Quotes in Memory of Susan Sontag

1933 - 28th December 2004

Revealing Quotes :: GlobalVillage Mass-Media Deception
:: Directory of Skepticism & Free Thinking ::

... and some more quotes These quotes have been gathered over quite a few years, and I [some Norwegian/Scandinavian wise guy] have unfortunately not been very careful in noting down the source. Please mail me @ tathagat_hosho@yahoo.com if you have corrections, comments or additional information on any of them. Quotes on 'Measles of mankind' nationalism/patriotism on July '04 Issue :: middle section

Quotations Of Wisdom, Organized Religion Merely Fiction

Philosophy ::

"Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion." ~ Democritus

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away". ~ Philip K. Dick

"And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." ~ T. S. Eliot

"The average man does not know what to do with his life, yet wants another one which will last forever." ~ Anatole France

"There is no sadder sight in the world than to see a beautiful theory killed by a brutal fact." ~ Thomas Huxley

"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." ~ Delo McKown

"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently." ~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, 1844-1900, "The Dawn" (1881)

"The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it." ~ Bertrand Russell, "The Philosophy of Logical Atomism"

Religion :: mainly humourous quotes ::

"If I were not an atheist I think I would have to be a Catholic because if it wasn't the forces of natural selection that designed fish, it must have been an Italian." ~ Douglas Adams, "Riding the Rays"

"The MIT Science Fiction society keeps a Bible in their comprehensive collection, as an anthology filed (by editor's last name) under 'G'." ~ David Mix Barrington

"If Jesus had been killed 20 years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses." ~ Lenny Bruce

"Christ died for our sins. Dare we make his martydom meaningless by not committing them?" ~ Jules Feiffer

"Life in Lubbock, Texas, taught me two things: One is that God loves you and you're going to burn in hell. The other is that sex is the most awful, filthy thing on earth and you should save it for someone you love." ~ Butch Hancock

"What do atheists scream when they come?" ~ Bill Hicks

Question: "Mr. Haldane, what can you tell about the Creator from your study of biology?" Answer: "The Creator, if He exists, has a special preference for beetles." ~ J. B. S. Haldane, 1892-1964, Report of lecture, 7 April 1951 in Journal of the British Interplanetary Society (1951) vol. 10, p. 156

"There once was a time when all people believed in God and the church ruled. This time was called the Dark Ages." ~ Richard Lederer, Anguished English

"If Jesus was a Jew, why did he have a Spanish name?" ~ Bill Maher on "Politically Incorrect"

"The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore." ~ H. L. Mencken's Notebooks, no. 309 (1956), quoted from The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations

"God is real, unless declared Integer".

"Why does the Vatican have lightning rods?"

"Christian Fundamentalism: The doctrine that there is an aboslutely powerful, infinitely knowledgeable, universe spanning entity that is deeply and personally concerned about my sex life."

"'God is as real as I am' the old man said. I was relieved since I knew Santa wouldn't lie to me ... "

"And Jesus said unto them, 'And whom do you say that I am?' They replied, 'You are the eschatological manifestation of the ground of our being, the ontological foundation of the context of our very selfhood revealed.' And Jesus replied, 'What?'"

Religion - more serious quotes ::

"The world holds two classes of men ~ intelligent men without religion, and religious men without intelligence." ~ Abu'l-Ala-Al-Ma'arri, 973-1057, Syrian poet

"If Atheism is a religion, then health is a disease!" ~ Clark Adams

"Pray: To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy." ~ Ambrose Bierce

"Religions are conclusions for which the facts of nature supply no major premises." ~ Ambrose Bierce, "Collected Works" (1912)

"Missionaries are perfect nuisances and leave every place worse than they found it." ~ Charles Dickens

"Intellectually, religious emotions are not creative but conservative. They attach themselves readily to the current view of the world and consecrate it." ~ John Dewey

"Beyond the grave they will find nothing but death. But we shall keep the secret, and for their happiness we shall allure them with the reward of heaven and eternity." ~ Fyodor Dostoyevski, The Brothers Karamazov, remark of the Grand Inquisitor

"If there is a God, atheism must strike Him as less of an insult than religion." ~ Edmond and Jules de Goncourt

"Belief in gods and belief in ghosts is identical. God is taken as a more respectable word than ghost, but it means no more." ~ E. Haldeman-Julius, "The Meaning Of Atheism"

"Businesses may come and go, but religion will last forever, for in no other endeavor does the consumer blame himself for product failure." ~ Harvard Lampoon, "Doon" (paraphrase)

"History has the relation to truth that theology has to religion ~ i.e. none to speak of." ~ Robert Heinlein (Lazarus Long)

"Organized religion is like organized crime; it preys on peoples' weakness, generates huge profits for its operators, and is almost impossible to eradicate." ~ Mike Hermann

"Theology is but the ignorance of natural causes reduced to a system." ~ Baron Paul Henri T. d'Holbach

"John Wesley said that if you give up the witchcraft, you must give up the Bible. He is right. The choice is easy for me." ~ Rupert Hughes

"The Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one." ~ David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 1748

"Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous." ~ David Hume, Treatise of Human Nature (1739)

"You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough." ~ Aldous Huxley

"...your belief in God is merely an escape from your monotonous, stupid and cruel life." ~ Krishnamurti

"It is possible to pay another man's debts on his behalf, but it is not possible to make a guilty man innocent by suffering in his place." ~ Carl Lofmark, What is the Bible?

"Christians say that--without exception--their God answers all of their prayers; it's just that He sometimes says 'yes' and other times 'no', 'maybe', or 'wait'. Of course the same could be said of the rain-god, 'Bob'." ~ Rev. Donald Morgan

"Where it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat." ~ John Morley

"Few nations have been so poor as to have but one god. Gods were made so easily, and the raw material cost so little, that generally the god market was fairly glutted, and heaven crammed with these phantoms." ~ Robert G. Ingersoll, "The Gods", 1872

"Take from the church the miraculous, the supernatural, the incomprehensible, the unreasonable, the impossible, the unknowable, the absurd, and nothing but a vacuum remains." ~ Robert G. Ingersoll, Ingersoll's Works, Vol. 1, p. 285

This crime called blasphemy was invented by priests for the purpose of defending doctrines not able to take care of themselves." ~ Robert G. Ingersoll

"The notion that faith in Christ is to be rewarded by an eternity of bliss, while a dependence upon reason, observation, and experience merits everlasting pain, is too absurd for refutation, and can be relieved only by that unhappy mixture of insanity and ignorance called 'faith.'" ~ Robert G. Ingersoll

"Faith is often the boast of the man who is too lazy to investigate." ~ F. M. Knowles

"The fascists of the 21st century aren't going to come with swastikas and billy clubs. They're going to come with clerical collars and lawyers, and they'll sue their critics into bankruptcy." ~ Michael Langone, executive director of the Florida-based American Family Foundation

"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart." ~ H. L. Mencken, quoted from 'Not Church'

"The cosmos is a gigantic fly wheel making 10,000 revolutions a minute. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it. Religion is the theory that the wheel was designed and set spinning to give him the ride." ~ H. L. Mencken, quoted from 'Not Church'

"'God', 'immortality of the soul', 'redemption', 'beyond'. Without exception, concepts to which I have never devoted any attention, or time; not even as a child. Perhaps I have never been childlike enough for them? I do not by any means know atheism as a result; even less as an event: It is a matter of course with me, from instinct. I am too inquisitive, too questionable, too exuberant to stand for any gross answer. God is a gross answer, an indelicacy against us thinkers -- at bottom merely a gross prohibition for us: you shall not think!" ~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, 1844-1900, "Ecce Homo"

"Christianity came into existence in order to lighten the heart; but now it has first to burden the heart so as afterwards to be able to lighten it. Consequently it shall perish. ~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, 1844-1900, "Human, all too Human", p. 119

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." ~ Blaise Pascal, 1623-1662, "Pense'es" #894.

"To make sure that my blasphemy is thoroughly expressed, I hereby state my opinion that the notion of a god is a basic superstition, that there is no evidence for the existence of any god(s), that devils, demons, angels and saints are myths, that there is no life after death, heaven nor hell, that the Pope is a dangerous, bigoted, medieval dinosaur, and that the Holy Ghost is a comic-book character worthy of laughter and derision." ~ James Randi, "~ Challenge "

"We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes." ~ Gene Roddenberry

"It is an interesting and demonstrable fact, that all children are atheists and were religion not inculcated into their minds, they would remain so." ~ Ernestine Rose

"Blasphemy laws should be abolished. It would be a strange God indeed, that required protection by the judicial system." ~ Salman Rushdie

"My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race. I cannot, however, deny that it has made some contributions to civilization. It helped in early days to fix the calendar, and it caused Egyptian priests to chronicle eclipses with such care that in time they became able to predict them. These two services I am prepared to acknowledge, but I do not know of any others." ~ Bertrand Russell, 'Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization?'

"One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it." ~ Bertrand Russell, 'Why I Am Not A Christian', Little Blue Book No. 1372 edited by E. Haldeman-Julius.

"My conclusion is that there is no reason to believe any of the dogmas of traditional theology and, further, that there is no reason to wish that they were true. Man, in so far as he is not subject to natural forces, is free to work out his own destiny. The responsibility is his, and so is the opportunity." ~ Bertrand Russell, 'Is There a God?'

"It requires only two things to win credit for a miracle: a mountebank and a number of silly women." ~ Marquis de Sade

"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality." ~ George Bernard Shaw

"When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said let us close our eyes and pray. When we opened our eyes we had the Bible and they had the land." ~ Bishop Desmond Tutu

"Moral indignation - jealousy with a halo." ~ H.G. Wells

"Theists think all gods but theirs are false. Atheists simply don't make an exception for the last one."

"Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned."

"On the sixth day God created man. On the seventh day, man returned the favor."

"Faith is to the human what sand is to the ostrich."

"Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day; Give him a religion, and he'll starve to death while praying for a fish."

"Man created God in his own image."

"If the Bible is mistaken in telling us where we came from, how can we trust it to tell us where we're going?"

"Faith is deciding to allow yourself to believe something your intellect would otherwise cause you to reject -- otherwise there's no need for faith."

Religion :: quotes by practicioners ::

"Kill them all; God will recognize his own." -- Amalric Arnaud, during the seige of Be'ziers (1209 AD), addressing soldiers who asked him how to tell the difference between the heretics and the orthodox Catholics.

"The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine man in the bonds of Hell." -- Saint Augustine

"No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered as patriots. This is one nation under God." -- George H. W. Bush, to a reporter in 1988, while serving as vice-president and running for President

"Where would Christianity be if Jesus got eight to fifteen years with time off for good behavior?" -- NY State Senator James Donovan, speaking in support of capital punishment

"The idea that religion and politics don't mix was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country." -- Rev. Jerry Falwell, Sermon, July 4, 1976

"The decline in American pride, patriotism, and piety can be directly attributed to the extensive reading of so-called 'science fiction' by our young people. This poisonous rot about creatures not of God's making, societies of "aliens" without a good Christian among them, and raw sex between unhuman beings with three heads and God alone knows what sort of reproductive apparatus keeps our young people from realizing the true will of God." -- Rev. Jerry Falwell, "Can Our Young People Find God in the Pages of Trashy Magazines? No, Of Course Not!" Reader's Digest, August 1985

"Inbreeding is how we get championship horses." -- Carl Gunter, Lousiana state representative, explaining why he was fighting a proposed bill that allowed abortion in cases of incest

"What harm would it do, if a man told a good strong lie for the sake of the good and for the Christian church ... a lie out of necessity, a useful lie, a helpful lie, such lies would not be against God, he would accept them." -- Martin Luther cited by his secretary, in a letter in Max Lenz

"A sensible person will not demand a religion that makes sense. He will assume that God moves in ways which he cannot fathom." -- Olfert Ricard

"... a socialist, anti-family, political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians." -- Pat Robertson on Feminism

"Couples who are not childless by choice are of course not culpable. But something is wrong if a couple refuses to have children without a very good reason." -- Bishop Santer, addressing the Birmingham Diocesan Synod, Daily Telegraph, June 26 1995 pg 8

"I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over you. I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good.... Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a Biblical duty, we are called by God, to conquer this country. We don't want equal time. We don't want pluralism." -- Randall Terry, Founder of Operation Rescue, the most powerful of several groups who intimidate abortion providers through violence, and one of a handful of groups who enter bookstores and rip the pages out of books which they think other people should not read.

"We don't have to protect the environment, the Second Coming is at hand." -- James Watt, Former Secretary of the Interior under Ronald Reagan

Computer/natural sciences/technological/work related ::

"Among you Chieftains and Huns will be those whose spirits cling to our past ways. We will show patience with you unenlightened ones. Yet, if you choose not our new course and cause dissension, you will be stricken from our ranks." -- Attila the Hun, 450 AD

"Meetings are an addictive, highly self-indulgent activity that corporations and other organizations habitually engage in only because they cannot actually masturbate." -- Dave Barry

"Documentation is like sex; when it's good, it's very, very good, and when it's bad, it's better than nothing." -- Dick Brandon

"If you tell the boss you were late for work because you had a flat tire, the next morning you will have a flat tire." -- Cannon's Comment

"Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced." -- Arthur C. Clarke

"Heisenberg may have slept here ... " -- Leslie Paul Davies

"A computer scientist is someone who, when told to 'Go To Hell', sees the 'Go To', rather than the destination, as harmful." -- Dr. Roger M. Firestone

"Mathematicians are like the French: Whatever you tell them, they translate it to their own language, and suddenly it means something completely different." -- Goethe

"Working is easy enough, while genuine idleness really takes its toll. Personally I do not advocate the road of least resistance." -- G. Hamann

"They've found the gene for shyness. They would've found it earlier, but it was hiding behind a couple of other genes." -- Johnathon Katz

"For a good Prime, call: 29819592777931214269172453467810429868925511217482600306406141434158089" -- Zachary Kessin

"The Meta-Turing test counts a thing as intelligent if it seeks to devise and apply Turing tests to objects of its own creation. -- Lew Mammel, Jr. "The report that important decisions in the White House were based on astrological advice is most disturbing. The results could undermine faith in astrology." -- New York Times, Letter to the Editor, May 15. 1988

"Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relatively to other matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill-paid, the second is pleasant and highly paid." -- Bertrand Russell

"We trained very hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams, we would be reorganised. I was to learn later in life that we tended to react to any new situation by reorganising, and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress, while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralisation". -- commonly, but ~apparently erroneously attributed Petronii Arbitri, "Satyricon", AD 66

"Will the insects prove to be our control group?" -- Mohan Singh

"At Group L, Stoffel oversees six first-rate programmers, a managerial challenge roughly comparable to herding cats." -- The Washington Post Magazine, June 9, 1985

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo."

"Artificial Intelligence is the study of how to make real computers act like the ones in movies."

"Who is this General Failure and why is he reading my disk?"

"If an infinite number of monkeys sat at an infinite number of computers and typed infinitely, Bill Gates would compile it and call it Windows."

"Daddy, this magnet won't pick up the floppy disks!"

"hAS ANYONE SEEN MY cAPSLOCK KEY?"

"I DID read the damned manual, and I STILL can't find the damned "ANY" key!" "Keyboard not present - Press F1 to continue"

"Dan Quayle: the EDLIN of Vice-Presidents"

"Copy from one, it's plagiarism; copy from two, it's research."

"In relativity theory space and time are the same thing. Einstein discovered this when he kept showing up three miles late for his meetings."

"Strategy: A long-range plan whose merit cannot be evaluated until sometime after those creating it have left the organization."

"The engineer thinks of his equations as an approximation to reality. The physicist thinks reality is an approximation to his equations. The mathematician doesn’t care."

"Mathematics is the part of science you could continue to do if you woke up tomorrow and discovered the universe was gone."

"If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried."

"The sooner you fall behind, the more time you have to catch up."

"Murphy's Law of Research: Enough Research will tend to support your theory."

"On the side of the software box, in the 'System Requirements' section, it said 'Requires Windows 95 or better'. So I installed Linux."

"When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl."

"Apparently scientists have isolated the gene that makes scientists want to isolate genes."

"A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk I have a work station... " Murphy's law cannot be relied upon. The program is right so the computer must be wrong.

Men/women/gender/sex related ::

"Women surrender themselves to God when the devil will have nothing more to do with them." -- Sophie Arnould

"Homosexuality is god's way of insuring that the truly gifted aren't burdened with children." -- Sam Austin

"It isn't premarital sex if you have no intention of getting married." -- Matt Barry

"Beauty times brains equals a constant." -- Beckhap's Law

"Behind any successful man there is a woman. And behind any man who makes a complete mess of his life, there are at least two or three." -- Lis Byrdal

"This is a feminist bookstore. There is no humor section." -- John Callahan

"Translations (like wives) are seldom faithful if they are in the least attractive." -- Roy Campbell: Poetry Review, June/July 1949

"The destruction of the Berlin wall marked history's first feminine revolution: There was no violence and when it ended everybody went shopping." -- Mario Dorion, Sun Montreal

"To argue with a woman is like trying to read a newspaper in a hurricane." -- Fyodor Dostojevskij

"Women are like elephants to me; I like to look at them, but I wouldn't want to own one." -- W. C. Fields

"I don't think I'll marry again. I'll rather just find a woman I don't like and give her a house." -- Lewis Grizzard

"Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea." -- Robert A. Heinlein

"I could have conquered Europe, all of it, but I had women in my life." -- Henry II

"For me sports is like pornography - it's fun to participate but boring to watch." -- Jytte Hilden

"If you are going to generalize about women, you will find yourself up to here in exceptions." -- D. Hitchens

"Woman is a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic peril, a deadly fascination, and a painted ill.." -- Saint John Chrysostom, (354?-407), Doctor and Father of the early Christian Church

"The cable TV sex channels don't expand our horizons, don't make us better people and don't come in clearly enough." -- Bill Maher

"Remember, you're fighting for this woman's honor - which is probably more than she ever did." -- Groucho Marx

"High heels were invented by a woman who was kissed on the forehead." -- Christopher Morley

"When a woman becomes a scholar there is usually something wrong with her sex organs." -- Friedrich Nietzsche, 1888

"I'm a great lover, I'll bet. -- Emo Phillips

"Men who have pierced ears are better prepared for marriage. They've experienced pain and bought jewelry." -- Rita Rudner

"Women might be able to fake orgasms. But men can fake whole relationships." -- Jimmy Shubert

"Personally I'm completely against foreplay. When your penis is as small as mine, you need all the friction you can get." -- Adam Soerensen

"Men should think twice before making widowhood women's only path to power" -- Gloria Steinem

"Dr. Alex Comfort, author of 'The Joy of Sex' has died, after a series of strokes." -- The Times, 28th March 2000

"I imagine bugs and girls have a dim perception that nature played a cruel trick on them, but they lack the intelligence to really comprehend the magnitude of it." -- Bill Watterson (Calvin)

"As she lay there dozing next to me, one voice inside my head kept saying, 'Relax... you are not the first doctor to sleep with one of his patients', but another kept reminding me, 'Howard, you are a veterinarian.'" -- Dick Wilson

"In the history of life, no good news has ever followed the sentence 'We have to talk.'"

"The difference between a golf ball and the G spot? A man will spend a half hour looking for a golf ball."

"Erotica is what turns me on. Pornography is what turns you on. Obscene is what turns them on."

Oneliners/observations/definitions ::

"If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now." -- Douglas Adams (Zaphood Beeblebox)

"I get all my ideas from a mail order company in Indianapolis. Although I'm not prepared to give you their name." -- Douglas Adams, Chat, June 17, 1998

"What I look forward to is continued immaturity followed by death." -- Dave Barry

"I don't make predictions. I never have and I never will." -- Tony Blair

"There are two rules for success in life: Rule 1: Don't tell people everything you know." -- Dan Bloch

"The word 'abbreviation' should really have fewer syllables." -- Barry Bowling

"The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life in order to keep it." -- G. K. Chesterton

"The rule which forbids ending a sentence with a preposition is the kind of nonsense up with which I will not put." -- Winston Churchill

"How does the guy who drives the snowplough get to his work in the morning?" -- Billy Connolly

"I've been called one of the wittiest men in the world, and it doesn't surprise me. I'm witty by nature, as I have always been and no doubt always will be. In addition I'm gifted with enormous talent, and it's no use trying to hide it." -- Noel Coward

"He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice." -- Albert Einstein

"Our parents were of Midwestern stock and very strict. They didn't want us to grow up to be spoiled and rich. If we left our tennis racquets in the rain, we were punished." -- Nancy Ellis, George Bush's sister

"Hey! Who took the cork off my lunch?!" -- W. C. Fields

"Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people." -- W. C. Fields

"Once...in the wilds of Afghanistan, I lost my corkscrew, and we were forced to live on nothing but food and water for days." -- W. C. Fields

"The first human being who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization." -- Sigmund Freud

"Many battles have been fought and won by soldiers nourished on beer, and the King does not believe that coffee-drinking soldiers can be relied upon to endure hardships in case of another war." -- Frederick the Great, 1777

"I think animal testing is a terrible idea; they get all nervous and give the wrong answers." -- "A Bit of Fry and Laurie"

"Many things do not happen as they ought. Most things do not happen at all. It is for the conscientious historian to correct these defects." -- Herodotus

"What is film after all, but life with the dull bits cut out?" -- Alfred Hitchcock

"Subjectivity is reading a sundial using a flashlight." -- Piet Hein

"Anybody who thinks of going to bed before 12 o'clock is a scoundrel." -- Samuel Johnson

"The way things are moving in Europe these days, it appears that very soon there will be just 8 countries in Europe. There will be one United Europe and seven independent Yugoslavian republics." -- Vijay Madisetti

"The IRS is auditing the NRA. I haven't had this much trouble picking sides since the Iran-Iraq war." -- Bill Maher, "Politically Incorrect"

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside a dog, it's too dark to read." -- Groucho Marx

"Sufficiently advanced political correctness is indistinguishable from sarcasm." -- Erik Naggum

"In fact, safety has no place anywhere. Everything that's fun in life is dangerous. Horse races, for instance, are very dangerous. But attempt to design a safe horse and the result is a cow (an appalling animal to watch at the trotters.) And everything that isn't fun is dangerous too. It is impossible to be alive and safe." -- P. J. O'Rourke

"There was much in this that I did not understand, in some ways I did not even like it, but I recognized it immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for." -- George Orwell

"Too fucking busy, and vice versa." -- Dorothy Parker, Reply to her editor who was bugging her for her belated work while she was on her honeymoon

"People come up to me and say, 'Emo, do people really come up to you?'" -- Emo Phillips

"I was at a bar nursing a beer. My nipple was getting quite soggy." -- Emo Phillips

"You can learn more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation." -- Plato

"If we do not succeed, we run the risk of failure." -- Dan Quale

"I wonder if other dogs think poodles are members of a weird religious cult?" -- Rita Rudner

"One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny." -- Bertrand Russell

"I refuse to have an emotional attachment to a piece of ground. At one end of the scale it's called patriotism, at the other end of the scale it's called gardening." -- Bob Shaw

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw, "Man and Superman"

"Aibohphobia - fear of palindromes" (also "Caibohphobiac - someone who suffers from the above") -- Rich Seidner, Stan Kelly-Bootle

"Give a man a fish, and you've fed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you can sell him a ton of accessories." -- Don Selesky

"Yesterday Hillary Clinton and first husband Bill did something most people in Arkansas can only dream about -- moved into a house without wheels." -- Jon Stewart, "The Daily Show" January 6

"Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes." -- Henry David Thoreau, 1817-1862

"Truth is our most valuable commodity - let us economize." -- Mark Twain

"When I was 19 my father was quite dumb; I was surprised at how much he learned by the time I was 30." -- Mark Twain

"Wagner's music is better than it sounds." -- Mark Twain

"Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society." -- Mark Twain

""It's not denial. I'm just very selective about what I accept as reality." -- Bill Watterson (Calvin)

"To err is human, ... but it feels divine." -- Mae West

"When it comes to a choice between two evils, I always choose the one I haven't tried before." -- Mae West

"Keep a diary and one day it will keep you." -- Mae West

"A metaphor is like a simile."

"When people have acupuncture, do wax dolls die?"

"Is it really necessary to sterilize the needle to give a lethal injection?"

"The human race is faced with a cruel choice: work or daytime television."

"A Freudian slip is when you say one thing but mean your mother."

"Children are natural mimics who act like their parents despite every effort to teach them good manners."

"If I did not exist, I would find it necessary to invent me."

"You know, I think I've had Deja Vu before."

"Life is uncertain, eat dessert first!"

"'Philip', she said, 'it's one thing to count your chickens before they're hatched, but do wait until the rooster's in the mood.'"

"Life is complex. It has real and imaginary parts."

"Sure, I'm in shape... round's a shape isn't it?"

"I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous."

"Give me golf clubs, fresh air and a beautiful partner, and you can keep my golf clubs and fresh air."

"I want to die peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather. Not screaming in terror like his passengers."

"Right now I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time. I think I've forgotten this before."

"Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at math."

"If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you."

"Early to rise, Early to bed, Makes a man healthy but socially dead."

"Never do card tricks for the group you play poker with."

"To err is human. To forgive is unusual."

"But besides that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?"

"I have to exercise in the morning before my brain figures out what I'm doing."

"I don't jog. It makes the ice jump right out of my glass."

"Are people more violently opposed to fur rather than leather because it's much easier to harass rich women than motorcycle gangs?"

"One thing kids like is to be tricked. For instance, I was going to take my nephew to Disneyland, but instead I drove him to an old burned-out warehouse. "Oh no," I said, "Disneyland burned down." He cried and cried, but I think that deep down he thought it was a pretty good joke. I started to drive over to the real Disneyland, but it was getting pretty late." If it weren't for Venetian blinds it would be curtains for everybody. One man's fish is another man's poisson.

"'Irony is dead!', said those who never understood it in the first place hopefully."

"A pseudointellectual is like an intellectual, but without integrity."

"Restlessness is energy without focus." Better a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy. Atheism is a non-prophet organization. Classifying pottery: If it holds water, it's craft. If it leaks, it's art.

"Should 'anal retentive' have a hyphen?"

"A Sept 13 1987 Boston Globe story indicated polls show almost half of Americans think the phrase 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his need' comes from the US Constitution."

Cynics, misanthrops, pessimists unite! ::

"Politics --the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich by promising to protect each from the other." -- Oscar Ameringer

"The depressed appear as realists, the non-depressed as confident distortionists." -- Bandura

"Admiration: Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves." -- Ambrose Bierce

"Boundary. In political geography, an imaginary line between two nations, separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary rights of another." -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"

"I either want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it." -- Ashleigh Brilliant

"Any fool can tell the truth, but it takes a clever man to lie well." -- Samuel Butler t.y.

"To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost." -- Gustave Flaubert

"Never underestimate the power of very stupid people in large groups." -- John Kenneth Galbraith

"The problem with the globalvillage is all the globalvillage idiots." -- P. Ginsparg

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

"Not only is life a bitch, it has puppies." -- Adreienne E. Gusoff

"When life gives you lemons, make lemonade, pee in it, and serve it to the people that piss you off." -- Jack Handy

"If it wasn't for bad luck, I wouldn't have no luck at all." -- Albert King

"Disclaimer: If you need a disclaimer to point out the potential danger of doing this, then you're too dumb to live and we can just think of it as natural selection in action." -- Lamont

"I went on a diet and I went on the wagon. In a fortnight I lost two weeks." -- Joe E. Lewis

"I believe I have found the link between animals and civilized man. It is us." -- Konrad Lorenz

"It is a comfort in wretchedness to have companions in woe." -- C. Marlowe, 'Faust'

"I only drink to make other people seem interesting." -- George Jean Nathan

"He was considered to be third among equals." -- Nils-Fredrik Nielsen, "Tristesser"

"Man is a sad mammal that combs its hair." -- Cees Nooteboom

"A cynic is a man who looks both ways before crossing a one-way street." -- E. Norfolk-Ingway

"In fact, safety has no place anywhere. Everything that's fun in life is dangerous. Horse races, for instance, are very dangerous. But attempt to design a safe horse and the result is a cow (an appalling animal to watch at the trotters.) And everything that isn't fun is dangerous too. It is impossible to be alive and safe." -- P. J. O'Rourke

"It is a mistake to allow any mechanical object to realize that you are in a hurry." -- Ralph's Observation

"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it." -- George Bernard Shaw

"It was such a lovely day, I thought it a pity to get up." -- W. Somerset Maugham

"I envy the paranoid... they actually think people are paying attention to them." -- Susan Sontag

"No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up." -- Lily Tomlin

"It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail." -- Gore Vidal

"A true friend stabs you in the front." -- Oscar Wilde

"Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess." -- Oscar Wilde

"Philosophy: A study that lets us be unhappy more intelligently."

"Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to hide the bodies of those I had to kill because they pissed me off."

"Beware the lollipop of mediocrity. Lick once and you suck forever."

"Democracy is the belief that twenty thousand lemmings can't ALL be wrong."

"There's a fixed amount of intelligence in the world, but the population keeps growing."

"Majority: That quality that distinguishes a crime from a law."

"Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat."

Quips/Insults ::

" "The 3rd Lord Moynihan, who has died in Manila, aged 55, provided, through his character and career, ample ammunition for critics of the hereditary principle." -- Daily Telegraph, Obituary

"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it." -- Groucho Marx

"Lampooning is unnecessary with many people. Quoting is sufficient." -- Robert Neumann

"The affair between Margot Asquith and Margot Asquith will live as one of the prettiest love stories in all literature." -- Dorothy Parker

"Sir, you will either die on the gallows or of the pox!"

"That, my Lord, depends on whether I embrace your principles or your mistress!" -- John Wilkes to The Earl of Sandwich, Parliament, November 1763

"I would've been your father but the guy behind me had exact change."

"I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent."

"Ahhh...I see the fuck-up fairy has visited us again..."

"The fact that no one understands you doesn't mean you're an artist."

"I don't know what your problem is, but I'll bet it's hard to pronounce."

"Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental."

"I have plenty of talent and vision. I just don't give a damn."

"I like you. You remind me of when I was young and stupid."

"What am I? Flypaper for freaks!?"

"I'm not being rude. You're just insignificant."

"Thank you. We're all refreshed and challenged by your unique point of view."

"I will always cherish the initial misconceptions I had about you."

"I'm really easy to get along with once you people learn to worship me."

"I'll try being nicer if you'll try being smarter."

"You are validating my inherent mistrust of strangers."

"I see you've set aside this special time to humiliate yourself in public."

"Someday, we'll look back on this, laugh nervously and change the subject."

"This plumber is trying to placate a woman in her flooded kitchen. 'Listen madam', he says to her, 'Crying only makes it worse'.

Woody Allen ::

"Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it.

"More than any time in history, mankind now faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly."

"Sex without love is an empty experience, but, as empty experiences go, it's one of the best."

"There are two types of people in this world, good and bad. The good sleep better, but the bad seem to enjoy the waking hours much more."

"To YOU I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition."

"What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet."

"What if nothing exists and we're all in somebody's dream? Or what's worse, what if only that fat guy in the third row exists?"

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

"When I was in school, I cheated on my metaphysics exam: I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me."

"Her figure described a set of parabolas that could cause cardiac arrest in a yak."

"Love is the answer, but while you are waiting for the answer, sex raises some pretty good questions."

"Life is a concentration camp. You're stuck here and there's no way out and you can only rage impotently against your persecutors."

"Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable."

"Don't knock masturbation --- it's sex with someone I love."

"The Great Roe is a mythological beast with the head of a lion and the body of a lion, though not the same lion."

"I am at two with nature."

"I'm not afraid to die, I just don't want to to be there when it happens."

"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve immortality through not dying."

"Showing up is 80 % of life."

"Is sex dirty? Only if it is done right."

"Syllogism: All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. [Therefore,] All men are Socrates."

"The lion shall lie down with the lamb, but the lamb won't get much sleep."

"If man were immortal, can you imagine what his meat bills would be?"

"Sex between two people can be a beautiful thing. But between five it's fantastic."

"Yea, I shall walk through the valley of the shadow of death.... In fact, now that I think of it, I shall RUN through the valley of the shadow of death; you get through the valley much faster that way."

"The great thing about bisexuality is that it automatically doubles your chances for a date on Saturday night."

"My parents did not want me when I was a child. They put a live teddy bear in my crib. They bronzed my baby shoes with my feet still in them. And that scarred me emotionally."

"She was a beautiful woman. When I see a woman that beautiful, I want to cry ... write a poem ... jump on her...."

"The only difference between death and sex, after death you're not nauseous."

"I once stole a pornographic book that was printed in braille. I used to rub the dirty parts."

"God is not mean; he is just not very good at what he's doing."

"Marriage is the only war where you're sleeping with the enemy."

Stephen Wright:

"My theory of evolution is that Darwin was adopted."

"On the other hand, you have different fingers."

"If you were going to shoot a mime, would you use a silencer?"

"I had my coathangers spayed."

"I wrote a few children's books...not on purpose."

"If you are going to try cross-country skiing, start with a small country."

"I went to a general store. They wouldn't let me buy anything specifically."

"I was trying to daydream, but my mind kept wandering."

"I'm writing an unauthorized autobiography."

"Support bacteria - they're the only culture some people have."

"Boycott shampoo! Demand the REAL poo!"

"Energizer Bunny arrested, charged with battery."

"All those who believe in telekinesis, raise my hand"

"I almost had a psychic girlfriend but she left me before we met."

"OK, so what's the speed of dark?"

"When everything is coming your way, you're in the wrong lane."

"Everyone has a photographic memory. Some just don't have film."

"Shin: a device for finding furniture in the dark."

"Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines."

"24 hours in a day ... 24 beers in a case.... coincidence?"

"What happens if you get scared half to death twice?"

"For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism."

"The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard."

"A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory."

"A fool and his money are soon partying."

"Drugs may lead to nowhere, but at least it's the scenic route."

"I'd kill for a Nobel Peace Prize."

"99 percent of lawyers give the rest a bad name."

"42.7 percent of all statistics are made up on the spot."

"I saw a sign: 'Rest Area 25 Miles'. That's pretty big. Some people must be really tired."

"In Vegas, I got into a long argument with the man at the roulette wheel over what I considered to be an odd number."

"Today I dialed a wrong number... The other person said, 'Hello?' and I said, 'Hello, could I speak to Joey?'... They said, 'Uh... I don't think so... he's only 2 months old.' I said, 'I'll wait.'"

"When I have a kid, I want to buy one of those strollers for twins. Then put the kid in and run around, looking frantic. When he gets older, I'd tell him he used to have a brother, but he didn't obey."

"Can you imagine a world with no hypothetical questions?"

Norwegian/Scandinavian quotes ::

"Mitt ettermæle vil nok bli godt i den grad det kan brukes mot mine etterkommere." -- Trygve Bratteli

"Gennom livet trues man av farer og overlistelser, men med et naturligt kønsliv kan man undgå sportslivets fristelser." -- Piet Hein

"Det er lettere at regne med, at folk er idioter end at søge at forøge deres åndelige kvoter." -- Piet Hein

"Hvad rager det dén som er sikker på sit at resten af verden er ude af trit." -- Piet Hein

"Den som taber sin ene handske er heldig i forhold til dén, som taber den ene, kasserer den anden og finder den første igen." -- Piet Hein

"Fagfolk har man til at spøre hvordan intet lar sig gøre." -- Piet Hein

"Hvo som bare ønsker godt for sin syge moster kan den kunst at være flot uden at det koster." -- Piet Hein

"Der er intet man blir mere pessimist af end at sidde og ha glemt hvad man er trist af." -- Piet Hein

"Mannen i gata blir ofte overkjørt." -- Nils-Fredrik Nielsen, "Tristesser"

"Så lenge det er liv er det håp om en slutt." -- Nils-Fredrik Nielsen, "Tristesser"

"Fravær er det beste forsvar." -- Nils-Fredrik Nielsen, "Tristesser"

"En virkelig venn er nesten like glad i deg når du lykkes." -- Nils-Fredrik Nielsen, "Tristesser"

"Han var så liten og stygg at det falt dem lett å kalle ham en begavelse." -- Nils-Fredrik Nielsen, "Tristesser"

"Den som kaster den første sten, har i hvertfall et snev av originalitet." -- Nils-Fredrik Nielsen, "Tristesser"

"Det eneste som er typisk norsk er å tro at ting er typisk norsk."

"Før man kan være tverrfaglig må man være faglig."

"Han var så åndsfrisk at han var dypt deprimert helt til det siste."