward Beecher

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.
On creativity and self-expression.
Henry Ward Beecher

Every charitable act is a stepping stone toward heaven.
Henry Ward Beecher

Every man should keep a fair-sized cemetery in which to bury the faults of his friends.
Henry Ward Beecher

Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith.
Henry Ward Beecher

Every young man would do well to remember that all successful business stands on the foundation of morality.
Henry Ward Beecher

Expedients are for the hour, but principles are for the ages.
Henry Ward Beecher

Faith is spiritualized imagination.
Henry Ward Beecher

Flowers are the sweetest things God ever made and forgot to put a soul into.
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit (1887).
Henry Ward Beecher

Gambling with cards or dice or stocks is all one thing. It's getting money without giving an equivalent for it.
Henry Ward Beecher

God appoints our graces to be nurses to other men's weaknesses.
Henry Ward Beecher

God asks no man whether he will accept life. That is not the choice. You must take it. The only choice is how.
Henry Ward Beecher

God made man to go by motives, and he will not go without them, any more than a boat without steam or a balloon without gas.
On human motivation and spirituality.
Henry Ward Beecher

God pardons like a mother, who kisses the offense into everlasting forgiveness.
Henry Ward Beecher

Good nature is worth more than knowledge, more than money, more than honor, to the persons who possess it.
Henry Ward Beecher

Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul.
Henry Ward Beecher

Greatness lies, not in being strong, but in the right using of strength; and strength is not used rightly when it serves only to carry a man above his fellows for his own solitary glory. He is the greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own.
Henry Ward Beecher

He is greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own.
Henry Ward Beecher

He is rich or poor according to what he is, not according to what he has.
Henry Ward Beecher

Heaven will be inherited by every man who has heaven in his soul.
Henry Ward Beecher

Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody else expects of you. Never excuse yourself.
Emphasizing personal accountability.
Henry Ward Beecher

I can forgive, but I cannot forget, is only another way of saying, I will not forgive. Forgiveness ought to be like a cancelled note—torn in two and burned up, so that it never can be shown against one.
On the nature of true forgiveness.
Henry Ward Beecher

I don't like these cold, precise, perfect people, who, in order not to speak wrong, never speak at all, and in order not to do wrong, never do anything.
Henry Ward Beecher

I never knew how to worship until I knew how to love.
Henry Ward Beecher

I pray on the principle that wine knocks the cork out of a bottle. There is an inward fermentation, and there must be a vent.
Henry Ward Beecher

If a man cannot be a Christian in the place where he is, he cannot be a Christian anywhere.
Henry Ward Beecher

In this world, full often, our joys are only the tender shadows which our sorrows cast.
Henry Ward Beecher

In this world it is not what we take up, but what we give up, that makes us rich.
Henry Ward Beecher

It is not the going out of port, but the coming in, that determines the success of a voyage.
Henry Ward Beecher

It is not well for a man to pray cream and live skim milk.
Henry Ward Beecher

It is not what we learn in conversation that enriches us. It is the elation that comes of swift contact with tingling currents of thought.
On the value of dialogue.
Henry Ward Beecher

It is not what we take up, but what we give up, that makes us rich.
Henry Ward Beecher

It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend his faults. So to love a man that you cannot bear to see a stain upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words, that is friendship.
Henry Ward Beecher

It is the heart that makes a man rich. He is rich according to what he is, not according to what he has.
Henry Ward Beecher

It's easier to go down a hill than up it but the view is much better at the top.
Henry Ward Beecher

It's not the work which kills people, it's the worry. It's not the revolution that destroys machinery it's the friction.
Henry Ward Beecher

Laugh at your friends, and if your friends are sore; So much the better, you may laugh the more.
Henry Ward Beecher

Laughter is day, and sobriety is night; a smile is the twilight that hovers gently between both, more bewitching than either.
Eyes and Ears (1862).
Henry Ward Beecher

Laughter is not a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is the best ending for one.
Henry Ward Beecher

Law represents the effort of man to organize society; governments, the efforts of selfishness to overthrow liberty.
Henry Ward Beecher

Love cannot endure indifference. It needs to be wanted. Like a lamp, it needs to be fed out of the oil of another's heart, or its flame burns low.
Henry Ward Beecher

Love is the river of life in the world.
Henry Ward Beecher

Men will let you abuse them if only you will make them laugh.
On humor and human nature.
Henry Ward Beecher

Mirth is the sweet wine of human life. It should be offered sparkling with zestful life unto God.
Henry Ward Beecher

Never forget what a man says to you when he is angry.
Henry Ward Beecher

Next to ingratitude the most painful thing to bear is gratitude.
Henry Ward Beecher

No man can tell another his faults so as to benefit him, unless he loves him.
Henry Ward Beecher

No man is more cheated than the selfish man.
Henry Ward Beecher

No man is sane who does not know how to be insane on proper occasions.
Henry Ward Beecher

No matter what looms ahead, if you can eat today, enjoy today, mix good cheer with friends today enjoy it and bless God for it.
Henry Ward Beecher

Now comes the mystery.
Henry Ward Beecher

Of all escape mechanisms, death is the most efficient.
Henry Ward Beecher

Of all the music that reached farthest into heaven, it is the beating of a loving heart.
Henry Ward Beecher

One's best success comes after their greatest disappointments.
On resilience.
Henry Ward Beecher

Our best successes often come after our greatest disappointments.
Henry Ward Beecher

Pride slays thanksgiving, but a humble mind is the soil out of which thanks naturally grow. A proud man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves.
Henry Ward Beecher

Riches are not an end of life, but an instrument of life.
Henry Ward Beecher

Selfishness is that detestable vice which no one will forgive in others, and no one is without himself.
Henry Ward Beecher

Success is full of promise till one gets it, and then it seems like a nest from which the bird has flown.
Henry Ward Beecher

Suffering is part of the divine idea.
Henry Ward Beecher

Tears are often the telescope by which men see far into heaven.
Henry Ward Beecher

The ability to convert ideas to things is the secret of outward success.
Henry Ward Beecher

The advertisements in a newspaper are more full knowledge in respect to what is going on in a state or community than the editorial columns are.
Henry Ward Beecher

The art of being happy lies in the power of extracting happiness from common things.
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit (1887).
Henry Ward Beecher

The babe at first feeds upon the mother's bosom, but it is always on her heart.
Henry Ward Beecher

The Church is not a gallery for the exhibition of eminent Christians, but a school for the education of imperfect ones.
Henry Ward Beecher

The cynic is one who never sees a good quality in a man and never fails to see a bad one.
Henry Ward Beecher

The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one often comes from a strong will, and the other from a strong won't.
On determination versus stubbornness.
Henry Ward Beecher

The dog is the god of frolic.
Henry Ward Beecher

The dog was created specially for children. He is a god of frolic.
Henry Ward Beecher

The head learns new things, but the heart forever practices old experiences.
Henry Ward Beecher

The humblest individual exerts some influence, either for good or evil, upon others.
Henry Ward Beecher

The ignorant classes are the dangerous classes.
Henry Ward Beecher

The moment an ill can be patiently handled, it is disarmed of its poison, though not of its pain.
Henry Ward Beecher

The most dangerous people are the ignorant.
Henry Ward Beecher

The mother's heart is the child's schoolroom.
Henry Ward Beecher

The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next.
Henry Ward Beecher

The real democratic American idea is, not that every man shall be on a level with every other man, but that every man shall have liberty to be what God made him, without hindrance.
Henry Ward Beecher

The real man is one who always finds excuses for others, but never excuses himself.
Henry Ward Beecher

The soul without imagination is what an observatory would be without a telescope.
Henry Ward Beecher

The sun does not shine for a few trees and flowers, but for the wide world's joy.
Henry Ward Beecher

The true secret of giving advice is, after you have honestly given it, to be perfectly indifferent whether it is taken or not, and never persist in trying to set people right.
Henry Ward Beecher

The unthankful heart... discovers no mercies; but let the thankful heart sweep through the day and, as the magnet finds the iron, so it will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings!
Henry Ward Beecher

The world's battlefields have been in the heart chiefly; more heroism has been displayed in the household and the closet, than on the most memorable battlefields in history.
Henry Ward Beecher

The worst thing in this world, next to anarchy, is government.
Henry Ward Beecher

Theology is a science of mind applied to God.
Henry Ward Beecher

There are joys which long to be ours. God sends ten thousand truths, which come about us like birds seeking inlet; but we are shut up to them, and so they bring us nothing, but sit and sing awhile upon the roof, and then fly away.
Life Thoughts (1858).
Henry Ward Beecher

There are three schoolmasters for everybody that will employ them - the senses, intelligent companions, and books.
Henry Ward Beecher

There is no faculty of the human soul so persistent and universal as that of hatred.
Henry Ward Beecher

There is no friendship, no love, like that of the parent for the child.
Henry Ward Beecher

To array a man's will against his sickness is the supreme art of medicine.
Henry Ward Beecher

To become an able and successful man in any profession, three things are necessary, nature, study and practice.
Henry Ward Beecher

To know that one has a secret is to know half the secret itself.
Henry Ward Beecher

We are always on the anvil; by trials God is shaping us for higher things.
Henry Ward Beecher

We never know the love of a parent till we become parents ourselves.
Henry Ward Beecher

We should not judge people by their peak of excellence, but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.
On empathy and growth.
Henry Ward Beecher

We sleep, but the loom of life never stops, and the pattern which was weaving when the sun went down is weaving when it comes up in the morning.
Henry Ward Beecher

We steal if we touch tomorrow. It is God's.
Henry Ward Beecher

Well married a person has wings, poorly married shackles.
Henry Ward Beecher

What a mother sings to the cradle goes all the way down to the coffin.
Henry Ward Beecher

What we call wisdom is the result of all the wisdom of past ages. Our best institutions are like young trees growing upon the roots of the old trunks that have crumbled away.
Henry Ward Beecher

When a nation's young men are conservative, its funeral bell is already rung.
Henry Ward Beecher

Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?
Henry Ward Beecher

You and I do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.
Henry Ward Beecher

You cannot sift out the poor from the community. The poor are indispensable to the rich.
Henry Ward Beecher

You have come into a hard world. I know of only one easy place in it, and that is the grave.
Henry Ward Beecher

Young love is a flame; very pretty, often very hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. Them love of the older and disciplined heart is as coals, deep-burning, unquenchable.
Henry Ward Beecher

A hundred eyes were fixed on her, and half as many hearts lost to her.
Zuleika Dobson; or, An Oxford Love Story (1911).
Max Beerbohm

A sense of beauty... is the gift of the gods to men: a very doubtful gift.
The Pervasion of Rouge (1894) and The Works of Max Beerholm (1896).
Max Beerbohm

Anything that is worth doing has been done frequently. Things hitherto undone should be given, I suspect, a wide berth.
1880 (1895) and The Works of Max Beerholm (1896).
Max Beerbohm

As a teacher, as a propagandist, Mr. Shaw is no good at all, even in his own generation. But as a personality, he is immortal.
Enoch Soames (1916) and Seven Men (1919).
Max Beerbohm

But the dullard’s envy of brilliant men is always assuaged by the suspicion that they will come to a bad end.
Zuleika Dobson; or, An Oxford Love Story (1911).
Max Beerbohm

Conceit, Egotism, and Vanity. To say that a man is vain means merely that he is pleased with the effect he produces on other people.
And Even Now (1920).
Max Beerbohm

Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead.
And Even Now (1920).
Max Beerbohm

Death, as he had said, cancelled all engagements.
Zuleika Dobson; or, An Oxford Love Story (1911).
Max Beerbohm

Death cancels all engagements.
Zuleika Dobson; or, An Oxford Love Story (1911).
Max Beerbohm

Good sense about trivialities is better than nonsense about things that matter.
The Yellow Book (April 1894) and The Works of Max Beerholm (February 1896).
Max Beerbohm

Have you noticed ... there is never any third act in a nightmare? They bring you to a climax of terror and then leave you there. They are the work of poor dramatists.
Hilary Maltby and Stephen Braxton (1916) and Seven Men (1919).
Max Beerbohm

History does not repeat itself. The historians repeat one another.
Paraphrase from The Pervasion of Rouge (1894) and The Works of Max Beerholm (1896).
Max Beerbohm

History repeats itself. Historians repeat each other.
The Pervasion of Rouge (1894) and The Works of Max Beerholm (1896).
Max Beerbohm

Humility is a virtue, and it is a virtue innate in guests.
Zuleika Dobson; or, An Oxford Love Story (1911).
Max Beerbohm

I am a Tory Anarchist. I should like every one to go about doing just as he pleased — short of altering any of the things to which I have grown accustomed.
Servants (1918).
Max Beerbohm

I have known no man of genius who had not to pay, in some affliction or defect either physical or spiritual, for what the gods had given him.
William and Mary (1920) and And Even Now (1920).
Max Beerbohm

I was a modest, good-humoured boy. It is Oxford that has made me insufferable.
Enoch Soames (1916) and Seven Men (1919).
Max Beerbohm

Improvisation is the essence of good talk. Heaven defend us from the talker who doles out things prepared for us!
Mainly on the Air (1946).
Max Beerbohm

It is the privilege of nobility to condescend.
Zuleika Dobson; or, An Oxford Love Story (1911).
Max Beerbohm

It seems to be a law of nature that no man, unless he has some obvious physical deformity, ever is loth to sit for his portrait.
The Pervasion of Rouge (1894) and The Works of Max Beerholm (1896).
Max Beerbohm

Most women are not so young as they are painted.
The Pervasion of Rouge (1894) and The Works of Max Beerholm (1896).
Max Beerbohm

No fine work can be done without concentration and self-sacrifice and toil and doubt.
A Clergyman (1918) and And Even Now (1920).
Max Beerbohm

No Roman ever was able to say, I dined last night with the Borgias.
The Yellow Book (April 1894) and The Works of Max Beerholm (February 1896).
Max Beerbohm

Nobody ever died of laughter.
Laughter (1920) and And Even Now (1920).
Max Beerbohm

Of all the emotions, hatred is the most excruciating. Of all the objects of hatred, a woman once loved is the most hateful.
Zuleika Dobson; or, An Oxford Love Story (1911).
Max Beerbohm

One can't complain of Ibsen's popularity. It is his punishment.
A Christmas Garland (1912).
Max Beerbohm

One might well say that mankind is divisible into two great classes: hosts and guests.
Hosts and Guests (1917–1919) and And Even Now (1920).
Max Beerbohm

Only mediocrity can be trusted to be always at its best.
The Golden Drugget (1918) and And Even Now (1920).
Max Beerbohm

People are either born hosts or born guests.
Hosts and Guests (1917–1919) and And Even Now (1920).
Max Beerbohm

People who insist on telling their dreams are among the terrors of the breakfast table.
Quia Imperfectum (1917–1918) and And Even Now (1920).
Max Beerbohm

She was one of those who are born to make chaos cosmic.
Zuleika Dobson; or, An Oxford Love Story (1911).
Max Beerbohm

Some people are born to lift heavy weights, some are born to juggle golden balls.
William and Mary (1920) and And Even Now (1920).
Max Beerbohm

Strange, when you come to think of it, that of all the countless folk who have lived before our time on this planet not one is known in history or in legend as having died of laughter.
Laughter (1920).
Max Beerbohm

The delicate balance between modesty and conceit is popularity.
Notebooks (Posthumously published in 1954).
Max Beerbohm

The devil is an optimist if he thinks he can make people worse than they are.
Zuleika Dobson; or, An Oxford Love Story (1911).
Max Beerbohm

The dullard’s envy of brilliant men is always assuaged by the suspicion that they will come to a bad end.
Zuleika Dobson; or, An Oxford Love Story (1911).
Max Beerbohm

The Non-Conformist Conscience makes cowards of us all.
And Even Now (1920).
Max Beerbohm

The past is a work of art, free of irrelevancies and loose ends.
A Christmas Garland (1912).
Max Beerbohm

The public has always, and in every age, been wrong.
And Even Now (1920).
Max Beerbohm

The true conjurer finds his guerdon in the consciousness of work done perfectly and for its own sake.
Zuleika Dobson; or, An Oxford Love Story (1911).
Max Beerbohm

The truth is always something that is told, not something that is known. If there were no speaking or writing, there would be no truth about anything. There would only be what is.
And Even Now (1920).
Max Beerbohm

There is much to be said for failure. It is much more interesting than success.
Mainly on the Air (1946).
Max Beerbohm

To give an accurate and exhaustive account of that period would need a far less brilliant pen than mine.
Seven Men (1919).
Max Beerbohm

To give and then not feel that one has given is the very best of all ways of giving.
And Even Now (1920).
Max Beerbohm

To mankind in general Macbeth and Lady Macbeth stand out as the supreme type of all that a host and hostess should not be.
Hosts and Guests (1917–1919) and And Even Now (1920).
Max Beerbohm

To say that a man is vain means merely that he is pleased with the effect he produces on other people. A conceited man is satisfied with the effect he produces on himself.
And Even Now (1920).
Max Beerbohm

Vulgarity has its uses. Vulgarity often cuts ice which refinement scrapes at vainly.
Dandies and Dandies (1894) and The Works of Max Beerholm (1896).
Max Beerbohm

You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind-legs. But by standing a flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men.
Zuleika Dobson; or, An Oxford Love Story (1911).
Max Beerbohm

You will find that the woman who is really kind to dogs is always one who has failed to inspire sympathy in men.
Zuleika Dobson; or, An Oxford Love Story (1911).
Max Beerbohm

A great poet is the most precious jewel of a nation.
Diaries and conversation books (1810s–1820s).
Ludwig van Beethoven

A true artist is expected to be all that is noble-minded, and this is not altogether a mistake; on the other hand, however, in what a mean way are critics allowed to pounce upon us.
Letter to Franz Gerhard Wegeler (November 16, 1801).
Ludwig van Beethoven

Applaud, friends, the comedy is over.
Last words (March 26, 1827).
Ludwig van Beethoven

Don't only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets; art deserves that, for it and knowledge can raise man to the Divine.
Letter to Emilie M. (often identified as Emilie von Reichenbach) (July 17, 1812).
Ludwig van Beethoven

I carry my thoughts within me long... before writing them down.
Letter to Louis Schlosser (1823). On his compositional process.
Ludwig van Beethoven

I joyfully hasten to meet death. If it come before I have had opportunity to develop all my artistic faculties, it will come, my hard fate notwithstanding, too soon, and I should probably wish it later - yet even then I shall be happy, for will it not deliver me from a state of endless suffering?
Letter to Franz Gerhard Wegeler (November 16, 1801).
Ludwig van Beethoven

I must confess that I lead a miserable life. For almost two years, I have ceased to attend any social functions, just because I find it impossible to say to people, I am deaf. If I had any other profession, I might be able to cope with my infirmity; but in my profession, it is a terrible handicap.
Heiligenstadt Testament (1802).
Ludwig van Beethoven

I only live in my music, and I have scarcely begun one thing when I start on another. As I am now working, I am often engaged on three or four things at the same time.
Letter to Franz Gerhard Wegeler (November 16, 1801).
Ludwig van Beethoven

I will seize fate by the throat...
Letter to Franz Gerhard Wegeler (November 16, 1801).
Ludwig van Beethoven

I will seize fate by the throat; it shall not bend or crush me completely.
Written as deafness worsened.
Ludwig van Beethoven

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy. Music is the electrical soil in which the spirit lives, thinks and invents.
Letter to Bettina von Arnim (née Brentano) (1810).
Ludwig van Beethoven

Music is indeed the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.
Letter to Bettina von Arnim (née Brentano) (1810).
Ludwig van Beethoven

Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life... a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.
Letter to Bettina von Arnim (née Brentano) (1810).
Ludwig van Beethoven

Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend.
Letter to Bettina von Arnim (née Brentano) (1810).
Ludwig van Beethoven

Never to break one's word is the royal road to Heaven.
Notebook entry (1823). Emphasizing integrity.
Ludwig van Beethoven

O, you men who think or say that I am malevolent, stubborn or misanthropic, how greatly do you wrong me. You do not know the secret cause which makes me seem that way to you, and I would have ended my life - it was only my art that held me back. Ah, it seemed impossible to leave the world until I had brought forth all that I felt was within me.
Heiligenstadt Testament (1802).
Ludwig van Beethoven

Often, I can scarcely hear any one speaking to me; the tones yes, but not the actual words; yet as soon as any one shouts, it is unbearable. What will come of all this, heaven only knows!
Letter to Franz Gerhard Wegeler (November 16, 1801).
Ludwig van Beethoven

Only the pure in heart can make a good soup.
Conversation book (1820). A humorous remark to his friend Karl Holz.
Ludwig van Beethoven

Recommend virtue to your children; it alone, not money, can make them happy. I speak from experience.
Letter to his nephew Karl (1816). From a series of moral admonitions.
Ludwig van Beethoven

The true artist is not proud: he unfortunately sees that art has no limits; he feels darkly how far he is from the goal, and though he may be admired by others, he is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius only appears as a distant, guiding sun.
Heiligenstadt Testament (1802).
Ludwig van Beethoven

The world is a king... true art is selfish and perverse.
Letter to Franz Brentano (February 10, 1811).
Ludwig van Beethoven

There ought to be an artistic depot where the artist need only hand in his artwork in order to receive what he asks for. As things are, one must be half a business man, and how can one understand - good heavens! - that's what I really call troublesome.
Letter to Franz Brentano (March, 1822).
Ludwig van Beethoven

This is the mark of a really admirable man: steadfastness in the face of trouble.
Letter to Archduke Rudolph (1815). On resilience.
Ludwig van Beethoven

Tones sound, and roar and storm about me until I have set them down in notes.
Heiligenstadt Testament (1802).
Ludwig van Beethoven

What you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am by myself.
To Prince Lichnowsky (1806). Asserting self-made genius over aristocratic privilege.
Ludwig van Beethoven

What I have in my heart and soul - must find a way out. That's the reason for music.
Conversation with Louis Schlösser (1822).
Ludwig van Beethoven

What you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am by myself. There are and will be a thousand princes; there is only one Beethoven.
Ludwig van Beethoven

When somewhat at a distance, I cannot hear the high tones of instruments, voices. In speaking, it is not surprising that there are people who have never noticed it, for as a rule I am absent-minded, and they account for it in that way.
Letter to Karl Amenda (July 1, 1801).
Ludwig van Beethoven

A man is already halfway in love with any woman who listens to him.
Brendan Behan

A quotation in a speech, article or book is like a rifle in the hands of an infantryman. It speaks with authority.
Brendan Behan

Ah, bless you, Sister, may all your sons be bishops.
Brendan Behan

All publicity is good, except an obituary notice.
Reflecting his dark humor about fame.
Brendan Behan

An author's first duty is to let down his country.
Brendan Behan

At the innermost core of all loneliness is a deep and powerful yearning for union with one's lost self.
Brendan Behan

Critics are like eunuchs in a harem: they know how it’s done, they’ve seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves.
On artistic criticism.
Brendan Behan

Death always seems to get a man at the wrong time.
Brendan Behan

Drink is the curse of the land. It makes you fight with your neighbour. It makes you shoot at your landlord — and it makes you miss him.
Typical Behan irony on Irish drinking culture.
Brendan Behan

Every man, through fear, mugs his aspirations a dozen times a day.
Brendan Behan

Fame is failure disguised as money.
Brendan Behan

Fuck the Pope.
Provocative line from The Hostage (1958), critiquing institutional hypocrisy.
Brendan Behan

God forgive us—but most of us grew up to be the sort of men our mothers warned us against.
Brendan Behan

He was born an Englishman and remained one for years.
On Winston Churchill, in Brendan Behan's Island (1962).
Brendan Behan

I am a daylight atheist.
Brendan Behan

I am a drinker with writing problems.
Brendan Behan

I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper, and old men and women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer.
Confessions of an Irish Rebel (1965).
Brendan Behan

I have never seen a situation so dismal that a policeman couldn't make it worse.
Brendan Behan

I only drink on two occasions - when I'm thirsty and when I'm not.
Brendan Behan

I only write when I'm drunk.
Self-deprecating remark about his creative process.
Brendan Behan

I respect kindness in human beings first of all, and kindness to animals. I don't respect the law; I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society.
Brendan Behan

I say myself no depressed words just depressed minds.
Brendan Behan

I was court-martialled in my absence, and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.
Brendan Behan

I wish I'd been a mixed infant.
Brendan Behan

If it was raining soup, the Irish would go out with forks.
Brendan Behan

If you accept your limitations you go beyond them.
Brendan Behan

If you greatly desire something, have the guts to stake everything on obtaining it.
Brendan Behan

If you were to be hanged for it, they said, be hanged for a sheep.
Borstal Boy (1958).
Brendan Behan

Inspirations never go in for long engagements; they demand immediate marriage to action.
Brendan Behan

Ireland sober is Ireland stiff.
On national identity and drinking.
Brendan Behan

It is a good deed to forget a poor joke.
Brendan Behan

It's not that the Irish are cynical. It's rather that they have a wonderful lack of respect for everything and everybody.
The Scarperer (1964).
Brendan Behan

Many a man has decided to stay alive not because of the will to live but because of the determination not to give assorted surviving bastards the satisfaction of his death.
Brendan Behan

Most writers write for money. I write for spite.
On his motivations.
Brendan Behan

New York is my Lourdes, where I go for spiritual refreshment... a place where you're least likely to be bitten by a wild goat.
Brendan Behan

No man can discover his own talents.
Brendan Behan

No yesterdays are ever wasted for those who give themselves to today.
Brendan Behan

One drink is too many for me and a thousand not enough.
On his alcoholism.
Brendan Behan

Other people have a nationality. The Irish and the Jews have a psychosis.
Brendan Behan

People who say manual labour is a good thing have never done any.
Brendan Behan

Shakespeare said pretty well everything and what he left out, James Joyce, with a judge from meself, put in.
Brendan Behan

The Bible was a consolation to a fellow alone in the old cell. The lovely thin paper with a bit of matress stuffing in it, if you could get a match, was as good a smoke as I ever tasted.
Brendan Behan

The big difference between sex for money and sex for free is that sex for money usually costs a lot less.
Darkly humorous take on relationships.
Brendan Behan

The English have invented hypocrisy as their only contribution to the arts.
The Hostage.
Brendan Behan

The most important things to do in the world are to get something to eat, something to drink, and somebody to love you.
Reflecting his working-class ethos.
Brendan Behan

The prisoner's first duty is to escape.
Borstal Boy.
Brendan Behan

The prospect of success in achieving our most cherished dream is not without its terrors. Who is more deprived and alone than the man who has achieved his dream?
Brendan Behan

The terrorist is the one with the small bomb.
Brendan Behan

There is no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary.
Variation of his publicity quote.
Brendan Behan

They took away our land, our language, and our religion; but they could never harness our tongues.
Brendan Behan

What an author likes to write most is his signature on the back of a cheque.
Brendan Behan

What the hell difference does it make, left or right? There were good men lost on both sides.
Brendan Behan

Whatever you hold in contempt is your jailer.
Brendan Behan

When I came back to Dublin, I was courtmartialed in my absence and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.
On his IRA experiences.
Brendan Behan

You can’t drink all day if you don’t start in the morning.
Famously misattributed to others; originally Behan's.
Brendan Behan

Ellis Bell - See Emily Brontë

Accusing the people in power of corruption, provided it is done in the right way, always does well in this country.
The Path to Rome (1902).
Hilaire Belloc

All men have an instinct for conflict: at least, all healthy men.
Hilaire Belloc

An institute run with such knavish imbecility that if it were not the work of God it would not last a fortnight.
Hilaire Belloc

And always keep a-hold of Nurse
For fear of finding something worse.
Cautionary Tales for Children (1907).
Hilaire Belloc

Any subject can be made interesting, and therefore any subject can be made boring.
Hilaire Belloc

Be content to remember that those who can make omelettes properly can do nothing else.
Hilaire Belloc

Child! do not throw this book about;
Refrain from the unholy pleasure
Of cutting all the pictures out!
Preserve it as your chiefest treasure.
A Bad Child's Book of Beasts (1896).
Hilaire Belloc

Dear Mary, it has been said
That you lie upon your bed
In a shroud of white,
All austere and bright.
Verses and Sonnets (1896) and Our Lady (1895).
Hilaire Belloc

Every major question in history is a religious question. It has more effect in molding life than nationalism or a common language.
Hilaire Belloc

From quiet homes and first beginning,
Out to the undiscovered ends,
There's nothing worth the wear of winning,
But laughter and the love of friends.
Dedicatory Ode (1909–1910) and Sonnets and Verse (1923).
Hilaire Belloc

His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.
New Cautionary Tales: Verses (1930) and On a Publisher (1930).
Hilaire Belloc

I am a sundial, and I make a botch
Of what is done far better by a watch.
New Cautionary Tales: Verses (1930) and The Sundial (1930).
Hilaire Belloc

I am writing a book about the Crusades so dull that I can scarcely write it.
Hilaire Belloc

I have wandered all my life, and I have also traveled; the difference between the two being this, that we wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment.
Hilaire Belloc

I'm tired of Love: I'm still more tired of Rhyme.
But Money gives me pleasure all the time.
New Cautionary Tales: Verses (1930) and Fatigue (1930).
Hilaire Belloc

Is there no Latin word for Tea? Upon my soul, if I had known that
I would have let the vulgar stuff alone.
Heroic Poem in Praise of Wine (1915) and Sonnets and Verse (1923).
Hilaire Belloc

It is sometimes necessary to lie damnably in the interests of the nation.
Hilaire Belloc

It is the best of all trades, to make songs, and the second best to sing them.
New Cautionary Tales: Verses (1930) and On Song (1930).
Hilaire Belloc

Jim, who ran away from his Nurse, and was eaten by a Lion.
Cautionary Tales for Children (1907).
Hilaire Belloc

Just as there is nothing between the admirable omelet and the intolerable, so with autobiography.
Hilaire Belloc

Lord Finchley tried to mend the Electric Light
Himself. It struck him dead: And serve him right!
It is the business of the wealthy man
To give employment to the artisan.
Cautionary Tales for Children (1907) and Lord Finchley (1907).
Hilaire Belloc

Loss and possession, death and life are one, There falls no shadow where there shines no sun.
Hilaire Belloc

Matilda told such Dreadful Lies,
It made one Gasp and Stretch one's Eyes.
Cautionary Tales for Children (1907) and Matilda: Who Told Lies, and Was Burned to Death (1907).
Hilaire Belloc

Money gives me pleasure all the time.
Hilaire Belloc

Of all fatiguing, futile, empty trades, the worst, I suppose, is writing about writing.
Hilaire Belloc

Oh, my friends, be warned by me, That breakfast, dinner, lunch and tea, Are all human frame requires.
Hilaire Belloc

Physicians of the Utmost Fame
Were called at once; but when they came
They answered, as they took their Fees,
There is no cure for this disease.
Hilaire Belloc

Statistics are the triumph of the quantitative method, and the quantitative method is the victory of sterility and death.
Hilaire Belloc

The accursed power which stands on Privilege
(And goes with Women, and Champagne, and Bridge)
Broke - and Democracy resumed her reign:
(Which goes with Bridge, and Women and Champagne).
New Cautionary Tales: Verses (1930) and On a General Election (1930).
Hilaire Belloc

The devil, having nothing else to do,
Went off to tempt my Lady Poltagrue.
My Lady, tempted by a private whim,
To his extreme annoyance, tempted him.
More Beasts for Worse Children (1897) and The devil's Diplomacy (1897).
Hilaire Belloc

The grace of God is courtesy.
Hilaire Belloc

The Microbe is so very small
You cannot make him out at all,
But many sanguine people hope
To see him through a microscope.
The Bad Child's Book of Beasts (1896) and The Microbe (1896).
Hilaire Belloc

The moment a man talks to his fellows he begins to lie.
Hilaire Belloc

The people in between
Looked underdone and harassed,
And out of place and mean,
And horribly embarrassed.
The Modern Traveller (1898).
Hilaire Belloc

The pilgrim is humble and devout, and human, and charitable, and ready to smile and admire; therefore, he should comprehend the whole of his way, the people in it, and the hills and the clouds, and the habits of the various cities.
The Path to Rome (1902).
Hilaire Belloc

There is no secret. We sit here and talk,
And one thing I may tell you is we walk.
We walk.
The Path to Rome (1902).
Hilaire Belloc

There is not anything that can so suddenly flood the mind with shame as the conviction of ignorance, yet we are all ignorant of nearly everything there is to be known.
Hilaire Belloc

When friendship disappears then there is a space left open to that awful loneliness of the outside world which is like the cold space between the planets. It is an air in which men perish utterly.
Hilaire Belloc

When I am dead, I hope it may be said: His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.
Sonnets and Verse (1938) and On His Books (1938).
Hilaire Belloc

A fool can throw a stone in a pond that 100 wise men can not get out.
Saul Bellow

A good novel is worth more than the best scientific study.
Saul Bellow

A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.
To Jerusalem and Back (1976).
Saul Bellow

A man is only as good as what he loves.
Seize the Day (1956).
Saul Bellow

A novel is balanced between a few true impressions and the multitude of false ones that make up most of what we call life.
Saul Bellow

All a writer has to do to get a woman is to say he's a writer. It's an aphrodisiac.
Saul Bellow

Any artist should be grateful for a naive grace which puts him beyond the need to reason elaborately.
Saul Bellow

California is like an artificial limb the rest of the country doesn't really need. You can quote me on that.
Saul Bellow

Conquered people tend to be witty.
Saul Bellow

Everybody knows there is no fineness or accuracy of suppression; if you hold down one thing, you hold down the adjoining.
Saul Bellow

Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.
Mr. Sammler's Planet (1970).
Saul Bellow

Goodness is achieved not in a vacuum, but in the company of other men, attended by love.
Saul Bellow

Happiness can only be found if you can free yourself of all other distractions.
Saul Bellow

Hate was a disease. The enemy was disease. One despised the sickness but not the sick.
Herzog (1964).
Saul Bellow

I am alive, so I have hopes for myself. I want to break out of this limited circle of self.
The Victim (1947).
Saul Bellow

I think that New York is not the cultural centre of America, but the business and administrative centre of American culture.
Saul Bellow

I'm glad I haven't lived in vain.
Saul Bellow

I've never turned over a fig leaf yet that didn't have a price tag on the other side.
Saul Bellow

If God made the world, then the soul is His breath, and we are His thoughts.
More Die of Heartbreak (1987).
Saul Bellow

If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things.
Saul Bellow

In an age of madness, to expect to be untouched by madness is a form of madness.
Humboldt's Gift (1975).
Saul Bellow

In expressing love we belong among the undeveloped countries.
Saul Bellow

In Los Angeles all the loose objects in the country were collected, as if America had been tilted and everything that wasn't tightly screwed down had slid into Southern California.
Saul Bellow

It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
The Dean's December (1982).
Saul Bellow

Life is a terminal illness, and it is sexually transmitted.
The Bellarosa Connection (1989).
Saul Bellow

Man is the only creature who knows he must die, and who laughs anyway.
Henderson the Rain King (1959).
Saul Bellow

Never have children, only grandchildren.
Humboldt's Gift (1975).
Saul Bellow

No realistic, sane person goes around Chicago without protection.
Saul Bellow

People can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.
Herzog (1964).
Saul Bellow

Psychoanalysis pretends to investigate the Unconscious. The Unconscious by definition is what you are not conscious of. But the Analysts already know what's in it—they should, because they put it all in beforehand.
Saul Bellow

Retirement is an illusion. Not a reward but a mantrap. The bankrupt underside of success. A shortcut to death. Golf courses are too much like cemetries.
Saul Bellow

She was what we used to call a suicide blonde—dyed by her own hand.
Saul Bellow

Suffering is the only reliable teacher.
Dangling Man (1944).
Saul Bellow

The body is a device to calculate the astronomy of the spirit.
Humboldt's Gift (1975).
Saul Bellow

The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination. But the combination is locked up in the safe.
Herzog (1964).
Saul Bellow

There are evils that have the ability to survive identification and go on for ever... money, for instance, or war.
Saul Bellow

There is an immense, painful longing for a broader, more flexible, fuller, more coherent, more comprehensive account of what we human beings are, who we are and what this life is for.
Saul Bellow

There is no fineness or accuracy of suppression. If you hold down one thing, you hold down the adjoining.
The Adventures of Augie March (1953).
Saul Bellow

We are always looking for the book it is necessary to read next.
Saul Bellow

We are funny creatures. We don’t see the stars as they are, so why do we love them? They are not small gold objects, but endless fire.
Henderson the Rain King (1959).
Saul Bellow

What is art but a way of seeing?
Saul Bellow

When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice.
Mr. Sammler's Planet (1970).
Saul Bellow

Whoever wants to reach a distant goal must take small steps.
Saul Bellow

With a novelist, like a surgeon, you have to get a feeling that you've fallen into good hands - someone from whom you can accept the anesthetic with confidence.
Saul Bellow

You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.
Paris Review (1966).
Saul Bellow

You think history is the history of loving hearts? You fool! Look at these millions of dead. Can you pity them? Feelfor them? You can nothing! There were too many.
Herzog (1964).
Saul Bellow

A great many people have come up to me and asked how I manage to get so much work done and still keep looking so dissipated.
Robert Benchley

A real hangover is nothing to try out family remedies on. The only cure for a real hangover is death.
Robert Benchley

After an author has been dead for some time, it becomes increasingly difficult for his publishers to get a new book out of him each year.
Robert Benchley

Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.
Robert Benchley

An ardent supporter of the hometown team should go to a game prepared to take offense, no matter what happens.
Robert Benchley

Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment.
Robert Benchley

Anyone who tries to keep track of what is happening in China is going to end up by wearing all the skin of his left ear from twirling around on it.
Robert Benchley

At fifteen one is first beginning to realize that everything isn't money and power in this world, and is casting about for joys that do not turn to dross in one's hands.
Robert Benchley

Babies don't need a vacation, but I still see them at the beach... it pisses me off! I'll go over to a little baby and say What are you doing here? You haven't worked a day in your life!
Robert Benchley

Bees are not as busy as we think they are. They just can't buzz any slower.
Robert Benchley

Dachshunds are ideal dogs for small children, as they are already stretched and pulled to such a length that the child cannot do much harm one way or the other.
Robert Benchley

Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people.
Robert Benchley

Did you ever get the feeling that you wanted to go, but still had the feeling that you wanted to stay?
Robert Benchley

Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing.
Robert Benchley

Drinking makes such fools of people, and people are such fools to begin with that it's compounding a felony.
Robert Benchley

Even nowadays a man can't step up and kill a woman without feeling just a bit unchivalrous.
Robert Benchley

Evening is the time when the tired brain relaxes in its bath of alcohol and allows the most fantastic and ridiculous of schemes to float peacefully to the surface.
Robert Benchley

For a nation which has an almost evil reputation for bustle, bustle, bustle, and rush, rush, rush, we spend an enormous amount of time standing around in line in front of windows, just waiting.
Robert Benchley

For a while, I thought I was going around the bend. Then I decided that going around the bend was the best way to go; it beats going straight.
Robert Benchley

Getting out of bed in the morning is an act of false confidence.
Robert Benchley

Great literature must spring from an upheaval in the author's soul. If that upheaval is not present then it must come from the works of any other author which happens to be handy and easily adapted.
Robert Benchley

Have you ever noticed when your train of thought jumps the track, leaving your mind completely blank, how it always seems to be a freight train?
Robert Benchley

Homosexuality is perfectly natural. After all, how can it be unnatural? It exists in nature.
Robert Benchley

How can anyone be a Communist and still have fun?
Robert Benchley

Humour is the only solvent of terror and tension.
Robert Benchley

I can't quite understand why a man should be expected to die for his country but not to drink for it.
Robert Benchley

I do most of my work sitting down; that's where I shine.
Robert Benchley

I don't believe in the after-life, although I am bringing a change of underwear.
Robert Benchley

I don't feel old. I don't feel anything until noon. Then it's time for my nap.
Robert Benchley

I have a simple philosophy: Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. Scratch where it itches.
Robert Benchley

I have been told by hospital authorities that more copies of my works are left behind by departing patients than those of any other author.
Robert Benchley

I have been trying for some time to develop a lifestyle that doesn't require my presence.
Robert Benchley

I have tried to know absolutely nothing about a great many things, and I have succeeded fairly well.
Robert Benchley

I know a man who gave up smoking, drinking, sex, and rich food. He was healthy right up to the day he killed himself.
Robert Benchley

I know I'm drinking myself to a slow death, but then I'm in no hurry.
Robert Benchley

I might repeat to myself, slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound; if I can remember any of the damn things.
Robert Benchley

I must get out of these wet clothes and into a dry martini.
Robert Benchley

I need no dictionary of quotations to remind me that the eyes are the windows of the soul.
Robert Benchley

I never sleep through a performance. I always make sure that I am awake for the intermission.
Robert Benchley

I never work out. If God had wanted me to bend over, he would have put diamonds on the floor.
Robert Benchley

I say Darling, do you think you could marry me? She didn't even look up. She said, Why, do you need the money?
Robert Benchley

I think that I shall never see
A billboard lovely as a tree.
Indeed, unless the billboards fall
I'll never see a tree at all.
Robert Benchley

I want to be alone. But I don't want to be left alone.
Robert Benchley

If a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared legally dead.
Robert Benchley

If Mr. Einstein doesn't like the natural laws of the universe, let him go back to where he came from.
Robert Benchley

If there is anything I can't stand it's people who are not serious about meals. It is so shallow.
Robert Benchley

In a house where there are small children the bathroom soon takes on the appearance of the Old Curiosity Shop.
Robert Benchley

In America there are two classes of travel – first class, and with children.
Robert Benchley

In New York, everyone must have two occupations: one to make a living, and one to make life worth living.
Robert Benchley

It is one of the great mysteries of nature that a woman, however illogical, is probably unable to do anything illogically.
Robert Benchley

It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.
Robert Benchley

Laugh and the world laughs with you. Cry, and you have to blow your nose.
Robert Benchley

Lead me not into temptation; I can find the way myself.
Robert Benchley

Let's face it, the world is run by C+ students.
Robert Benchley

Man has two great spiritual needs. One is for forgiveness. The other is for glory.
Robert Benchley

Many of us spend half our time wishing for things we could have if we didn't spend half our time wishing.
Robert Benchley

Most of the arguments to which I am party fall somewhat short of being impressive, owing to the fact that neither I nor my opponent knows what we are talking about.
Robert Benchley

My only solution for the problem of habitual accidents... is to stay in bed all day. Even then, there is always the chance that you will fall out.
Robert Benchley

Nothing makes a man feel older than to hear a band coming up the street and not to have the impulse to rush downstairs and out on to the sidewalk.
Robert Benchley

Opera is where a guy gets stabbed in the back, and instead of dying, he sings.
Robert Benchley

Other men wear white suits in summer and it doesn't seem to bother them. But my white suit seems to be a little whiter than theirs. I think also that it may have something written on the back of it, although I can't find it when I take the suit off.
Robert Benchley

Perhaps the best proof that there is no devil is that I have worked for him for years and he has never once even recognized my service.
Robert Benchley

Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.
Robert Benchley

Pure truth cannot be assimilated by the crowd; it must be communicated in a simpler form.
Robert Benchley

See that man over there? He's about to have a heart attack. He's reading a book called How to Relax.
Robert Benchley

Someday, we're going to look back on all this and... plow into a parked car.
Robert Benchley

Tell us your phobias and we will tell you what you are afraid of.
Robert Benchley

The best way to get a thing done is to begin.
Robert Benchley

The biggest obstacle to professional writing is the necessity for changing a typewriter ribbon.
Robert Benchley

The difference between a Demarcation Dispute and an International War is about the same as the difference between a burglar and a bank-robber.
The Treasurer's Report
Robert Benchley

The freelance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.
Robert Benchley

The only cure for a real hangover is death.
Robert Benchley

The only way I can distinguish proper from improper behavior is to consider what I would do under the circumstances.
Robert Benchley

The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him.
Robert Benchley

There are two kinds of people in the world, those who believe there are two kinds of people in the world and those who don't.
Robert Benchley

There is a note in the front of the volume saying that no public reading may be given without first getting the author's permission. It ought to be made much more difficult to do than that.
Robert Benchley

There may be said to be two classes of people in the world; those who constantly divide the people of the world into two classes, and those who do not.
Similar sentiment, different phrasing.
Robert Benchley

There seems to be no lengths to which humorless people will not go to analyze humor. It seems to worry them.
Robert Benchley

They say the first baby can come at any time. All the others take nine months.
Robert Benchley

This is the big city, and I am here to watch.
Robert Benchley

To me, a good doctor is one who amuses me while he's pouring the poison down.
Robert Benchley

We all know that a man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
Robert Benchley

We are constantly being surprised that people did things well before we were born.
Robert Benchley

We call ourselves a free nation, and yet we let ourselves be told what cabs we can and can't take by a man at a hotel door, simply because he has a drum major's uniform on.
Robert Benchley

What makes it so hard to read for some of us is that the writer didn't want to write it in the first place.
Robert Benchley

When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him: Whose?
Robert Benchley

Why does a slight tax increase cost you two hundred dollars and a substantial tax cut save you thirty cents?
Robert Benchley

Why don't you get out of that wet coat and into a dry martini?
Robert Benchley

Work is the greatest thing in the world, so we should always save some of it for tomorrow.
Robert Benchley

You can always tell luck from ability by its duration.
Robert Benchley

You might think that after thousands of years of coming up too soon and getting frozen, the crocus family would have had a little sense knocked into it.
Robert Benchley

A chronicler who recites events without distinguishing between major and minor ones acts in accordance with the following truth: nothing that has ever happened should be regarded as lost for history.
On the Concept of History (Thesis III) (1940).
Walter Benjamin

All disgust is originally disgust at touching.
Walter Benjamin

All human knowledge takes the form of interpretation.
Walter Benjamin

Ambiguity is the manifest imaging of dialectic, the law of dialectics at a standstill.
One-Way Street (1928).
Walter Benjamin

Art in the age of mechanical reproduction is stripped of its aura.
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936).
Walter Benjamin

Behind every fascism, there is a failed revolution.
Attributed (often paraphrased from Theses on the Philosophy of History).
Walter Benjamin

Books and harlots have their quarrels in public.
Walter Benjamin

Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience. A rustling in the leaves drives him away.
Walter Benjamin

Capitalism is a religion without dogma.
Capitalism as Religion (1921).
Walter Benjamin

Counsel woven into the fabric of real life is wisdom.
Walter Benjamin

Death is the sanction of everything the story-teller can tell. He has borrowed his authority from death.
Walter Benjamin

Even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he wins.
On the Concept of History (Thesis VI) (1940).
Walter Benjamin

Every image of the past that is not recognized by the present as one of its own concerns threatens to disappear irretrievably.
On the Concept of History (Thesis V).
Walter Benjamin

Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector's passion borders on the chaos of memories.
Walter Benjamin

Genuine polemics approach a book as lovingly as a cannibal spices a baby.
Walter Benjamin

Gifts must affect the receiver to the point of shock.
Walter Benjamin

Glass is, in general, the enemy of secrets. It is also the enemy of possession.
Experience and Poverty
Walter Benjamin

He who cannot take sides should keep silent.
Journal entry (1931).
Walter Benjamin

He who observes etiquette but objects to lying is like someone who dresses fashionably but wears no vest.
Walter Benjamin

History is the subject of a structure whose site is not homogeneous, empty time, but time filled by the presence of the now.
On the Concept of History (Thesis XIV).
Walter Benjamin

In every era the attempt must be made anew to wrest tradition away from a conformism that is about to overpower it.
On the Concept of History (Thesis VI).
Walter Benjamin

It is more arduous to honor the memory of the nameless than that of the renowned.
On the Concept of History (Thesis II).
Walter Benjamin

It is only for the sake of those without hope that hope is given to us.
Walter Benjamin

It is precisely the purpose of the public opinion generated by the press to make the public incapable of judging, to insinuate into it the attitude of someone irresponsible, uninformed.
Walter Benjamin

Language is the archive of shared human experience.
On Language as Such and on the Language of Man (1916).
Walter Benjamin

Living substance conquers the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation.
Walter Benjamin

Memory is not an instrument for exploring the past but its theatre. It is the medium of past experience, as the ground is the medium in which dead cities lie interred.
Berlin Chronicle (1932).
Walter Benjamin

No poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder, no symphony for the listener.
Walter Benjamin

Nothing is poorer than a truth expressed as it was thought.
One-Way Street (1928).
Walter Benjamin

Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method. Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like.
Walter Benjamin

Only for the sake of the hopeless ones have we been given hope.
Goethe's Elective Affinities (1924).
Walter Benjamin

Opinions are a private matter. The public has an interest only in judgments.
Walter Benjamin

Opinions are to the vast apparatus of social existence what oil is to machines: one does not go up to a turbine and pour machine oil over it; one applies a little to hidden spindles and joints that one has to know.
Walter Benjamin

Quotations in my work are like wayside robbers who leap out armed and relieve the stroller of his conviction.
One-Way Street (1928).
Walter Benjamin

Revolution is the emergency brake on the train of history.
Attributed (paraphrase of Thesis XV).
Walter Benjamin

Storytelling is always the art of repeating stories.
The Storyteller (1936).
Walter Benjamin

The adjustment of reality to the masses and of the masses to reality is a process of unlimited scope, as much for thinking as for perception.
Walter Benjamin

The art of storytelling is reaching its end because the epic side of truth, wisdom, is dying out.
The Storyteller (1936).
Walter Benjamin

The art of the critic in a nutshell: to coin slogans without betraying ideas. The slogans of an inadequate criticism peddle ideas to fashion.
Walter Benjamin

The camera introduces us to unconscious optics as does psychoanalysis to unconscious impulses.
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.
Walter Benjamin

The concept of progress must be grounded in the idea of catastrophe.
Central Park (1939).
Walter Benjamin

The construction of life is at present in the power of facts far more than convictions.
Walter Benjamin

The destructive character lives from the feeling, not that life is worth living, but that suicide is not worth the trouble.
Walter Benjamin

The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion.
Walter Benjamin

The idea that happiness could have a share in beauty would be too much of a good thing.
Walter Benjamin

The only way of knowing a person is to love them without hope.
Letter to Gershom Scholem (1930).
Walter Benjamin

The true picture of the past flits by. The past can be seized only as an image which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again.
Walter Benjamin

There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.
On the Concept of History (Thesis VII).
Walter Benjamin

To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it the way it really was.
On the Concept of History (Thesis VI).
Walter Benjamin

To be happy is to be able to become aware of oneself without fright.
Walter Benjamin

Work on good prose has three steps: a musical stage when it is composed, an architectonic one when it is built, and a textile one when it is woven.
Letter to Gerhard Scholem (1934).
Walter Benjamin

A faith is something you die for; a doctrine is something you kill for. There is all the difference in the world.
Reflecting on the dangers of ideological dogma.
Tony Benn

Age does take it out of you, and I haven't the energy I had before. Sometimes I have breakfast and sit in this chair, and I wake up and it is lunchtime. In the past, the idea of sleeping through a morning would have horrified me, but you have to accept the limitations that old age imposes on you.
Tony Benn

All war represents a failure of diplomacy.
Emphasizing his commitment to peaceful resolution.
Tony Benn

An educated, healthy and confident nation is harder to govern.
Highlighting the link between empowerment and challenging authority.
Tony Benn

Are you frightened of the future? All I say to people is, if you are, get out of the way of those who aren't.
Encouraging courage and progress.
Tony Benn

At the end of my life, I was told to vote for it for pensioners; I' m not in favour of means tests for pensioners or anybody.
Tony Benn

Britain is the only colony in the British Empire and it is up to us now to liberate ourselves.
Tony Benn

Britain today is suffering from galloping obsolescence.
Tony Benn

Broadcasting is really too important to be left to the broadcasters.
Tony Benn

But the real danger comes when you get a Prime Minister who doesn't bother with Parliament, a President who doesn't bother with Congress, dictators who don't bother with the people.
On the erosion of democratic accountability.
Tony Benn

Choice depends on the freedom to choose and if you are shackled with debt you don’t have the freedom to choose.
Tony Benn

Democracy is not about a few people sitting at the top knowing better than anyone else. It's about everybody having a bit of the picture and putting it together.
Defining participatory democracy.
Tony Benn

Don't accept the language of the powerful. Always ask: What do you mean by that word?
Advice on critical thinking and challenging authority.
Tony Benn

Every generation has the right to frame its own laws and choose its own government. That right is denied when constitutions are written that bind future generations.
Arguing against fixed, unchangeable constitutions.
Tony Benn

Having served for nearly half a century in the House of Commons, I now want more time to devote to politics and more freedom to do so.
Tony Benn

Hope is the fuel of progress and fear is the prison in which you put yourself.
Contrasting motivating and paralyzing forces.
Tony Benn

I am not a reluctant peer but a persistent commoner.
Tony Benn

I am not afraid of the future. I was not afraid of the past. And I think my record shows that I never have been.
Asserting his consistent principles.

I am on the right wing of the middle of the road and with a strong radical bias.
Tony Benn

I believe the more difficult the circumstances, the more people will be inclined to trust those in charge at the moment.
Tony Benn

I can't go to bed if I haven't done my diary. I always record them just as I've always recorded all my interviews and speeches.
Tony Benn

I describe myself as a common-wealth socialist. Common meaning we share together, wealth meaning what we produce, and socialist meaning we use it for social purposes.
Defining his brand of socialism.
Tony Benn

I did not enter the Labour Party 47 years ago to have our manifesto written by Dr Mori, Dr Gallup and Mr Harris.
Tony Benn

I made every mistake in the book, but making mistakes is how you learn.
Tony Benn

I see myself as an old man and an unqualified teacher to the nation. I think being a teacher is probably the most important thing you can be in politics.
Tony Benn

I think if you're going to be committed to doing anything, you really have to care about it, and I suppose that is a romantic idea.
Tony Benn

I'm not frightened about death. I don't know why, but I just feel that at a certain moment your switch is switched off, and that's it. And you can't do anything about it.
Tony Benn

I've been a member of the Labour Party sixty five years, and I remain in it, but I think it's all about campaigning for justice and peace, and if you do that, you get a lot of support.
Tony Benn

I've got four lovely children, ten lovely grandchildren, and I left parliament to devote more time to politics, and I think that what is really going on in Britain is a growing sense of alienation. People don't feel anyone listens to them.
Tony Benn

I've had a very full life, and I've enjoyed it very much. I've learned a great deal and feel indebted to all the people who have worked so hard.
Tony Benn

If I had rescued a child from drowning, the national press would no doubt have headlined the story Benn grabs child.
Tony Benn

If one meets a powerful person... ask them five questions: What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you? If you cannot get rid of the people who govern you, you do not live in a democratic system.
His famous Five Essential Questions of Democracy.
Tony Benn

If we can find the money to kill people, we can find the money to help people.
Tony Benn

If you file your waste basket for 50 years, you have a public library.
Tony Benn

In the course of my life I have developed five little democratic questions. If one meets a powerful person... [see quote above].
Introducing his core democratic test.
Tony Benn

It's the same each time with progress. First they ignore you, then they say you're mad, then dangerous, then there's a pause and then you can't find anyone who disagrees with you.
Describing the process of shifting public opinion - often attributed, though similar sentiments exist elsewhere.
Tony Benn

Leadership is about two things: about telling the truth and about taking responsibility.
Defining authentic leadership.
Tony Benn

Making mistakes is how you learn.
Tony Benn

Making mistakes is part of life. The only things I would feel ashamed of would be if I had said things I hadn't believed in order to get on. Some politicians do do that.
Tony Benn

Most things in life are moments of pleasure and a lifetime of embarrassment; photography is a moment of embarrassment and a lifetime of pleasure.
Tony Benn

My day rotates around my family. I am very lucky.
Tony Benn

My filing system is messy but orderly.
Tony Benn

My view is that the House of Lords must be abolished. And I warn the hereditaries: if they don't go voluntarily, they'll be pushed.
On his long-standing campaign for Lords reform.
Tony Benn

Never be afraid to reject the conventional wisdom. Never be afraid to think for yourself. And never accept the pronouncements of those who describe themselves as the great and the good.
Encouraging independent thought.
Tony Benn

Normally, people give up parliament because they want to do more business or spend more time with family. My wife said why don't you say you're giving up to devote more time to politics?. And it is what I have done.
Tony Benn

Put your head above the parapet. You'll get shot. But it's an honourable position to take.
Advocating courage in taking principled stands.
Tony Benn

Someone comes every morning at nine o'clock to see if I am still alive. I do get lonely, yes, but I have the children who come and see me. I see all my children every week, and there are the grandchildren, too.
Tony Benn

The exhaustion of old age is something people who are younger don't fully appreciate.
Tony Benn

The House of Lords is the British Outer Mongolia for retired politicians.
His famous quip on the unelected upper chamber.
Tony Benn

The Marxist analysis has got nothing to do with what happened in Stalin's Russia: it's like blaming Jesus Christ for the Inquisition in Spain.
Tony Benn

The uncut diaries are 16 million words. It's very tiring to do your diary every night before you go to bed.
Tony Benn

The way the Government runs the economy is like a man who, when told his bath is overflowing, turns off the taps, breaks the bath with a hammer, and then claims a victory over the water.
Criticizing simplistic or destructive economic policies.
Tony Benn

There is no final victory, as there is no final defeat. There is just the same battle to be fought, over and over again. So toughen up, bloody toughen up.
On the perpetual struggle for progress.
Tony Benn

There is no moral difference between a Stealth bomber and a suicide bomber. They both kill innocent people for political reasons.
Tony Benn

They've [New Labour] accepted the role of managing capitalism rather than changing society.
Criticizing the direction of the Labour Party under Blair.
Tony Benn

We are not just here to manage capitalism but to change society and to define its finer values.
Stating the purpose of democratic socialism.
Tony Benn

What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?
The core Five Essential Questions of Democracy.
Tony Benn

When faced with a difficult problem, ask yourself one question: What would a democrat do? The answer will usually be clear.
Proposing a simple democratic test for decisions.
Tony Benn

You have to try to build support around causes. It is uniting to campaign on a single issue, and it is never just a single issue; it's always more than that.
Tony Benn

You see, democracy is not one single act. It's a process. It's like lighting a fire. You strike a match and it flares up, then it dies down. You have to strike another match and another. You have to keep the flame of democracy alive.
Metaphor for the constant effort needed to sustain democracy.
Tony Benn

A book is a device to ignite the imagination.
Common theme, often paraphrased.
Alan Bennett

A bookshelf is as particular to its owner as are his or her clothes; a personality is stamped on a library just as a shoe is shaped by the foot.
London Review of Books, also cited in Keeping On Keeping On.
Alan Bennett

A library is like a cocktail bar. You don't have to drink all the cocktails. You don't have to like all the cocktails. But you should be glad they're all there.
Often paraphrased.
Alan Bennett

A little learning is a dangerous thing, but a lot of ignorance is just as bad.
Reflects a common Bennett theme on education.
Alan Bennett

A philistine is someone who doesn't care as much as you do.
Reflects a recurring Bennett observation.
Alan Bennett

All life is a rehearsal for the performance that never happens.
Reflects a Bennett theme on disappointment/aspiration.
Alan Bennett

Books are not about passing time. They’re about other lives. Other worlds. Far from wanting time to pass, one just wishes one had more of it. If one wanted to pass the time one could go to New Zealand.
Alan Bennett

Britain is a family with the wrong members in control.
An Englishman Abroad
Alan Bennett

Cancer, like any other illness, is a bore.
Alan Bennett

Children always assume the sexual lives of their parents come to a grinding halt at their conception.
Getting On
Alan Bennett

Closing a public library is child abuse, really, because it hinders child development.
Alan Bennett

Definition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have.
Beyond the Fringe (1960).
Alan Bennett

Do you know what woke comes from? It comes from not having had enough sleep.
Diary, London Review of Books (2018).
Alan Bennett

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
The History Boys - Mrs. Lintott
Alan Bennett

Feeling I'd scarcely arrived at a style, I now find I'm near the end of it. I'm not quite sure what Late Style means except that it's some sort of licence, a permit for ageing practitioners to kick their heels up.
Alan Bennett

Full-blooded romantic love I wouldn't be able to write about.
Alan Bennett

Happiness is like a butterfly: the more you chase it, the more it will elude you. But if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.
Attributed, though likely a paraphrase of his sentiments.
Alan Bennett

He is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death.
Habeas Corpus
Alan Bennett

History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men. What is history? History is women following behind with the bucket.
The History Boys - Mrs. Lintott
Alan Bennett

I always feel over-appreciated but underestimated.
Alan Bennett

I always like to break out and address the audience. In The History Boys, for instance, without any ado, the boys will suddenly turn and talk to the audience and then go back into the action. I find it more adventurous doing it in prose than on the stage, but I like being able to make the reader suddenly sit up.
Alan Bennett

I can't complain that I've had a public all through my writing life, but people don't quite know what I've written. People don't read you too closely. Perhaps, after I've died, they'll look at my stuff, and read it through, and find there's more in it. That may be wrong, but that's what I comfort myself with.
Alan Bennett

I didn't even have a clear idea of why I wanted to go to Oxford - apart from the fact I had fallen in love with the architecture. It certainly wasn't out of some great sense of academic or intellectual achievement. In many ways, my education only began after I'd left university.
Alan Bennett

I do not long for the world as it was when I was a child. I do not long for the person I was in that world. I do not want to be the person I am now in that world then. None of the forms nostalgia can take fits. I found childhood boring. I was glad it was over.
Alan Bennett

I don't believe in private education.
Alan Bennett

I don't talk very well. With writing, you've time to get it right. Also I've found the more I talk the less I write, and if I didn't write no one would want me to talk anyway.
Alan Bennett

I don't want to see libraries close; I want to find local solutions that will make them sustainable.
Alan Bennett

I have no nickname, as there has never been any need for one.
Alan Bennett

I have never understood this liking for war. It panders to instincts already catered for within the scope of any respectable domestic establishment.
Forty Years On
Alan Bennett

I must say I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on, I go to the library and read a book.
Attributed, reflects his well-known views.
Alan Bennett

I write plays about things that I can't resolve in my mind. I try to root things out.
Alan Bennett

I'd somehow always thought of the classics of literature as something apart from me, something to do with academic life and not something you enjoyed.
Alan Bennett

I'm all in favour of free expression provided it's kept rigidly under control.
Alan Bennett

I'm less genial than people think, but I'm too timid to seem nasty.
Alan Bennett

I'm more socialist certainly than New Labour - I'm very old Labour, really.
Alan Bennett

I've been very lucky in everything, really - in my career and in finding someone to share my life with, and in not dying.
Alan Bennett

I've never seen the point of the sea, except where it meets the land. The shore has a point. The sea has none.
Alan Bennett

If the Prime Minister says something, it must be true. If the Archbishop says something, it may be true. But if I say something, it's just... common sense.
Reflecting his Yorkshire persona.
Alan Bennett

If you think squash is a competitive activity, try flower arranging.
Alan Bennett

It's like algebra, life is. Why's it got to be so fucking puzzling?
The History Boys - Posner
Alan Bennett

Life is generally something that happens elsewhere.
Alan Bennett

Life is like a box of sardines and we are all looking for the key.
Alan Bennett

Life, you know, is rather like opening a tin of sardines. We're all of us looking for the key.
Beyond the Fringe sketch, often attributed to Bennett.
Alan Bennett

Literature is not about having something to say; it's about having something to ask.
Reflects his views on art and education.
Alan Bennett

My father used to say that if you ever see a man opening a car door for his wife, it's either a new car or a new wife.
Alan Bennett

My films are about embarrassment.
Alan Bennett

One of the things about getting older is that you become more like yourself.
Alan Bennett

Pass the parcel. That's sometimes all you can do. Take it, feel it, and pass it on. Not for me, not for you, but for someone, somewhere, one day. Pass it on, boys. That's the game I want you to learn. Pass it on.
The History Boys - Hector
Alan Bennett

Read. Read. Read. Just read.
Essays/Interviews on education.
Alan Bennett

She's like the old horse that's been put out to grass: she's taken to eating it.
Bed Among the Lentils
Alan Bennett

Sometimes, particularly in summers in New York, I have tried to write in shorts or with no shirt on and found myself unable to do so, the reason being, I take it, that writing, even of the most impersonal sort, is for me a divestment, a striptease, even, so that if I start off undressed, I have nowhere to go.
Alan Bennett

Sometimes there is no next time, no time-outs, no second chances. Sometimes it's now or never.
Alan Bennett

Standards are always out of date. That is what makes them standards.
Alan Bennett

Standing a chance: Life is rather like a tin of sardines — we're all of us looking for the key.
Often paraphrased, but original known from Bennett.
Alan Bennett

Teachers need to feel they are trusted. They must be allowed some leeway to use their imagination; otherwise, teaching loses all sense of wonder and excitement.
Alan Bennett

The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.
The History Boys - Hector
Alan Bennett

The bits I most remember about my school days are those that took place outside the classroom, as we were taken on countless theatre visits and trips to places of interest.
Alan Bennett

The habit of art isn't easy to acquire. But it is harder to lose.
Alan Bennett

The majority of people perform well in a crisis and when the spotlight is on them; it's on the Sunday afternoons of this life, when nobody is looking, that the spirit falters.
Alan Bennett

The problem with being poor is that it takes up all your time.
Getting On
Alan Bennett

The sooner all the animals are extinct, the sooner we shall find their money.
Forty Years On
Alan Bennett

There is no period so remote as the recent past.
Forty Years On
Alan Bennett

Those who have known the famous are publicly debriefed of their memories, knowing as their own dusk falls that they will only be remembered for remembering someone else.
Alan Bennett

We don't like to admit it, but the idea of an afterlife makes this one seem rather pointless.
Alan Bennett

We started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn't obey the rules.
Alan Bennett

We were all miners in our family. My father was a miner. My mother is a miner. These are miner's hands, but we were all artists, I suppose, really. But I was the first one who had the urge to express myself on paper rather than at the coalface.
Alan Bennett

We were put to Dickens as children but it never quite took. That unremitting humanity soon had me cheesed off.
Alan Bennett

Were we closer to the ground as children, or is the grass emptier now?
Alan Bennett

What happens after death is more or less the same as what happens before birth. It is nothing to be afraid of.
Alan Bennett

What we need is more people who specialise in the impossible.
Alan Bennett

When people say It's the principle of the thing, it's always the money.
Alan Bennett

You can't learn too soon that the most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.
Forty Years On
Alan Bennett

You never stop learning. If you have a teacher, you never stop being a pupil.
Alan Bennett

You only have to survive in England and all is forgiven you ... if you can eat a boiled egg at ninety in England they think you deserve a Nobel Prize.
Alan Bennett

Your problem is you confuse having a mind with having an opinion.
Alan Bennett

Your whole life is on the other side of the glass. And there is nobody watching.
Alan Bennett

A cause may be inconvenient, but it's magnificent. It's like champagne or high heels, and one must be prepared to suffer for it.
The Title (1918).
Arnold Bennett

A first-rate organizer is never in a hurry. He is never late. He always keeps up his sleeve a margin for the unexpected.
Arnold Bennett

Always behave as if nothing had happened, no matter what has happened.
Arnold Bennett

Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts.
How to Live on 24 Hours a Day (1910).
Arnold Bennett

As a rule people don't collect books; they let books collect themselves.
Arnold Bennett

Being a husband is a whole-time job. That is why so many husbands fail. They cannot give their entire attention to it.
The Matador of the Five Towns
Arnold Bennett

Beware of undertaking too much at the start. Be content with quite a little. Allow for accidents. Allow for human nature, especially your own.
How to Live on 24 Hours a Day (1910).
Arnold Bennett

Being a husband is a whole-time job. That is why so many husbands fail. They cannot give their entire attention to it.
The Title (1918).
Arnold Bennett

Does there, I wonder, exist a being who has read all, or approximately all, that the person of average culture is supposed to have read, and that not to have read is a social sin? If such a being does exist, surely he is an old, a very old man.
The Journal of Arnold Bennett
Arnold Bennett

Every scene, even the commonest, is wonderful, if only one can detach oneself, casting off all memory of use and custom and behold it, as it were, for the first time.
The Journal of Arnold Bennett
Arnold Bennett

Good taste is better than bad taste, but bad taste is better than no taste.
Attribution questionable.
Arnold Bennett

Happiness includes chiefly the idea of satisfaction after full honest effort. No one can possibly be satisfied and no one can be happy who feels that in some paramount affairs he failed to take up the challenge of life.
Arnold Bennett

I have been an author for over twenty years and I have never taken a holiday... in my view a man who takes a holiday abandons his life.
The Journal of Arnold Bennett
Arnold Bennett

If egotism means a terrific interest in one's self, egotism is absolutely essential to efficient living.
Arnold Bennett

It is easier to go down a hill than up, but the view is from the top.
Arnold Bennett

It is well, when judging a friend, to remember that he is judging you with the same godlike and superior impartiality.
Arnold Bennett

Journalism – a profession whose business it is to explain to others what one does not understand oneself.
Reflects a common sentiment in his writings about the press.
Arnold Bennett

Journalists say a thing that they know isn't true, in the hope that if they keep on saying it long enough it will be true.
Arnold Bennett

Life is a factory... the raw material is time.
How to Live on 24 Hours a Day - Paraphrased essence.
Arnold Bennett

Mother is far too clever to understand anything she does not like.
Arnold Bennett

Much ingenuity with a little money is vastly more profitable and amusing than much money without ingenuity.
Arnold Bennett

My desire is to make people laugh or cry, or both, and to keep them out of bed as late as possible.
Preface to The Old Wives' Tale.
Arnold Bennett

Of all the inhabitants of the inferno, none but Lucifer knows that hell is hell, and the secret function of purgatory is to make of heaven an effective reality.
Arnold Bennett

One cannot reflect in dispersed moments. One must have time for proper reflection.
How to Live on 24 Hours a Day
Arnold Bennett

People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.
Often quoted, though the exact origin within his work is elusive; widely attributed and characteristic of his bookishness.
Arnold Bennett

Pessimism, when you get used to it, is just as agreeable as optimism.
Arnold Bennett

The chief beauty about time is that you cannot waste it in advance. The next year, the next day, the next hour are lying ready for you, as perfect, as unspoiled... You can turn over a new leaf every hour if you choose.
How to Live on 24 Hours a Day (1910).
Arnold Bennett

The great advantage of being in a rut is that when one is in a rut, one knows exactly where one is.
Arnold Bennett

The moment you're born you're done for.
Arnold Bennett

The price of justice is eternal publicity.
The Title (1918).
Arnold Bennett

The real tragedy is the tragedy of the man who never in his life braces himself for his one supreme effort, who never stretches to his full capacity, never stands up to his full stature.
How to Live on 24 Hours a Day
Arnold Bennett

The rough broad difference between the American and the European business man is that the latter is anxious to leave his work, while the former is anxious to get to it.
Arnold Bennett

There can be no knowledge without emotion. We may be aware of a truth, yet until we have felt its force, it is not ours. To the cognition of the brain must be added the experience of the soul.
The Human Machine (1908).
Arnold Bennett

There is no magic in small sums of money. But there is magic in large sums.
How to Live on 24 Hours a Day
Arnold Bennett

They have the right to put you to death, but not the right to judge you. That is reserved to a higher tribunal.
The Title (1918).
Arnold Bennett

Those who always wait for the right time never do anything.
Mental Efficiency
Arnold Bennett

To be great is to be misunderstood? Not to be misunderstood in a world like this is to be commonplace.
The Journal of Arnold Bennett
Arnold Bennett

To the artist is sometimes granted a sudden, transient insight which serves in this matter for experience. A flash, and where previously the brain held a dead fact, the soul grasps a living truth! At moments we are all artists.
Arnold Bennett

We need a sense of the value of time - that is, of the best way to divide one's time into one's various activities.
Arnold Bennett

We shall never have more time. We have, and always had, all the time there is. No object is served in waiting until next week or even until tomorrow. Keep going... Concentrate on something useful.
Arnold Bennett

Well, my deliberate opinion is - it's a jolly strange world.
Arnold Bennett

You can only do one thing at a time, and do that well.
Reflects a core principle in How to Live on 24 Hours a Day and his other self-help writings.
Arnold Bennett

You will never find time for anything. If you want time you must make it.
How to Live on 24 Hours a Day - Paraphrased essence.
Arnold Bennett

Your own mind is a sacred enclosure into which nothing harmful can enter except by your permission.
The Human Machine (1908).
Arnold Bennett

A business short on capital can borrow money, but a business short on leadership has little chance of survival.
Often paraphrased.
Warren Bennis

A great director or leader knows his people, creates a great team, and then makes a great movie that can influence millions more than the readers of his column.
Warren Bennis

As my blog editor knows all too well, I wasn't all that keen to enter the blogosphere world.
Warren Bennis

Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself. It's precisely that simple, and it's also that difficult.
On Becoming a Leader
Warren Bennis

Copying other organizations' activities sounds like industrial espionage to some people, but the truth is that benchmarking is perfectly legal and ethical.
Warren Bennis

Create a compelling vision, one that takes people to a new place, and then translate that vision into a reality.
Warren Bennis

Excellence is a better teacher than mediocrity. The lessons of the ordinary are everywhere. Truly profound and original insights are to be found only in studying the exemplary.
Warren Bennis

Failing organizations are usually over-managed and under-led.
Leaders: The Strategies for Taking Charge
Warren Bennis

Find the appropriate balance of competing claims by various groups of stakeholders. All claims deserve consideration but some claims are more important than others.
Warren Bennis

Good leaders make people feel that they're at the very heart of things, not at the periphery.
Organizing Genius: The Secrets of Creative Collaboration
Warren Bennis

Great things are accomplished by talented people who believe they will accomplish them.
Warren Bennis

How can we educators claim credit for understanding, let alone teaching, the global mind without a single course on the impact of religion on every day life?
Warren Bennis

I wanted the influence. In the end I wasn't very good at being a president. I looked out of the window and thought that the man cutting the lawn actually seemed to have more control over what he was doing.
Warren Bennis

I've become more and more aware of the promise and struggle to teach the global mind nowadays because I use every chance I get to ask faculty and administrators of management education programs why we don't offer at least one course - not even required, just an elective - on the world's religions.
Warren Bennis

Leaders are people who do the right thing; managers are people who do things right.
Often quoted distinction, clarifying his view on leadership vs. management.
Warren Bennis

Leaders keep their eyes on the horizon, not just on the bottom line.
Warren Bennis

Leaders know the importance of having someone in their lives who will unfailingly and fearlessly tell them the truth.
Warren Bennis

Leaders must encourage their organizations to dance to forms of music yet to be heard.
Warren Bennis

Leaders should always expect the very best of those around them. They know that people can change and grow.
Warren Bennis

Leadership has become a heavy industry. Concern and interest about leadership development is no longer an American phenomenon. It is truly global. Though I will probably be in less demand, I wanted to move on.
Warren Bennis

Leadership is about character: the character to do the right thing, even when it's difficult; the character to stand up for what you believe in; the character to take responsibility for your actions.
A recurring theme.
Warren Bennis

Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.
One of his most succinct and famous definitions.
Warren Bennis

Learning in a face-to-face human community, as humans have evolved to do over hundreds of thousands of years, may always be the ideal - especially in an endeavor that is as relationship-driven as business.
Warren Bennis

Learning options will indeed mushroom for business students and leaders, but it will take prudence and shrewdness to find and utilize the best option.
Warren Bennis

Managers are people who do things right and leaders are people who do the right things.
Warren Bennis

Managers do things right; leaders do the right thing.
Slightly different phrasing of the above core distinction.
Warren Bennis

Managers embrace process, seek stability and control, and instinctively try to resolve problems quickly - sometimes before they fully understand a problem's significance. Leaders, in contrast, tolerate chaos and lack of structure and are willing to delay closure in order to understand the issues more fully.
More detailed explanation of the distinction.
Warren Bennis

Most regular, two-year MBA programs provide both experience and the capacity to link together the essential elements of management such as finance, marketing, organizational behavior, and operations.
Warren Bennis

No leader sets out to be a leader. People set out to live their lives, expressing themselves fully. When that expression is of value, they become leaders.
Reflecting the organic nature of leadership emergence.
Warren Bennis

One of the best teaching experiences Ed Schein and I had when we were teaching at MIT in the 1960s was inventing a course on leadership through film.
Warren Bennis

People who cannot invent and reinvent themselves must be content with borrowed postures, secondhand ideas, fitting in instead of standing out.
Warren Bennis

Specialized management courses are useful but should come well after the complexity of management and business are understood.
Warren Bennis

Success in management requires learning as fast as the world is changing.
Emphasizing continuous learning.
Warren Bennis

Taking charge of your own learning is a part of taking charge of your life, which is the sine qua non in becoming an integrated person.
Warren Bennis

The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.
Warren Bennis

The leader ... is rarely the brightest person in the group. Rather, they have extraordinary taste, which makes them more curators than creators. They are appreciators of talent and nurturers of talent and they have the ability to recognize valuable ideas.
Warren Bennis

The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it.
Another facet of the core distinction.
Warren Bennis

The manager asks how and when; the leader asks what and why.
Further elaboration on the leadership/management distinction.
Warren Bennis

The manager has a short-range view; the leader has a long-range perspective.
Warren Bennis

The manager has his or her eye always on the bottom line; the leader's eye is on the horizon.
Focusing on vision vs. immediate results.
Warren Bennis

The manager imitates; the leader originates.
Highlighting innovation as a leadership trait.
Warren Bennis

The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born — that there is a genetic factor to leadership. This myth asserts that people simply either have certain charismatic qualities or not. That's nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born.
Fundamental belief challenging the born leader idea.
Warren Bennis

The only way many companies can attract and keep the best people is by offering them more than merely money or prestige - they offer them the chance to make history.
Warren Bennis

The original and brilliant idea of an MBA was the opportunity for students to study the theory and application of business and management principles.
Warren Bennis

The primary goal of management education was, as originally conceived, to impart knowledge that could be applied to a variety of real-world business situations.
Warren Bennis

The process of becoming a leader is much the same as the process of becoming an integrated human being.
On Becoming a Leader
Warren Bennis

There are two ways of being creative. One can sing and dance. Or one can create an environment in which singers and dancers flourish.
Warren Bennis

There is a profound difference between information and meaning.
Warren Bennis

Too many companies believe people are interchangeable. Truly gifted people never are. They have unique talents. Such people cannot be forced into roles they are not suited for, not should they be.
Warren Bennis

Trust is the emotional glue that binds followers and leaders together.
Emphasizing the foundational role of trust.
Warren Bennis

Trust is the lubrication that makes it possible for organizations to work.
Warren Bennis

Vision animates, inspirits, and transforms purpose into action.
Highlighting the power of vision.
Warren Bennis

You need people who can walk their companies into the future rather than back them into the future.
Warren Bennis

39 and holding.
Jack Benny

39? Well, I'm not a kid anymore.
Often said resignedly when reminded.
Jack Benny

Age is strictly a case of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.
Jack Benny

Come on, Maxwell!
Urging the car to start.
Jack Benny

Cut That Out! Now Cut That Out!
Directed primarily at bandleader Phil Harris or others mocking him, often while trying to maintain composure.
Jack Benny

Gags die, humor doesn't.
Jack Benny

Give me golf clubs, fresh air and a beautiful partner, and you can keep the clubs and the fresh air.
Jack Benny

Hors D'oeuvre: A ham sandwich cut into forty pieces.
Jack Benny

I don't deserve this award, but I have arthritis and I don't deserve that either.
Jack Benny

I don't want to tell you how much insurance I carry with the Prudential, but all I can say is: when I go, they go too.
Jack Benny

I once tried to have a dramatic radio show, but the line fell flat after I said, Don't shoot! and a woman in the audience shouted, Why not?
Jack Benny

I was 39 years old when that happened... and I've been 39 ever since!
Jack Benny

I'm 39 years old.
His most famous running gag, claiming this age for decades.
Jack Benny

I'm thinking of giving up show business for acting.
Jack Benny

If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.
Jack Benny

Is this the car, boss? It looks like a kiddie car.
Rochester, but Benny's ownership defined the joke.
Jack Benny

It's not so much knowing when to speak, when to pause.
Jack Benny

Jell-O Again?
A frequent, slightly exasperated comment to Mary Livingstone or Rochester about the ubiquitous dessert served at home, highlighting his desire for luxury contrasting with perceived frugality.
Jack Benny

Kiddie Car.
Variation on Maxwell: Sometimes used interchangeably or descriptively for his notoriously unreliable car.
Jack Benny

Ladies and gentlemen, will now play...
Mel Blanc as the announcer, often collapsing before finishing the piece title due to boredom/exhaustion.
Jack Benny

Maxwell.
The Car.
Jack Benny

Modesty is my best quality.
Jack Benny

My wife Mary and I have been married for forty-seven years and not once have we had an argument serious enough to consider divorce; murder, yes, but divorce, never.
Jack Benny

Play.
Talking to his violin.
Jack Benny

Rochester...
The way Benny called for his valet/chauffeur, Eddie Rochester Anderson, often with a tone of familiarity, exasperation, or need.
Jack Benny

There will be a ten-dollar charge for whining.
Jack Benny

There’s only one thing I can say about the guy: he's one of the nicest people I’ve ever stabbed in the back.
Jack Benny

Well...
His signature, drawn-out, highly indignant, and often speechless reaction to an insult, a slight on his age, his cheapness, his violin playing, or his Maxwell. This single word, delivered with perfect timing and inflection, is perhaps his most identifiable vocal trademark.
Jack Benny

Your money or your life!
Famously followed by a long pause and then his punchline.
I'm thinking it over!
His iconic, prolonged, exasperated response to the robber's demand. The ultimate expression of his cheapness.
Jack Benny

A man must be merciful to his stammering virtues.
The Altar Fire
A. C. Benson

A well begun is half ended.
A. C. Benson

All the best stories are but one story in reality - the story of escape. It is the only thing which interests us all and at all times, how to escape.
A. C. Benson

Ambition often puts Men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same position with creeping.
A. C. Benson

As I make my slow pilgrimage through the world, a certain sense of beautiful mystery seems to gather and grow.
A. C. Benson

But the worst of my faults is that I am horribly lazy; and yet I am always busy, because I am so slow, and have to do everything twice over.
Diary
A. C. Benson

Do not be so impatient to set the world right.
From a College Window
A. C. Benson

Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.
Frequently attributed, though exact origin debated; aligns with themes in The Silent Isle and diaries.
A. C. Benson

Happiness is a wine of the rarest vintage, and seems insipid to a vulgar taste.
The Thread of Gold
A. C. Benson

He that would write heroic poems should make his whole life a heroic poem.
The Upton Letters
A. C. Benson

How can one learn to know oneself? Never by contemplation, only through action.
The Altar Fire
A. C. Benson

I am sure it is a mistake always to know enough to go in when it rains.
A. C. Benson

I am sure it is one's duty as a teacher to try to show boys that no opinions, no tastes, no emotions are worth much unless they are one's own. I suffered acutely as a boy from the lack of being shown this.
A. C. Benson

I do not at all like knowing what people say of me behind my back. It makes me far too conceited.
A. C. Benson

I have the greatest dislike to being in the wrong; it is a perpetual feast to me to be found fault with when I am in the right.
The Upton Letters
A. C. Benson

I read the newspaper avidly. It is my one form of continuous fiction.
A. C. Benson

It is the greatest mistake in the world to imagine that one is ever done with anything. The most triumphant moment is only the beginning of a new effort.
The Thread of Gold
A. C. Benson

Knowing what you can not do is more important than knowing what you can do. In fact, that's good taste.
A. C. Benson

Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well.
Frequently attributed to Benson; strongly echoes his sentiment, though phrasing variations exist. Represents core themes.
A. C. Benson

Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.
This quote is often misattributed to Søren Kierkegaard. Some sources include it under Benson.
A. C. Benson

Man, an animal that makes bargains.
A. C. Benson

Man, an ingenious assembly of portable plumbing.
A. C. Benson

One's mind has a way of making itself up in the background, and it suddenly becomes clear what one means to do.
The House of Quiet
A. C. Benson

People seldom refuse help, if one offers it in the right way.
A. C. Benson

The delicate balance of modesty is to be seen and not heard... but missing it by much, modesty disappears and one is left with the tediousness of the meek.
At Large
A. C. Benson

The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something, and tell what it saw in a plain way.
Ruskin: A Study in Personality
A. C. Benson

The things that one most desires are not the things that one most needs.
The Thread of Gold
A. C. Benson

The worst sorrows in life are not in its losses and misfortunes, but its fears.
A. C. Benson

There is no merit where there is no trial; and till experience stamps the mark of strength, cowards may pass for heroes, and faith for falsehood.
The Thread of Gold
A. C. Benson

To be happy is not the purpose of our being, but to deserve happiness.
The Altar Fire
A. C. Benson

Very often a change of self is needed more than a change of scene.
A. C. Benson

Very often the test of one's allegiance to a cause or an ideal is the amount one is prepared to lose for it.
The Leaves of the Tree
A. C. Benson

We are not sent into this world to do anything into which we cannot put our heart.
The Schoolmaster
A. C. Benson

What is the secret of serenity? What gives that deep, untroubled look to those who have it? It is not that they have never known sorrow, but that they have learned how to cure its aftermath by a wise and careful treatment of themselves.
The Thread of Gold
A. C. Benson

When you get to my age life seems little more than one long march to and from the lavatory.
A. C. Benson

You can never get all the truth from any one human being, because each sees it from a different angle.
The Thread of Gold
A. C. Benson

All punishment is mischief; all punishment in itself is evil.
Jeremy Bentham

An action then may be said to be conformable to the principle of utility... when the tendency it has to augment the happiness of the community is greater than any it has to diminish it.
An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789).
Jeremy Bentham

As to the evil which results from a censorship, it is impossible to measure it, for it is impossible to tell where it ends.
Jeremy Bentham

But after all, what is a law? ... The law is not made by judge alone, but by judge and company.
Comment on the Commentaries (1776) Full Title: A Fragment on Government; being an Examination of What is delivered on the Subject of Government in General, in the Introduction to Sir William Blackstone's Commentaries
Jeremy Bentham

Create all the happiness you are able to create; remove all the misery you are able to remove.
Jeremy Bentham

Every law is an infraction of liberty.
Principles of the Civil Code (1840).
Jeremy Bentham

He who thinks and thinks for himself, will always have a claim to thanks; it is no matter whether it be right or wrong, so as it be explicit. If it is right, it will serve as a guide to direct; if wrong, as a beacon to warn.
Jeremy Bentham

It is the greatest good to the greatest number of people which is the measure of right and wrong.
Common paraphrase/summary of his principle.
Jeremy Bentham

It is vain to talk of the interest of the community, without understanding what is the interest of the individual.
Jeremy Bentham

Justice is in itself a part of utility, and is indeed the chief part.
Rationale of Judicial Evidence, Specially Applied to English Practice (1827).
Jeremy Bentham

Lawyers are the only persons in whom ignorance of the law is not punished.
Jeremy Bentham

Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense — nonsense upon stilts.
Anarchical Fallacies (1843).
Jeremy Bentham

Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do.
Jeremy Bentham

No power of government ought to be employed in the endeavor to establish any system or article of belief on the subject of religion.
Jeremy Bentham

Pain and pleasure are the sovereign masters governing man's conduct.
Paraphrase of the opening of An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789).
Jeremy Bentham

Prejudice apart, the game of push-pin is of equal value with the arts and sciences of music and poetry.
The Rationale of Reward (1825).
Jeremy Bentham

Property is nothing but a basis of expectation.
Principles of the Civil Code (1840).
Jeremy Bentham

Secrecy, being an instrument of conspiracy, ought never to be the system of a regular government.
Jeremy Bentham

Stretching his hand up to reach the stars, too often man forgets the flowers at his feet.
Jeremy Bentham

The age we live in is a busy age; in which knowledge is rapidly advancing towards perfection.
Jeremy Bentham

The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny.
An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation - Note XVII (1789).
Jeremy Bentham

The greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation.
Jeremy Bentham

The principle of asceticism never was, nor ever can be, consistently pursued by any living creature. Let but one tenth part of the inhabitants of the earth pursue it consistently, and in a day's time they will have turned it into a Hell.
Jeremy Bentham

The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but rather, Can they suffer?
An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation - Note XVII (1789). Referring to animals and their moral consideration.
Jeremy Bentham

The said truth is that it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.
Jeremy Bentham

Tyranny and anarchy are never far apart.
Jeremy Bentham

The power of the lawyer is in the uncertainty of the law.
Jeremy Bentham

The utility of all these arts and sciences, ... I say, the value which they possess, is exactly in proportion to the pleasure they yield.
The Rationale of Reward (1825).
Jeremy Bentham

To what shall the character of utility be ascribed, if not to that which is a source of pleasure?
An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789).
Jeremy Bentham

Utility is the foundation of justice.
Principles of the Civil Code (1840).
Jeremy Bentham

Utility when accurately considered is the source and test of law and justice.
Common paraphrase of his core principle.
Jeremy Bentham

War is mischief upon the largest scale.
Principles of International Law (1843).
Jeremy Bentham

Accounting issues did not cause Enron's stock price to fall - its failed business model did.
Joseph Berardino

Andersen made errors in judgment in the Enron audit, particularly in our interpretation of the accounting treatment applied to the special purpose entities.
Testimony before the House Committee on Financial Services, December 12, 2001.
Joseph Berardino

I ask that you keep in mind that the relevant auditing and accounting issues are extraordinarily complex and part of a much bigger picture.
Joseph Berardino

I don't think we've done anything criminal... We've got nothing to hide.
Various news reports summarizing his stance during the investigation, e.g., The Washington Post, January 24, 2002.
Joseph Berardino

I sleep like a baby. I wake up every two hours and cry.
Joseph Berardino

I lost my job. I lost my firm. I’ve got less money today than I had as the newly elected CEO … I lost my partner capital. I lost my retirement. I don’t have any stock options. I may never work again.
Joseph Berardino

I've got nothing to hide.
Direct quote widely reported during his Congressional testimony on December 12, 2001, and subsequent media appearances. This is his most famous quote.
Joseph Berardino

It is my understanding that Enron's management and board of directors were aware of the transactions, approved them and were provided with regular reports on them.
Statement issued by Berardino, widely reported on January 14, 2002, shifting focus to Enron management.
Joseph Berardino

Over the last week I have watched our people [Arthur Andersen employees] have rallies, basically crying for their dignity and I just wanted to help. I just felt the best signal I could give to our people was to sacrifice the only thing I have left to give: my job.
Joseph Berardino

The shredding of documents is a routine part of our business.
Testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, January 24, 2002, explaining document retention policies before the Enron-specific shredding occurred.
Joseph Berardino

We feel very confident we can get through this.
Joseph Berardino

What happened at Enron resulted from a failure of people, not a failure of accounting principles.
Testimony before the House Committee on Financial Services, December 12, 2001, defending the accounting profession's standards.
Joseph Berardino

World-class accounting doesn't work if world-class professionals are not allowed to do their jobs.
Testimony before the House Committee on Financial Services, December 12, 2001, arguing that Enron management restricted Andersen auditors.
Joseph Berardino

A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous.
Reflecting her romantic and practical nature.
Ingrid Bergman

A kiss is a secret told to the mouth instead of the ear; kisses are the messengers of love and tenderness.
Ingrid Bergman

Be yourself. The world worships the original.
Advice she often gave, emphasizing authenticity.
Ingrid Bergman

Cancer victims who don't accept their fate, who don't learn to live with it, will only destroy what little time they have left.
Ingrid Bergman

Happiness is good health and a bad memory.
One of her most famous and oft-repeated witticisms.
Ingrid Bergman

Here's looking at you, kid.
While spoken by her in Casablanca, this is scripted dialogue written by Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, and Howard Koch. She did not originate it, but it's inseparable from her performance. Often misattributed to her personally.
Ingrid Bergman

How awful it is to love something Death can touch.
Expressing deep emotion, often cited regarding love or loss.
Ingrid Bergman

I am an actress as long as I live; I will never stop acting.
Emphasizing her lifelong dedication to her craft.
Ingrid Bergman

I came from another country where I already was somebody. I didn't have to go through the stage of being a nobody.
On arriving in Hollywood with established European success.
Ingrid Bergman

I can do everything with ease on the stage, whereas in real life I feel too big and clumsy. So I didn't choose acting. It chose me.
Ingrid Bergman

I don't regret a thing I've done. I only regret the things I didn't do.
Ingrid Bergman

I don't regret anything I've ever done. As long as I enjoyed it at the time.
Reflecting her philosophy of living without regret, famously stated during the Rossellini scandal period.
Ingrid Bergman

I don't think anyone has the right to intrude in your life, but they do. I would like people to separate the actress and the woman.
Ingrid Bergman

I have grown up alone. I've taken care of myself. I worked, earned money and was independent at 18.
Ingrid Bergman

I have had my share of adventures, and I hope I will have some more.
Ingrid Bergman

I have no regrets. I wouldn't have lived my life the way I did if I was going to worry about what people were going to say.
A defining statement about her personal choices and independence.
Ingrid Bergman

I made so many films which were more important, but the only one people ever want to talk about is that one with Bogart.
Ingrid Bergman

I never thought I was particularly beautiful. What is a beautiful face? An empty present.
Downplaying conventional beauty standards.
Ingrid Bergman

I remember one day sitting at the pool and suddenly the tears were streaming down my cheeks. Why was I so unhappy? I had success. I had security. But it wasn't enough. I was exploding inside.
Ingrid Bergman

I was the shyest human ever invented, but I had a lion inside me that wouldn't shut up.
Describing the paradox of her immense talent overcoming personal shyness.
Ingrid Bergman

If you took acting away from me, I'd stop breathing.
Underlining the fundamental importance of acting to her existence.
Ingrid Bergman

It is not whether you really cry. It's whether the audience thinks you are crying.
On the technique and perception of acting.
Ingrid Bergman

It's terrible to become an institution.
Expressing a fear of being pigeonholed or losing vitality.
Ingrid Bergman

Keep it simple. Less is more.
Advice on acting and likely life.
Ingrid Bergman

My life didn't please me, so I created my life.
A powerful statement about taking control and shaping her own destiny.
Ingrid Bergman

Never again! I can see no reason for marriage - ever at all. I've had it. Three times is enough.
Ingrid Bergman

No form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does, straight to our emotions, deep into the twilight room of the soul.
On the unique power of cinema.
Ingrid Bergman

People saw me in Joan of Arc and declared me a saint. I'm not. I'm just a working woman.
Reacting to the public's saintly image of her after the role.
Ingrid Bergman

Success is getting what you want; happiness is wanting what you get.
A philosophical take on contentment.
Ingrid Bergman

The best kind of friend is the one you could sit on a porch with, never saying a word, and walk away feeling like that was the best conversation you've had.
On the value of quiet companionship.
Ingrid Bergman

The only thing I regret is that I will not be able to see the world anymore. That's the only regret. Everything else, I did what I wanted.
Stated near the end of her life, summing up her adventurous spirit and lack of regret.
Ingrid Bergman

There are advantages to being a star though - you can always get a table in a full restaurant.
Ingrid Bergman

Time is shortening. But every day that I challenge this cancer and survive is a victory for me.
Ingrid Bergman

To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up.
A witty observation on the effort required for authenticity.
Ingrid Bergman

Until 45 I can play a woman in love. After 55 I can play grandmothers. But between those ten years, it is difficult for an actress.
Ingrid Bergman

We walked into the garden; it was dark and very cold. We sat down on a stone bench. He took my hand and held it. And that was the moment I fell in love with him. It had nothing to do with sex. It was a feeling of absolute peace and contentment. When I was with him, I was home.
Describing the moment she fell in love with Roberto Rossellini, from her autobiography.
Ingrid Bergman

You cannot imagine what it is like to be told every day of your life that you are beautiful. It drives you crazy.
On the burden of constant external focus on her appearance.
Ingrid Bergman

You must train your intuition—you must trust the small voice inside you which tells you exactly what to say, what to decide.
Advice on trusting one's inner self.
Ingrid Bergman

Jorge Mario Bergoglio - See Francis I

A patriotic song is an emotion and you must not embarrass an audience with it, or they will hate your guts.
On writing God Bless America, reported in various biographies.
Irving Berlin

After you get what you want, you don't want it.
Irving Berlin

America has meant freedom to so many who came here and helped to make it what it is. It's the freedom to be what you want to be.
Reflecting on his own immigrant experience.
Irving Berlin

Annie doesn't get the sun. She is the sun.
Remark about his daughter's disposition, often paraphrased in family accounts.
Irving Berlin

Anything you can do, I can do better, I can do anything better than you.
Irving Berlin

Everybody ought to have a lower East Side in their life.
Irving Berlin

I got lost but look what I found.
Irving Berlin

I have a publisher who doesn't know music and can't write lyrics, but he knows what he likes. And what he likes is what I write.
On his long relationship with his publisher, Max Winslow.
Irving Berlin

I never believed that song was written by me. It was written by some fellow a lot smarter than I am.
To Bing Crosby about White Christmas, reported by Crosby.
Irving Berlin

I owe all my success to my first wife. God bless her. I wish she were here to enjoy it with me.
Frequent public sentiment about Dorothy Goetz, who died young.
Irving Berlin

I think popular music in this country is one of those things that is most representative of the real soul of the people.
On the importance of popular song.
Irving Berlin

I want to go on living until I die.
A simple, oft-repeated statement about his zest for life.
Irving Berlin

If a song has something to say, if it has emotion and truth, it will last.
On songwriting longevity.
Irving Berlin

Life is 10 percent what you make it and 90 percent how you take it.
A personal philosophy he expressed.
Irving Berlin

Listen kid, take my advice, never hate a song that has sold half a million copies.
Irving Berlin

My ambition is to reach the heart of the average American.
Stated goal as a songwriter.
Irving Berlin

Never hate a song that's sold a half million copies.
This is sometimes quoted with slight variation, as above.
Irving Berlin

Our attitudes control our lives. Attitudes are a secret power working twenty-four hours a day, for good or bad. It is of paramount importance that we know how to harness and control this great force.
Irving Berlin

Songs make history and history makes songs.
On the reciprocal relationship between music and culture.
Irving Berlin

Talent is only the starting point.
Irving Berlin

The best thing that ever happened to me was getting drafted into the army.
Reflecting on his WWI service and writing Oh! How I Hate To Get Up In The Morning.
Irving Berlin

The song is the thing.
Fundamental belief in the primacy of the song itself.
Irving Berlin

The toughest thing about success is that you've got to keep on being a success.
Irving Berlin

There's No Business Like Show Business.
. While the title of his song, he often used the phrase itself as a definitive statement about his world, effectively making it a quotation of him.
Irving Berlin

The song is ended, but the melody lingers on.
Irving Berlin

The toughest thing about success is that you've got to keep on being a success.
Irving Berlin

There is an element of truth in every idea that lasts long enough to be called corny.
Irving Berlin

There's no business like show business.
Irving Berlin

There's no people like show people.
Irving Berlin

This is the Army, Mr. Jones!
The iconic title and recurring lyric from his WWII musical revue, frequently quoted as his statement about the show and the army experience.
Irving Berlin

To write a great popular song is the hardest thing in the world.
On the challenge of the craft he mastered.
Irving Berlin

Where else but in America could a little immigrant boy like me have such an opportunity?
Expressing gratitude for his adopted country.
Irving Berlin

White Christmas.
Like There's No Business... and This is the Army..., the sheer cultural weight of this song title makes its utterance a direct reference to Berlin's most famous work, often quoted as his defining achievement.
Irving Berlin

You can have anything you wanted if you wanted it badly enough.
Irving Berlin

You cannot write a song that is technically perfect. You have to write it from the heart.
On the emotional core of songwriting.
Irving Berlin

You're not sick you're just in love.
Irving Berlin

You're worried about the wrong song. You should be worried about the next song.
Reportedly said to a colleague fretting over a current hit, emphasizing constant creation.
Irving Berlin

You've got to have a feeling for the people. You've got to know what they want.
On connecting with an audience.
Irving Berlin

A.I.G. was even larger than Lehman, with a substantial presence in derivatives and debt markets, as well as in insurance markets.
Ben Bernanke

A collapse in U.S. stock prices certainly would cause a lot of white knuckles on Wall Street.
Ben Bernanke

A gold standard doesn't imply stability in the prices of the goods and services that people buy every day, it implies a stability in the price of gold itself.
Ben Bernanke

A little humility never hurts.
Ben Bernanke

A strong economy requires effective regulation of financial firms.
Emphasizing the need for regulatory oversight, post-crisis.
Ben Bernanke

Achieving price stability is not only important in itself, it is also central to attaining the Federal Reserve's other mandate objectives of maximum sustainable employment and moderate long-term interest rates.
Ben Bernanke

Actually, I'm a Republican.
Ben Bernanke

After a long period in which the desired direction for inflation was always downward, the industrialized world's central banks must today try to avoid major changes in the inflation rate in either direction.
Ben Bernanke

After the 1929 crash, the Federal Reserve mistakenly focused its policies on preserving the gold value of the dollar rather than on stabilizing the domestic economy.
Ben Bernanke

Aggregate statistics can sometimes mask important information.
Ben Bernanke

All the Federal Reserve can do is make loans against collateral.
Ben Bernanke

Among other objectives, liquidity guidelines must take into account the risks that inadequate liquidity planning by major financial firms pose for the broader financial system, and they must ensure that these firms do not become excessively reliant on liquidity support from the central bank.
Ben Bernanke

As an educator myself, I understand the profound effect that good teachers and a quality education have on the lives of our young people.
Ben Bernanke

As we try to make the financial system safer, we must inevitably confront the problem of moral hazard.
Ben Bernanke

As you know, in the latter part of 2008 and early 2009, the Federal Reserve took extraordinary steps to provide liquidity and support credit market functioning, including the establishment of a number of emergency lending facilities and the creation or extension of currency swap agreements with 14 central banks around the world.
Ben Bernanke

Asset purchases are not on a preset course.
Clarifying the Fed's flexibility regarding Quantitative Easing, June 2013.
Ben Bernanke

At the most basic level, a central bank must be clear and open about its actions and operations, particularly when they involve the deployment of public funds.
Ben Bernanke

Banks need to continue to lend to creditworthy borrowers to earn a profit and remain strong.
Ben Bernanke

Banks will have to win the confidence of their customers through fair dealing, making good loans, and remaining financially healthy.
Ben Bernanke

Because a person has to be either working or looking for work to be counted as part of the labor force, an increase in the number of people too discouraged to continue their search for work would reduce the unemployment rate, all else being equal - but not for a positive reason.
Ben Bernanke

Because financially capable consumers ultimately contribute to a stable economic and financial system as well as improve their own financial situations, it's clear that the Federal Reserve has a significant stake in financial education.
Ben Bernanke

Both humanity's capacity to innovate and the incentives to innovate are greater today than at any other time in history.
Ben Bernanke

Building a rainy-day fund during good times may not be politically popular, but it can pay off during the bad times.
Ben Bernanke

Central bankers got it right in the United States in 1987 when they avoided deflationary pressures as well as serious trouble in the banking system.
Ben Bernanke

Central banks have the ability to create unlimited amounts of currency.
Highlighting the power of monetary authorities, especially during crises.
Ben Bernanke

Certainly, 9 percent unemployment and very slow growth is not a good situation.
Ben Bernanke

Chairman Greenspan is, of course, a master.
Ben Bernanke

China is growing very quickly and is clearly becoming an important player in the world economy.
Ben Bernanke

Clear communication is always important in central banking, but it can be especially important when economic conditions call for further policy stimulus but the policy rate is already at its effective lower bound.
Ben Bernanke

Community development has a long history of innovation and learning from experience.
Ben Bernanke

Consumers going through foreclosure typically will see their credit scores drop, raising longer-term questions about their ability to rebound financially and perhaps pursue a more sustainable home purchase at some later point.
Ben Bernanke

Deflation can be particularly dangerous when a financial system is shaky, with household and corporate balance sheets in poor shape and banks undercapitalized and heavily burdened with bad loans.
Ben Bernanke

Deflation is defined as a general decline in prices, with emphasis on the word general.
Ben Bernanke

Deflation is in almost all cases a side effect of a collapse of aggregate demand.
Explaining the causes of deflation, 2002 speech on preventing deflation.
Ben Bernanke

Developments in financial markets can have broad economic effects felt by many outside the markets.
Ben Bernanke

Different countries have different kinds of financial structures.
Ben Bernanke

Economic engineering is about the design and analysis of frameworks for achieving specific economic objectives.
Ben Bernanke

Economic management involves the operation of economic frameworks in real time - for example, in the private sector, the management of complex financial institutions or, in the public sector, the day-to-day supervision of those institutions.
Ben Bernanke

Economic policy is no panacea, but it can foster a more stable and equitable society.
Reflecting on the broader goals of policy.
Ben Bernanke

Economic science concerns itself primarily with theoretical and empirical generalizations about the behavior of individuals, institutions, markets, and national economies. Most academic research falls in this category.
Ben Bernanke

Economics has many substantive areas of knowledge where there is agreement, but also contains areas of controversy. That's inescapable.
Ben Bernanke

Economics is a very difficult subject. I've compared it to trying to learn how to repair a car when the engine is running.
Ben Bernanke

Every effort needs to be made to try and offset the costs of Katrina and Rita by reductions in other government programs, especially those that are wasteful, duplicative and ineffective.
Ben Bernanke

Evolutionary psychologists suggest that humans experienced evolutionary benefits from brain developments that included aversion to loss and risk and from instincts for cooperation that helped strengthen communities.
Ben Bernanke

Evolving technologies that allow economists to gather new types of data and to manipulate millions of data points are just one factor among several that are likely to transform the field in coming years.
Ben Bernanke

Extraordinarily low interest rates are needed to get the economy going.
Justifying the Fed's near-zero interest rate policy during the Great Recession.
Ben Bernanke

Financial stress has been and continues to be a significant drag on the economy.
Assessing the impact of the financial crisis on the broader economy.
Ben Bernanke

Following an extended boom in housing, the demand for homes began to weaken in mid-2005. By the middle of 2006, sales of both new and existing homes had fallen about 15 percent below their peak levels. Homebuilders responded to the fall in demand by sharply curtailing construction.
Ben Bernanke

For many of us, owning a home signaled a passage into adulthood that coincided with the start of a career and family.
Ben Bernanke

For practitioners of community development, as in any field, joining a network of like-minded professionals is important for building skills and becoming aware of opportunities and resources.
Ben Bernanke

Fostering transparency and accountability at the Federal Reserve was one of my principal objectives when I became Chairman in February 2006.
Ben Bernanke

Given the extent of the exposures of major banks around the world to A.I.G., and in light of the extreme fragility of the system, there was a significant risk that A.I.G.'s failure could have sparked a global banking panic.
Ben Bernanke

Growth in U.S. real imports slowed to about 3 percent in 2006, in part reflecting a drop in real terms in imports of crude oil and petroleum products.
Ben Bernanke

High levels of homeownership have been shown to foster greater involvement in school and civic organizations, higher graduation rates, and greater neighborhood stability.
Ben Bernanke

History has demonstrated time and again the inherent resilience and recuperative powers of the American economy.
Ben Bernanke

History proves... that a smart central bank can protect the economy and the financial sector from the nastier side effects of a stock market collapse.
Ben Bernanke

Home purchases that are very highly leveraged or unaffordable subject the borrower and lender to a great deal of risk. Moreover, even in a strong economy, unforeseen life events and risks in local real estate markets make highly leveraged borrowers vulnerable.
Ben Bernanke

Honest error in the face of complex and possibly intractable problems is a far more important source of bad results than are bad motives.
Ben Bernanke

Housing markets are finally starting to recover.
Noting a positive sign in the recovery, 2012.
Ben Bernanke

How much would you pay to avoid a second Depression?
Ben Bernanke

I agree that it's very hard to pop a bubble.
Acknowledging the difficulty of identifying and deflating asset bubbles preemptively.
Ben Bernanke

I am particularly pleased to see that the Bendheim Center for Finance is thriving.
Ben Bernanke

I am very proud of my nerd-dom.
Ben Bernanke

I and others were mistaken early on in saying that the subprime crisis would be contained. The causal relationship between the housing problem and the broad financial system was very complex and difficult to predict.
Ben Bernanke

I assure this committee that, if I am confirmed, I will be strictly independent of all political influences... essential to that institution's ability to function effectively and achieve its mandated objectives.
Ben Bernanke

I came home from school one day, and there was a phone call for me. And I picked up the phone. They said, This is the Harvard Admissions Department. We'd like to let you know that you're accepted in the freshman class. And I said, Come on, who is this really?
Ben Bernanke

I come from Main Street, from a small town that's really depressed.
Ben Bernanke

I don't know why there aren't more Depression buffs.
Ben Bernanke

I don't think there are any students who should not be exposed to a basic financial literacy course.
Ben Bernanke

I generally leave the details of fiscal programs to the Administration and Congress. That's really their area of authority and responsibility, and I don't think it's appropriate for me to second guess.
Ben Bernanke

I got into economics because I wanted to make things better for the average person.
Ben Bernanke

I have spoken about deficits, and I think deficits are important because they address broad economic and financial stability. We need to talk about that.
Ben Bernanke

I like to think I'm a Republican of the Eisenhower type.
Describing his political leanings in a non-partisan Fed context.
Ben Bernanke

I served seven years as the chair of the Princeton economics department where I had responsibility for major policy decisions, such as whether to serve bagels or doughnuts at the department coffee hour.
Ben Bernanke

I think most of us would agree that people who have, say, little formal schooling but labor honestly and diligently to help feed, clothe, and educate their families are deserving of greater respect - and help, if necessary - than many people who are superficially more successful.
Ben Bernanke

I think one of the lessons of the Depression - and this is something that Franklin Roosevelt demonstrated - was that when orthodoxy fails, then you need to try new things. And he was very willing to try unorthodox approaches when the orthodox approach had shown that it was not adequate.
Ben Bernanke

I was a professor at Princeton University. And, in that capacity, I studied for many years the role of financial crisis in the economy.
Ben Bernanke

I would argue that no financial instrument counted as regulatory capital should be allowed to receive any protection from losses.
Ben Bernanke

I'd throw dollars out of helicopters if I had to, to stimulate the economy.
Ben Bernanke

I've never been on Wall Street. And I care about Wall Street for one reason and one reason only because what happens on Wall Street matters to Main Street.
Ben Bernanke

Identity theft is a serious crime that affects millions of Americans each year.
Ben Bernanke

If Australia finds it has a strong Australian dollar, and it has higher unemployment, then it would have to respond, and that would either be by increasing domestic demand or by weakening its own currency.
Ben Bernanke

If bankers become overly conservative in response to past lending mistakes - or if examiners force such behavior - it will hurt bankers' own long-term interests and the economy in general.
Ben Bernanke

If I am confirmed, I am confident that my colleagues on the Federal Open Market Committee and I will maintain the focus on long-term price stability as monetary policy's greatest contribution to general economic prosperity and maximum employment.
Ben Bernanke

If the fiscal cliff occurs, I don't think the Federal Reserve has the tools to offset that event.
Ben Bernanke

If two people always agree, one of them is redundant.
Ben Bernanke

If we let the banking system fail, no one will talk about the Great Depression anymore, because this will be so much worse.
Reportedly said during the intense crisis discussions in 2008, highlighting systemic risk.
Ben Bernanke

If you are not happy with yourself, even the loftiest achievements won't bring you much satisfaction.
Ben Bernanke

If you take a candy bar in the short run, it gives you a burst of energy, but after a while, it just makes you fat.
Ben Bernanke

If you want to understand geology, study earthquakes. If you want to understand the economy, study the Depression.
Ben Bernanke

If you're in a car crash, you're mostly involved in trying to not go off the bridge, and later on you say, Oh my God!
Ben Bernanke

Imperfect substitutability of assets implies that changes in the supplies of various assets available to private investors may affect the prices and yields of those assets.
Ben Bernanke

Importantly, in the 1930s, in the Great Depression, the Federal Reserve, despite its mandate, was quite passive and, as a result, financial crisis became very severe, lasted essentially from 1929 to 1933.
Ben Bernanke

In a mature economy like India's, which is becoming modern and a financially-oriented economy, an independent central bank, responsible central bank, is really central to success.
Ben Bernanke

In a slow-growing world that is short on aggregate demand, Germany's trade surplus is a problem.
Ben Bernanke

In all likelihood, a significant amount of time will be required to restore the nearly eight and a half million jobs that were lost nationwide over 2008 and 2009.
Ben Bernanke

In any given month, a large number of workers are being hired or are leaving their current jobs, illustrating the dynamism of the U.S. labor market.
Ben Bernanke

In fact, the world needs more nerds.
Ben Bernanke

In many spheres of human endeavor, from science to business to education to economic policy, good decisions depend on good measurement.
Ben Bernanke

In September 2008, the two largest housing mortgage companies called Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which were government-sponsored enterprises, which hold hundreds of billions of dollars of mortgages, because of the losses they took on the mortgages, they essentially became insolvent, and the government had to take them over.
Ben Bernanke

In the future, financial firms of any type whose failure would pose a systemic risk must accept especially close regulatory scrutiny of their risk-taking.
Ben Bernanke

In the future, my communications with the public and with the markets will be entirely through regular and formal channels.
Ben Bernanke

In the past, Federal Reserve chairmen have not generally gone directly to the public.
Ben Bernanke

In the tradition of national income accounting, economic policymakers have typically focused on variables such as income, wealth, and consumption.
Ben Bernanke

In the typical economic recovery, a resurgent housing sector helps fuel reemployment and rising incomes.
Ben Bernanke

Income inequality is troubling because, among other things, it means that many people in our society don't have the opportunities to advance themselves.
Ben Bernanke

Indeed, in general, healthy investment returns cannot be sustained in a weak economy, and of course it is difficult to save for retirement or other goals without the income from a job.
Ben Bernanke

Inflation is not currently a significant risk.
Frequently stated during the early recovery phase to justify accommodative policy.
Ben Bernanke

Interest rates are used to achieve overall economic stability.
Ben Bernanke

Investment banks manage to go bankrupt through their investment-banking activities, commercial banks manage to go bankrupt through their commercial-banking activities.
Ben Bernanke

It must be awfully frustrating to get a small raise at work and then have it all eaten by a higher cost of commuting.
Ben Bernanke

It is not the responsibility of the Federal Reserve to bail out imprudent investors.
Stating a principle, though actions during the crisis sometimes conflicted with this sentiment.
Ben Bernanke

It takes about two and a half percent growth just to keep unemployment stable.
Ben Bernanke

It's the price of success: people start to think you're omnipotent.
Ben Bernanke

It's true that the Federal Reserve faces a lot of political pressure and is unpopular in many circles.
Ben Bernanke

Let me end my talk by abusing slightly my status as an official representative of the Federal Reserve. I would like to say to Milton and Anna: Regarding the Great Depression. You're right, we did it. We're very sorry. But thanks to you, we won't do it again.
Famously apologizing to Milton Friedman for the Fed's role in the Great Depression, at Friedman's 90th birthday celebration, 2002.
Ben Bernanke

Long-term unemployment is particularly costly to those directly affected, of course. But in addition, because of its negative effects on workers' skills and attachment to the labor force, long-term unemployment may ultimately reduce the productive capacity of our economy.
Ben Bernanke

Long term, I have a lot of confidence in the United States. We have an excellent record in terms of innovation. We have great universities that are involved in technological change and progress. We have an entrepreneurial culture, much more than almost any other country.
Ben Bernanke

Low and stable inflation in many countries is an important accomplishment that will continue to bring significant benefits.
Ben Bernanke

Many foreclosed homes are neglected or abandoned, as legal proceedings or other factors delay their resale. Deteriorating or vacant properties can, in turn, directly affect the quality of life in a neighborhood, for example, by leading to increases in vandalism or crime.
Ben Bernanke

Many savers are also homeowners; indeed, a family's home may be its most important financial asset. Many savers are working, or would like to be.
Ben Bernanke

Market discipline can only limit moral hazard to the extent that debt and equity holders believe that, in the event of distress, they will bear costs.
Ben Bernanke

Monetary policy cannot do much about long-run growth, all we can try to do is to try to smooth out periods where the economy is depressed because of lack of demand.
Ben Bernanke

Monetary policy has less room to maneuver when interest rates are close to zero, while expansionary fiscal policy is likely both more effective and less costly in terms of increased debt burden when interest rates are pinned at low levels.
Ben Bernanke

Monetary policy is a blunt tool which certainly affects the distribution of income and wealth, although whether the net effect is to increase or reduce inequality is not clear.
Acknowledging the limitations of interest rates in targeting specific economic issues.
Ben Bernanke

Monetary policy is not a panacea.
Ben Bernanke

Most of the policies that support robust economic growth in the long run are outside the province of the central bank.
Ben Bernanke

My proposal that Fed governors should signal their commitment to public service by wearing Hawaiian shirts and Bermuda shorts has so far gone unheeded.
Ben Bernanke

Neighborhoods and communities are complex organisms that will be resilient only if they are healthy along a number of interrelated dimensions, much as a human body cannot be healthy without adequate air, water, rest, and food.
Ben Bernanke

No economy can succeed without a high-quality workforce, particularly in an age of globalization and technical change.
Ben Bernanke

No one will be satisfied with the recovery process until unemployment is down to a more normal level.
Focusing on the human cost of the recession.
Ben Bernanke

No one will lend at a negative interest rate; potential creditors will simply choose to hold cash, which pays zero nominal interest.
Ben Bernanke

Nobody likes to fail but failure is an essential part of life and of learning. If your uniform isn’t dirty, you haven’t been in the game.
Ben Bernanke

Now that I'm a civilian again, I can once more comment on economic and financial issues without my words being put under the microscope by Fed watchers.
Ben Bernanke

Obviously, I haven't succeeded in defusing the political concerns about the Fed.
Ben Bernanke

Of course, economic forecasts must be revised when new information arrives and are thus necessarily provisional.
Ben Bernanke

One would be forgiven for concluding that the assumed benefits of financial innovation are not all they were cracked up to be.
Ben Bernanke

Only a strong economy can create higher asset values and sustainably good returns for savers.
Ben Bernanke

Our financial system is so complicated and so interactive – so many different markets in different countries and so many sets of rules.
Ben Bernanke

Our mission, as set forth by the Congress is a critical one: to preserve price stability, to foster maximum sustainable growth in output and employment, and to promote a stable and efficient financial system that serves all Americans well and fairly.
Ben Bernanke

Our strategy is to provide policy accommodation through open-ended asset purchases.
Describing the Fed's QE3 program, September 2012.
Ben Bernanke

People saw the Depression as a necessary thing - a chance to squeeze out the excesses, get back to Puritan morality. That just made things worse.
Ben Bernanke

Preventing liquidation of an unbalanced market will leave you in tears.
Ben Bernanke

Remember that physical beauty is evolution's way of assuring us that the other person doesn't have too many intestinal parasites.
Ben Bernanke

Rents should begin to decelerate as the demand for owner-occupied housing stabilizes and the supply of rental units increases.
Ben Bernanke

Sector-specific price declines, uncomfortable as they may be for producers in that sector, are generally not a problem for the economy as a whole and do not constitute deflation.
Ben Bernanke

Since World War II, inflation - the apparently inexorable rise in the prices of goods and services - has been the bane of central bankers.
Ben Bernanke

Small businesses have played an important role in fueling past economic recoveries.
Ben Bernanke

Smart financial planning - such as budgeting, saving for emergencies, and preparing for retirement - can help households enjoy better lives while weathering financial shocks. Financial education can play a key role in getting to these outcomes.
Ben Bernanke

Stronger regulation and supervision aimed at problems with underwriting practices and lenders' risk management would have been a more effective and surgical approach to constraining the housing bubble than a general increase in interest rates.
Ben Bernanke

Textbooks describe economics as the study of the allocation of scarce resources. That definition may be the what, but it certainly is not the why.
Ben Bernanke

The actions taken by central banks and other authorities to stabilize a panic in the short run can work against stability in the long run if investors and firms infer from those actions that they will never bear the full consequences of excessive risk-taking.
Ben Bernanke

The American people are among the most productive in the world. We have the best technologies. We have great universities. We have entrepreneurs.
Ben Bernanke

The amount of currency in circulation is not changing. The money supply is not changing in any significant way.
Ben Bernanke

The banks have accounts with the Fed, much the same way that you have an account in a commercial bank.
Ben Bernanke

The benefit of appointing a hawkish central banker is the increased inflation-fighting credibility that such an appointment brings.
Ben Bernanke

The best solution to income inequality is providing a high-quality education for everybody. In our highly technological, globalized economy, people without education will not be able to improve their economic situation.
Ben Bernanke

The biggest downside of my current job is that I have to wear a suit to work. Wearing uncomfortable clothes on purpose is an example of what former Princeton hockey player and Nobel Prize winner Michael Spence taught economists to call signaling.
Ben Bernanke

The central bank needs to be able to make policy without short term political concerns.
Ben Bernanke

The children of the unemployed achieve less in school and appear to have reduced long-term earnings prospects.
Ben Bernanke

The crisis and recession have led to very low interest rates, it is true, but these events have also destroyed jobs, hamstrung economic growth and led to sharp declines in the values of many homes and businesses.
Ben Bernanke

The crisis in Europe has affected the U.S. economy by acting as a drag on our exports, weighing on business and consumer confidence, and pressuring U.S. financial markets and institutions.
Ben Bernanke

The decline in home equity makes it more difficult for struggling homeowners to refinance and reduces the financial incentive of stressed borrowers to remain in their homes.
Ben Bernanke

The Depression was an incredibly dramatic episode - an era of stock-market crashes, breadlines, bank runs and wild currency speculation, with the storm clouds of war gathering ominously in the background... For my money, few periods are so replete with human interest.
Ben Bernanke

The downturn following the collapse of Japan's so-called bubble economy of the 1980s was not as severe as the Great Depression.
Ben Bernanke

The economist John Maynard Keynes said that in the long run, we are all dead. If he were around today he might say that, in the long run, we are all on Social Security and Medicare.
Ben Bernanke

The failure of Lehman Brothers demonstrated that liquidity provision by the Federal Reserve would not be sufficient to stop the crisis; substantial fiscal resources were necessary.
Ben Bernanke

The Fed is totally open.
Ben Bernanke

The Fed needs an approach that consolidates the gains of the Greenspan years and ensures that those successful policies will continue - even if future Fed chairmen are less skillful or less committed to price stability than Mr. Greenspan has been.
Ben Bernanke

The Fed's independence is critical.
Ben Bernanke

The Fed's policy choices can always be debated, but the quality and commitment of the Federal Reserve as a public institution is second to none, and I am proud to lead it.
Ben Bernanke

The Federal Reserve Act requires the Federal Reserve to report annually on its operations and to publish its balance sheet weekly.
Ben Bernanke

The Federal Reserve can only buy Treasuries and agencies, and moreover quantitative easing typically involves buying longer-term Treasuries and agencies in terms of bills, for example.
Ben Bernanke

The Federal Reserve cannot solve all the economy's problems on its own.
Ben Bernanke

The Federal Reserve has always recognized the importance of allowing markets to work, and government oversight of financial firms will never be fully effective without the aid of strong market discipline.
Ben Bernanke

The Federal Reserve has never suffered any losses in the course of its normal lending to banks and, now, to primary dealers.
Ben Bernanke

The Federal Reserve is prepared to take further action as appropriate to promote a stronger economic recovery.
A common refrain signaling openness to more stimulus.
Ben Bernanke

The Federal Reserve, like other central banks, wields powerful tools; democratic accountability requires that the public be able to see how and for what purposes those tools are being used.
Ben Bernanke

The Federal Reserve's job is to do the right thing, to take the long-run interest of the economy to heart, and that sometimes means being unpopular. But we have to do the right thing.
Ben Bernanke

The financial crisis that began in the summer of 2007 was an extraordinarily complex event with multiple causes.
Ben Bernanke

The global economy is interconnected, and events abroad affect the U.S. economy.
Emphasizing the importance of global factors.
Ben Bernanke

The job market remains quite weak; the unemployment rate is still about 8 percent.
Highlighting the persistent challenge of high unemployment during the recovery.
Ben Bernanke

The lesson of history is that you do not get a sustained economic recovery as long as the financial system is in crisis.
Ben Bernanke

The Libor system is structurally flawed. It is a major problem for our financial system and for the confidence in the financial system. We need to address it.
Ben Bernanke

The Mexican debt crisis, Latin American debt crisis, the crises of the 1990s, the Wall Street stock market crash, and other events should have reminded us, and did remind us, that financial instability remains a concern, remains a problem.
Ben Bernanke

The more guidance a central bank can provide the public about how policy is likely to evolve the greater the chance that market participants will make appropriate inferences.
Ben Bernanke

The movement toward a holistic approach to community development has been long in the making, but the housing crisis has motivated further progress.
Ben Bernanke

The one thing people don't appreciate, I think, is that central banking is not a new development. It's been around for a very long time.
Ben Bernanke

The public in many countries is understandably concerned by the commitment of substantial government resources to aid the financial industry when other industries receive little or no assistance. This disparate treatment, unappealing as it is, appears unavoidable.
Ben Bernanke

The role of liquidity in systemic events provides yet another reason why, in the future, a more system wide or macroprudential approach to regulation is needed.
Ben Bernanke

The stress on the financial system in the fall of 2007 was significant, but not so significant as to threaten the overall stability of the U.S. economy, although it did lead to the beginning of a recession at the end of 2007.
Ben Bernanke

The tax code is very inefficient. Both the personal tax code and the corporate tax code. By closing loopholes and lowering rates, you could increase the efficiency of the tax code and create more incentives for people to invest.
Ben Bernanke

The tools we have involve affecting financial asset prices.
Describing the mechanism of unconventional monetary policy like QE.
Ben Bernanke

The ultimate purpose of economics, of course, is to understand and promote the enhancement of well-being.
Ben Bernanke

The world has a great deal more to offer than money.
Ben Bernanke

There are a number of institutions globally where the Federal Reserve typically leads the U.S. effort to work with financial regulators from other countries, and we try to, to the extent possible, establish international standards for how - the amount of capital a bank should hold, for example, or how much.
Ben Bernanke

There are limits to monetary policy.
Ben Bernanke

There will not be an automatic increase in interest rate when unemployment hits 6.5%.
Ben Bernanke

There's no doubt that the crisis has imposed a heavy burden on many.
Acknowledging the widespread hardship caused by the Great Recession.
Ben Bernanke

To achieve a more balanced international system over time, countries with excessive and unsustainable trade surpluses will need to allow their exchange rates to better reflect market fundamentals.
Ben Bernanke

To be sure, faster growth in nominal labor compensation does not necessarily portend higher inflation.
Ben Bernanke

To be sure, the provision of liquidity alone can by no means solve the problems of credit risk and credit losses; but it can reduce liquidity premiums, help restore the confidence of investors, and thus promote stability.
Ben Bernanke

To minimize market uncertainty and achieve the maximum effect of its policies, the Federal Reserve is committed to providing the public as much information as possible about the uses of its balance sheet, plans regarding future uses of its balance sheet, and the criteria on which the relevant decisions are based.
Ben Bernanke

To the extent that bank panics interfere with normal flows of credit, they may affect the performance of the real economy.
Ben Bernanke

Uncertainty is seen to retard investment independently of considerations of risk or expected return.
Ben Bernanke

Under a paper-money system, a determined government can always generate higher spending and hence positive inflation.
From his 2002 deflation speech, outlining the theoretical ability to prevent deflation.
Ben Bernanke

Under current law, on January 1st, 2013, there is going to be a massive fiscal cliff of large spending cuts and tax increases.
House Committee on Financial Services on February 29, 2012.
Ben Bernanke

We are focused on the medium-term inflation outlook.
Guiding expectations about the Fed's policy horizon.
Ben Bernanke

We see the economy as having modest growth going forward.
A typical cautiously optimistic assessment.
Ben Bernanke

We should see better and more direct measurements of economic well being.
Ben Bernanke

Well, optimism's a good thing. It - makes people go out and - you know, start businesses and spend and do whatever is necessary to get the economy going.
Ben Bernanke

Well, the problem with QE is it works in practice, but it doesn't work in theory.
A wry remark acknowledging the unconventional nature and empirical success of Quantitative Easing despite theoretical debates.
Ben Bernanke

Well, the U.S., of course, is the world's largest economy. It's about a quarter of the world's output. It's also home to many of the largest financial institutions and financial markets.
Ben Bernanke

What we're looking for is a sustained improvement in the labor market.
Setting a key criterion for adjusting monetary policy.
Ben Bernanke

When historical relationships are taken into account, it is difficult to ascribe the house price bubble either to monetary policy or to the broader macroeconomic environment.
Ben Bernanke

When the economic well-being of their nation demanded a strong and creative response, my colleagues at the Federal Reserve... mustered the moral courage to do what was necessary.
Ben Bernanke

You want to put the fire out first and then worry about the fire code.
Ben Bernanke

Bernard of Chartres - See Bernardus Carnotensis

A piece of information is really defined only by what it’s related to, and how it's related. There really is little else to meaning. The structure is everything.
Timothy Berners-Lee

Any enterprise CEO really ought to be able to ask a question that involves connecting data across the organization, be able to run a company effectively, and especially to be able to respond to unexpected events. Most organizations are missing this ability to connect all the data together.
Timothy Berners-Lee

Any good software engineer will tell you that a compiler and an interpreter are interchangeable.
Timothy Berners-Lee

Anyone who has lost track of time when using a computer knows the propensity to dream, the urge to make dreams come true and the tendency to miss lunch.
Reflecting on the creative, immersive nature of computing.
Timothy Berners-Lee

Celebrity damages private life.
Timothy Berners-Lee

Cool URIs don't change.
A fundamental principle of web architecture emphasizing stable, persistent links.
Timothy Berners-Lee

Compared even to the development of the phone or TV, the Web developed very quickly.
Timothy Berners-Lee

Customers need to be given control of their own data-not being tied into a certain manufacturer so that when there are problems they are always obliged to go back to them.
Timothy Berners-Lee

Data is a precious thing and will last longer than the systems themselves.
Timothy Berners-Lee

Everybody who runs a Web site knows we're not assured of compatibility, and we could end up with a split.
Timothy Berners-Lee

I basically wrote the code and the specs and documentation for how the client and server talked to each other.
Timothy Berners-Lee

I don't know whether machine translation will eventually get good enough to allow us to browse people's websites in different languages so you can see how they live in different countries.
Timothy Berners-Lee

I don't mind being, in the public context, referred to as the inventor of the World Wide Web. What I like is that image to be separate from private life, because celebrity damages private life.
Timothy Berners-Lee

I have built a moat around myself, along with ways over that moat so that people can ask questions.
Timothy Berners-Lee

I hope we will use the Net to cross barriers and connect cultures.
Timothy Berners-Lee

I just had to take the hypertext idea and connect it to the Transmission Control Protocol and domain name system ideas and—ta-da!—the World Wide Web.
Describing the synthesis that created the Web.
Timothy Berners-Lee

I myself feel that it is very important that my ISP supplies internet to my house like the water company supplies water to my house. It supplies connectivity with no strings attached.
Timothy Berners-Lee

I should be able to pick which applications I use for managing my life, I should be able to pick which content I look at, and I should be able to pick which device I use, which company I use for supplying my internet, and I'd like those to be independent choices.
Timothy Berners-Lee

I suppose it's amazing when you think how many things people get involved in that don't work.
Timothy Berners-Lee

I think IT projects are about supporting social systems - about communications between people and machines. They tend to fail due to cultural issues.
Timothy Berners-Lee

I think when you have a lot of jumbled up ideas they come together slowly over a period of several years.
Timothy Berners-Lee

I want to know if I look up a whole lot of books about some form of cancer that that's not going to get to my insurance company and I'm going to find my insurance premium is going to go up by 5% because they've figured I'm looking at those books.
Timothy Berners-Lee

I was lucky enough to invent the Web at the time when the Internet already existed - and had for a decade and a half.
Acknowledging the foundational role of the pre-existing Internet.
Timothy Berners-Lee

I'm an optimist about humanity in general, I suppose.
Timothy Berners-Lee

I'm not a fan of giving a website a simple number like an IQ rating because like people they can vary in all kinds of different ways. So I'd be interested in different organisations labelling websites in different ways.
Timothy Berners-Lee

I'm very aware there are lots of other people who are just bright and working just as hard, with just the same dedication to make the world a good place.
Timothy Berners-Lee

If you are not on the web, you will have problems accessing services.
Timothy Berners-Lee

If you're looking for the next big thing and you're looking at smartphones and the Web, you're looking in the wrong direction. The next big thing is the Web happening on bigger things... like walls.
On the future of interfaces and ubiquitous computing.
Timothy Berners-Lee

Imagine that everything you are typing is being read by the person you are applying to for your first job. Imagine that it's all going to be seen by your parents and your grandparents and your grandchildren as well.
Timothy Berners-Lee

In '93 to '94, every browser had its own flavor of HTML. So it was very difficult to know what you could put in a Web page and reliably have most of your readership see it.
Timothy Berners-Lee

In many ways, people growing up with the Web and now the Semantic Web take the power at their fingertips for granted.
Timothy Berners-Lee

Innovation is serendipity, so you don’t know what people will make.
Timothy Berners-Lee

Intellectual property is an important legal and cultural issue. Society as a whole has complex issues to face here: private ownership vs. open source, and so on.
Timothy Berners-Lee

IT professionals have a responsibility to understand the use of standards and the importance of making Web applications that work with any kind of device.
Timothy Berners-Lee

It was really hard explaining the Web before people just got used to it because they didn't even have words like click and jump and page.
Timothy Berners-Lee

It's amazing how quickly people on the internet can pick something up, but it's also amazing how quickly they can drop it.
Timothy Berners-Lee

It's difficult to imagine the power that you're going to have when so many different sorts of data are available.
On the potential of Linked Data and the Semantic Web.
Timothy Berners-Lee

It's interesting that people throughout the existence of the web have been concerned about monopolies.
Timothy Berners-Lee

It's not that the Internet has been a failure in bringing people together - it's been an enormous success. But it has also brought people together to do bad things.
Acknowledging the dual-use nature of the Web.
Timothy Berners-Lee

Long Live the Web.
Title and rallying cry of a key 2010 Scientific American article outlining his vision and concerns.
Timothy Berners-Lee

Most larger companies now see that for the market to grow, Web infrastructure must be royalty-free.
Timothy Berners-Lee

My own personal preference is that the consumer, the individual person should be protected because individual people and the difference between individual people and the diversity we have between people on the planet is so important.
Timothy Berners-Lee

On the web the thinking of cults can spread very rapidly and suddenly a cult which was 12 people who had some deep personal issues suddenly find a formula which is very believable.
Timothy Berners-Lee

One of the issues of social networking silos is that they have the data and I don't.
Timothy Berners-Lee

One of the things I like about the computer that I use is that I can write a program on it or I can download a program on to it and run it. That's kind of important to me, and that's also kind of important to the whole future of the internet... obviously a closed platform is a serious brake on innovation.
Timothy Berners-Lee

One way to think about the magnitude of the changes to come is to think about how you went about your business before powerful Web search engines. You probably wouldn't have imagined that a world of answers would be available to you in under a second. The next set of advances will have an different effect, but similar in magnitude.
Timothy Berners-Lee

People should be able to choose who they give their data to.
Advocating for user data ownership and control.
Timothy Berners-Lee

Physicists analyze systems. Web scientists, however, can create the systems.
Timothy Berners-Lee

Sites need to be able to interact in one single, universal space.
Timothy Berners-Lee

That idea of URL was the basic clue to the universality of the Web. That was the only thing I insisted upon.
Timothy Berners-Lee

The amount of control you have over somebody if you can monitor internet activity is amazing.
Timothy Berners-Lee

The challenge is to manage the Web in an open way-not too much bureaucracy, not subject to political or commercial pressures. The U.S. should demonstrate that it is prepared to share control with the world.
Timothy Berners-Lee

The amount of control you have over somebody if you can monitor internet activity is amazing.
Timothy Berners-Lee

The decision to make the Web an open system was necessary for it to be universal.
Stating the core principle of openness.
Timothy Berners-Lee

The Domain Name Server (DNS) is the Achilles heel of the Web. The important thing is that it's managed responsibly.
Timothy Berners-Lee

The dream behind the Web is of a common information space in which we communicate by sharing information.
Defining the original vision.
Timothy Berners-Lee

The first thing any country does when it wants to take control is to try to control the Internet.
Warning about internet censorship and control.
Timothy Berners-Lee

The goal of the Web is to serve humanity.
Defining the ultimate purpose.
Timothy Berners-Lee

The Google algorithm was a significant development. I've had thank-you emails from people whose lives have been saved by information on a medical website or who have found the love of their life on a dating website.
Timothy Berners-Lee

The important thing is the diversity available on the Web.
Timothy Berners-Lee

The Mobile Web Initiative is important - information must be made seamlessly available on any device.
Timothy Berners-Lee

The most important thing that was new was the idea of URI-or URL, that any piece of information anywhere should have an identifier, which will allow you to get hold of it.
Timothy Berners-Lee

The original idea of the web was that it should be a collaborative space where you can communicate through sharing information.
Timothy Berners-Lee

The people who designed the tools that make the Net run had their own ideas for the future.
Timothy Berners-Lee

The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect.
Emphasizing Web Accessibility.
Timothy Berners-Lee

The Semantic Web is not a separate Web but an extension of the current one, in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation.
Timothy Berners-Lee

The Semantic Web isn't inherently complex. The Semantic Web language, at its heart, is very, very simple. It's just about the relationships between things.
Timothy Berners-Lee

The Web as I envisaged it, we have not seen it yet. The future is still so much bigger than the past.
Expressing belief in the Web's unrealized potential.
Timothy Berners-Lee

The Web does not just connect machines, it connects people.
Stating its fundamental social nature.
Timothy Berners-Lee

The Web is more a social creation than a technical one. I designed it for a social effect — to help people work together — and not as a technical toy.
Highlighting the social intent behind the technology.
Timothy Berners-Lee

The Web is now more critical to fundamental fairness and human rights than ever before.
On the Web's societal importance.
Timothy Berners-Lee

The Web is now philosophical engineering. Physics and the Web are both about the relationship between the small and the large.
Timothy Berners-Lee

The Web is the humanity connected by technology.
A poetic summary of its impact.
Timothy Berners-Lee

The world's urban poor and the illiterate are going to be increasingly disadvantaged and are in danger of being left behind. The web has added a new dimension to the gap between the first world and the developing world. We have to start talking about a human right to connect.
Timothy Berners-Lee

There was a time when people felt the internet was another world, but now people realise it's a tool that we use in this world.
On the integration of the online and offline worlds.
Timothy Berners-Lee

Things can change so fast on the internet.
Timothy Berners-Lee

This is for everyone.
His iconic message displayed during the London 2012 Olympics opening ceremony.
Timothy Berners-Lee

Universal access to the web is so important. It's a basic right.
Arguing for internet access as a fundamental right.
Timothy Berners-Lee

Vague but exciting...
The famous note he wrote on the margin of his original 1989 proposal: Information Management: A Proposal.
Timothy Berners-Lee

We can't blame the technology when we make mistakes.
Timothy Berners-Lee

We could say we want the Web to reflect a vision of the world where everything is done democratically. To do that, we get computers to talk with each other in such a way as to promote that ideal.
Timothy Berners-Lee

We need diversity of thought in the world to face new challenges.
Linking open information sharing to problem-solving.
Timothy Berners-Lee

We need to build a web that is truly for everyone: one that is accessible to all, from any device, and one that gives everyone the power to shape their online experience and the web itself.
Outlining a vision for inclusivity and user agency.
Timothy Berners-Lee

We need to re-decentralize the Web.
Calling for a shift away from platform dominance towards user control.
Timothy Berners-Lee

We shouldn't build a technology to colour, or grey out, what people say. The media in general is balanced, although there are a lot of issues to be addressed that the media rightly pick up on.
Timothy Berners-Lee

Web pages are designed for people. For the Semantic Web, we need to look at existing databases.
Timothy Berners-Lee

Web users ultimately want to get at data quickly and easily. They don't care as much about attractive sites and pretty design.
Timothy Berners-Lee

What I do has to be a function of what I can do, not a function of what people ask me to do.
Timothy Berners-Lee

What is a Web year now, about three months? And when people can browse around, discover new things, and download them fast, when we all have agents - then Web years could slip by before human beings can notice.
Timothy Berners-Lee

What is amazing is that if one of these little [document] nodes is mentioned in another place... you can move through the information space by clicking with a mouse.
Describing the revolutionary nature of hyperlinks in his original proposal.
Timothy Berners-Lee

Whatever the device you use for getting your information out, it should be the same information.
Timothy Berners-Lee

When it comes to professionalism, it makes sense to talk about being professional in IT. Standards are vital so that IT professionals can provide systems that last.
Timothy Berners-Lee

When something is such a creative medium as the web, the limits to it are our imagination.
On the Web's boundless creative potential.
Timothy Berners-Lee

When you go onto the internet, if you really rummage around randomly then how do you hope to find something of any of value?
Timothy Berners-Lee

You affect the world by what you browse.
Suggesting user behavior shapes the online ecosystem.
Timothy Berners-Lee

Your data is your data. It belongs to you.
A clear statement on personal data ownership.
Timothy Berners-Lee

Actors are the only honest hypocrites. Our life is a lie, but we represent truth.
Reflecting on the paradox of acting.
Sarah Bernhardt

Ah, jealousy! The worst of all tortures, the most cruel, the most vain, the most ridiculous!
On the destructive nature of jealousy.
Sarah Bernhardt

All the pictures that hung in my memory before I knew you have faded and given place to our radiant moments together. Now I cannot live apart from you ... Your words are my food, your breath my wine. You are everything to me.
Sarah Bernhardt

Although all new ideas are born in France, they are not readily adopted there. It seems that they must first commence to prosper in a foreign country.
Sarah Bernhardt

Art is not about something, Art is something.
Sarah Bernhardt

Cloak my shoulders, shield my heart, armor my feelings.
Reportedly said to her dresser, reflecting her need for protection offstage.
Sarah Bernhardt

Each action of the actor on the stage should be the visible concomitant of his thoughts.
Sarah Bernhardt

Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich.
Sarah Bernhardt

For the theatre one needs long arms... an artiste with short arms can never make a fine gesture.
Sarah Bernhardt

Genius is eternal patience.
On the misconception of effortless talent.
Sarah Bernhardt

He who is incapable of feeling strong passions, of being shaken by anger, of living in every sense of the word, will never be a good actor.
Sarah Bernhardt

I adore Chicago. It is the pulse of America.
Sarah Bernhardt

I adored him. He was so homely he was attractive. Besides, it is restful to talk to a man who is not trying to make love to you.
On her friend, the scientist Louis Pasteur.
Sarah Bernhardt

I am a daughter of the sun... I need light.
Explaining her love for sunshine and travel.
Sarah Bernhardt

I do love cricket – it's so very English.
Sarah Bernhardt

I have often been asked why I am so fond of playing male parts. As a matter of fact, it is not male parts, but male brains that I prefer.
Sarah Bernhardt

I have often been asked why I am so fond of playing male parts. It is because I can only feel like a woman when I am one... On stage I am the man I dream of.
On her famous roles like Hamlet and L'Aiglon.
Sarah Bernhardt

I have, thanks to my travels, added to my stock all the superstitions of other countries. I know them all now, and in any critical moment of my life, they all rise up in armed legions for or against me.
Sarah Bernhardt

I must have flowers, always, and always.
Expressing her well-known passion for flowers.
Sarah Bernhardt

It is in spending oneself that one becomes rich.
On generosity and living fully.
Sarah Bernhardt

Legend remains victorious in spite of history.
Sarah Bernhardt

Life begets life. Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich.
Sarah Bernhardt

Life engenders life. Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich.
Sarah Bernhardt

My dear, for the theatre one needs long arms. It is better to have them too long than too short. You can always cut off the sleeves.
Advice to a young actress, emphasizing expressiveness on stage.
Sarah Bernhardt

Once the curtain is raised, the actor is ceases to belong to himself. He belongs to his character, to his author, to his public. He must do the impossible to identify himself with the first, not to betray the second, and not to disappoint the third.
Sarah Bernhardt

Oscar Wilde: Do you mind if I smoke? Sarah Bernhardt: I don't care if you burn.
Sarah Bernhardt

Permanent success cannot be achieved except by incessant intellectual labour, always inspired by the ideal.
Sarah Bernhardt

The actor is too prone to exaggerate his powers; he wants to play Hamlet when his appearance is more suitable to King Lear.
Sarah Bernhardt

The artist who cannot mold the public to his own image had better quit.
On the power and responsibility of the artist.
Sarah Bernhardt

The gesture is the thing truly expressive of the individual—as we think so we will act.
On the connection between thought and physical expression in acting.
Sarah Bernhardt

The theatre is the involuntary reflex of the ideas of the crowd.
Sarah Bernhardt

The theatre is the most beautiful lie.
On the magic and artifice of performance.
Sarah Bernhardt

The truth, the absolute truth, is that the chief beauty for the theatre consists in fine bodily proportions.
Sarah Bernhardt

To be a good actor... it is necessary to have a firmly tempered soul, to be surprised at nothing, to resume each minute the laborious task that has barely just been finished.
Sarah Bernhardt

To be a success an actress must have the face of Venus, the brains of Minerva, the grace of Terpsichore, the memory of Macaulay, the figure of Juno, and the hide of a rhinoceros.
On the demanding requirements of her profession.
Sarah Bernhardt

We must live for the few who know and appreciate us, who judge and absolve us, and for whom we have the same affection and indulgence. The rest I look upon as a mere crowd, lively or sad, loyal or corrupt, from whom there is nothing to be expected but fleeting emotions, either pleasant or unpleasant, which leave no trace behind them.
On her inner circle versus the public.
Sarah Bernhardt

We ought to hate very rarely, as it is too fatiguing; remain indifferent to a great deal, forgive often and never forget.
Sarah Bernhardt

What matters poverty? What matters anything to him who is enamoured of our art? Does he not carry in himself every joy and every beauty?
Sarah Bernhardt

When asked at age 79 why her Paris apartment was located up many flights of stairs... It's the only way I can still make the hearts of men beat faster.
Sarah Bernhardt

Why do you weep? Did you think I was immortal?
Reportedly said to her distraught dresser while gravely ill, demonstrating her defiance and dark humor.
Sarah Bernhardt

Your words are my food, your breath my wine. You are everything to me.
Sarah Bernhardt

90 percent of the game is half mental.
Often paraphrased: Baseball is 90 percent mental, the other half is physical.
Yogi Berra

A good ball club.
When asked what makes a good baseball team manager.
Yogi Berra

A lot of guys go, Hey, Yog, say a Yogi-ism. I tell 'em, I don't know any. They want me to make one up. I don't make 'em up. I don't even know when I say it. They're the truth. And it is the truth. I don't know.
Yogi Berra

A nickel ain't worth a dime anymore.
Yogi Berra

All pitchers are liars or crybabies.
Yogi Berra

Almost every Monday I have a charity thing. I like that. I do.
Yogi Berra

Always go to other people's funerals, otherwise they won't come to yours.
Yogi Berra

Baseball is 90 percent mental, the other half is physical.
Yogi Berra

Congratulations. I knew the record would stand until it was broken.
Yogi Berra

Cut my pie into four pieces. I don't think I could eat eight.
Yogi Berra

Even Napoleon had his Watergate.
Yogi Berra

Half the lies they tell about me aren't true.
Yogi Berra

He hits from both sides of the plate. He's amphibious.
Meaning ambidextrous.
Yogi Berra

How can you think and hit at the same time?
Yogi Berra

I always got nervous the nights we played in the World Series. First pitch, I was nervous. Then after that, forget it; I'd start playing.
Yogi Berra

I always thought that record would stand until it was broken.
Yogi Berra

I didn't know much about golf growing up.
Yogi Berra

I didn't really say everything I said.
Pointing out that he didn't say everything that people think he said. A meta-Yogi-ism.
Yogi Berra

I don't blame the players today for the money. I blame the owners. They started it. They wanna give it to 'em? More power to 'em.
Yogi Berra

I don't like seeing myself on television. I don't like it.
Yogi Berra

I don't mean to be funny.
Yogi Berra

I enjoy now doing what I do... playing golf, relaxing a little, enjoying life.
Yogi Berra

I guess I've got a smart wife.
Yogi Berra

I just want to thank everyone who made this day necessary.
Yogi Berra

I liked George Weiss when he was with the Yankees. He loved the Old Timers' Day. He loved it. And he invited all these people to come, all these players to come.
Yogi Berra

I liked St. Louis, when they were in the American League, because that was going home. I had all my family and friends there.
Yogi Berra

I never blame myself when I'm not hitting. I just blame the bat and if it keeps up, I change bats. After all, if I know it isn't my fault that I'm not hitting, how can I get mad at myself?
Yogi Berra

I never figured I'd go into the Hall of Fame. A kid from the Hill.
Yogi Berra

I never said half the things I said.
Yogi Berra

I tell the kids, somebody's gotta win, somebody's gotta lose. Just don't fight about it. Just try to get better.
Yogi Berra

I think Little League is wonderful. It keeps the kids out of the house.
Yogi Berra

I thought they said steak dinner, but then I found it was a state dinner...
Regarding a fancy dinner he attended at the White House.
Yogi Berra

I usually take a two-hour nap from one to four.
Yogi Berra

I want to thank you for making this day necessary.
Spoken on Yogi Berra Day in St Louis in 1947.
Yogi Berra

I was in the invasion of Normandy in southern France.
Yogi Berra

I wish I had an answer to that because I'm tired of answering that question.
Yogi Berra

I'd say he's done more than that!
When asked if Don Mattingly had exceeded expectations.
Yogi Berra

I'm a lucky guy and I'm happy to be with the Yankees. And I want to thank everyone for making this night necessary.
Yogi Berra

I'm glad I was in the Navy.
Yogi Berra

I'm lucky. Usually you're dead to get your own museum, but I'm still alive to see mine.
Yogi Berra

I'm not going to buy my kids an encyclopedia. Let them walk to school like I did.
Yogi Berra

If I didn't make it in baseball, I won't have made it workin'. I didn't like to work.
Yogi Berra

If I didn't wake up I'd still be sleeping.
Yogi Berra

If people don't want to come out to the ballpark, nobody's going to stop them.
Yogi Berra

If the world were perfect, it wouldn't be.
Yogi Berra

If they don't want to come, you can't stop them.
Yogi Berra

If you ask me anything I don't know, I'm not going to answer.
Yogi Berra

If you can't imitate him, don't copy him.
Yogi Berra

If you don't know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.
Yogi Berra

If you get a guy that can play a couple positions, it helps you out a real lot.
Yogi Berra

In baseball, you don't know nothing.
Yogi Berra

It ain't over till it's over.
His most famous, coined during the 1973 Mets pennant race.
Yogi Berra

It ain't the heat, it's the humility.
Yogi Berra

It gets late early out there.
Referring to left field shadows at Yankee Stadium.
Yogi Berra

It was hard to have a conversation with anyone; there were so many people talking.
Regarding a fancy dinner he attended at the White House.
Yogi Berra

It's fun; baseball's fun.
Yogi Berra

It's like déjà vu all over again.
In reference to the number of home runs hit by Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle.
Yogi Berra

It's pretty far, but it doesn't seem like it.
Yogi Berra

Little League baseball is a very good thing because it keeps the parents off the streets.
Yogi Berra

Love is the most important thing in the world, but baseball is pretty good, too.
Yogi Berra

Mickey Mantle was a very good golfer, but we weren't allowed to play golf during the season; only at spring training.
Yogi Berra

Never answer an anonymous letter.
Yogi Berra

Ninety percent of the game is half mental.
A general comment on the game of baseball.
Yogi Berra

Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded.
Commenting on a restaurant in St. Louis called Ruggeri's.
Yogi Berra

Pair up in threes.
Instruction as a coach.
Yogi Berra

So I'm ugly. So what? I never saw anyone hit with his face.
Yogi Berra

Slump? I ain't in no slump. I just ain't hitting.
Yogi Berra

Surprise me!
When asked by his wife Carmen where he would like to be buried.
Yogi Berra

The future ain't what it used to be.
Yogi Berra

The other teams could make trouble for us if they win.
Yogi Berra

The towels were so thick there I could hardly close my suitcase.
Yogi Berra

There are some people who, if they don't already know, you can't tell 'em.
Yogi Berra

Think! How the hell are you gonna think and hit at the same time?
Yogi Berra

We have a good time together, even when we're not together.
Talking about his wife Carmen.
Yogi Berra

We have deep depth.
Yogi Berra

We made too many wrong mistakes.
Yogi Berra

What? You mean right now?
When asked what time it is.
Yogi Berra

When you come to a fork in the road, take it.
Directions to his house involved either fork leading there.
Yogi Berra

Why buy good luggage? You only use it when you travel!
Yogi Berra

You better make it four, I don't think I could eat eight.
After being asked how many slices should be cut in his pizza.
Yogi Berra

You better cut the pizza in four pieces because I'm not hungry enough to eat six.
Yogi Berra

You can observe a lot by watching.
Yogi Berra

You don't have to swing hard to hit a home run. If you got the timing, it'll go.
Yogi Berra

You don't look so hot yourself.
Replying to the Mayor of New York's wife after being told that he looked cool in his summer suit.
Yogi Berra

You have to give 100 percent in the first half of the game. If that isn't enough, in the second half, you have to give what is left.
Yogi Berra

You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours.
Yogi Berra

You wouldn't have won if we'd beaten you.
Yogi Berra

You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there.
Yogi Berra

A Society in which the people's wants do not exceed their possessions is not a Socialist society.
Aneurin Bevan

All I am liable to forget is my good resolutions.
Reflecting on human nature.
Aneurin Bevan

Because they're threatened by the idea that doctors might throw off the slave-morality...
Aneurin Bevan

Damn it all, you can't have the crown of thorns and the thirty pieces of silver.
Aneurin Bevan

Discontent arises from a knowledge of the possible, as contrasted with the actual.
Aneurin Bevan

Discretion is not the better part of biography.
On writing his own life story.
Aneurin Bevan

Fascism is not in itself a new order of society. It is the future refusing to be born.
Aneurin Bevan

Freedom is the by-product of economic surplus.
In Place of Fear
Aneurin Bevan

He seems determined to make a trumpet sound like a tin whistle.
Aneurin Bevan

How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power? Here lies the whole art of Conservative politics in the twentieth century.
Aneurin Bevan

I have never regarded politics as the arena of morals. It is the arena of interest.
Aneurin Bevan

I have never regarded the Tories as vermin. I have always thought they were lower than vermin.
Speech in Manchester, 4 July 1948 - his most infamous line, often shortened.
Aneurin Bevan

I know that the right kind of leader for the Labour Party is a desiccated calculating machine ... talk about a dying child in the same way as he would about the pieces inside an internal combustion engine.
Aneurin Bevan

I read the newspapers avidly. It is my one form of continuous fiction.
Aneurin Bevan

I would rather be kept alive in the efficient if cold altruism of a large hospital than expire in a gush of warm sympathy in a small one.
Aneurin Bevan

If you carry this resolution you will send Britain's Foreign Secretary naked into the conference chamber.
Speech at Labour Party Conference opposing unilateral nuclear disarmament (October 3, 1957).
Aneurin Bevan

Ignorance is not a defence, it is an opportunity.
Stressing the importance of education and overcoming disadvantage.
Aneurin Bevan

In one sense the House of Commons is the most unrepresentative of representative assemblies … The classic Parliamentary style of speech is understatement.
Aneurin Bevan

It is an axiom, enforced by all the experience of the ages, that they who rule industrially will rule politically.
Aneurin Bevan

It is not enough in this situation to have faith. It is not enough to have enthusiasm. It is not enough to have hope. You have to have knowledge.
Emphasizing the need for expertise in governance.
Aneurin Bevan

It is not possible to create peace in the Middle East by jeopardizing the peace of the world.
Aneurin Bevan

Language is the most powerful weapon at your command. Use it well.
Advice to fellow politicians.
Aneurin Bevan

Let us remember that we are the heirs of great traditions... Let us try to be worthy of them.
Reflecting on Labour's purpose.
Aneurin Bevan

No amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party... So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin.
Speech in Manchester (July 4, 1948).
Aneurin Bevan

No society can legitimately call itself civilized if a sick person is denied medical aid because of lack of means.
Core principle behind the NHS.
Aneurin Bevan

Politics is a blood sport.
Aneurin Bevan

Poor fellow, he suffers from files.
Aneurin Bevan

Reactionary: a man walking backwards with his face to the future.
Aneurin Bevan

Reading is not a duty, and has consequently no business to be made disagreeable.
Aneurin Bevan

Soon, if we are not prudent, millions of people will be watching each other starve to death through expensive television sets.
Aneurin Bevan

Stand not too near the rich man lest he destroy thee - and not too far away lest he forget thee.
Aneurin Bevan

The collective principle asserts that... no society can legitimately call itself civilised if a sick person is denied medical aid because of lack of means.
In Place of Fear
Aneurin Bevan

The eyes of the world are turning to Great Britain. We now have the moral leadership of the world.
On the significance of Labour's post-war reforms, particularly the NHS).
Aneurin Bevan

The National Health Service and the Welfare State have come to be used as interchangeable terms, and in the mouths of some people as terms of reproach. Why this is so I do not know, unless it be that no good deed goes unpunished.
Defending his achievements.
Aneurin Bevan

The NHS will last as long as there are folk left with faith to fight for it.
A famous and often-repeated prediction/plea.
Aneurin Bevan

The Prime Minister has an absolute genius for putting flamboyant labels on empty luggage.
Aneurin Bevan

The purpose of getting power is to be able to give it away.
Aneurin Bevan

The Tories, every election, must have a bogy man. If you haven't got a programme, a bogy man will do.
Aneurin Bevan

This is my truth, tell me yours.
Aneurin Bevan

This island is made mainly of coal and surrounded by fish. Only an organizing genius could produce a shortage of coal and fish at the same time.
Scathing critique of Conservative economic management, c. 1945.
Aneurin Bevan

We could manage to survive without money changers and stockbrokers. We should find it harder to do without miners, steel workers and those who cultivate the land.
Aneurin Bevan

We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run down.
On the need for decisive action and principle.
Aneurin Bevan

We should never be ashamed to struggle for the good of the people.
Defining Labour's mission.
Aneurin Bevan

What is pitiful about humanity is that men and women are prepared to degrade themselves to such a degree for the sake of a little security.
On the dangers of conformity and lack of aspiration.
Aneurin Bevan

Will last as long as there are folk left with the faith to fight for it.
Referring to the National Health Service (NHS).
Aneurin Bevan

Why look in the crystal ball when you can read the book?
Criticizing over-reliance on speculation instead of learning from history and evidence.
Aneurin Bevan

You call that statesmanship? I call it an emotional spasm.
Critique of political opponents.
Aneurin Bevan

A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.
Jeff Bezos

A company shouldn't get addicted to being shiny, because shiny doesn't last.
Jeff Bezos

A life of stasis would be population control, combined with energy rationing. That is the stasis world that you live in if you stay. And even with improvements in efficiency, you'll still have to ration energy. That, to me, doesn't sound like a very exciting civilization for our grandchildren's grandchildren to live in.
Jeff Bezos

All businesses need to be young forever. If your customer base ages with you, you're Woolworth's.
Jeff Bezos

Amazon.com strives to be the e-commerce destination where consumers can find and discover anything they want to buy online.
Jeff Bezos

Base your strategy on things that won't change.
Often referencing customer desire for low prices, vast selection, fast delivery.
Jeff Bezos

Beautiful speech doesn't need protection, it's ugly speech that needs protection. We have these cultural norms that allow people to say really ugly things. You don't have to invite them to your dinner party, but you should let them say it.
Jeff Bezos

Because, you know, resilience - if you think of it in terms of the Gold Rush, then you'd be pretty depressed right now because the last nugget of gold would be gone. But the good thing is, with innovation, there isn't a last nugget. Every new thing creates two new questions and two new opportunities.
Jeff Bezos

But there's so much kludge, so much terrible stuff, we are at the 1908 Hurley washing machine stage with the Internet. That's where we are. We don't get our hair caught in it, but that's the level of primitiveness of where we are. We're in 1908.
Jeff Bezos

Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice.
Jeff Bezos

Complaining is not a strategy. You have to work with the world as you find it, not as you would have it be.
Jeff Bezos

Cultures, for better or worse, are very stable.
Jeff Bezos

Customers are always beautifully, wonderfully dissatisfied, even when they report being happy and business is great.
Jeff Bezos

Disagree and commit.
A key Amazon leadership principle.
Jeff Bezos

Ebooks had to happen.
Jeff Bezos

Failure and invention are inseparable twins.
Jeff Bezos

For many people, extended reading sessions on an LCD display cause eyestrain.
Jeff Bezos

For people who are readers, reading is important to them.
Jeff Bezos

Frugality drives innovation.
Jeff Bezos

Great industries are never made from single companies. There is room in space for a lot of winners.
Jeff Bezos

Humans are unbelievably data efficient. You don't have to drive 1 million miles to drive a car, but the way we teach a self-driving car is have it drive a million miles.
Jeff Bezos

I believe you have to be willing to be misunderstood if you're going to innovate.
Jeff Bezos

I don't know about you, but most of my exchanges with cashiers are not that meaningful.
Jeff Bezos

I don't know all the future steps, but I know one of them: we need to build a low-cost, highly operable, reusable launch vehicle. No matter which path we take, it has to include that gate, and so that's why that's Blue Origin's mission.
Jeff Bezos

I don't want to use my creative energy on somebody else's user interface.
Jeff Bezos

I grew up reading science fiction.
Jeff Bezos

I have won this lottery. It's a gigantic lottery, and it's called Amazon.com. And I'm using my lottery winnings to push us a little further into space.
Jeff Bezos

I knew that if I failed I wouldn't regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not trying.
Jeff Bezos

I like having the digital camera on my smart phone, but I also like having a dedicated camera for when I want to take real pictures.
Jeff Bezos

I read The High Frontier in high school. I read it multiple times, and I was already primed. As soon as I read it, it made sense to me. It seemed very clear that planetary surfaces were not the right place for an expanding civilization inside our solar system.
Jeff Bezos

I strongly believe that missionaries make better products. They care more. For a missionary, it's not just about the business. There has to be a business, and the business has to make sense, but that's not why you do it. You do it because you have something meaningful that motivates you.
Jeff Bezos

I think frugality drives innovation, just like other constraints do. One of the only ways to get out of a tight box is to invent your way out.
Jeff Bezos

I think that, ah, I'm a very goofy sort of person in many ways.
Jeff Bezos

I think the definition of a book is changing.
Jeff Bezos

I think there are going to be a bunch of tablet-like devices. It's really a different product category.
Jeff Bezos

I very much believe the Internet is indeed all it is cracked up to be.
Jeff Bezos

I went to Princeton specifically to study physics.
Jeff Bezos

I'm a big fan of all-you-can-eat plans, because they're simpler for customers.
Jeff Bezos

I'm skeptical of any mission that has advertisers at its centerpiece.
Jeff Bezos

I'm skeptical that the novel will be re-invented.
Jeff Bezos

I've always been at the intersection of computers and whatever they can revolutionize.
Jeff Bezos

If someone thinks they are being mistreated by us, they won't tell 5 people, they'll tell 5000.
Jeff Bezos

If you can't feed a team with two pizzas, it's too large.
Jeff Bezos

If you can't tolerate critics, don't do anything new or interesting.
Jeff Bezos

If you decide that you're going to do only the things you know are going to work, you're going to leave a lot of opportunity on the table.
Jeff Bezos

If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful.
Jeff Bezos

If you don't understand the details of your business you are going to fail.
Jeff Bezos

If you double the number of experiments you do per year, you're going to double your inventiveness.
Jeff Bezos

If you never want to be criticized, for goodness' sake don't do anything new.
Jeff Bezos

If you only do things where you know the answer in advance, your company goes away.
Jeff Bezos

If you're competitor-focused, you have to wait until there is a competitor doing something. Being customer-focused allows you to be more pioneering.
Jeff Bezos

If your customer base is aging with you, then eventually you are going to become obsolete or irrelevant. You need to be constantly figuring out who are your new customers and what are you doing to stay forever young.
Jeff Bezos

If your payloads cost hundreds of millions of dollars, they actually cost more than the launch. It puts a lot of pressure on the launch vehicle not to change, to be very stable. Reliability becomes much more important than the cost. It's hard to get off of that equilibrium.
Jeff Bezos

In just a few hundred years, we will have to cover the entire surface of the Earth in solar cells if we want to continue to grow our energy usage.
Jeff Bezos

In the end, we are our choices.
Jeff Bezos

In this industry, there's a lot of cases of being a competitor in one way, but you're often a customer and a vendor in another way. It's not atypical in aerospace. Actually, it's not that atypical in a lot of industries.
Jeff Bezos

Infrastructure web services had to happen.
Jeff Bezos

Innovation is disruption.
Jeff Bezos

It is harder to be kind than clever.
Princeton Commencement Address, referencing his grandfather.
Jeff Bezos

It is very difficult to get people to focus on the most important things when you're in boom times.
Jeff Bezos

It's not an experiment if you know it’s going to work.
Jeff Bezos

Life's too short to hang out with people who aren't resourceful.
Jeff Bezos

Maintain a firm grasp of the obvious at all times.
Jeff Bezos

Market leadership can translate directly to higher revenue, higher profitability, greater capital velocity, and correspondingly stronger returns on invested capital.
Jeff Bezos

Mediocre theoretical physicists make no progress. They spend all their time understanding other people's progress.
Jeff Bezos

Millions of people were inspired by the Apollo Program. I was five years old when I watched Apollo 11 unfold on television, and without any doubt it was a big contributor to my passions for science, engineering, and exploration.
Jeff Bezos

Most of our important decisions are made with less than 70% of the information we wish we had.
Jeff Bezos

My own view is that every company requires a long-term view.
Jeff Bezos

My view is there's no bad time to innovate.
Jeff Bezos

Obsess about customers, not competitors.
Jeff Bezos

Of course humans like to explore, and we should. There's nothing wrong with that. But it's more than that. It's essential for your children and your children's children.
Jeff Bezos

On the Internet, companies are scale businesses, characterized by high fixed costs and relatively low variable costs. You can be two sizes: You can be big, or you can be small. It's very hard to be medium. A lot of medium-sized companies had the financing rug pulled out from under them before they could get big.
Jeff Bezos

One of the things that I'm very excited about with New Shepard, which is our suborbital tourism vehicle, is using that to get a lot of practice. One of the equilibria that we're at today with space launch is that we don't get to practice enough.
Jeff Bezos

One thing that I find very unmotivating is the kind of Plan B argument: when Earth gets destroyed, you want to be somewhere else. That doesn't work for me. We have sent robotic probes now to every place in the solar system, and this is the best one.
Jeff Bezos

Our motto at Blue Origin is Gradatim Ferociter: Step by Step, Ferociously.
Jeff Bezos

Our success at Amazon is a function of how many experiments we do per year, per month, per week, per day.
Jeff Bezos

Part of company culture is path-dependent - it's the lessons you learn along the way.
Jeff Bezos

People forget already how much utility they get out of the Internet - how much utility they get out of e-mail, how much utility they get out of even simple things like brochureware online.
Jeff Bezos

People who are right a lot of the time are people who often change their minds.
Jeff Bezos

People will visit Mars, they will settle Mars, and we should because it's cool.
Jeff Bezos

Percentage margins don't matter. What matters always is dollar margins: the actual dollar amount. Companies are valued not on their percentage margins, but on how many dollars they actually make, and a multiple of that.
Jeff Bezos

Real estate is the key cost of physical retailers. That's why there's the old saw: location, location, location.
Jeff Bezos

Stress primarily comes from not taking action over something that you can have some control over.
Jeff Bezos

Strip malls are history.
Jeff Bezos

The Apollo program certainly had no real commercial value. It was done for very different reasons and, I think, very good reasons for the time. It's an extraordinary achievement of mankind, but it wasn't sustainable.
Jeff Bezos

The best customer service is if the customer doesn't need to call you, doesn't need to talk to you. It just works.
Jeff Bezos

The book is not really the container for the book. The book itself is the narrative. It's the thing that people create.
Jeff Bezos

The common question that gets asked in business is,Why? That’s a good question, but an equally valid question is, Why not?
Jeff Bezos

The human brain is an incredible pattern-matching machine.
Jeff Bezos

The key thing about a book is that you lose yourself in the author's world.
Jeff Bezos

The killer app that got the world ready for appliances was the light bulb. So the light bulb is what wired the world. And they weren't thinking about appliances when they wired the world. They were really thinking about - they weren't putting electricity into the home. They were putting lighting into the home.
Jeff Bezos

The one thing that offends me the most is when I walk by a bank and see ads trying to convince people to take out second mortgages on their home so they can go on vacation. That's approaching evil.
Jeff Bezos

The question really is, are you improving the world? And you can do that in many models. You can do that in government, you can do that in a nonprofit, and you can do it in commercial enterprise.
Jeff Bezos

The reason we chose vertical landing as our recovery architecture is that vertical landing scales really well.
Jeff Bezos

The solar system can support a trillion humans. And then we'd have a thousand Mozarts and a thousand Einsteins.
Jeff Bezos

The special ops guys and the firefighters around the world have this great phrase. They say, Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast, and that is true. Everything I've accomplished in my life has been because of that attitude.
Jeff Bezos

The strategic objective of New Shepard is to practice, and a lot of the subcomponents of New Shepard actually get directly reused on the second stage of New Glenn.
Jeff Bezos

The thing that motivates me is a very common form of motivation. And that is, with other folks counting on me, it's so easy to be motivated.
Jeff Bezos

There are two kinds of companies, those that work to try to charge more and those that work to charge less. We will be the second.
Jeff Bezos

There are two ways to extend a business. Take inventory of what you're good at and extend out from your skills. Or determine what your customers need and work backward, even if it requires learning new skills. Kindle is an example of working backward.
Jeff Bezos

There is no alternative to hard work.
Jeff Bezos

There'll always be serendipity involved in discovery.
Jeff Bezos

Today I continue with my science-fiction reading habit and find it very mind-expanding. Always makes me think.
Jeff Bezos

Two kids in their dorm room can't start anything important in space today. That's why I want to take the assets I have from Amazon and translate that into the heavy-lifting infrastructure that will allow the next generation to have dynamic entrepreneurialism in space, to build that transportation network.
Jeff Bezos

We are stubborn on vision. We are flexible on details.
Jeff Bezos

We expect all our businesses to have a positive impact on our top and bottom lines. Profitability is very important to us or we wouldn't be in this business.
Jeff Bezos

We fly to 106 kilometers. We've always had as our mission that we always wanted to fly above the Karman line because we didn't want there to be any asterisks next to your name about whether you're an astronaut or not.
Jeff Bezos

We need to know what the resources of the moon are. We have great evidence now because of different kinds of radar and spectroscopic analysis that people have been able to do. But we really do need to go visit there, and we can do that with a robot craft without any problem.
Jeff Bezos

We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It's our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.
Jeff Bezos

We will have to leave this planet, and we're going to leave it, and it's going to make this planet better.
Jeff Bezos

We're taking all of the lessons that we have from New Shepard and incorporating them into New Glenn.
Jeff Bezos

We're working on New Glenn, which is our orbital vehicle, but we have in our mind's eye an even bigger vehicle called New Armstrong.
Jeff Bezos

We've had three big ideas at Amazon that we've stuck with for 18 years, and they're the reason we're successful: Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient.
Jeff Bezos

What consumerism really is, at its worst is getting people to buy things that don't actually improve their lives.
Jeff Bezos

What we need to do is always lean into the future; when the world changes around you and when it changes against you – what used to be a tail wind is now a head wind – you have to lean into that and figure out what to do because complaining isn't a strategy.
Jeff Bezos

What we want to be is something completely new. There is no physical analog for what Amazon.com is becoming.
Jeff Bezos

What's dangerous is not to evolve.
Jeff Bezos

When it comes to space, I see it as my job, I'm building infrastructure the hard way. I'm using my resources to put in place heavy lifting infrastructure so the next generation of people can have a dynamic, entrepreneurial explosion into space.
Jeff Bezos

When we build our own colonies, we can do them in near-Earth vicinity, because people are going to want to come back to Earth. Very few people - for a long time, anyway - are going to want to abandon Earth altogether.
Jeff Bezos

Work hard, have fun, make history.
Early Amazon motto.
Jeff Bezos

You cannot make a giant space company in your dorm room. Not today. And the reason is that the heavy lifting infrastructure isn't in place.
Jeff Bezos

You don't want to negotiate the price of simple things you buy every day.
Jeff Bezos

You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well.
Jeff Bezos

You have to be willing to be misunderstood if you're going to innovate.
Jeff Bezos

You know, we love stories and we love narrative; we love to get lost in an author's world.
Jeff Bezos

You know you're not anonymous on our site. We're greeting you by name, showing you past purchases, to the degree that you can arrange to have transparency combined with an explanation of what the consumer benefit is.
Jeff Bezos

You need a culture that high-fives small and innovative ideas and senior executives that encourage them.
Jeff Bezos

You want your customers to value your service.
Jeff Bezos

You're not going to make Hemingway better by adding animations.
Jeff Bezos

Your brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room.
Jeff Bezos

Your margin is my opportunity.
Explaining Amazon's strategy to enter new markets.
Jeff Bezos

Bibi - See Benjamin Netanyahu

A diplomatic solution that puts significant and verifiable constraints on Iran's nuclear program represents the best and most sustainable chance to ensure that America, Israel, the entire Middle East will never be menaced by a nuclear-armed Iran.
Joe Biden

A gaffe in Washington is someone telling the truth, and telling the truth has never hurt me.
Joe Biden

Abe Foxman has been a friend and advisor of mine for a long time.
Joe Biden

Al Qaeda is almost all in Pakistan, and Pakistan has nuclear weapons. And yet for every dollar we're spending in Pakistan, we're spending $30 in Afghanistan. Does that make strategic sense?
Joe Biden

America doesn't have health insurance.
Joe Biden

America's commitment to collective defense under Article 5 of NATO is a sacred obligation in our view - a sacred obligation not just for now, but for all time.
Joe Biden

America's experience, like many others, teaches us that fostering entrepreneurship is not just about crafting the right economic policy or developing the best educated curricula. It's about creating an entire climate in which innovation and ideas flourish.
Joe Biden

Anyone who's traveled with me to Afghanistan knows why I love this book: War, by Sebastian Junger.
Joe Biden

As a matter of fact, I didn't make a political speech outside of my state for 20 years.
Joe Biden

Barack Obama is probably the most exciting candidate that either the Democratic or Republican party has produced at least since I've been around. He's fresh, he's new, he's insightful.
Joe Biden

Corruption is a cancer: a cancer that eats away at a citizen's faith in democracy, diminishes the instinct for innovation and creativity; already- tight national budgets, crowding out important national investments. It wastes the talent of entire generations. It scares away investments and jobs.
Joe Biden

Corruption is just another form of tyranny.
Joe Biden

Don't compare me to the Almighty, compare me to the alternative.
A frequent refrain contrasting himself with opponents, particularly Donald Trump.
Joe Biden

Don't hold against me that I don't own - that I don't own a single stock or bond. Don't hold it - I have no savings accounts.
Joe Biden

Don't tell me what you value. Show me your budget, and I'll tell you what you value.
Joe Biden

During the 60's, I was, in fact, very concerned about the civil rights movement.
Joe Biden

El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras have all agreed to send additional consular officers from Guatemala, from Honduras, from El Salvador, send them to the U.S. border so that we can more quickly and humanely identify unaccompanied children and process their individual removal.
Joe Biden

Every Republican's voted for it. Look at what they value and look at their budget and what they're proposing. Romney wants to let the - he said in the first 100 days he's going to let the big banks once again write their own rules - unchain Wall Street. They're gonna put y'all back in chains.
Joe Biden

Except for the title father, there is no title, including vice president, that I am more proud to wear than that of United States senator.
Joe Biden

Failure at some point in your life is inevitable, but giving up is unforgivable.
Joe Biden

Fighting corruption is not just good governance. It's self-defense. It's patriotism.
Joe Biden

Folks, I can tell you I know we're making progress when I look at the past.
Characteristic phrasing emphasizing progress from a difficult past.
Joe Biden

Folks, I can tell you I've known eight presidents, three of them intimately.
Joe Biden

Folks, you're the reason that the automobile industry is back. Whether it was the wage freezes, the plant closures, folks, you sacrificed to keep your companies open. Because of your productivity, the combined auto companies have committed to invest another $23 billion in expansion in America.
Joe Biden

For any young democracy, the most difficult but important step is burying the legacy of tyranny and establishing an economy and a government and institutions that abide by the rule of law. Every country faces challenges to the rule of law, including my own.
Joe Biden

For too long in this society, we have celebrated unrestrained individualism over common community.
Reflecting his theme of unity and community.
Joe Biden

Foreign policy is like human relations, only people know less about each other.
Joe Biden

Given a fair shot, given a fair chance, Americans have never, ever, ever, ever let their country down. Never. Never. Ordinary people like us. Who do extraordinary things.
Joe Biden

Global energy security is a vital part of America's national security.
Joe Biden

Hillary Clinton is as qualified or more qualified than I am to be Vice President of the United States of America. Let's get that straight. She's a truly close personal friend. She is qualified to be President of the United States of America. She's easily qualified to be Vice President of the United States of America.
Joe Biden

I always wonder when it was that I was embraced.
Joe Biden

I believe the American people have a genuine and justifiable fear of government intrusion in what they instinctively know is going to be an ever more intrusive world.
Joe Biden

I can die a happy man never having been president of the United States of America. But it doesn't mean I won't run.
Joe Biden

I consider myself to be as informed on American foreign policy as anyone in America.
Joe Biden

I didn't play soccer; I played that other football in grade school through college.
Joe Biden

I don't say very much I don't really think through. I know that sounds inconsistent with Joe Biden.
Joe Biden

I exaggerate when I'm angry, but I've never gone around telling people things that aren't true about me.
Joe Biden

I graduated from the University of Delaware with a double major in history and political science.
Joe Biden

I guess every single word I've ever said is going to be dissected now.
Joe Biden

I have a really close relationship with Mike Bloomberg.
Joe Biden

I have an expression I use as I've gone around the world through my career: You never tell another man or woman what's in their interest. They know their interest better than you know their interest.
Joe Biden

I have no doubt that Russia will and should remain a major source of energy supplies for Europe and the world.
Joe Biden

I have Parents magazine in my home.
Joe Biden

I know I'm not supposed to like muscle cars, but I like muscle cars.
Joe Biden

I know what I believe, I know what I want to do, and I'm just comfortable saying it, and laying it out there.
Joe Biden

I know why we're strong. I know why we have held together; I know why we are united: it's because there's always been a growing middle class.
Joe Biden

I love that Cadillac ATS!
Joe Biden

I ran for the Senate six times. And one of the things I know about Senate races off years and on races, and on years, the same as governor's races, is it's all local. It all gets down to what the specific issues in that - in that district or that state is.
Joe Biden

I used to say to my late wife, I have great faith in the American people.
Joe Biden

I used to stutter really badly. Everybody thinks it's funny. And it's not funny. It's not.
Joe Biden

I view the vice presidency as a partnership.
Describing his relationship with President Obama.
Joe Biden

I was kind of secretly hoping one of my kids would go out and make a million bucks. So when they put me in a home, at least I'll have a window with a view.
Joe Biden

I was not an activist.
Joe Biden

I'm not big on flak jackets and tie-dyed shirts. You know, that's not me.
Joe Biden

I've been really, really fortunate.
Joe Biden

I've been waiting over 40 years to come to Cyprus, and it has not disappointed - the birthplace of Aphrodite, the Crossroads of Civilization, and, I might add, a genuine strategic partner to the United States of America.
Joe Biden

I've known and continue to know every one of these major world leaders by their first names, and I have access to them.
Joe Biden

If I don't run for president, we'll all be OK.
Joe Biden

If we do everything right, if we do it with absolute certainty, there's still a 30% chance we're going to get it wrong.
2009 remark on swine flu response, later often referenced or mischaracterized.
Joe Biden

If you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump, then you ain't Black.
In an interview with The Breakfast Club radio program, May 22, 2020.
Joe Biden

If you need more than 10 rounds to hunt, and some argue they hunt with that many rounds, you shouldn't be hunting. If you can't get the deer in 3 shots, you shouldn't be hunting. You are an embarrassment.
Joe Biden

If you’re in a confined aircraft and you’re not wearing a mask, you should probably be wearing a mask—it doesn't hurt.
During a July 21, 2022 speech in Wilmington, Massachusetts.
Joe Biden

If you're in a confined aircraft; when one person sneezes, it goes all the way through the aircraft.
Joe Biden

In my heart, I'm confident I could make a good president.
Joe Biden

In Romania, American forces have found a devoted NATO ally.
Joe Biden

In the 21st century, the countries that thrive will be the ones where citizens know their voices will be heard because the institutions are transparent.
Joe Biden

In the good old days when I was a senator, I was my own man.
Joe Biden

In the middle of a recession, where we're just climbing out of it, where the economy -unemployment is still at 9.7 percent, the idea of raising taxes and reducing spending is a prescription for disaster.
Joe Biden

In this world, emotion has become suspect - the accepted style is smooth, antiseptic and passionless.
Joe Biden

Income inequity has to be addressed.
Joe Biden

Innovation can only occur where you can breathe free.
Joe Biden

ISIS is not an existential threat to something happening to someone in the United States of America. It's a serious problem overseas, but it's confusing and frightening.
Joe Biden

Isn't it a bitch? I mean, ... this vice president thing?
Response to a student body vice president at Harvard College, Oct. 2, 2014.
Joe Biden

It is my view that we cannot conduct foreign policy at the extremes.
Joe Biden

It is no secret that I believe my son, Attorney General Beau Biden would make a great United States Senator - just as I believe he has been a great Attorney General. But Beau has made it clear from the moment he entered public life, that any office he sought, he would earn on his own.
Joe Biden

It's never, ever a good bet to bet against America.
A core belief and frequent theme in his speeches.
Joe Biden

It's overwhelmingly in the self-interest of the United States of America to have a secure, democratic friend, a strategic partner like Israel.
Joe Biden

It's presumptuous to say you know how somebody feels.
Joe Biden

Just talk to me as a father - not what the Constitution says. What do you feel?
Joe Biden

Let me tell you what I literally told every world leader I've met with, and I've met them all: It's never, never, never been a good bet to bet against America. We have the finest fighting force in the world.
Joe Biden

Let's build back better.
Joe Biden

Let's just be smart this time. I'm looking for smart.
Joe Biden

Life is a matter of really tough choices.
Joe Biden

Look folks, we know who built this country and we know who is going to rebuild it. It's you. Instead of vilifying you, we should be thanking you. We owe you.
Joe Biden

Look, freedom is an overwhelming American notion. The idea that we want to see the world, the peoples of the world free is something that all of us subscribe to.
Joe Biden

Malarkey!
His signature term for calling out nonsense or falsehoods.
Joe Biden

Most liberals think of civil liberties as their Achilles heel. It isn't.
Joe Biden

My dad always said, Champ, the measure of a man is not how often he is knocked down, but how quickly he gets up.
Joe Biden

My dad used to have an expression - It is the lucky person who gets up in the morning, puts both feet on the floor, knows what they are about to do, and thinks it still matters.
Joe Biden

My dad used to have an expression. He'd say, Joey, a job is about a lot more than a paycheck. It's about your dignity. It's about respect. It's about your place in your community.
Frequently cited to emphasize the value of work.
Joe Biden

No fundamental right is safe in this country if the right to vote is undermined.
Emphasizing the importance of voting rights.
Joe Biden

No fundamental social change occurs merely because government acts. It's because civil society... begins to rise up and demand change.
Joe Biden

No matter how you cut it, this real debate on personal accounts is about the legitimacy of Social Security; it's not about the solvency of Social Security.
Joe Biden

No nation should stoke instability in its neighbor's country.
Joe Biden

No nation should threaten its neighbors by massing troops along the border.
Joe Biden

No one doubts that innocent men, women and children have been the victims of chemical weapons attacks in Syria. And there's no doubt who is responsible for this heinous use of chemical weapons in Syria: the Syrian regime.
Joe Biden

No one ever doubts that I mean what I say. The problem is I sometimes say all that I mean.
Joe Biden

No one making less than $250,000 under Barack Obama's plan will see one single penny of their tax raised, whether it's their capital gains tax, their income tax, investment tax, any tax.
Joe Biden

Now, people when I say that look at me and say, What are you talking about, Joe? You're telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?. The answer is yes, that's what I'm telling you.
Joe Biden

Nowhere is it written that there must be conflict between the United States and China.
Joe Biden

Obama and Biden want to raise taxes by a trillion dollars. Guess what? Yes, we do in one regard: We want to let that trillion dollar tax cut expire so the middle class doesn't have to bear the burden of all that money going to the super-wealthy. That's not a tax raise. That's called fairness where I come from.
Joe Biden

On the way back from Mumbai to go meet with President Xi in China, I stopped in Singapore to meet with a guy named Lee Kuan Yew, who most foreign policy experts around the world say is the wisest man in the Orient.
Joe Biden

One of the things I've never been accused of is not caring about people.
Joe Biden

Other than being crazy enough to press a button, there is nothing that Putin can do militarily to fundamentally alter American interests.
Joe Biden

Our future cannot depend on the government alone. The ultimate solutions lie in the attitudes and the actions of the American people.
Joe Biden

People everywhere in the world are hungry for economic opportunity. And it's about a lot more than being able to make money.
Joe Biden

People should not be in a position where their children have access to weapons and ammunition.
Joe Biden

Poor kids are just as bright, just as talented, as white kids.
Remarks made to Asian and Latino Coalition, Des Moines, Iowa, August 8, 2019.
Joe Biden

Prime Minister Netanyahu has, as Minister Livni knows, has been my friend for over 30 years. We drive each other crazy. But he has truly been a personal friend for well over 30 years. He acknowledged this.
Joe Biden

Putin sought to destabilize Ukraine's economy.
Joe Biden

Putin sought to keep Ukraine weak through corruption.
Joe Biden

Quite frankly, Russian aggression in Ukraine and its illegal occupation of Crimea remind us that we still have a good deal more work to do to guarantee the strategic vision of a Europe whole, free and at peace.
Joe Biden

Reality has a way of intruding. Reality eventually intrudes on everything.
Joe Biden

Romania can be a linchpin in delivering gas to its neighbors and even become an energy exporter for its neighbors across Central and Eastern Europe.
Joe Biden

Saudi Arabia has allowed training on its soil of American forces.
Joe Biden

Show me your budget, and I'll tell you what you value.
A well-known phrase he often uses to discuss priorities.
Joe Biden

The 21st century is going to be the American century. Because we lead not only by the example of our power, but by the power of our example. That is the history of the journey of America.
Joe Biden

The American people are so much stronger, so much more resolved than any enemy can fully understand.
Joe Biden

The American people have not become heartless.
Joe Biden

The American people have the right to know if their president is a crook. Well, I'm not a crook.
Paraphrasing/contrasting Nixon's famous line, used during the 2020 campaign.
Joe Biden

The Chinese have figured out that they have a giant environmental problem. Folks in Beijing, some days, literally can't breathe. Over a million Chinese die prematurely every year because of air pollution.
Joe Biden

The devastating punch we took on September 11th still reverberates throughout American society.
Joe Biden

The effects of climate change are real and must be acted on.
Joe Biden

The greatest gift is the ability to forget – to forget the bad things and focus on the good.
Joe Biden

The Middle East is hopeful. There's hope there.
Joe Biden

The moral disapprobation of society has an impact on behavior in societies.
Joe Biden

The only thing I know is I ain't changing my brand. I know what I believe. I'm confident in what I know. And I'm gonna say it. And if folks like it, wonderful. If they don't like it, I understand.
Joe Biden

The Qataris have cut off support for the most extreme elements of terrorist organizations.
Joe Biden

The Recovery Act is working, but it's going to continue to work. It's not over. A lot's going to happen this summer. And even after the summer, there's more to come with the act.
Joe Biden

The United States supports a strong, united Ukraine with productive and peaceful relationships with both the East and the West, with both Russia and Europe.
Joe Biden

The United States, to state the obvious, is greatly concerned by the startling number of unaccompanied minors that - children and teenagers who are making a very perilous journey through Central America to reach the United States.
Joe Biden

The White House isn't the place to learn how to deal with international crisis, the balance of power, war and peace, and the economic future of the next generation.
Joe Biden

There is no inherent power in the office of the vice presidency. Zero. None. It's all a reflection of your relationship with the president. I mean, Kennedy never let Johnson in the office.
Joe Biden

There used to be an old bad joke. I hope it's not so much a good joke anymore. Everybody's from Scranton; no one's in Scranton.
Joe Biden

There's a lot of revisionist history that goes on these days about Iraq.
Joe Biden

There's no political point worth my son's life.
Joe Biden

There's one advantage in having been around as long as I have. Everybody in the Senate knows me, and - I'm going to say something presumptuous, to repeat myself - I think most respect me.
Joe Biden

There's only one person in this race who will be there, who's always been there for you, and that's Hillary Clinton's life story.
Joe Biden

This is a big fucking deal!
Whispered to President Obama at the signing of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, caught on hot mic - arguably his most famous utterance, though not an official quote.
Joe Biden

This nuclear option is ultimately an example of the arrogance of power.
Joe Biden

Two million felons have tried to buy a gun and, because of the background check, have been denied.
Joe Biden

Unions did in fact build the middle class. And here's what that did. That built the United States of America as we know it.
Joe Biden

We Americans think, in every country in transition, there's a Thomas Jefferson hiding behind some rock or a James Madison beyond one sand dune.
Joe Biden

We are America, second to none, and we own the finish line. Don't forget it.
A common patriotic refrain.
Joe Biden

We choose hope over fear. We choose unity over division. We choose light over darkness.
A central theme of his 2020 campaign and presidency.
Joe Biden

We didn't crumble after 9/11. We didn't falter after the Boston Marathon. But we're America. Americans will never, ever stand down. We endure. We overcome. We own the finish line.
Joe Biden

We don't want two-tier people in America. Those who are legal but not citizens, and citizens.
Joe Biden

We have to be remembered for what's been done.
Joe Biden

We must end this uncivil war.
From his 2021 Inaugural Address, calling for unity.
Joe Biden

We must rekindle the fire of idealism in our society.
Joe Biden

We're close friends - the American people, the Israeli people, our governments. There's absolutely no daylight - none - between us and the Israelis on the question of Israel's security.
Joe Biden

We're going to be OK because of the American people. They have more grit, determination and courage than you can imagine.
Joe Biden

Well, I thought the deal was, when you went to work for the government you weren't supposed to make money!
Joe Biden

Well, I was 29 years old when I came to the United States Senate, and I have learned a lot.
Joe Biden

What on God's green Earth are we doing?
Expressing exasperation or disbelief, often about gun violence or political obstruction.
Joe Biden

When my first semester grades came out, my mom and dad told me I wouldn't be playing football.
Joe Biden

When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the princes of greed. He said, Look, here's what happened.
Joe Biden

When we wrote the Constitution, the intention was to give the commander in chief the authority how to use the forces when you authorize him to be able to use the forces.
Joe Biden

When you go to your local police officer, your police chief in the town you live in, big or small, he will tell you the vast majority of the weapons recovered at a crime scene are either stolen weapons, and/or they have been lost or stolen.
Joe Biden

You are twice as likely to be struck by lightning as you around to be affected by a terrorist event in the United States.
Joe Biden

You get a lawyer whether you're in a military tribunal or whether you're in a federal court, number one. The attorney general decided that the court with the biggest - with the greatest venue, with the best jurisdiction was the New York court. That was the right decision to make.
Joe Biden

You know, my Grandpop Finnegan used to have an expression: he used to say, Joey, the guy in Olyphant's out of work, it's an economic slowdown. When your brother-in-law's out of work, it's a recession. When you're out of work, it's a depression.
Joe Biden

You never make fun of anybody with a club foot or a withered arm, but it's open season on anybody who stutters.
Joe Biden

You should be attacking the carbon emissions, period, and whether it's cap-and-trade or carbon tax or whatever, that's the realm in which we should be playing.
Joe Biden

You want to know whether we're better off? I've got a little bumper sticker for you: Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive. Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive! Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive!
Joe Biden

You're a lying dog-faced pony soldier.
Remark made to a student at a campaign event, Hampton, New Hampshire, February 9, 2020.
Joe Biden

You're looking at a middle-class guy. I am who I am.
Joe Biden

You're president, if you conclude my judgment is not the right judgment, I abide by that, but I want an opportunity to have an input.
Joe Biden

You've all seen over the last eight years what President Obama means to this country. He is the embodiment of honor, resolve, and character - one of the finest presidents we have ever had.
Joe Biden

You've got to reach a hand of friendship across the aisle and across philosophies in this country.
Joe Biden

A man is known by the company he organizes.
Ambrose Bierce

A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms against himself. He makes his failure certain by himself being the first person to be convinced of it.
Ambrose Bierce

A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.
Ambrose Bierce

Abasement:A decent and customary mental attitude in the presence of wealth or power. Peculiarly appropriate in an employee when addressing an employer.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

Ability is commonly found to consist mainly in a high degree of solemnity.
Ambrose Bierce

Abscond: To move in a mysterious way, commonly with the property of another.
Ambrose Bierce

Absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends.
Ambrose Bierce

Abstainer: A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.
Ambrose Bierce

Absurdity: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
Ambrose Bierce

Academe: An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught.
Ambrose Bierce

Academy: A modern school where football is taught.
Ambrose Bierce

Acquaintance: A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to. A degree of friendship called slight when its object is poor or obscure, and intimate when he is rich or famous.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

Admiral: That part of a warship which does the talking while the figurehead does the thinking.
Ambrose Bierce

Admiration: Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

Alien: An American sovereign in his probationary state.
Ambrose Bierce

All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusions is called a philosopher.
Ambrose Bierce

Alliance: In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third.
Ambrose Bierce

Alone: In bad company.
The devil's Dictionary

Ambidextrous: Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket or a left.
Ambrose Bierce

Ambition: An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead.
Ambrose Bierce

Amnesty: The state's magnanimity to those offenders whom it would be too expensive to punish.
Ambrose Bierce

Anoint: To grease a king or other great functionary already sufficiently slippery.
Ambrose Bierce

Architect: One who drafts a plan of your house, and plans a draft of your money.
Ambrose Bierce

Ardor: The quality that distinguishes love without knowledge.
Ambrose Bierce

Bacchus: A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for getting drunk.
Ambrose Bierce

Backbite: To speak of a man as you find him when he can't find you.
Ambrose Bierce

Barometer: An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we are having.
Ambrose Bierce

Battle: A method of untying with the teeth a political knot that would not yield to the tongue.
Ambrose Bierce

Beauty: The power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.
Ambrose Bierce

Belladonna: In Italian a beautiful lady; in English a deadly poison. A striking example of the essential identity of the two tongues.
Ambrose Bierce

Bigot: One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.
Ambrose Bierce

Birth: The first and direst of all disasters.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

Bore: A person who talks when you wish him to listen.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

Brain: An apparatus with which we think that we think.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

Bride: A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
Ambrose Bierce

Cabbage: A familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man's head.
Ambrose Bierce

Calamities are of two kinds: misfortunes to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
Ambrose Bierce

Calamities: Occurrences in remarkable number, continually succeeding each other... The first calamity was the creation of the world; the last will be its destruction.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

Childhood: The period of human life intermediate between the idiocy of infancy and the folly of youth - two removes from the sin of manhood and three from the remorse of age.
Ambrose Bierce

Clairvoyant: A person, commonly a woman, who has the power of seeing that which is invisible to her patron - namely, that he is a blockhead.
Ambrose Bierce

Commerce: A kind of transaction in which A plunders from B the goods of C, and for compensation B picks the pocket of D of money belonging to E.
Ambrose Bierce

Compromise: Such an adjustment of conflicting interests as gives each adversary the satisfaction of thinking he has got what he ought not to have, and is deprived of nothing except what was justly his due.
Ambrose Bierce

Confidante: One entrusted by A with the secrets of B confided to herself by C.
Ambrose Bierce

Conservative: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

Consul: In American politics, a person who having failed to secure an office from the people is given one by the Administration on condition that he leave the country.
Ambrose Bierce

Consult: To seek another's approval of a course already decided on.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

Convent: A place of retirement for women who wish for leisure to meditate upon the sin of idleness.
Ambrose Bierce

Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.
Ambrose Bierce

Coward: One who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

Creditor: One of a tribe of savages dwelling beyond the Financial Straits and dreaded for their desolating incursions.
Ambrose Bierce

Curiosity: An objectionable quality of the female mind. The desire to know whether or not a woman is cursed with curiosity is one of the most active and insatiable passions of the masculine soul.
Ambrose Bierce

Cynic: A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.
Ambrose Bierce

Damn it all, you can't have the crown of thorns and the thirty pieces of silver.
Noted occasionally, but attribution uncertain—omitted to maintain only verified quotes.
Ambrose Bierce

Dawn: When men of reason go to bed.
Ambrose Bierce

Day: A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent.
Ambrose Bierce

Death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate.
Ambrose Bierce

Debt: An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slave-driver.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

Deliberation: The act of examining one's bread to determine which side it is buttered on.
Ambrose Bierce

Democracy is four wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.
Ambrose Bierce

Destiny: A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

Diplomacy: The patriotic art of lying for one's country.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

Discussion: A method of confirming others in their errors.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

Divorce: A resumption of diplomatic relations and rectification of boundaries.
Ambrose Bierce

Dog: A kind of additional or subsidiary Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the world's worship.
Ambrose Bierce

Doubt begins only at the last frontiers of what is possible.
Ambrose Bierce

Doubt is the father of invention.
Ambrose Bierce

Doubt, indulged and cherished, is in danger of becoming denial; but if honest, and bent on thorough investigation, it may soon lead to full establishment of the truth.
Ambrose Bierce

Duty: That which sternly impels us in the direction of profit, along the line of desire.
Ambrose Bierce

Edible: Good to eat, and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm.
Ambrose Bierce

Education: That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

Egotist: A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

Eloquence: The art of orally persuading fools that white is the color that it appears to be. It includes the gift of making any color appear white.
Ambrose Bierce

Enthusiasm: A distemper of youth, curable by small doses of repentance in connection with outward applications of experience.
Ambrose Bierce

Erudition: Dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull.
Ambrose Bierce

Eulogy: Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration to be dead.
Ambrose Bierce

Experience: A revelation in the light of which we renounce our errors of youth for those of age. The wisdom that enables us to recognise in an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced.
Ambrose Bierce

Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.
Ambrose Bierce

Famous: Conspicuously miserable.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

Fidelity: A virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed.
Ambrose Bierce

Forgetfulness: A gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for their destitution of conscience.
Coward: One who, in a perilous emergency, thinks with his legs.
Ambrose Bierce

Fork: An instrument used chiefly for the purpose of putting dead animals into the mouth.
Ambrose Bierce

Friendless: Having no favors to bestow. Destitute of fortune. Addicted to utterance of truth and common sense.
Ambrose Bierce

Friendship: A ship big enough to carry two in fair weather, but only one in foul.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

Future: That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

Genealogy: An account of one's descent from a man who did not particularly care to trace his own.
Ambrose Bierce

Genius: To know without having learned; to draw just conclusions from unknown premises; to discern the soul of things.
Ambrose Bierce

Gratitude: A sentiment lying midway between a benefit received and a benefit expected.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

Habit: A shackle for the free.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

Happiness: An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

Heathen: A benighted creature who has the folly to worship something that he can see and feel.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

Heaven lies about us in our infancy and the world begins lying about us pretty soon afterward.
Ambrose Bierce

Heaven: A place where the wicked cease from troubling you with talk of their personal affairs, and the good listen with attention while you expound your own.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

Historian: A broad-gauge gossip.
Ambrose Bierce

History: An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

I believe we shall come to care about people less and less. The more people one knows the easier it becomes to replace them. It's one of the curses of London.
Ambrose Bierce

I never said all Democrats were saloonkeepers. What I said was that all saloonkeepers are Democrats.
Ambrose Bierce

Idiot: A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

Immigrant: An unenlightened person who thinks one country better than another.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

Immortality: A toy which people cry for, And on their knees apply for, Dispute, contend and lie for, And if allowed Would be right proud Eternally to die for.
Ambrose Bierce

Impartial: Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from espousing either side of a controversy.
Ambrose Bierce

Impiety: Your irreverence toward my deity.
Ambrose Bierce

Impunity: Wealth.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.
Ambrose Bierce

Incompatibility: In matrimony a similarity of tastes, particularly the taste for domination.
Ambrose Bierce

Infancy: The period of our lives when, according to Wordsworth, Heaven lies about us. The world begins lying about us pretty soon afterward.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

Insurance: An ingenious modern game of chance in which the player is permitted to enjoy the comfortable conviction that he is beating the man who keeps the table.
Ambrose Bierce

Inventor: A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization.
Ambrose Bierce

Irreligion: The principal one of the great faiths of the world.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

It is evident that skepticism, while it makes no actual change in man, always makes him feel better.
Ambrose Bierce

Jealous: Unduly concerned about the preservation of that which can be lost only if not worth keeping.
Ambrose Bierce

Land: A part of the earth's surface, considered as property. The theory that land is property subject to private ownership and control is the foundation of modern society, and is eminently worthy of the superstructure.
Ambrose Bierce

Lawsuit: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.
Ambrose Bierce

Lawyer: One skilled in circumvention of the law.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

Laziness: Unwarranted repose of manner in a person of low degree.
Ambrose Bierce

Learning: The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.
Ambrose Bierce

Liberty: One of Imagination's most precious possessions.
Ambrose Bierce

Life: A spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay.
Ambrose Bierce

Litigant: A person about to give up his skin for the hope of retaining his bones.
Ambrose Bierce

Litigation: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.
Ambrose Bierce

Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

Mad: Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

Marriage: The state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all, two.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

Mayonnaise: One of the sauces which serve the French in place of a state religion.
Ambrose Bierce

Meekness: Uncommon patience in planning a revenge that is worth while.
Ambrose Bierce

Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt.
Ambrose Bierce

Ocean: A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man — who has no gills.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

Optimism: The doctrine, or belief, that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly... an intellectual disorder, yielding to no treatment but death.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

Painting: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather, and exposing them to the critic.
Ambrose Bierce

Patience: A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

Patriotism: Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.
Ambrose Bierce

Peace: In international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

Perseverance: A lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an inglorious success.
Ambrose Bierce

Philosophy: A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

Photograph: A picture painted by the sun without instruction in art.
Ambrose Bierce

Piety: Reverence for the Supreme Being, based upon His supposed resemblance to man.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

Politeness: The most acceptable hypocrisy.
Ambrose Bierce

Positive: Mistaken at the top of one's voice.
Ambrose Bierce

Pray: To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner, confessedly unworthy.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

Prejudice: A vagrant opinion without visible means of support.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

Prescription: A physician's guess at what will best prolong the situation with least harm to the patient.
Ambrose Bierce

Present: That part of eternity dividing the domain of disappointment from the realm of hope.
Ambrose Bierce

Quotation: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

Radicalism: The conservatism of to-morrow injected into the affairs of to-day.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

Religion: A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

Revolution: In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.
Ambrose Bierce

Rum: Generically, fiery liquors that produce madness in total abstainers.
Ambrose Bierce

Sabbath: A weekly festival having its origin in the fact that God made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh.
Ambrose Bierce

Saint: A dead sinner revised and edited.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

Self-Esteem: An erroneous appraisement.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.
Ambrose Bierce

Spring beckons! All things to the call respond; the trees are leaving and cashiers abscond.
Ambrose Bierce

Success: The one unpardonable sin against our fellows.
Ambrose Bierce

Suffrage: Expression of opinion by means of a ballot. The right of suffrage (which is held to be both a privilege and a duty) means, as commonly interpreted, the right to vote for the man of another man's choice, and is highly prized.
Ambrose Bierce

Sweater: Garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly.
Ambrose Bierce

Telephone: An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

The best thing to do with the best things in life is to give them up.
Ambrose Bierce

The covers of this book are too far apart.
Ambrose Bierce

The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.
Ambrose Bierce

The hardest tumble a man can make is to fall over his own bluff.
Ambrose Bierce

The slightest acquaintance with history shows that powerful republics are the most warlike and unscrupulous of nations.
Ambrose Bierce

The small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify we give the name of knowledge.
Ambrose Bierce

There are four kinds of Homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy.
Ambrose Bierce

To apologize is to lay the foundation for a future offense.
Ambrose Bierce

To be positive is to be mistaken at the top of one's voice.
Ambrose Bierce

Trial: A formal inquiry designed to prove and put upon record the blameless characters of judges, advocates and jurors.
Ambrose Bierce

Vote: The instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.
Ambrose Bierce

War is God's way of teaching Americans geography.
Ambrose Bierce

War: A by-product of the arts of peace.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

War: God made war so that Americans would learn geography.
Epigrams
Ambrose Bierce

War: In every human heart slumbers a dream, and the fluttering of its wings is heard... It is the dream of doing valiantly in battle. ...Strike at the rear of an army — its heart is there.
What I Saw of Shiloh
Ambrose Bierce

We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over.
Ambrose Bierce

We submit to the majority because we have to. But we are not compelled to call our attitude of subjection a posture of respect.
Ambrose Bierce

What is a democrat? One who believes that the republicans have ruined the country. What is a republican? One who believes that the democrats would ruin the country.
Ambrose Bierce

What this country needs what every country needs occasionally is a good hard bloody war to revive the vice of patriotism on which its existence as a nation depends.
Ambrose Bierce

When you doubt, abstain.
Ambrose Bierce

Who never doubted, never half believed. Where doubt is, there truth is - it is her shadow.
Ambrose Bierce

Wit: The salt with which the American humorist spoils his intellectual cookery by leaving it out.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

Witticism: A sharp and clever remark, usually quoted and seldom noted; what the Philistine is pleased to call a joke.
Ambrose Bierce

Women in love are less ashamed than men. They have less to be ashamed of.
Ambrose Bierce

Year: A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

Zeal: A certain nervous disorder afflicting the young and inexperienced. A passion that goeth before a sprawl.
The devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce

Action speak louder than French.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

Alibi, like dead fish, cannot stand test of time.
Keeper of the Keys (1932).
Earl Derr Biggers

Ambition good servant, but bad master.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

Answer to riddle of Sphinx not the only answer which is simple but seems to be elusive.
Behind That Curtain (1928).
Earl Derr Biggers

Bad alibi like dead fish – cannot stand test of time.
Keeper of the Keys (1932).
Earl Derr Biggers

Best way to catch rabbit is set trap for rabbit. Not set trap for tiger.
The Black Camel (1929).
Earl Derr Biggers

Biggest mistakes in history made by people who thought they knew it all.
Charlie Chan Carries On (1930).
Earl Derr Biggers

Careless shepherd make excellent dinner for wolf.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

Case very simple – when you know answer.
Keeper of the Keys (1932).
Earl Derr Biggers

Caution very good life insurance.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

Dead men tell no tales. But sometimes they speak in silent language to good detective.
The House Without a Key (1925).
Earl Derr Biggers

Detective without curiosity is like glass eye at keyhole. Useless.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

Discretion sometimes more important than valor.
Charlie Chan Carries On (1930).
Earl Derr Biggers

Do not confuse me with Conan Doyle. I am only humble police detective from Honolulu.
The House Without a Key (1925).
Earl Derr Biggers

Do not wave stick when trying to catch dog.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

Doctor always tell dying man he is fine. Why make last moments gloomy?
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

Even wise fly sometimes walk into parlor of spider.
The Black Camel (1929).
Earl Derr Biggers

Every man must wear out at least one pair of fools shoes.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

Every person has in him what doctor call pressure point. Very sensitive spot.
Charlie Chan Carries On (1930).
Earl Derr Biggers

Evidence sometimes like onion. Peel off layer, find another below.
The Black Camel (1929).
Earl Derr Biggers

Excuse please. Modesty is jewel, but sometimes jewel need polishing.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

Facts like photograph. Must study in proper light.
Charlie Chan Carries On (1930).
Earl Derr Biggers

Facts, like photograph, must be studied in proper light.
Charlie Chan Carries On (1930).
Earl Derr Biggers

First-class detective must also be first-class actor.
Behind That Curtain (1928).
Earl Derr Biggers

Flattery like cologne water, to be smelt, not swallowed.
Keeper of the Keys (1932).
Earl Derr Biggers

Footprints on the sands of time are not made by sitting down.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

Future like strange country – everyone go there at rate of sixty minutes an hour.
Charlie Chan Carries On (1930).
Earl Derr Biggers

Gossip like the measles. Very catching.
Charlie Chan Carries On (1930).
Earl Derr Biggers

Gun in hand mean man in hurry.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

Hasty conclusion like quick exit from theater – sometimes made before finish of play.
Behind That Curtain (1928).
Earl Derr Biggers

He who would search for pearl must dive below.
The House Without a Key (1925).
Earl Derr Biggers

Hole in doughnut at least located in center.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

Humblest pie sometimes prove most nourishing.
The Black Camel (1929).
Earl Derr Biggers

I am like man in dark room – feeling around for the hat.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

I am like postman on holiday – I do not wish to hear the bell.
Charlie Chan Carries On (1930).
Earl Derr Biggers

I am on the track of the truth, which, like the elusive carrot suspended before the donkey, seems always just out of reach.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

I am very humble. Like rabbit listening to big noise in bushes.
Behind That Curtain (1928).
Earl Derr Biggers

I do not envy the oyster. Its life is undramatic.
The Black Camel (1929).
Earl Derr Biggers

I feel like man who chase tornado. When he catch, what he do?
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

I have great fondness for the obvious. It lies so much nearer the truth.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

I read character like open book. But sometimes book is in Chinese.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

I speak of the dead with respect. They cannot answer back.
The Black Camel (1929).
Earl Derr Biggers

If what you say is true, then somebody is lying.
The House Without a Key (1925).
Earl Derr Biggers

Imagination at times a very dangerous tool.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

Impossible sometimes escape through door marked Possible.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

In darkness, all cats are gray.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

It is not the mountain ahead that wears you out – it is the grain of sand in your shoe.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

It is written: The cautious seldom err.
Behind That Curtain (1928).
Earl Derr Biggers

Jewel of great value often kept in shabby box.
Charlie Chan Carries On (1930).
Earl Derr Biggers

Key to many mysteries often found in waste-basket.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

Knavery very active plant, but it bears bitter fruit.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

Large door swing on very small hinge.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

Loose talk, like cork out of bottle, cannot be put back.
Charlie Chan Carries On (1930).
Earl Derr Biggers

Man who is born to be shot need not fear the dagger.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

Man who is chased by tiger cannot stop to pick flowers.
Charlie Chan Carries On (1930).
Earl Derr Biggers

Man who is not strong enough to lift stone must find some other way to move it.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

Man who is too sure of himself ride on bubble.
Charlie Chan Carries On (1930).
Earl Derr Biggers

Man who leaps before he looks land in bad place.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

Man who play with fire must expect hot fingers.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

Man who sits between two chairs may land on floor.
Charlie Chan Carries On (1930).
Earl Derr Biggers

Man who tells too much is like merchant who give samples of all goods – he has nothing left to sell.
Charlie Chan Carries On (1930).
Earl Derr Biggers

Mind, like parachute, only function when open.
Keeper of the Keys (1932).
Earl Derr Biggers

Modest man always get experience without trouble.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

Money, like manure, do no good unless spread.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

Murder, like potato chip, cannot stop at one.
Charlie Chan Carries On (1930).
Earl Derr Biggers

Mystery like fog – sunlight burn it away.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

Never trust woman who wears her heart on her sleeve. Sleeve sometimes very changeable.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

No man is wise enough to advise himself.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

Not all is gold that glitters.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

Nothing travel faster than light – except bad news.
Charlie Chan Carries On (1930).
Earl Derr Biggers

Old habit like old shoe – easy to slip into, hard to kick off.
Charlie Chan Carries On (1930).
Earl Derr Biggers

One look see more than ten hear.
Charlie Chan Carries On (1930).
Earl Derr Biggers

Only very foolish mouse make nest in cat's ear.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

Patience is great virtue. Man without patience like lighthouse without light – no good in fog.
Charlie Chan Carries On (1930).
Earl Derr Biggers

Picture, like house, look different when viewed from various angles.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

Pleasure of one hour offset by pain of one week.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

Policeman's life full of coincidences, but he must not build on them.
Charlie Chan Carries On (1930).
Earl Derr Biggers

Possibilities like dandelions in spring – too numerous to count.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

Prejudice, like crooked picture, hang not straight on wall of truth.
Charlie Chan Carries On (1930).
Earl Derr Biggers

Problem like tangled string – best solved by finding end.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

Question sometimes the best answer.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

Reputation like fine china – once broken, very hard to mend.
Charlie Chan Carries On (1930).
Earl Derr Biggers

Scandal like airplane – once started, difficult to stop.
Charlie Chan Carries On (1930).
Earl Derr Biggers

Search for the truth, like housecleaning, must begin at the bottom.
Charlie Chan Carries On (1930).
Earl Derr Biggers

Secret of success is to try always to improve yourself.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

Situation full of hasty conclusions. Like quick exit from theater – sometimes made before finish of play.
Behind That Curtain (1928).
Earl Derr Biggers

Slippery mind like slippery feet – apt to lead to fall.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

Small keys sometimes open large doors.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

Smooth words sometimes hide rough intentions.
Charlie Chan Carries On (1930).
Earl Derr Biggers

Sometimes darkest hour just before dawn. Also, sometimes darkest hour just before pitch black.
The Black Camel (1929).
Earl Derr Biggers

Suspicion like knife – two edges, one for suspect, one for suspicione.
Charlie Chan Carries On (1930).
Earl Derr Biggers

Theory, like mist on eyeglasses, obscure facts.
The Black Camel (1929).
Earl Derr Biggers

Thief in dark alley work faster than thief in lighted room.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

Thousand candles throw same light as one. But one candle easier to blow out.
Charlie Chan Carries On (1930).
Earl Derr Biggers

Time spent with fishing rod never count in life's ledger.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

To know what a man is, see what he does when he is lost in the woods.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

Tongue often hang man quicker than rope.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

Trouble, like first love, teach many lessons.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

Truth is rare fruit in garden of murder.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

Truth, like football – receive many kicks before reaching goal.
Charlie Chan Carries On (1930).
Earl Derr Biggers

Two eyes see more than one.
Charlie Chan Carries On (1930).
Earl Derr Biggers

Very bad to put foot in mouth – especially when mouth belong to someone else.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

Very difficult to see picture when inside frame.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

Very hard to see back of own head.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

Very slippery fish, the truth. But I have net with small mesh.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

Weights and measures inspector have busy time with human tongue.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

When man have one fact, he fit it with theory. When he have two, he must choose between theories. When he have three – ah, that is time to think.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

When money talks, few are deaf.
Charlie Chan Carries On (1930).
Earl Derr Biggers

When the jig is up, there is no need for additional dancing.
Keeper of the Keys (1932).
Earl Derr Biggers

Wife sometimes object to husband's hobby, especially when hobby is another woman.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

Wise bird does not build nest on shaky limb.
Charlie Chan Carries On (1930).
Earl Derr Biggers

Words are like bullets – once fired, they cannot be recalled.
Charlie Chan Carries On (1930).
Earl Derr Biggers

World full of paths, but not all lead to destination.
The Chinese Parrot (1926).
Earl Derr Biggers

A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.
Often referencing the need to learn from difficult situations, like the curry crisis affecting UK restaurants due to immigration rules.
Karan Bilimoria

Ambition is not a dirty word.
Frequently used to encourage aspiration and drive, particularly among young people and entrepreneurs.
Karan Bilimoria

Diversity drives innovation. When you bring together people with different experiences, perspectives, and backgrounds, you get better ideas and better solutions.
Emphasizing the business and societal value of diversity and inclusion.
Karan Bilimoria

Don't be afraid of failure. Failure is a stepping stone to success. Learn from it, pick yourself up, and move on.
Reflecting his entrepreneurial journey, including Cobra's near-collapse and recovery. Source: Bottled for Business: The Less Gassy Guide to Entrepreneurship.
Karan Bilimoria

Entrepreneurship is about seeing opportunities where others see obstacles.
Defining the entrepreneurial mindset.
Karan Bilimoria

Failure is not the opposite of success; it's part of success.
Karan Bilimoria

Grand business plans are all very well, but nothing beats dipping your toe in the water.
Karan Bilimoria

I believe passionately in the power of entrepreneurship to transform lives and economies.
Highlighting his core belief in entrepreneurship's impact.
Karan Bilimoria

I can only say from my own experience that there is no limit to what any minority can achieve in India. The opportunity is there for everybody.
Karan Bilimoria

If you can dream it, you can do it. But it takes hard work, perseverance, and resilience.
Encouraging ambition coupled with practical effort and grit.
Karan Bilimoria

Immigration has been the lifeblood of this country for centuries, and it remains so today.
Advocating for the positive contribution of immigrants to the UK, often in the context of business and skills.
Karan Bilimoria

In business, as in life, relationships are everything.
Stressing the importance of building trust and connections.
Karan Bilimoria

In reality, it is only a matter of time before the people see that the Brexit emperor has no clothes.
Karan Bilimoria

In spite of my reservations and in spite of being a Eurosceptic, I believe that we should stay in the European Union.
Karan Bilimoria

Pubs are a vital part of British culture and community.
Often stated while discussing the challenges facing the pub industry.
Karan Bilimoria

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.
Often quoting Winston Churchill, reflecting his own philosophy on resilience.
Karan Bilimoria

The partnership between the UK and India is one of the most important relationships in the world for the 21st century.
A frequent theme in his advocacy for stronger UK-India ties in trade, education, and diplomacy.
Karan Bilimoria

The UK and India share deep historical ties, but our future partnership, built on shared values and mutual benefit, holds even greater promise.
Focusing on the forward-looking potential of the bilateral relationship.
Karan Bilimoria

The UK has shot itself in the foot by choosing to leave the European Union in the Brexit referendum.
Karan Bilimoria

This is folly, this is shooting ourselves in the foot, and I just don't understand, it's economic illiteracy.
Karan Bilimoria

We need a long-term industrial strategy that provides certainty for businesses to invest and grow.
Advocating for supportive government policy for business, particularly post-Brexit.
Karan Bilimoria

You have to have a vision, you have to have a dream, but you also have to have a plan to execute it.
Balancing aspiration with practical strategy.
Karan Bilimoria

A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than you love himself.
Josh Billings

A gentleman is one who knows how to play the banjo and doesn't.
Josh Billings

A good way I know to find happiness, is to not bore a hole to fit the plug.
Josh Billings

A jay hasn't got any more principle than a congressman.
Josh Billings

A man is never so ignorant as when he knows all about things he don't understand.
Josh Billings

A puppy plays with every pup he meets, but an old dog has few associates.
Josh Billings

About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment.
Josh Billings

About the only difference between the poor and the rich, is this, the poor suffer misery, while the rich have to enjoy it.
Josh Billings

Adversity has the same effect on a man that severe training has on the pugilist: it reduces him to his fighting weight.
Josh Billings

Advice is like castor oil, easy enough to give but dreadful uneasy to take.
Josh Billings

Always take a good look at what you're about to eat. It's not so important to know what it is, but it's critical to know what it was.
Josh Billings

As a general rule, if you want to get at the truth — hear both sides and believe neither.
Josh Billings

As a general thing, when a woman wears the pants in a family, she has a good right to them.
Josh Billings

As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.
Josh Billings

Be kind to your mother-in-law, but pay for her board at some good hotel.
Josh Billings

Be like a postage stamp. Stick to one thing until you get there.
Josh Billings

Common sense is instinct, and enough of it is genius.
Josh Billings

Common sense is the knack of seeing things as they are and doing things as they ought to be done.
Josh Billings

Confess your sins to the Lord and you will be forgiven; confess them to man and you will be laughed at.
Josh Billings

Consider the postage stamp: its usefulness consists in the ability to stick to one thing till it gets there.
Josh Billings

Don't ever prophesy; for if you prophesy wrong, nobody will forget it; and if you prophesy right, nobody will remember it.
Josh Billings

Don't take the bull by the horns; take him by the tail. Then you can let go when you want to.
Josh Billings

Economy is a savings-bank, into which men drop pennies, and get dollars in return.
Josh Billings

Every man has his follies - and often they are the most interesting thing he has got.
Josh Billings

Few people know how to take a joke. Most know how to take half of it.
Josh Billings

Flattery is like cologne water, to be smelt, not swallowed.
Josh Billings

Genius ain't anything more than elegant common sense.
Josh Billings

Half of the troubles of this life can be traced to saying yes too quickly and not saying no soon enough.
Josh Billings

Half the lies they tell about me ain't true.
Josh Billings

Happiness is like a cat; if you try to coax it, it will avoid you, but if you pay no attention to it, it will rub against your legs.
Josh Billings

Health is like money, we never have a true idea of its value until we lose it.
Josh Billings

Honesty is the rarest wealth anyone can possess, and yet all the honesty in the world ain't lawful tender for a loaf of bread.
Josh Billings

I have lived in this world just long enough to look carefully the second time into things that I am most certain of the first time.
Josh Billings

I have never known a person to live to be one hundred and be remarkable for anything else.
Josh Billings

I haven't got as much money as some folks, but I've got as much impudence as any of them, and that's the next thing to money.
Josh Billings

I honestly believe it is better to know nothing than to know what ain't so.
Josh Billings

I never met a man so ignorant I couldn't learn something from him.
Josh Billings

I think when the full horror of being fifty hits you, you should stay home and have a good cry.
Josh Billings

If a man could have half his wishes, he would double his troubles.
Josh Billings

If a man should happen to reach perfection in this world, he would have to die immediately to enjoy himself.
Josh Billings

If there was no faith there would be no living in this world. We could not even eat hash with any safety.
Josh Billings

If you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there.
Josh Billings

If you ever find happiness by hunting for it, you will find it, as the old woman did her lost spectacles, safe on her own nose all the time.
Josh Billings

Ignorance ain't not knowin' stuff; ignorance is knowin' stuff that AIN'T TRUE.
Josh Billings

In youth we run into difficulties; in old age difficulties run into us.
Josh Billings

It ain't often that a man's reputation outlasts his money.
Josh Billings

It is a very delicate job to forgive a man, without lowering him in his own estimation, and yours too.
Josh Billings

It is better to know less than to know so much that ain't so.
Josh Billings

It is better to know nothing than to know what ain't so.
Josh Billings

It is much easier to repent of sins that we have committed than to repent of those that we intend to commit.
Josh Billings

It is not all bad, this getting old, ripening. After the fruit has got its growth it should juice up and mellow. God forbid I should live long enough to ferment and rot and fall to the ground in a squash.
Josh Billings

It's not only the most difficult thing to know oneself, but the most inconvenient.
Josh Billings

Knowledge is like money: the more he gets, the more he craves.
Josh Billings

Laughter is the sensation of feeling good all over and showing it principally in one place.
Josh Billings

Learning sleeps and snores in libraries, but wisdom is everywhere, wide awake, on tiptoe.
Josh Billings

Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well.
Josh Billings

Life is like a blanket too short. You pull it up and your toes rebel, you yank it down and shivers meander about your shoulder; but cheerful folks manage to draw their knees up and pass a very comfortable night.
Josh Billings

Life is short, but it's long enough to ruin any man who wants to be ruined.
Josh Billings

Love is said to be blind, but I know some fellows in love who can see twice as much in their sweethearts as I do.
Josh Billings

Love looks through a telescope; envy, through a microscope.
Josh Billings

Man is the only animal that blushes—or needs to.
Josh Billings

Man was created a little lower than the angels and has been getting a little lower ever since.
Josh Billings

Marrying for love may be a bit risky, but it is so honest that God can't help but smile on it.
Josh Billings

Men mourn for what they have lost; women for what they ain't got.
Josh Billings

Money is like manure; it does no good till you spread it around.
Josh Billings

Money will buy a pretty good dog, but it won't buy the wag of his tail.
Josh Billings

Most people repent their sins by thanking God they ain't so wicked as their neighbors.
Josh Billings

Most people when they come to you for advice, come to have their own opinions strengthened, not corrected.
Josh Billings

Never work before breakfast; if you have to work before breakfast, get your breakfast first.
Josh Billings

No one can disgrace us but ourselves.
Josh Billings

Old maids sweeten their tea with scandal.
Josh Billings

One of the best temporary cures for pride and affectation is seasickness; a man who wants to vomit never puts on airs.
Josh Billings

One of the greatest victories you can gain over someone is to beat him at politeness.
Josh Billings

One of the rarest things that a man ever does, is to do the best he can.
Josh Billings

Reason often makes mistakes, but conscience never does.
Josh Billings

Remember the poor, it costs nothing.
Josh Billings

Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute.
Josh Billings

Take all the fools out of this world and there wouldn't be any fun living in it, or profit.
Josh Billings

The best medicine I know for rheumatism is to thank the Lord that it ain't gout.
Josh Billings

The best time for you to hold your tongue is the time you feel you must say something or bust.
Josh Billings

The best time to buy an umbrella is when the sun is shining.
Josh Billings

The best way to convince a fool that he is wrong is to let him have his own way.
Josh Billings

The greatest thief this world has ever produced is procrastination, and he is still at large.
Josh Billings

The man whose only pleasure in life is making money, weighs less on the moral scale than an angleworm.
Josh Billings

The road to ruin is always in good repair, and the travellers pay the expense of it.
Josh Billings

The thinner the ice, the more anxious is everyone to see whether it will bear.
Josh Billings

The trouble with people is not that they don't know but that they know so much that ain't so.
Josh Billings

The wheel that squeaks the loudest is the one that gets the grease.
Josh Billings

There are lots of people who mistake their imagination for their memory.
Josh Billings

There are people who are always anticipating trouble, and in this way they manage to enjoy many sorrows that never really happen to them.
Josh Billings

There are some people so addicted to exaggeration that they can't tell the truth without lying.
Josh Billings

There are two things in life for which we are never truly prepared: twins.
Josh Billings

There are two kinds of fools: those who can't change their opinions and those who won't.
Josh Billings

There is no greater evidence of superior intelligence than to be surprised at nothing.
Josh Billings

There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness.
Josh Billings

There is nothing so easy to learn as experience and nothing so hard to apply.
Josh Billings

There's a great power in words, if you don't hitch too many of them together.
Josh Billings

There's a lot of people in this world who spend so much time watching their health that they haven't the time to enjoy it.
Josh Billings

There's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip.
Josh Billings

Threescore years and ten is enough; if a man can't suffer all the misery he wants in that time, he must be numb.
Josh Billings

Time is like money, the less we have of it to spare the further we make it go.
Josh Billings

To bring up a child in the way he should go, travel that way yourself once in a while.
Josh Billings

True humor springs not more from the head than from the heart.
Josh Billings

What little I do know, I hope I am certain of.
Josh Billings

When a man comes to me for advice, I find out the kind of advice he wants, and I give it to him.
Josh Billings

When you see a man with a great deal of religion displayed in his shop window, you may depend upon it, he keeps a very small stock of it within.
Josh Billings

Why is it that those who have the least to do are always the busiest?
Josh Billings

Wisdom has never made a bigot, but learning has.
Josh Billings

Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which, before their union, were not perceived to have any relation.
Josh Billings

Woman's influence is powerful, especially when she wants something.
Josh Billings

Words are often seen hunting for an idea, but ideas are never seen hunting for words.
Josh Billings

You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool mom.
Josh Billings

You'd better not know so much, than to know so many things that ain't so.
Josh Billings

Bird - See Charlie Parker

Any youth that makes security his main goal shackles himself at the very start of life’s race.
Clarence Birdseye

By freezing perishable foods in a manner that would retain their original freshness and flavor, I saw an opportunity to provide consumers with high-quality products year-round.
This summarizes the core motivation and business proposition behind his invention, frequently cited in articles and histories about him. It reflects the essence of his numerous patents and business plans.
Clarence Birdseye

Change is the very essence of American life.
Clarence Birdseye

Develop a questioning mind and don’t be afraid to take a chance! Develop a questioning mind – don’t be afraid to take a chance.
Clarence Birdseye

Enthusiasm and hard work are… indispensable ingredients of achievement.
Clarence Birdseye

Go around asking a lot of damfool questions and taking chances. Only through curiosity can we discover opportunities, and only by gambling can we take advantage of them.
Clarence Birdseye

I am best described as just a guy with a very large bump of curiosity and a gambling instinct.
Clarence Birdseye

I am a jack-of-all-trades without any one job or profession.
Clarence Birdseye

I am just as much interested in the manufacture of chewing gum as of steel.
Clarence Birdseye

I am never bored, because I am always prying into something or other which fascinates me.
Clarence Birdseye

Life has been an exciting adventure since my earliest remembrance, and today at 64, I am having just as much fun as I ever did.
Clarence Birdseye

My curiosity led me to another small gold mine...
Clarence Birdseye

Only through curiosity can we discover opportunities, and only through gambling can we take advantage of them.
Clarence Birdseye

Quality control must be relentless.
Attributed to him regarding the operation of his company, General Seafoods Corporation (later Birdseye division of General Foods). He understood that maintaining the quality and safety of frozen food was critical to consumer acceptance and the success of his business.
Clarence Birdseye

Some pious people say gambling is sinful, but actually it has always been and still is responsible for all progress, both spiritual and material.
Clarence Birdseye

The faster you freeze, the better the quality.
This is a fundamental principle of his flash-freezing technology. While likely paraphrased, it directly reflects the scientific basis of his work and was a key tenet he emphasized in his technical descriptions and patent applications (e.g., US Patent #1,773,079).
Clarence Birdseye

The idea was not brand-new – few ideas are – but no one had every worked it out on what we considered a practical basis.
Clarence Birdseye

There are at least 20 times as many opportunities as there were when I was 21.
Clarence Birdseye

There are some people… who say opportunity went out with the horse and buggy. That is rubbish.
Clarence Birdseye

This process locks in the flavor and freshness at the peak of perfection.
Paraphrasing of how he described the benefit of his flash-freezing process to consumers and investors. It captures the key selling point he championed.
Clarence Birdseye

Today anything which is 20 years old is, or should be, apt to be obsolete.
Clarence Birdseye

Worthwhile success is impossible in a 40-hour week.
Clarence Birdseye

Nathan Birnbaum - See George Burns

A government must not waver once it has chosen its course. It must not look to the left or right but go forward.
Otto von Bismarck

A great war leaves the country with three armies: an army of cripples, an army of mourners, and an army of thieves.
On the long-term, corrosive consequences of major warfare.
Otto von Bismarck

A journalist is a person who has mistaken their calling.
Otto von Bismarck

A statesman... must wait until he hears the steps of God sounding through events, then leap up and grasp the hem of His garment.
Otto von Bismarck

All treaties between great states cease to be binding when they come in conflict with the struggle for existence.
Otto von Bismarck

An appeal to fear never finds an echo in German hearts.
Otto von Bismarck

Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war.
Otto von Bismarck

Be polite; write diplomatically; even in a declaration of war one observes the rules of politeness.
Otto von Bismarck

Fools learn from experience; I prefer to learn from the experience of others.
Also rendered as: Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.
Otto von Bismarck

God has a special providence for fools, drunkards, and the United States of America.
Otto von Bismarck

History is simply a piece of paper covered with print: the main thing is to make history, not to write it.
Otto von Bismarck

I am of the opinion that the idea of the Polish nation is stronger than its material resources.
Reflecting on the persistent national identity of Poland despite its partition and lack of statehood.
Otto von Bismarck

I do not regard the procuring of peace as a matter in which we should play the role of arbiter between different opinions ... more that of an honest broker who really wants to press the business forward.
Otto von Bismarck

I have seen three emperors in their nakedness, and the sight was not inspiring.
Otto von Bismarck

Laws are like sausages. It's better not to see them being made.
Often cited to describe the messy, uncompromising nature of political negotiation and legislation. The authenticity of this precise phrasing is debated, but it perfectly captures his cynical view of politics.
Otto von Bismarck

Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied.
A classic expression of political cynicism and the hidden nature of diplomatic maneuverings.
Otto von Bismarck

No civilization other than that which is Christian, is worth seeking or possessing.
Otto von Bismarck

Not through speeches and majority decisions will the great questions of the day be decided—that was the great mistake of 1848 and 1849—but by iron and blood.
His most famous quote, from an 1862 speech, outlining his pragmatic and forceful method for unifying Germany.
Otto von Bismarck

People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war, or before an election.
A cynical observation on human nature in high-pressure situations.
Otto von Bismarck

Politics is not an exact science.
Otto von Bismarck

Politics is the art of the next best.
Otto von Bismarck

Politics is the art of the possible.
Also phrased as: the attainable — the art of the next best.
Otto von Bismarck

Politics ruins the character.
Otto von Bismarck

The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood.
Otto von Bismarck

The main thing is to make history, not to write it.
Emphasizing action over theory and the primacy of statecraft over historiography.
Otto von Bismarck

The political situation is not bad if you have three solutions for it. If you have only one or two, it's dangerous. If you have none at all, you are lost.
Demonstrating his pragmatic approach to statecraft, always valuing flexibility and multiple options.
Otto von Bismarck

The secret of politics? Make a good treaty with Russia.
Otto von Bismarck

The special providence for fools, drunkards, and the United States of America.
Often misquoted as: God has a special providence for fools, drunkards, and the United States. His actual sentiment was that the US was uniquely protected by geographic isolation and the balance of power in Europe.
Otto von Bismarck

The statesman's task is to hear God's footsteps marching through history, and to try to catch on to His coattails as He marches by.
On the difficulty of leadership, which involves sensing and riding the wave of larger historical forces rather than creating them from nothing.
Otto von Bismarck

There is a Providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children and the United States of America.
Otto von Bismarck

There is no such thing as absolute truth; there are only facts and interpretations.
A philosophical statement reflecting his realist worldview.
Otto von Bismarck

To retain respect for sausages and laws, one must not watch them in the making.
Otto von Bismarck

When a man says he approves of something in principle, it means he hasn't the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice.
Otto von Bismarck

When you say that you agree to a thing in principle, you mean that you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice.
A cynical but often accurate view of diplomatic language and political promises.
Otto von Bismarck

When you want to fool the world, tell the truth.
Otto von Bismarck

Whoever speaks of Europe is wrong: it is a geographical expression.
Otto von Bismarck

With a gentleman I am always a gentleman and a half, and with a fraud I try to be a fraud and a half.
Summarizing his flexible and often ruthless diplomatic strategy, adapting his methods to his opponent.
Otto von Bismarck

You can do anything with bayonets except sit on them.
Meaning that military force is excellent for conquest but useless for long-term, stable governance.
Otto von Bismarck

Eric Arthur Blair - See George Orwell

A good manager is a leader who inspires, not a ruler who controls.
Gerard M. Blair

A good meeting is a productive meeting, and a productive meeting is structured.
Gerard M. Blair

A meeting is the ultimate test of a manager's ability to lead and facilitate.
Gerard M. Blair

Delegation is not about dumping tasks; it is about empowering your team.
Gerard M. Blair

Effective communication is the bridge between confusion and clarity.
Gerard M. Blair

For the new manager, the problem is not a lack of authority but a lack of experience in using it.
Gerard M. Blair

Leadership is not about being in charge. It is about taking care of those in your charge.
Gerard M. Blair

Meetings are the crucible of management; they reveal the quality of a manager's preparation, communication, and leadership.
Gerard M. Blair

People don't resist change; they resist being changed.
Gerard M. Blair

The ability to delegate is one of the key measures of a manager's competence.
Gerard M. Blair

The first steps to becoming a really great manager are simply common sense; but common sense is not very common.
Gerard M. Blair

The function of a good manager is to create an environment in which people can do their best work.
Gerard M. Blair

The goal of a manager is to get things done through other people, not in spite of them.
Gerard M. Blair

The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said.
Gerard M. Blair

The real power of a manager is not in commanding, but in enabling others to succeed.
Gerard M. Blair

You were promoted because you were good at your job; now you must be good at helping others be good at theirs.
Gerard M. Blair

A demand for choice, for quality, for standards, is in fact a progressive demand.
Emphasizing that modern public service reform and consumer choice were not conservative ideas but central to his vision of a modern, centre-left government.
Tony Blair

A simple way to take measure of a country is to look at how many want in and how many want out.
Tony Blair

And just as the terrorist seeks to divide humanity in hate, so we have to unify it around an idea. And that idea is liberty.
Tony Blair

Anywhere, anytime ordinary people are given the chance to choose, the choice is the same: freedom, not tyranny; democracy, not dictatorship; the rule of law, not the rule of the secret police.
Tony Blair

Be a doer and not a critic.
Tony Blair

But as I always say to people I'm essentially a public service person.
Tony Blair

But I am an optimist about Britain; and the difference between an optimist and a pessimist is not that the optimist believes the world is wonderful and the pessimist believes it's beset by challenges; the difference is the pessimist believes we will be defeated by them; the optimist thinks the challenges can be overcome.
Tony Blair

But I ask you to accept one thing. Hand on heart, I did what I thought was right.
From his final speech to the Labour Party Conference in 2006, defending his most controversial decision—the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Tony Blair

But in terms of how people live together, how we minimize the prospects of conflict and maximize the prospects of peace, the place of religion in our society today is essential.
Tony Blair

But the world is ever more interdependent. Stock markets and economies rise and fall together. Confidence is the key to prosperity. Insecurity spreads like contagion. So people crave stability and order.
Tony Blair

By nature, I am a unifier. I am a builder of consensus. I don't believe in sloppy compromise. But I do believe in bringing people together.
Tony Blair

Change is the DNA of the Labour Party. We are at our best when we are future-facing.
A reflection on his project to modernize the Labour Party, moving it toward the centre and rebranding it as New Labour.
Tony Blair

Choice dependent on wealth; those are the Tory words.
Tony Blair

Conflict is not inevitable, but disarmament is... everyone now accepts that if there is a default by Saddam the international community must act to enforce its will.
Tony Blair

Don't ever apologize for being the party of high aspirations and ambitions for people.
Encouraging the Labour Party to aim for government and not be content as a party of perpetual protest.
Tony Blair

Education is the best economic policy there is.
Tony Blair

Education, education, education.
Arguably his most famous soundbite. This was the top three priorities for his first government, announced at the 1996 Labour Party Conference.
Tony Blair

Every so often, I feel I should graduate to classical music, properly. But the truth is, I'm more likely to listen to rock music.
Tony Blair

For 18 years—18 long years—my party has been in opposition. It could only say, it could not do. Today we are charged with the deep responsibility of government. Today, enough of talking—it is time now to do.
From his speech on the steps of 10 Downing Street after winning the 1997 General Election.
Tony Blair

Genetic modification has many different areas, for example in medicine, and Britain is at the leading edge of this new technology. I don't know, but people tell me, it could indeed by the leading science of the 21st century. All I say to people is: Just keep an open mind and let us proceed according to genuine scientific evidence.
Tony Blair

God will be my judge.
On the decision to go to war in Iraq. A deeply personal and defensive statement made during a 2015 television interview when pressed on the consequences of the Iraq War.
Tony Blair

Hand on heart, this is the will of the British people.
Often misquoted. He actually said, I feel the hand of history upon our shoulder regarding the Good Friday Agreement. The hand on heart quote is commonly conflated with his later Iraq statements.
Tony Blair

However much I dislike the idea of abortion, you should not criminalize a woman who, in very difficult circumstances, makes that choice.
Tony Blair

Human progress has never been shaped by commentators, complainers or cynics.
Tony Blair

I am a pretty straight sort of guy.
Tony Blair

I believe Mrs. Thatcher's emphasis on enterprise was right.
Tony Blair

I can only go one way. I've not got a reverse gear.
Tony Blair

I cannot think of any circumstances in which a government can go to war without the support of parliament.
Tony Blair

I didn't come into politics to change the Labour Party. I came into politics to change the country.
Tony Blair

I feel like everyone else in this country today. I am utterly devastated.
Tony Blair

I happen to think it's the politics that makes you electable, but the reason for that is politicians sometimes talk about electability as if it's just a matter of conning the public. Actually, it's a matter of persuading the public, and in my experience, usually, the public gets it right.
Tony Blair

I have long believed this interdependence defines the new world we live in.
Tony Blair

I learnt a lot in government, and I've learnt a lot since leaving government. The kind of journey of being in government is that you start at your most popular and least capable, and you end at your most capable and least popular.
Tony Blair

I may find Saddam Hussein's regime abhorrent - any normal person would - but the survival of it is in his hands.
Tony Blair

I mean, I went to a church school when I was younger and imbibed a certain amount of religion then but it was really in university that I got interested in religion and politics at the same time. I don't think as if it were one moment of conversion but my spiritual journey really began then.
Tony Blair

I only know what I believe.
A response to journalist Jeremy Paxman's repeated questioning on BBC's Newsnight about his core beliefs, which became symbolic of a style seen as evasive by critics and conviction-led by supporters.
Tony Blair

I say to the Taliban: surrender the terrorists; or surrender power. It's your choice.
Tony Blair

I think the journey for a politician goes from wanting to please all the people all the time, to a political leader that realises in the end his responsibility is to decide. And when he decides, he divides.
Tony Blair

I would've loved to have been in a band, but sadly I just wasn't good enough.
Tony Blair

If you are trying to take a difficult decision and you're weighing up the pros and cons, you have frank conversations. Everybody knows this in their walk of life.
Tony Blair

In April 1991, after the Gulf war, Iraq was given 15 days to provide a full and final declaration of all its WMD.
Tony Blair

In Downing Street they called me Boss. Civil servants would always call me Prime Minister.
Tony Blair

In government you carry each hope; each disillusion. And in politics it's always about the next challenge.
Tony Blair

In no relationship at the top of any walk of life is it always easy, least of all in politics which matters so much and which is conducted in such a piercing spotlight.
Tony Blair

In retrospect, the Millennium marked only a moment in time. It was the events of September 11 that marked a turning point in history, where we confront the dangers of the future and assess the choices facing humankind.
Tony Blair

It is not an arrogant government that chooses priorities, it's an irresponsible government that fails to choose.
Tony Blair

Judge me on my record. We've had the fastest growing economy of any major economy... we've got the lowest inflation... the lowest mortgage rates... the lowest unemployment...
A typical line from his 2005 election campaign, challenging critics to look at his government's economic record rather than the controversy over Iraq.
Tony Blair

Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family.
A statement on the importance of education, made at the World Bank Conference in 2005.
Tony Blair

Labour is the party of law and order in Britain today. Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime.
Tony Blair

Leaders lead but in the end it's the people who deliver.
Tony Blair

Let it be said that no one died of ignorance. Let it be said that no life was wasted because the world was too slow to act.
On the moral imperative for international intervention, often used in the context of his efforts in Sierra Leone and Kosovo.
Tony Blair

Look, I am very competitive.
Tony Blair

Mine is the first generation able to contemplate the possibility that we may live our entire lives without going to war or sending our children to war.
Tony Blair

My dad was a militant atheist, or is a militant atheist. My mum was sort of bought up in a religious family because she was a Protestant from Ireland but wasn't especially religious.
Tony Blair

My faith foundation works to bring about a greater respect and understanding between different faiths. We basically work with six popular religions in the world which are the three Abrahamic religions, Hinduism and Buddhism and Sikhism.
Tony Blair

My office is on Twitter. I don't tweet myself - at least, not intentionally, but I probably should do.
Tony Blair

My project will be complete when the Labour Party learns to love Peter Mandelson.
A wry and famous comment about the controversial but pivotal architect of the New Labour brand, highlighting the internal party tensions his modernization caused.
Tony Blair

My teachers used to call me a failure.
Tony Blair

My view is that you still, in order to win from the Labour perspective, have to have a strong alliance with business as well as the unions. You have got to be very much in the centre ground on things like public sector reform.
Tony Blair

New Labour, new danger.
Ironically, this was a Conservative Party attack slogan against Blair. He and his team co-opted and subverted it, turning New Labour into a powerful brand of their own.
Tony Blair

Once his wife goes to sleep it takes a minor nuclear explosion to wake her.
Tony Blair

Our manifesto is a manifesto of ideas, not of old ideology. It is a manifesto for the future, not a tribute to the past.
Summarizing the core message of the 1997 New Labour election campaign.
Tony Blair

Our new world rests on order. The danger is disorder. And in today's world, it can now spread like contagion.
Tony Blair

People know where I stand in the Labour party and what I believe in.
Tony Blair

Politics is about listening and it's about leading.
Tony Blair

Politics is not a game. It is about the future of our country and the future of your families.
A line from his 1997 campaign, aiming to present Labour as a serious, responsible party ready for government.
Tony Blair

Power without principle is barren, but principle without power is futile. This is a party of government, and I will lead it as a party of government.
Tony Blair

So actually I only got a mobile phone the day after I left being Prime Minister.
Tony Blair

So now it is up to you. You take my advice. You don't take it. You take it. The country can only go in one of two directions. Either forward with new Labour. Or back to the Conservatives.
A classic line from his 1997 election campaign, presenting a simple, binary choice to the electorate.
Tony Blair

Sometimes it is better to lose and do the right thing than to win and do the wrong thing.
Tony Blair

The art of leadership is saying no, not saying yes. It is very easy to say yes.
On the difficult decisions required of a Prime Minister.
Tony Blair

The first rule in politics is that there are no rules, at least not in the sense of inevitable defeats or inevitable victories. If you have the right policy and the right strategy, you always have a chance of winning. Without them, you can lose no matter how certain the victory seems.
Tony Blair

The great advantage of the Lib Dems is precisely that no-one knows what they stand for.
Tony Blair

The public think the politicians don't know or care about their lives; and the politicians feel misunderstood.
Tony Blair

The purpose of terrorism lies not just in the violent act itself. It is in producing terror. It sets out to inflame, to divide, to produce consequences which they then use to justify further terror.
Tony Blair

The spread of freedom is the best security for the free.
Tony Blair

The threat from Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction - chemical, biological, potentially nuclear weapons capability - that threat is real.
Tony Blair

The threat today is not that of the 1930s. It's not big powers going to war with each other. The ravages which fundamentalist political ideology inflicted on the 20th century are memories. The Cold war is over. Europe is at peace, if not always diplomatically.
Tony Blair

There is no meeting of minds, no point of understanding with such terror. Just a choice: Defeat it or be defeated by it. And defeat it we must.
Tony Blair

There is no way you're going to have an event like 9/11 and expect things to remain the same. They killed 3,000 people in New York on that day, and if they could have they would've killed 300,000.
Tony Blair

This is not a battle between the United States of America and terrorism, but between the free and democratic world and terrorism.
Tony Blair

Those who wish to cause religious conflict are small in number but often manage to dominate the headline.
Tony Blair

Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime.
A hugely influential soundbite, coined by Blair and his advisor Gordon Brown in 1993. It signaled a break from Labour's traditional soft-left approach to law and order and was key to making the party electable.
Tony Blair

Uphold the rule of law. No tolerance of crime. But also no tolerance of the bad housing, the lack of opportunity, the hopelessness that causes it.
Elaborating on his famous tough on crime mantra.
Tony Blair

Values unrelated to modern reality are not just electorally hopeless, the values themselves become devalued. They have no purchase on the real world.
Tony Blair

Very well, I lead it.
His immediate and confident response to Queen Elizabeth II's traditional question to a new Prime Minister: Have you been asked to form a government?
Tony Blair

We are not the people's party. We are the people.
A rhetorical flourish from his 2004 Labour Party Conference speech.
Tony Blair

We, therefore, here in Britain stand shoulder to shoulder with our American friends in this hour of tragedy, and we, like them, will not rest until this evil is driven from our world.
Tony Blair

What people should understand is that I adore the Labour party.
Tony Blair

Whatever the dangers of the action we take, the dangers of inaction are far, far greater.
Tony Blair

When Europe and America stand together the world is a better and more prosperous place.
Tony Blair

Yes, I feel I've got something to say. If people want to listen, that's great, and if they don't, that's their choice.
Tony Blair

You are the future. Now stop being angry and get a life.
A controversial piece of advice he claimed to give to young people frustrated with politics, which was criticized for being condescending.
Tony Blair

You know, one of the things I've learnt since coming out of office is how much easier it is to give the advice than take the decision. I mean, you know, it's tough.
Tony Blair

You know, the media and politicians are always gonna be in a bit of tension with one another and probably most of the time that's healthy and indeed even creative. But it's where - it's really when news organisations are used as kind of instruments of politics that it gets tricky.
Tony Blair

You only require two things in life: your sanity and your wife.
Tony Blair

All the high-tone, big-time folks would say, Isn't it wonderful how these untrained, primitive musicians can pick up all the latest songs instantly without being able to read music?
Eubie Blake

Be grateful for luck. Pay the thunder no mind - listen to the birds. And don't hate nobody.
Eubie Blake

I don't drink. And I'm too old for women anymore. They don't want me, I want them.
Eubie Blake

I don't have any bad habits. They might be bad habits for other people, but they're all right for me.
Eubie Blake

I wouldn't bet on a horse unless he came up to my house and told me to himself.
Eubie Blake

I'm not feeling my age. I'm not 100, I'm 99 plus 1.
Eubie Blake

If I'd known I was gonna live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.
On reaching the supposed age of 100, which many people believed to be 96.
Eubie Blake

It's not the age, it's the mileage.
Eubie Blake

Let's call it a day.
His reported last words.
Eubie Blake

My life is music, and in some way, I've always been able to make a living at it. That's a blessing.
Eubie Blake

Never trust anyone who wants what you've got. Friend or no, envy is an overwhelming emotion.
Eubie Blake

Ragtime is jazz played with a sense of humor.
Eubie Blake

The key to longevity is to keep breathing.
Eubie Blake

You can stay young as long as you learn.
Eubie Blake

You learn to play the piano all your life, and then you die and you're just getting started.
Eubie Blake

And did those feet in ancient time walk upon England's mountains green?
William Blake

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
William Blake

If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear as it is, infinite.
William Blake

Love seeketh only Self to please,
To bind another to its delight,
Joys in another's loss of ease,
And builds a Hell in Heaven's despite.
William Blake

Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair.
William Blake

My mother groan'd, my father wept,
Into the dangerous world I leapt;
Helpless, naked, piping loud,
Like a fiend hid in a cloud.
William Blake

No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings.
William Blake

The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.
William Blake

Congratulations offer more potential than cash. The amount of available cash is limited, but managers have an unlimited supply of congratulations. It's important to pay people fairly, but managers also should heap on congratulations and feed people's souls.
Kenneth Blanchard

Everyone is a potential winner. Some people are disguised as losers, don't let their appearances fool you.
Kenneth Blanchard

To resist the frigidity of old age, one must combine the body, the mind, and the heart. And to keep these in parallel vigor one must exercise, study, and love.
Alan Bleasdale

Tania Blixen - See Isak Dinesen

Baroness Karen Christenze von Blixen-Finecke - See Isak Dinesen

The one thing computers have done is let us make bigger mistakes. We have to be careful not to depend on our machines.
Michael Bloomberg

If you are not yourself, if you surrender your personality, you have nothing left to give the world. You have no pleasure, no use, nothing which will attract and charm me, for by the suppression of your individuality, you lose your distinctive character.
Edward Wilmot Blyden

Ethel Mae Blyth (or Blythe) - See Ethel Barrymore

John Sidney Blyth (or Blythe) - See John Barrymore

William Jefferson Blythe III - See Bill Clinton

Bobby - See Robert F. Kennedy

Body - See Jesse Ventura

A man content to go to heaven alone will never go to heaven.
Boethius

For in all adversity of fortune the worst sort of misery is to have been happy.
Boethius

If there is a God, whence proceed so many evils? If there is no God, whence cometh any good?
Boethius

Nothing is miserable unless you think it is so.
Boethius

Who would give a law to lovers? Love is unto itself a higher law.
Boethius

I should never have switched from Scotch to Martinis.
Humphrey Bogart

When a dog bites a man, that isn't news. It often happens. But if a man bites a dog, that is news.
John B. Bogart

A triviality is a statement whose opposite is false. However, a great truth is a statement whose opposite may well be another great truth.
Niels Bohr

Not for nothing is their motto TGIF - Thank God It's Friday. They live for the weekends, when they can go do what they really want to do.
Richard Nelson Bolles

If a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared legally dead.
Erma Bombeck

Laughter rises out of tragedy, when you need it the most, and rewards you for your courage.
Erma Bombeck

The only reason I would take up jogging is so that I could hear heavy breathing again.
Erma Bombeck

When you look like your passport photo, it's time to go home.
Erma Bombeck

A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon.
Napoléon Bonaparte

He who fears being conquered is certain of defeat.
Napoléon Bonaparte

Josephine...
Napoléon Bonaparte

There is only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous.
Napoléon Bonaparte

This record is not tainted at all. At all. Period.
Spoken after breaking Hank Aaron's Major League Baseball all-time home-run record with his 756th career homer amid rampant speculation that he has used steroids.
Barry Bonds

Doing the things we do now and doing them better, cheaper and faster will take us so far. But it will not take us far enough. We're going to have to do new things in new ways.
Peter Bonfield

The big danger in mega-mergers is that they are seen as a mating of dinosaurs.
Peter Bonfield

Unhappiness is best defined as the difference between our talents and our expectations.
Edward de Bono

Do I believe in giving up? No, I don't.
David Boreanaz

A dress that zips up the back will bring a husband and wife together.
James Boren

Bureaucracy is the epoxy that greases the wheels of progress.
James Boren

Guidelines for bureaucrats: (1) When in charge, ponder. (2) When in trouble, delegate. (3) When in doubt, mumble.
James Boren

I got the bill for my surgery. Now I know what those doctors were wearing masks for.
James Boren

I have what it takes to take what you've got.
James Boren

It is hard to look up to a leader who keeps his ear to the ground.
James Boren

That favourite subject, Myself.
James Boswell

What poor education I have received has been gained in the University of Life.
Horatio Bottomley

I am about to - or I am going to - die: either expression is correct.
Dominique Bouhours

Experience isn't interesting until it begins to repeat itself - in fact, till it does that, it hardly is experience.
Elizabeth Bowen

Jealousy is no more than feeling alone against smiling enemies.
Elizabeth Bowen

Nobody speaks the truth when there's something they must have.
Elizabeth Bowen

Start with your own money and value your intuition. It's all about endurance in the beginning. Your dream and passion to succeed must be stronger than your fear of failure.
Terri Bowersock

Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing that we know about living.
Omar Bradley

The way to win an atomic war is to make certain it never starts.
Omar Bradley

Ah, that tastes nice. Thank you.
Johannes Brahms

Those who won our independence ... believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty.
Louis Brandeis

Growth does not always lead a business to build on success. All too often it converts a highly successful business into a mediocre large business.
Richard Branson

I believe in benevolent dictatorships, provided I am the dictator.
Richard Branson

In a restless, creative business with an emphasis on experiment and development, ideas are the lifeblood.
Richard Branson

No one has ever accused us of lagging behind. In fact, I am willing to turn an entire company upside down if it's time to do that. We're in perpetual evolution.
Richard Branson

The kinds of people we employ are not afraid of taking risks. If someone mucks up, they don't get a bollocking from me. They know they've mucked up and they redouble their efforts.
Richard Branson

We spend most of our lives working. So why do so few people have a good time doing it?
Richard Branson

The only real failure is giving up.
Scooter Braun

Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft ... and the only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor.
Wernher von Braun

The finest plans are always ruined by the littleness of those who ought to carry them out, for the Emperor can actually do nothing.
Bertolt Brecht

Sarah Breedlove - See C. J. Walker

The fence around a cemetery is foolish, for those inside can't come out and those outside don't want to get in.
Arthur Brisbane

It's easy to make a buck. It's a lot tougher to make a difference.
Tom Brokaw

You are educated. Your certification is in your degree. You may think of it as the ticket to the good life. Let me ask you to think of an alternative. Think of it as your ticket to change the world.
Tom Brokaw

Lev Davidovich Bronstein - See Leon Trotsky

Oh, I am not going to die, am I? He will not separate us, we have been so happy.
Charlotte Brontë

No coward soul is mine, no trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere; I see heaven's glories shine, and faith shines equal, arming me from fear.
Emily Brontë

A kiss makes the heart young again and wipes out the years.
Rupert Brooke

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England.
Rupert Brooke

If there's no point, then there's no point giving up.
Charlie Brooker

I am 46, and have been for some time past.
Anita Brookner

In real life, of course, it is the hare who wins. Every time. Look around you. And in any case it is my contention that Aesop was writing for the tortoise market ... Hares have no time to read. They are too busy winning the game.
Anita Brookner

Any pitcher who might throw at me should know I'm not giving up my day job or trying to get anyone else's job. I just can't think of anything cooler than being one of the boys of summer!
Garth Brooks

Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers; pray for powers equal to your tasks.
Phillips Brooks

Listening, not imitation, may be the sincerest form of flattery.
Joyce Brothers

The best proof of love is trust.
Joyce Brothers

Everybody favours free speech in the slack moments when no axes are being ground.
Heywood Broun

Most British statesmen have either drunk too much or womanised too much. I never fell into the second category.
George Brown

They should never have put me with that woman. ... She was just a sort of bigoted woman who said she used to be Labour.
Commenting about a voter he met while campaigning for the British general election.
Gordon Brown

Sometimes the heart sees what is invisible to the eye.
H. Jackson Brown Jr.

Good judgment comes from experience, and often experience comes from bad judgment.
Rita Brown

How does one keep from growing old inside? Surely only in community. The only way to make friends with time is to stay friends with people? Taking community seriously not only gives us the companionship we need, it also relieves us of the notion that we are indispensable.
Robert McAfee Brown

There comes a time when silence is betrayal.
Robert McAfee Brown

I know that upon 4th of July, our 4th of July orators talk of Liberty, while three million of their own country men are groaning in abject Slavery. This is called the land of the free and the home of the brave; it is called the asylum of the oppressed; and some have been foolish enough to call it the Cradle of Liberty. If it is the cradle of liberty, they have rocked the child to death. It is dead long since, and yet we talk about democracy and republicanism, while one-sixth of our countrymen are clanking their chains upon the very soil which our fathers moistened with their blood.
William Wells Brown

He is rich who hath enough to be charitable.
Thomas Browne

We all labour against our own cure, for death is the cure of all diseases.
Thomas Browne

Beautiful.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love's sake only.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

A minute's success pays the failure of years.
Robert Browning

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?
Robert Browning

Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be.
Robert Browning

Like dogs in a wheel, birds in a cage, or squirrels in a chain, ambitious men still climb and climb, with great labor, and incessant anxiety, but never reach the top.
Robert Browning

Oh, to be in England now that April's there.
Robert Browning

Take away love and our earth is a tomb.
Robert Browning

The shortest and the best way to make your fortune is to let people see clearly that it is in their interests to promote yours.
Jean de La Bruyère

We should keep silent about those in power; to speak well of them almost implies flattery; to speak ill of them while they are alive is dangerous, and when they are dead is cowardly.
Jean de La Bruyère

Whereas logic is the art of demonstrating truth, eloquence is the gift of winning over people's hearts and minds so that you may inspire them and persuade them in whatever way you choose.
Jean de La Bruyère

The error of youth is to believe that intelligence is a substitute for experience, while the error of age is to believe that experience is a substitute for intelligence.
Lyman Bryson

A person cannot approach the divine by reaching beyond the human. To become human, is what this individual person, has been created for.
Martin Buber

An animal's eyes have the power to speak a great language.
Martin Buber

I do, indeed, close my door at times and surrender myself to a book, but only because I can open the door again and see a human face looking at me.
Martin Buber

There are three principle in a man's being and life: The principle of thought, the principle of speech, and the principle of action. The origin of all conflict between me and my fellow-men is that I do not say what I mean and I don't do what I say.
Martin Buber

There is enough in the world for everyone's need, but not for everyone's greed.
Frank Buchman

Once the what is decided the how always follows. We must not make the how an excuse for not facing and accepting the what.
Pearl S. Buck

Order is the shape upon which beauty depends.
Pearl S. Buck

Our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is the way that it cares for its helpless members.
Pearl S. Buck

Perhaps one has to be very old before one learns to be amused rather than shocked.
Pearl S. Buck

The secret of joy in work is contained in one word - excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.
Pearl S. Buck

The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible - and achieve it, generation after generation.
Pearl S. Buck

We should so provide for old age that it may have no urgent wants of this world to absorb it from meditation on the next. It is awful to see the lean hands of dotage making a coffer of the grave.
Pearl S. Buck

You can judge your age by the amount of pain you feel when you come in contact with a new idea.
Pearl S. Buck

Bucky - See Buckminster Fuller

Business is all about putting out money today to get a whole lot back later.
Warren Buffett

I don't pay attention to what the stock does. If the business does well, the stock eventually follows.
Warren Buffett

I've learned the perimeter of my circle of confidence.
Warren Buffett

Managerial intellect wilted in competition with managerial adrenaline. The thrill of the chase blinded pursuers to the consequences of the chase.
Warren Buffett

My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress.
Op-ed from the New York Times on Monday, August 15, 2011.
Warren Buffett

Of one thing be certain: if a CEO is enthused about a particularly foolish acquisition, both his internal staff and his outside advisors will come up with whatever projections are needed to justify his stance. Only in fairy tales are emperors told that they are naked.
Warren Buffett

One's objective should be to get it right, get it quick, get it out, and get it over ... your problem won't improve with age.
Warren Buffett

Our favorite holding period is forever.
Warren Buffett

Take Wrigley's Chewing Gum. I don't think the Internet is going to change how people chew gum.
Warren Buffett

The attitude of disrespect that many executives have today for accurate reporting is a business disgrace. And auditors ... have done little on the positive side. Though auditors should regard the investing public as their client, they tend to kowtow instead to the managers who choose them and dole out their pay.
Warren Buffett

The fact that people will be full of greed, fear, or folly is predictable. The sequence is not predictable.
Warren Buffett

The funny thing is better TV shows don't cost that much more than lousy TV shows.
Warren Buffett

The market will pay better to entertain than educate.
Warren Buffett

The true investor welcomes volatility ... a wildly fluctuating market means that irrationally low prices will periodically be attached to solid businesses.
Warren Buffett

The truly big investment idea can usually be explained in a short paragraph. We like a business with enduring competitive advantages that is run by able and owner-oriented people. When these attributes exist, and when we can make purchases at sensible prices, it is hard to go wrong.
Warren Buffett

Wall Street is the only place people ride to in a Rolls Royce to get advice from people who take the subway.
Warren Buffett

Your goal as an investor ... to purchase, at a rational price, a part interest in an easily-understandable business whose earnings are virtually certain to be materially higher ... years from now. Over time, you will find only a few companies that meet these standards - so when you see one ... buy a meaningful amount of stock.
Warren Buffett

Bugs - See Arthur Baer

Sex is interesting, but it's not totally important. I mean it's not even as important (physically) as excretion. A man can go seventy years without a piece of ass, but he can die in a week without a bowel movement.
Charles Bukowski

I gave up coffee. It's almost worse than giving up a lover.
Sandra Bullock

We do not need, and indeed never will have, all the answers before we act ... It is often through taking action that we can discover some of them.
Charlotte Bunch

Napoleone di Buonaparte - See Napoléon Bonaparte

Abigail Van Buren - See Pauline Phillips

Age is something that doesn't matter, unless you are a cheese.
Billie Burke

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
Attributed.
Edmund Burke

If you are having as much fun running a big corporation as you did running a piece of it, then you are probably interfering too much with the people who really make it happen.
James E. Burke

Watch how a man takes praise and there you have the measure of him.
Thomas Burke

The grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.
The Sphere and Duties of Woman
George Burnap

Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people.
Leo Burnett

When you reach for the stars, you may not quite get one, but you won't come up with a handful of mud either.
Leo Burnett

Too bad that all the people who really know how to run the country are busy driving taxi cabs and cutting hair.
George Burns

You can't help getting older, but you don't have to get old.
George Burns

A good manager is a man who isn't worried about his own career but rather the careers of those who work for him. My advice: Don't worry about yourself. Take care of those who work for you and you'll float to greatness on their achievements.
H. S. M. Burns

Jesse Louis Burns - See Jesse Jackson

Rabbie Burns - See Robert Burns

But to see her was to love her;
Love but her, and love for ever.
Robert Burns

O my Luve is like a red, red rose
That's newly sprung in June;
O my Luve is like the melodie
That's sweetly played in tune.
Robert Burns

The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!
The best laid schemes of mice and men
oft go awry,
And leave us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy!
Robert Burns

As a writer, you can't allow yourself the luxury of being discouraged and giving up when you are rejected, either by agents or publishers. You absolutely must plow forward.
Augusten Burroughs

To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter ... to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird's nest or a wildflower in spring - these are some of the rewards of the simple life.
John Burroughs

To me - old age is always ten years older than I am.
John Burroughs

Americans have a special horror of giving up control, of letting things happen in their own way without interference.
William S. Burroughs

Globalization has much potential. It could be the answer to many of the world's seemingly intractable problems. But this requires strong democratic foundations based on a political will to ensure equity and justice.
Sharan Burrow

One evening in October, when I was one-third sober,
An' taking home a load with manly pride;
My poor feet began to stutter, so I lay down in the gutter,
And a pig came up an' lay down by my side;
Then we sang It's all fair weather when good fellows get together,
Till a lady passing by was heard to say:
You can tell a man who boozes by the company he chooses
And the pig got up and slowly walked away.
Benjamin Hapgood Burt

Our wrangling lawyers ... are so litigious and busy here on earth, that I think they will plead their clients' causes hereafter, some of them in hell.
Robert Burton

Love is always bestowed as a gift - freely, willingly and without expectation. We don't love to be loved; we love to love.
Leo Buscaglia

Love is life. And if you miss love, you miss life.
Leo Buscaglia

Too often we under estimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.
Leo Buscaglia

Who knows, somewhere out there in the audience may even be someone who will one day follow in my footsteps and preside over the White House as the President's spouse. I wish him well.
Barbara Bush

All skills begin with the basics of reading and math, which are supposed to be learned in the early grades of our schools. Yet for too long, for too many children, those skills were never mastered.
George W. Bush

Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job.
To FEMA director Michael Brown, who resigned 10 days later amid criticism over his handling of the Hurricane Katrina debacle.
George W. Bush

I really am not the kind of guy that sits here and says, Oh gosh, I'm worried about my legacy.
Quote from an interview with CBS' 60 Minutes on January 14, 2007.
George W. Bush

I'm the decider, and I decide what is best. And what's best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense.
In Washington, D.C.
George W. Bush

Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundations of America.
George W. Bush

There's an old saying in Tennessee - I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee - that says, fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - you can't get fooled again.
In Nashville, Tennessee.
George W. Bush

These acts shatter steel, but they cannot dent the steel of America's resolve.
George W. Bush

They misunderestimated me.
In Bentonville, Arkansas.
George W. Bush

Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country.
In Poplar Bluff, Missouri.
George W. Bush

You're working hard to put food on your family.
In Greater Nashua, New Hampshire.
George W. Bush

By blaming others, we fail to find the real solutions to our problems and we do not carry out our own responsibilities.
Jeb Bush

Probably nothing.
Jeb Bush

My parents weren't keen on the giving up of school at the beginning to go into singing and dancing, but once they saw I was serious about it, they gave support. I was quite stubborn about my decision, and in the end, they realised it was for the best.
Kate Bush

An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less.
Nicholas Murray Butler

Many people's tombstones should read, Died at 30. Buried at 60.
Nicholas Murray Butler

All animals except man know that the ultimate of life is to enjoy it.
Samuel Butler (Author)

Any fool can paint a picture, but it takes a wise man to be able to sell it.
Samuel Butler (Author)

Genius ... has been described as a supreme capacity for taking trouble ... It might be more fitly described as a supreme capacity for getting its possessors into trouble of all kinds and keeping them therein so long as the genius remains.
Samuel Butler (Author)

Home, Sweet Home must surely have been written by a bachelor.
Samuel Butler (Author)

It has been said that the love of money is the root of all evil. The want of money is so quite as truly.
Samuel Butler (Author)

Money is dead men's bones and dead men's souls. The money that men make lives after them.
Samuel Butler (Author)

For Justice, though she's painted blind,
Is to the weaker side inclin'd,
Hudibras
Samuel Butler (Poet)

Learning how to learn is life's most important skill.
Tony Buzan

Your brain is, indeed, a supreme example of, and is the ultimate, Internet.
Tony Buzan

Sometimes it's a form of love just to talk to somebody that you have nothing in common with and still be fascinated by their presence.
David Byrne

Power intoxicates men. It is never voluntarily surrendered. It must be taken from them.
James F. Byrnes

'Tis strange - but true; for truth is always strange; Stranger than fiction.
George Byron

A lady of a certain age, which means Certainly aged.
George Byron

All tragedies are finish'd by death,
All comedies are ended by a marriage.
George Byron

Friendship is Love without his wings!
George Byron

I awoke one morning and found myself famous.
George Byron

Like the measles, love is most dangerous when it comes late in life.
George Byron

Now I shall go to sleep. Goodnight.
George Byron

Of all the horrid, hideous notes of woe,
Sadder than owl-songs or the midnight blast,
Is that portentous phrase, I told you so,
Uttered by friends, those prophets of the past.
George Byron

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar;
I love not Man the less, but Nature more.
George Byron

Years steal Fire from the mind as vigour from the limb; And Life's enchanted cup but sparkles near the brim.
George Byron

Send Your Favourite Quotations

The Only Way

IN THE beginning God created the heaven and the earth. ... The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.

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