Quotes From Famous and Not So Famous People


A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z




G




Getting divorced just because you don't love a man is almost as silly as getting married just because you do.
- Zsa Zsa Gabor

Wealth is not without its advantages, and the case to the contrary, although it has often been made, has never proved widely persuasive.
- John Kenneth Galbraith/ Gabraith

In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone.
- John Kenneth Galbraith/ Gabraith

Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.
- John Kenneth Galbraith/ Gabraith

Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.
- John Kenneth Galbraith/ Gabraith

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.
- John Kenneth Galbraith/ Gabraith

One of the greatest pieces of economic wisdom is to know what you do not know.
- John Kenneth Galbraith/ Gabraith

I'll moider da bum.
- Heavyweight boxer Tony Galento, when asked what he thought of William Shakespeare

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
- Galileo Galilei

There are two kinds of people, those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group; there is less competition there.
- Indira Gandhi

640K ought to be enough for anybody.
- Bill Gates in 1981

The Warren Commission thought they had an open-and-shut case. Three bullets, one assassin. But two unpredictable things happened that day that made it virtually impossible. One, the eight-millimeter home movie taken by Abraham Zapruder while standing by the grassy knoll. Two, the third wounded man, James Tague, who was knicked by a fragment, standing near the triple underpass. The time frame, five point six seconds, determined by the Zapruder film, left no possibility of a fourth shot. So the shot or fragment that left a superficial wound on Tague's cheek had to come from the three shots fired from the sixth floor depository. That leaves just two bullets. And we know one of them was the fatal head shot that killed Kennedy. So now a single bullet remains. A single bullet now has to account for the remaining seven wounds in Kennedy and Connelly. But rather than admit to a conspiracy or investigate further, the Warren Commission chose to endorse the theory put forth by an ambitious junior counselor, Arlen Spector, one of the grossest lies ever forced on the American people. We've come to know it as the "Magic Bullet Theory." This single-bullet explanation is the foundation of the Warren Commission's claim of a lone assassin. Once you conclude the magic bullet could not create all seven of those wounds, you'd have to conclude that there was a fourth shot and a second rifle. And if there was a second rifleman, then by definition, there had to be a conspiracy.
- Jim Garrison

The graveyards are full of indispensable men.
- General Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970)

What do you take me for, an idiot?
- General Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970), when a journalist asked him if he was happy

Ask her to wait a moment - I am almost done.
- Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855), while working, when informed that his wife is dying

A country can be judged by the quality of its proverbs.
- German Proverb

Crazy people who are productive are geniuses. Crazy people who are rich are eccentric. Crazy people who are neither productive nor rich are just plain crazy. Geniuses and crazy people are both out in the middle of a deep ocean; geniuses swim, crazy people drown. Most of us are sitting safely on the shore. Take a chance and get your feet wet.
- Michael J. Gelb

Brain researchers estimate that your unconscious data base outweighs the conscious on an order exceeding ten million to one. This data base is the source of you hidden, natural genius. In other words, a part of you is much smarter than you are. The wise people regularly consult that smarter part.
- Michael J. Gelb

Over-seriousness is a warning sign for mediocrity and bureaucratic thinking. People who are seriously committed to mastery and high performance are secure enough to lighten up.
- Michael J. Gelb

Champions know that success is inevitable; that there is no such thing as failure, only feedback. They know that the best way to forecast the future is to create it.
- Michael J. Gelb

Life is a continuous exercise in creative problem solving.
- Michael J. Gelb

Confusion is the welcome mat at the door of creativity.
- Michael J. Gelb

A champion views resistance as a gift of energy.
- Michael J. Gelb

Don't be afraid to take a big step. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps.
- David Lloyd George

If you can count your money you don't have a billion dollars.
- J. Paul Getty

There are people in the world so hungry that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.
- Mahatma/ Mohandas Ghandi (1869-1948)

I think it would be a good idea.
- Mahatma/ Mohandas Ghandi (1869-1948), when asked what he thought of Western civilization

Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. It passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever so experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that precious right.
- Mahatma/ Mohandas Gandhi

Anger and intolerance are the enemies of correct understanding.
- Mahatma/ Mohandas Gandhi

One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
- André Gide

Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.
- André Gide

Real poverty is less a state of income than a state of mind.
- George Gilder

The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that you've got it made.
- Jean Giraudoux

One of the true tests of leadership is the ability to recognize a problem before it becomes an emergency.
- Arnold Glasow

The fewer the facts, the stronger the opinion.
- Arnold Glasow

Expecting something for nothing is the most popular form of hope.
- Arnold Glasow

Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
- Arthur Godfrey

Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater.
- Gail Godwin

A life without love, without the presence of the beloved, is nothing but a mere magic-latern show. We draw out slide after slide, swiftly tiring of each, and pushing it back to make haste for the next.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Whatever you do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius and power and magic in it.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

When ideas fail, words come in very handy.
- Goethe (1749-1832)

We are not abandoning our convictions, our philosophy or traditions, nor do we urge anyone to abandon theirs.
- Mikhail Gorbachov

The genius of the American system is that through freedom we have created extraordinary results from plain ordinary people.
- Senator Phil Gramm

No one ever achieved greatness by playing it safe.
- Harry Gray

A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him.
- Sidney Greenberg

Heresy is another word for freedom of thought.
- Graham Greene

Class is how you treat people who can do nothing for you.
- Geof Greenleaf

A man is measured by the size of things that anger him.
- Geof Greenleaf

Good leaders must first become good servants.
- Robert Greenleaf

A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.
- Greek Proverb

You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take.
- Wayne Gretzky

When authorities warn you of the sinfulness of sex, there is an important lesson to be learned. Do not have sex with the authorities.
- Matt Groening

Figures won't lie, but liars will figure.
- Charles H. Grosvenor

Silence is argument carried out by other means.
- Ernesto"Che"Guevara (1928-1967)

You can pretend to be serious; you can't pretend to be witty.
- Sacha Guitry (1885-1957)

The little I know, I owe to my ignorance.
- Sacha Guitry

When a man steals your wife, there is no better revenge than to let him keep her.
- Sacha Guitry



H




This book fills a much-needed gap.
- Moses Hadas (1900-1966) in a review

I have read your book and much like it.
- Moses Hadas (1900-1966)

Thank you for sending me a copy of your book - I'll waste no time reading it.
- Moses Hadas (1900-1966)

You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube.
- H.R. Haldeman

There is something that is much more scarce, something rarer than ability. It is the ability to recognizeability.
- Robert Half

Men give me credit for some genius. All the genius I have lies in this; when I have a subject in hand, I study it profoundly. Day and night it is before me. My mind becomes pervaded with it. Then the effort that I have made is what people are pleased to call the fruit of genius. It is the fruit of labor and thought.
- Alexander Hamilton

Those who stand for nothing fall for anything.
- Alexander Hamilton

War will cease when men refuse to fight.
- Fridtjof Hansen

Don't do drugs because if you do drugs you'll go to prison, and drugs are really expensive in prison.
- John Hardwick

What is a committee? A group of the unwilling, picked from the unfit, to do the unnecessary.
- Richard Harkness

When I hear somebody sigh, Life is hard, I am always tempted to ask, Compared to what?
- Sydney Harris

Nobody can be so amusingly arrogant as a young man who has just discovered an old idea and thinks it is his own.
- Sydney Harris

The nice thing about egotists is that they don't talk about other people.
- Lucille S. Harper

In times like these, it is helpful to remember that there have always been times like these.
- Paul Harvey

If you don't make mistakes, you aren't really trying.
- Coleman Hawking

There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal. While the first is the condition of a free society, the second means as DeTocqueville describes it, a new form of servitude.
- F.A. Hayek

We must face the fact that the preservation of individual freedom is incompatible with a full satisfaction of our views of distributive justice.
- F.A. Hayek

Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity a greater.
- William Hazlitt

Opinions founded on prejudice are always sustained with the greatest violence.
- Hebrew Proverb

I'm not going to get into the ring with Tolstoy.
- Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)

Never mistake motion for action.
- Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)

Nothing is more common than unfulfilled potential
- Howard Hendricks

Plain women know more about men than beautiful ones do. But beautiful women don't need to know about men. It's the men who have to know about beautiful women.
- Katherine Hepburn

We are most nearly ourselves when we achieve the seriousness of the child at play.
- Heraclitus

There is nothing permanent except change.
- Heraclitus

Love and a cough cannot be hid.
- George Herbert

Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure
- Oliver Herford (1863-1935)

Great deeds are usually wrought at great risks.
- Herodotus

The brighter you are, the more you have to learn.
- Don Herold

If you don't ask why this? often enough, somebody will ask why you?
- Tom Hirshfield

I heard someone tried the monkeys-on-typewriters bit trying for the plays of W. Shakespeare, but all they got was the collected works of Francis Bacon.
- Bill Hirst

Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.
- Alfred Hitchcock

The victor will never be asked if he told the truth.
- Adolf Hitler

What luck for the rulers that men do not think.
- Adolf Hitler

Strength lies not in defense but in attack.
- Adolf Hitler

Success is the sole earthly judge of right and wrong.
- Adolf Hitler

The very first esential for success is a prepetually constant and regular employment of violence.
- Adolf Hitler

The great masses of the people... will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one.
- Adolf Hitler

When you're away, I'm restless, lonely, wretched, bored, dejected; only here's the rub, my darling dear, I feel the same when you're near.
- Samuel Hoffenstein

You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
- Eric Hoffer

We are told that talent creates its own opportunities. But it sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents.
- Eric Hoffer

The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.
- Abbie Hoffman

Hell is paved with good samaritans.
- William M. Holden

There is no exercise better for the heart than reaching down and lifting people up.
- John Andrew Holmes

Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimension.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes

The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841-1935)

Ability is what you're capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.
- Lou Holtz

Justice is incidental to law and order.
- J. Edgar Hoover

You manage things; you lead people.
- Admiral Grace Murray Hopper, USN

Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.
- Elbert Hubbard

The greatest mistake you can make is to be continually fearing you will make one.
- Elbert Hubbard

He has achieved success who has worked well, laughed often, and loved much.
- Elbert Hubbard

To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.
- Elbert Hubbard

Boys will be boys, and so will a lot of middle-aged men. - Kin Hubbard

When a fellow says it ain't the money but the principle of the thing, it's the money.
- Kin Hubbard

Now and then an innocent man is sent to the legislature.
- Kin Hubbard

He who opens a school door, closes a prison.
- Victor Hugo

There is a country in Europe where multiple-choice tests are illegal.
- Sigfried Hulzer

The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.
- Hubert H. Humphrey

Behind every successful man stand a surprised mother-in-law.
- Hubert H. Humphrey

The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.
- Robert Hutchins

Maybe this world is another planet's Hell.
- Aldous Huxley

Experience is not what happens to you. It is what you do with what happens to you.
- Aldous Huxley

There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self.
- Aldous Huxley

Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.
- Aldous Huxley



I




You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can't get them across, your ideas won't get you anywhere.
- Lee Iacocca

A community is like a ship; everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm.
- Henrik Ibsen

The strongest man in the world is he who stands alone.
- Henrik Ibsen

Few rich men own their own property. The property owns them.
- Robert G. Ingersoll



J




Take time to deliberate; but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in.
- Andrew Jackson

One man with courage makes a majority. v - Andrew Jackson

The will to win is worthless if you don't get paid for it.
- Reggie Jackson

It is only when they go wrong that machines remind you how powerful they are.
- Clive James

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
- William James

The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.
- William James

Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.
- William James

The art of becoming wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
- William James

When you have completed 95% of your journey you are halfway there.
- Japanese Proverb

I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government; I mean an additional article taking from the Federal Government the power of borrowing. I now deny their power of making paper money or anything else a legal tender. I know that to pay all proper expenses within the year would, in case of war, be hard on us. But not so hard as ten wars instead of one. For wars could be reduced in that proportion; besides that the State governments would be free to lend their credit in borrowing quotas.
- Thomas Jefferson

I place economy among the first and important virtues, and public debt as the greatest of dangers. To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our choice between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy.
- Thomas Jefferson

Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servility crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.
- Thomas Jefferson

A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicity.
- Thomas Jefferson

I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to Heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.
- Thomas Jefferson

We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable; that all men are created equal and independent, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent and inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
- Thomas Jefferson

Above all things I hope the education of the common people will be attended to, convinced that on their good sense we may rely with the most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty.
- Thomas Jefferson

If the children are untaught, their ignorance and vices will in future life cost us much dearer in their consequences than it would have done in their correction by a good education.
- Thomas Jefferson

I sincerely believe... that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale.
- Thomas Jefferson

It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.
- Thomas Jefferson

I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, to many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.
- Thomas Jefferson

Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.
- Thomas Jefferson

A little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.
- Thomas Jefferson

The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.
- Thomas Jefferson

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.
- Thomas Jefferson

That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.
- Thomas Jefferson

When angry, count to ten before you speak. If very angry, a hundred.
- Thomas Jefferson

Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail.
- Thomas Jefferson

Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.
- Thomas Jefferson

Be polite to all, but intimate with few.
- Thomas Jefferson

I cannot live without books.
- Thomas Jefferson

I am a great believer in luck, and I find that the harder I work, the more I seem to have.
- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

In every country and every age, the priest had been hostile to Liberty.
- Thomas Jefferson

It is always the best policy to tell the truth, unless, of course, you are an exceptionally good liar.
- Jerome K. Jerome

Men are like wine - some turn to vinegar, but the best improve with age.
- Pope John XXIII

Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.
- Samuel Johnson

Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.
- Samuel Johnson

The quickest and shortest way to crush whatever laurels you have won is for you to rest on them.
- Donald P. Jones

Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate. - Thomas Jones

The man who gets the most satisfactory results is not always the man with the most brilliant single mind, but rather the man who can best coordinate the brains and talents of his associates.
- W. Alton Jones

Take your life in your own hands and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.
- Erica Jong

Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't.
- Erica Jong

Don't do today what you can put off till tomorrow
- Joakim Jonsson

Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.
- Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961)

An ounce of emotion is equal to a ton of facts.
- John Junor

Why don't you write books people can read?
- Nora Joyce to her husband James (1882-1941)