For many years, essentially since I was a student and maybe earlier, I’ve collected odd quotations. So now I have a database full – and that’s only the ones I have online; I have a book of handwritten quotes too which I have just never got round to transcribing! This is a copy of that database, which I hope to refresh from time to time as I add to the master list.

There are no guarantees that the attributed authors are correct (for instance I’m far from sure all the quotes attributed to Albert Einstein are genuine), however they are correct to the best of my ability. I have added the original source of the quote if I know it, bu again there are no guarantees. Caveat emptor.

The quotations are not keyworded, but if you want to look for something particular you can search on any word (or part of a word) or author name; by default the search will scan all the fields. The default sequence is alphabetic by author surname, but again you can sort on the columns, should you wish.

---

Author	Quote	Source
Abbey, Edward	Grown men do not need leaders.
Adair, Red	The only thing more expensive than hiring a professional, is hiring an amateur.
Adams, Douglas	All you really need to know for the moment is that the universe is a lot more complicated than you might think, even if you start from a position of thinking it's pretty damn complicated in the first place.
Adams, Douglas	Anything that thinks logically can be fooled by something else that thinks at least as logically as it does.
Adams, Douglas	Beauty doesn't have to be about anything. What's a vase about? What's a sunset or a flower about? What, for that matter, is Mozart's Twenty-third Piano Concerto about?
Adams, Douglas	Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
Adams, Douglas	I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don't know the answer.
Adams, Douglas	If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a non-working cat.
Adams, Douglas	It is folly to say you know what is happening to other people. Only they know, if they exist. They have their own Universes of their own eyes and ears.
Adams, Douglas	Only a child sees things with perfect clarity, because it hasn't developed all those filters which prevent us from seeing things that we don't expect to see.
Adams, Douglas	Reality is frequently inaccurate.
Adams, Douglas	There is no point in using the word 'impossible' to describe something that has clearly happened.
Adams, Douglas	We have normality. I repeat, we have normality. Anything you still can't cope with is therefore your own problem.
Adams, Douglas	I love deadlines. I like the wooshing sound they make as they fly by.
Adams, Douglas	First we thought the PC was a calculator. Then we found out how to turn numbers into letters with ASCII - and we thought it was a typewriter. Then we discovered graphics, and we thought it was a television. With the World Wide Web, we've realized it's a brochure.
Adams, Douglas	The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy [... ]says of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation products that "it is very easy to be blinded to the essential uselessness of them by the sense of achievement you get from getting them to work at all. In other words - and this is the rock solid principle on which the whole of the Corporation's Galaxy-wide success is founded - their fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their superficial design flaws."	So Long and Thanks for All the Fish
Adams, Scott	I say we should listen to the customers and give them what they want. What they want is better products for free.
Adams, Scott	Nothing defines humans better than their willingness to do irrational things in the pursuit of phenomenally unlikely payoffs. This is the principle behind lotteries, dating, and religion.	The Dilbert Principle; 1996
Adams, Scott	Normal people ... believe that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Engineers believe that if it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet.	The Dilbert Principle
Adams, Scott	The clue meter is reading zero.
Agassiz, Louis	Every great scientific truth goes through three stages. First, people say it conflicts with the Bible. Next they say it had been discovered before. Lastly they say they always believed it.	Science-Week; 1 January 1998
Ali, Mohammad	Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It's not something you learn in school. But if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven't learned anything.
Ali, Monica	In Gowipur, a sweetmaker was a sweetmaker, a shoemaker was a shoemaker, and a carpenter was a carpenter. They did not want to be teachers or librarians. They were not waiting for promotions. They did not make themselves unhappy.	Brick Lane
Alimonos, Nick	I reject the notion that men and women cannot live in sight of one another without clothes. I reject the belief that bodies are inherently sexual and must be hidden from view. And I know, with certainty, that nudity is not harmful to children – in fact,	http://writersdisease.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/nudity-is-future.html
Alimonos, Nick	The last irrational, moralistic taboo in America is that of public nudity. There is no difference between an Iranian woman being arrested for going out in the streets without her hair covered and an American woman being arrested for stepping out her fron	http://writersdisease.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/nudity-is-future.html
Allan, Corey	... marriage is not about happiness ... it's about growing up. All of life is - BUT grown ups have the most pleasure and fun!	www.simplemarriage.net; 19 March 2009
Allan, Corey	Marriage is more than an institution or a social convention. Marriage is personal development bootcamp.	www.simplemarriage.net; 19 March 2009
Allen, Fred	California is a fine place to live - if you happen to be an orange.
American Indian	Walk tall as the trees; live strong as the mountains; be gentle as the spring winds; keep the warmth of summer in your heart; and the Great Spirit will always be with you.
Amiel, Henri Frederic	Action and faith enslave thought, both of them in order not to be troubled or inconvenienced by reflection, criticism and doubt.
Amis, Kingsley	If you can't annoy somebody, there is little point in writing.
Amsden, David	The role of fiction is to make you stare at something small, so it's not so small anymore.	Poets and Writers; Jan/Feb 2006
Angell, Jeannette	Any argument against making [prostitution] legal is really a reaction to fear. It's time that we got rid of some of our fears and thought about both the safety and well-being of everyone involved, and about the fact that taxing this profession would bring in substantial revenue that could be used for all sorts of positive social services.	"A Wellness Perspective on Prostitution, Freedom, Religion, and More", Seek Wellness, 30 April 2005
Angell, Jeannette	The only way to stop this trafficking in and profiting from the use of women's bodies is for prostitution to be legalized. Legalization will open it up to regulation; and regulation means safety.
Anon	To every rule there is a exception, and vice versa.
Anon	Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned.
Anon	Mary had a little lamb, / Her father shot it dead, / And now it goes to school with her / Between two bits of bread.
Anon	Some things were never meant to make sense.
Anon	Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.
Anon	The best book on programming for the layman is Alice in Wonderland; but that's because it's the best book on anything for layman.
Anon	OK rules notation Polish Reverse.
Anon	Smile ... tomorrow will be worse.
Anon	I am unable to confirm or deny that X was involved in A. This is partly because to issue a denial in a matter in which X had no interest could effectively reveal its interest in a matter in which no denial could be given. Furthermore, , which sets the ... control over X, lays down ... those circumstances in which X is permitted to disclose information. These do not include requests of the kind made in your enquiry.
Anon	Bizarreness is the essence of the exotic.
Anon	Religion: the only known contagious mental illness
Anon	An apology is not a confession of guilt. It's asking for friendship to continue.
Anon	Punters talk through their pockets. That's their nature and their privilege.	CH4 TV Racing; 12 October 2002
Anon	Success is accepting the world as it is and rising above it.
Anon	Every program has at least one bug and can be shortened by at least one instruction - from which, by induction, one can deduce that every program can be reduced to one instruction which doesn't work.
Anon	Believe it or not, every fool you meet is the end result of millions of years of evolution.
Anon	Nothing can be taught: all the teacher can do is to show that there are paths.
Anon	When history and tradition are not in agreement, it is safe to bet, almost as a certainty, that it is the historians, makers of history, who are deceived.
Anon	Any society that needs disclaimers has too many lawyers.
Anon	The older I get, the better I was.
Anon	It always fascinates me, the number of people willing - nay, eager - to leap forward and impose pettifogging limitations on their fellow men for their own convenience, incapable of imagining that what is good for them (insofar as their limited imagination can conceive) may not be inevitably beneficial for all of mankind.
Anon	"What will we do when we are no longer able to do useful work?" / "Well there's always management."	Wizard of Id, London Evening Standard
Anon	If you do not tell the truth about yourself, you can not tell it about other people.
Anon	She shifted her brain into neutral and let her tongue idle on.
Anon	Information is the flotsam left by the tides of entropy.
Anon	Sir, 'e's a man with wot you'd call a troublesome organ.
Anon	Please grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot 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.
Anon	There's a fundamental rule of automation that says "Everything automatically done for you simultaneously does something unpredicted and usually unpleasant to you."
Anon	Laws are society's common sense, written down for the stupid. The stupid refuse to read.
Anon	A year from now you may wish you had started today.
Anon	If it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change.
Anon	Heaven is where the police are British, the cooks French, the mechanics German, the lovers Italian and it is all organised by the Swiss. / Hell is where the chefs are British, the mechanics French, the lovers Swiss, the police German, and it is all organised by the Italians.
Araki, Nobuyoshi	Without obscenity, our cities are dreary places and life is bleak.	Tokyo Lucky Hole; 1997
Armstrong, Karen	A lot of people see God as a sacred seal of approval on some of their worst fantasies about other people.
Arnold (of Rugby)	I became increasingly convinced that it is not knowledge, but the means of gaining knowledge, which I have to teach.
Arnold, Oren	Christmas gift suggestions: / To your enemy, forgiveness. / To an opponent, tolerance. / To a friend, your heart. To a customer, service. To all, charity. To every child, a good example. To yourself, respect.
Asimov, Isaac	Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.	Foundation
Auden, WH	But how can I offer you advise? I, who remember gas light and when everyone travelled by train and when the poor were what they were used to being, the producers of wealth, not a nuisance (no one has suggested gassing them yet, but someone surely will) ...	Epistle to a Godson
Austen, Jane	One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.
Bacon, Kevin	There's something therapeutic about nudity. Clothing is one of the external things about a character. Take away the Gucci or Levis and we're all the same.
Bacon, Sir Francis	Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider.
Bakunin, Mikhail	All religions are cruel, all founded on blood; for all rest principally on the idea of sacrifice -- that is, on the perpetual immolation of humanity to the insatiable vengeance of divinity.
Balfour, Arthur	Nothing matters very much, and few things matter at all.
Barker, Ronnie	The marvellous thing about a joke with a double meaning is that it can only mean one thing.
Barnes, Simon	The thing we humans find hard to believe is that nature is not there to please us. We are not, after all, lords of nature; we are just a part of nature. One more species, if a rather rum one. Nature is not organised for our special delectation. Much of nature is glorious - that is to say, profoundly pleasing to humans. But plenty of it is - or would be, if we were talking about human morality - pretty horrible. But nature is not horrible. Nature is not wonderful. Nature is not cruel. Nature is not beautiful. Nature only is. And it is not our job to change it.	How to be a Bad Birdwatcher, 2004
Barnes, Simon	The universe is not only weirder than we understand. It is weirder than we are capable of understanding.	How to be a Bad Birdwatcher, 2004
Barnes, Simon	And in diversity, in the million solutions to the problem of staying alive, we find life. The meaning of life is life, and it comes in a million forms.	How to be a Bad Birdwatcher, 2004
Barnes, Simon	All mammalian life is ... understood through the nose. Sniff sniff: this tells me all I need to know about the age, sex, sexual availability, position in the dominance hierarchy and - like as not - the personal identity of the individual that dumped and sprayed here. I am Dog; my name is writ in urine. / Most mammals understand the universe, each other and themselves through the nose. If you were to write a novel for a dog, it would have to be written not in sound symbols, like the words you are reading now, but in smell symbols. / And it is all completely baffling to us apes. We smell, as it were, bloody awful. But we have damn good colour vision and pretty decent hearing. These are the senses we work through. Colour and sound are our way of communication: and they form the basis for our art - for what is a book but fossilised sound?	How to be a Bad Birdwatcher, 2004
Barnes, Simon	Humans are in some ways closer to birds than to mammals. Most mammals have an ethology of dung and urine obsession, living in the impenetrable world of smell. But birds are creatures of colour and sound, and we relate to them as like to like. A dog is in many ways more alien than a nightingale. If a dog wrote a novel, it would be in smell symbols, not sound symbols.	New Scientist, 18 June 2005
Barrow, Prof. John D	Nothing truly revolutionary is ever predicted because that is what makes it revolutionary.	New Scientist, 18/11/2006
Bartlett, Rob	When I tested it with no data it worked perfectly.
Baudrillard, Jean	Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest [of America ]is real.	Globe and Mail, 13 November 1999
Bayers-Landshut, Duke of	Herewith shall beer brewers and others not use anything other than malt, hops and water. These same brewers also shall not add anything when serving or otherwise handling beer, upon penalty to body and chattels.	1493; Regulation
Bayley, John	Sex described has its own sort of inevitable banality. Even so accomplished and versatile a performer on the sexual theme as Anthony Powell is capable of error in the same direction, as when the writer X. Trapnel (a superlative creation) reveals the secret horror of the diabolical Pamela Flitton's sexuality. The Pamela enigma, and its funniness both louche and sinister, is at once collapsed into the banal.	London Review of Books, 18 April 1996
Beckett, Samuel	We are all born mad. Some remain so.
Bell, Vanessa ??	I'm not afraid of being thought tasteless, because I make my own taste.
Benn, Tony	Five dicta of democracy: 1. What power have you got? 2. Where did you get it from? 3. In whose interests do you exercise it? 4. To whom are you accountable? 5. How do we get rid of you?
Benson, DR	The Puritan often will brood / On how horrid it is to be nude; / The absence of clothing / He views with such loathing / That the naked truth strikes him as lewd.
Berenson, Bernard	Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.
Bergonzi, Bernard	Arthur Mizener has suggested that Powell sees the twentieth century as 'a world nearly transformed by Widmerpools though still haunted by Stringhams'.	Critical Quarterly; Spring 1969
Bergonzi, Bernard	Compared with Waugh, Powell is not a mythologiser, and there is nothing in his fiction comparable to the recurring image of the doomed gentleman that I have tried to trace in Waugh's novels. Although Powell is acutely interested in the past he does not lament it; change and even decay are seen as inevitable and something to be endured with as good a grace as possible, since, whatever happens, life goes on.	Critical Quarterly; Spring 1969
Bernard, Claude	Man can learn nothing except by going from the known to the unknown.
Bernhard, Ruth	We say 'nakedness is natural', but have we begun to think through all that means? It is so basic. A human being is an innocent part of nature. Our civilization has distorted this universal quality that allows us to feel at home in our skin. Other anim
Berra, Yogi	When you come to a fork in the road ... take it.
Berra, Yogi	You can observe a lot just by watching.
Bevin, Ernest	If you open that Pandora's Box, you never know what Trojan horses will jump out.
Bible	While the earth remaineth, seed time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.	Genesis, viii, 22
Bierce, Ambrose	The covers of this book are too far apart.
Bierce, Ambrose	There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy...
Bierce, Ambrose	Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum - I think that I think, therefore I think that I am.
Billière, General Sir Peter de la	Leaders have to earn respect, not popularity.	Saga Magazine; July 2005
Birrell, Augustine	The great dust-heap called history.
Bismarck	Only fools learn by their experience; smart people use the experience of others.
Blake, William	If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.
Blake, William	Every harlot was a virgin once.
Blake, William	Prisons are built with stones of Law. Brothels with the bricks of religion.
Blunkett, David	If authorities passport on the additional resources and you then ring-fence, the additional £2,000 uplift will be available on a ring-fenced basis.	The Times; 24/12/2004
Bly, Mary	Dogs come when they're called. Cats take a message and get back to you.
Bly, Robert	Contemporary business life allows competitive relationships only, in which the major emotions are anxiety, tension, loneliness, rivalry and fear. Having no soul union with other men can be the most damaging wound of all. Much personal power is given away in the process of denying one's true feelings.
Bohr, Neils	There are trivial truths & there are great truths. The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false. The opposite of a great truth is also true.
Bohr, Niels	The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.
Boteach, Rabbi Shmuley	Indeed, from a logical standpoint, the illegality of polygamy seems grossly unfair. If a man has a wife, and then takes a mistress, it is perfectly legal. He can have sex with her and use her for her body without any legal repercussions. But the moment he takes responsibility for her, contractualizes the relationship, and makes an honest woman out of her by marrying her, they throw him in prison.	Homosexuality is a Religious Sin, Not an Ethical One
Bradbury, Malcolm	Briefly, a conference is what you hold when you want to give a particular group prestige; a congress is what you have if you wish to make the prestige international; a convention is what you have if you want to have a good time as well; a course is what you have if you want the good time to go on for several weeks; and a colloquium is if you want to have a good time for several weeks with a very small and select number of people. / At conferences the participants confer; at a congress they dissent; at a convention they listen; on a course they fall asleep; at a colloquium they do the same but often in the same bed. / To put it another way: a conference is an elite meeting on equal terms; a congress is a group of elites meeting on opposite terms; a convention is a mob meeting on equal terms; a course is an elite instructing a mob; and a colloquium is a group capable of considering all these phenomena.	Unsent Letters
Brand, Stewart	Art begets fashion; fashion means style; style is made of illusion (granite veneer pretending to be solid; façade columns pretending to hold something); and illusion is no friend of function. The fashion game is fun for architects to play and diverting for the public to watch, but it's deadly for building users.
Brinkhurst, Sara	Very avocado. [Description of 1970's interior decorating.]	12-Jul-97
Brinner, Roger	The plural of anecdote is not data.
Bristow-Bovey, Darrel	We may be lazy, but we are not dumb. It is only the very smart who can get away with being as lazy as we are.	I Moved Your Cheese, 2002
Bristow-Bovey, Darrel	Sometimes it is not necessary to learn wisdom by being taught wisdom. Sometimes it is enough merely to be in the proximity of wisdom. Sometimes wisdom doesn't even have to make sense.	I Moved Your Cheese, 2002
Brougham, Lord	Education makes people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave.
Brown, Rita Mae	Morals are private. Decency is public.
Bryson, Bill	Live as though you're going to be 100, work as though you may die tomorrow, talk as though you were quoting from the 'Readers' Digest'.
Burns, Father Mick	A mind fallow becomes overgrown with the weeds of confusion and forgetfulness.
Burr, Chandler	Metaphor is the currency of knowledge. I have spent my life learning incredible amounts of disparate, disconnected, obscure, useless pieces of knowledge, and they have turned out to be, almost all of them, extremely useful.	The Emperor of Scent
Burton, Robert	Almost in every kingdom the most ancient families have been at first princes' bastards; their worthiest captains, best wits, greatest scholars, bravest spirits in all our annals, have been base [born].	The Anatomy of Melancholy
Butler, Josephine	Beware of purity workers [who are] … ready to accept and endorse any amount of coercive and degrading treatment of their fellow creatures in the fatuous belief that you can oblige human beings to be moral by force.
Byron, Lord	But words are things, a small drop of ink, / Falling like dew upon a thought, produces / That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.
Cage, John	I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.
Caius Petronius	I was to learn later in life that we tend to-meet any situation by reorganizing, and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress, while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization.
Campbell, Joseph	We're so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget that the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it's all about.
Campbell, Joseph	The best things cannot be told, the second best are misunderstood. After that comes civilised conversation. After that indoctrination. After that inter-cultural exchange.
Camus, Albert	A free press can of course be good or bad, but, most certainly, without freedom it will never be anything but bad.	Homage to an Exile; 1955
Capote, Truman	I have always believed that I was slightly saner than most people. Then again, most insane people think this.
Carlin, George	Those who dance are thought mad by those who do not hear the music.
Carson, Johnny	Never continue in a job you don't enjoy. If you're happy in what you're doing, you'll like yourself, you'll have inner peace. And if you have that, along with physical health, you will have had more success than you could possibly have imagined.
Carson, Rachel	Elixir of death.	Silent Spring
Carter, Tom	No wonder prostitution is so rampant in China, I mused as I watched the four girls watch us: why stand on your feet all day for slave wages when you can get rich on your back?	Unsavory Elements: Stories of Foreigners on the Loose in China
Casals, Pablo	Each person has inside a basic decency and goodness. If he listens to it and acts on it, he is giving a great deal of what it is the world needs most. It is not complicated but it takes courage. It takes courage for a person to listen to his own goodness and act on it.
Charles V, Emperor	I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men and German to my horse.
Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich	We shall find peace. We shall hear angels. We shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds
Chesterton, GK	Don't ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.
Chesterton, GK	A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.
Chesterton, GK	We must learn to love life without ever trusting it.
Chinese Proverb	If we don't change our direction we're liable to end up where we're going.
Chittenden, Meg	Many people hear voices when no-one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stare at the walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing.
Christie, Agatha	It is completely unimportant. That is why it is so interesting.
Chuang Tzu	Words exist because of meaning; once you've gotten the meaning, you can forget the words.
Chuang Tzu	To use a finger as a metaphor for the nonfingerness of a finger is not as good as using nonfingerness as a metaphor for the nonfingerness of a finger.
Churchill, Winston	He has all of the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire
Churchill, Winston	Eating words has never given me indigestion
Churchill, Winston	Short words are the best and the old words when short are best of all
Churchill, Winston	I'm always ready to learn although I do not always like to be taught
Churchill, Winston	When the eagles are silent the parrots begin to jabber
Churchill, Winston	The price of greatness is responsibility
Churchill, Winston	This report, by its very length, defends itself against the risk of being read.
Churchill, Winston	The greatest lesson in life is to know that sometimes fools are right
Churchill, Winston	Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.
Churchill, Winston	I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.
Clark, Dave	We reject kings, presidents and voting. We believe in rough consensus and running code.	IETF Credo, 1992
Clark, David D	Things get worse slowly. People adjust. The problem is assigning the correct degree of fear to distant elephants.
Clarke, Arthur C	Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Clinton, President Bill	The red light districts of cyberspace.	Press Release; 26 June 1997
Cochrane, Prof. Peter	We have gone from a world of concentrated knowledge and wisdom to one of distributed ignorance.  And we know and understand less while being increasingly capable.
Colbert, Stephen	Americans respond to certainty, not fact.	San Francisco City Arts & Lectures, January, 2006
Cole, Johnetta Betsch	To teach well is to be a lifelong student.
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor	Advice is like snow; the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper it sinks into the mind.
Compton-Burnett, Ivy	He was concerned with the things that had value to him, and his father's opinion was not among them.	Bullivant and the Lambs
Conan Doyle, Sir Arthur	Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself but talent instantly recognizes genius.	The Valley of Fear
Conan Doyle, Sir Arthur	Absence of evidence should not be taken as evidence of absence.	Sherlock Holmes
Confucius	Desire to have things done quickly prevents their being done thoroughly.
Connelly, Tom J	He who asks a question may be a fool for five minutes, but he who never asks a question remains a fool forever.
Conrad, Joseph	The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.
Cook, Peter	Tragically I was an only twin.
Cook, Peter	Californians have got this thing about open spaces. They have lots of it. Mostly between the ears.
Corbett, Harry H	My old man's a nutter. He's gone squirreled!	Harold Steptoe in Steptoe & Son, BBC TV
Costello, Elvis	My ultimate vocation in life is to be an irritant. Not something actively destructive, but someone who irritates, who disorientates. Someone who disrupts the daily drag of life just enough to leave the victim thinking there's maybe more to it all than the mere humdrum quality of existence.
Courteline, Georges	If it was necessary to tolerate in other people everything that one permits in oneself, life would be unbearable.
Coward, Noel	“I have read the first volume of one of Anthony Powell’s sagas [AQOU]. Very well written, at times witty, but on the whole a trifle arid, a mixture of Proust and bromide. The critics who have compared him to Evelyn Waugh are far from accurate. Evelyn, in his earlier books at least, had zest and brevity and was irresistibly comic. Powell is meticulous and, by comparison, stodgy. The difference between the Yorkshire pudding you get in restaurants and the Yorkshire puddings I used to make in Bermuda.	Diaries
Craig, Philip R	Libraries are treasuries. They're mountains of information in which you can delve for free. They have things to read and places to read them, and you can even take material home with you. And librarians are also treasuries. When you can't find something yourself, they will show you how or else find it themselves. And unlike people at the Registry of Motor Vehicles, librarians WANT to help you.	The Woman Who Walked Into the Sea
Cray, Seymour	To make a unique contribution, you must be willing to be different.
Cromer, Lord	The main end of education is to teach people to think.
Cromer, Lord	I do not think that English statesmen ... quite sufficiently recognize that the final cause of British rule in India is to teach the people to govern themselves.	Private letter to a friend
Cunningham, Jim C	[M]y children are being brought up in such a way that they don't bat an eye at looking at anybody's nakedness. They look at the so-called private parts the same way they look at an elbow or an ear. I think that's entirely psychologically healthy. When
Cunningham, Jim C	If women don't want to be ogled, they should just get naked; nothing can possibly deflate voyeurism better ... Once the element of “tease” is gone, the voyeur must turn elsewhere.
d'Angelo, Anthony	The people who oppose your ideas are inevitably those who represent the established order that your ideas will upset.
Dalai Lama	Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
Dalai Lama	For me, it is nothing. New millennium, or new century, or new year. For me it is another day and night. The sun, the moon, the stars remain the same.	August 1999
Dalai Lama	I am open to the guidance of synchronicity, and do not let expectations hinder my path.
DaVinci, Leonardo	Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does Nature, because in her inventions, nothing is lacking and nothing is superfluous.
Dawkins, Richard	We, alone on earth ... are separate and independent enough from our genes to rebel against them ... we do so in a small way every time we use contraception.
de Saint Exupery, Antoine	If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
de Santos, Des	The squeaky wheel gets the most oil
de Unamuno, Miguel	A lot of good arguments are spoiled by some fool who knows what he is / talking about.
DeGaulle, Charles	Nothing great will ever be achieved without great men, and men are great only if they are determined to be so
DeGaulle, Charles	I respect those who resist me, but I cannot tolerate them
DeGaulle, Charles	Every man of action has a strong dose of egoism, pride, hardness and cunning. But all those things will be regarded as high qualities if he can make them the means to achieve great ends
DeGaulle, Charles	Deliberation is the work of many men. Action, of one alone
DeGaulle, Charles	I have come to the conclusion that politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians
DeGaulle, Charles	Since a politician never believes what he says he is surprised when others do
DeGaulle, Charles	The graveyards are full of indispensable men
DeGaulle, Charles	Silence is the ultimate weapon of power
DeGaulle, Charles	Treaties are like roses and young girls they last while they last
Deming, W Edwards	Anyone that comes to try and help us must understand all about our business? All evidence points to the fallacy of this supposition. Competent men in every position, if they are doing their best, know all there is to know about their work except how to improve it. Help towards improvement can only come from some other kind of knowledge. Help may come from outside the company, combined with knowledge already possessed by people within the company but not being utilised.
Diamond, John	That majority of Americans who have had irony bypasses.	The Times; 2 September 1995
Dietiker, Eric	I'm designed intelligently? As far as I can see, I was designed by an idiot. My parts are neither interchangeable nor replaceable. I could use a new ankle right now, and almost everything I do injures my back. Some of my internal organs are useless, and can even kill me. My risk calculation engine is useless. I am afraid to eat beef, but have no problem catapulting myself down tree-lined roads on my motorcycle. My judgment is so bad I can be convinced to send my life savings to a complete stranger with just one phone call. The final stake in the heart of intelligent design is that there are people we might otherwise consider intelligent, who, in the face of all this, maintain we are functioning as intended.
Dietrich, Marlene	A country without bordellos is like a house without bathrooms.
Dijkstra, EW	Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
Dill, David L	The difference between using computers for voting and for flying airplanes is that you know when the airplane crashes.
Dill, Davis	You can't do a meaningful recount if the question is about the integrity of the voting machines themselves.	Washington Post, 6 October 2003
Dillard, Annie	How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.	The Writing Life
Disraeli, Benjamin	Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.
Dixon, Martin	I moved to London in 1973 to study Chemistry at University College, London. Here, if nothing else, I learnt that at degree level, Chemistry is Physics, Physics is Maths and Maths is impossible.	Subterranea; August 2008
Dizick, Missy	Some people say that cats are sneaky, evil, and cruel. True, and they have many other fine qualities as well.
Donne, John	Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee, / As souls unbodied, bodies uncloth'd must be, / To taste whole joyes.	1699
Drew, Wayland	When no one is listening, that is when it is most important to speak the truth.	The Master of Norriya
Drucker, Peter	Management by objective works if you know the objectives. Ninety percent of the time you don't.
Drummond, William	Libraries are as Forests, in which not only tall Cedars and Oaks are to be found, but Bushes too and dwarfish Shrubs; and as in Apothecaries Shops all sorts of Drugs are permitted to be, so may all sort of Books be in a Library: And as they out of Vipers and Scorpions, and poisoning Vegetables, extract often wholesome Medicaments, for the Life of Mankind; so out of whatsoever Book, good Instructions and Examples may be acquired.	The Works of William Drummond of Hawthornden (1711)
Dukane, William	All writing is essentially bricks of plagiarism secured in place by the mortar of original thinking.
Duschénes, Stéphane	Why would you wear a bathing suit? Does it keep you dry? Does it keep you warm? It' s no kind of protection from sand. I can look at anyone and know what they look like under their clothes.
Ebert, Roger	This movie should be cut into free ukulele picks for the poor.
Eco, Umberto	When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything.
Edison, Thomas	I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
Einstein, Albert	The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.
Einstein, Albert	The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.
Einstein, Albert	The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvellous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.
Einstein, Albert	The more I study physics, the more I am drawn to metaphysics.
Einstein, Albert	The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless childish.	Letter to Eric Gutkind, 1954
Einstein, Albert	Solitude is so painful when one is young but delightful when one is more mature
Einstein, Albert	The whole of science is nothing more than refinement of everyday thinking
Einstein, Albert	We all dance to an invisible tune, intoned in the distance, by an invisible piper.
Einstein, Albert	The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.
Einstein, Albert	Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value.
Einstein, Albert	The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
Einstein, Albert	There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.
Einstein, Albert	Never loose a questioning curiosity
Einstein, Albert	He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe is as good as dead
Einstein, Albert	You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.
Einstein, Albert	The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible.
Einstein, Albert	Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.
Einstein, Albert	No, this trick won't work ... How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?
Einstein, Albert	Nationalism is an infantile sickness. It is the measles of the human race.
Einstein, Albert	It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.
Einstein, Albert	Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction.
Einstein, Albert	If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
Einstein, Albert	I have no particular talent. I am merely inquisitive.
Einstein, Albert	I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it.
Einstein, Albert	How I wish that somewhere there existed an island for those who are wise and of good will.
Einstein, Albert	In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.
Einstein, Albert	Gravitation can not be held responsible for people falling in love.
Einstein, Albert	Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.
Einstein, Albert	God does not play dice with the universe.
Einstein, Albert	Imagination is more important than knowledge.
Einstein, Albert	Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
Einstein, Albert	Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school.
Einstein, Albert	Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
Einstein, Albert	Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish.
Einstein, Albert	A man's ethical behaviour should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.
Einstein, Albert	As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
Einstein, Albert	A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy.
Einstein, Albert	All men are ignorant, just in different fields.
Einstein, Albert	All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.
Einstein, Albert	Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
Einstein, Albert	God may be subtle, but He isn't plain mean.
Einstein, Albert	The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.
Einstein, Albert	Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it.
Einstein, Albert	I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.
Einstein, Albert	Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.
Einstein, Albert	The devil has put a penalty on all things we enjoy in life. Either we suffer in health or we suffer in soul or we get fat.
Einstein, Albert	Great spirits have always encountered opposition from mediocre minds
Einstein, Albert	Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
Einstein, Albert	The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.
Einstein, Albert	Our technology has surpassed our humanity
Einstein, Albert	Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
Eliot, TS	Because I know that time is always time And place is always and only place And what is actual is actual only for one time And only for one place I rejoice that things are as they are.	Ash Wednesday
Ellerbee, Linda	If men can run the world, why can't they stop wearing neckties? How intelligent is it to start the day by tying a little noose around your neck?
Emerson, Ralph Waldo	Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than material forces; that thoughts rule the world.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo	What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo	A foolish consistency is the Hobgoblin of little minds.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo	Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo	We may all live under the same sky, but we do not share the same horizons.
English Proverb	Craftiness must have clothes, but truth loves to go naked.
Escher, MC	I think ... I think it's in my basement. Let me go upstairs and check.
Ezust, Alan	Recursion is a lot like recursion, only a little simpler.
Feynman, Richard	It has not yet become obvious to me that there's no real problem. I cannot define the real problem, therefore I suspect there's no real problem, but I'm not sure there's no real problem.
Feynman, Richard	For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
Feynman, Richard	Where did we get that [equation ]from? Nowhere. It is not possible to derive it from anything you know. It came from the mind of Schrodinger.
Feynman, Richard	Permit us to question - to doubt, that's all - and not to be sure.
Feynman, Richard	Now we are in a position in physics that is different from any other time in history (it's always different!). We have a theory ... so why can't we test the theory right away to see if it's right or wrong? Because what we have to do is calculate the consequences of the theory to test it. This time the difficulty is the first step.
Feynman, Richard	A half-assedly thought out, semi-visual, hand-waving kind of argument thing.
Feynman, Richard	Poets say that science takes away the beauty of the stars - mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is 'mere'. I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination - stuck on this carousel, my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light ... Or see them with the greater eye of Palomar, rushing all apart from some common starting point when they were perhaps all together. What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it. For far more marvellous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined! Why do the poets of the present not speak of it?
Fleischhauer-Hardt, Dr Helga	A child who has never been allowed to see his parents and brothers and sisters naked sees nudity as something shocking.
Fleischhauer-Hardt, Helga	A child who has never been allowed to see his parents and brothers and sisters naked sees nudity as something shocking.	Quoted in Show Me (New York: St Martin's Press, 1975)
Ford, Henry	A bore is a man who opens his mouth and puts his feats in it
Ford, Henry	Vision without funding is just hallucination.
Ford, Henry	Don't find fault. Find a remedy
Ford, Henry	Failure is only the opportunity to begin again more intelligently
Ford, Henry	It is the product that pays the wages, not the employer
Ford, Henry	My best friend is one who brings out the best in me
Forster, EM	Books have to be read (worse luck it takes so long a time). It is the only way of discovering what they contain. A few savage tribes eat them, but reading is the only method of assimilation revealed to the West.
Fox, Kate	The term 'Guardian-reader' is often used as a shorthand for a woolly, lefty, politically correct, knit-your-own-tofu sort of person.	Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour; 2004
France, Anatole	The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the poor, to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread. 
France, Anatole	The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.
Frank, Anne	Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands.
Franklin, Benjamin	The heart of a fool is in his mouth, but the mouth of a wise man is in his heart
Franklin, Benjamin	There are three extremely hard things: Steel, Diamonds & to know ones self
Franklin, Benjamin	If a man could have half his wishes, he would double his troubles
Franklin, Benjamin	Blessed is he that expects nothing for he will never be disappointed
Franklin, Benjamin	Beware of little expenses, for a small leak will sink a great ship
Franklin, Benjamin	Love your enemies, for they tell you your faults
Franklin, Benjamin	Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
Franklin, Gene	Management will select actions or events and convert them to crises. It will then over-react.
Franklin, Gene	To get action out of management, it is necessary to create the illusion of a crisis in the hope it will be acted on.
Freeman, Anitra L	Solving problems of sexual discrimination by proscriptively tinkering with language is only slightly more relevant than rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic.
French Toast Girl	Life is made up of simple ingredients that combine to make up a marvellous concoction we often take for granted. Your life is full of wonderful flavours, and meant to be relished. And if you aren't crazy about the way your life tastes, remember: you're the one who controls how much sweetness goes on top, or if it's soggy and underdone.
Freud, Sigmund	A man should not strive to eliminate his complexes but to get into accord with them: they are legitimately what directs his conduct in the world.
Friedman, Michael Jan	There's no such thing as a meaningless sacrifice ... Any positive act, no matter how hopeless or insignificant, is ultimately worthwhile.	Requiem
Gaarder, Jostein	If the human brain were simple enough for us to understand we would be too stupid to understand it.
Galileo Galilei	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.
Gandhi, Indira	My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was much less competition.
Gandhi, Mahatma	Non Violence is the first article of faith
Gandhi, Mahatma	Patience means self suffering
Gandhi, Mahatma	The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong
Gandhi, Mahatma	There is no god higher than truth
Gandhi, Mahatma	Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err
Gandhi, Mahatma	The only tyrant I accept in this world is still the voice within
Gandhi, Mahatma	Honest differences are a healthy sign of progress
Gandhi, Mahatma	No culture can live if it attempts to be exclusive
Gandhi, Mahatma	The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world's problems.
Gardner, Gerald	Do as thou wilt, an it harm none.
Garlin, George	I've never been quarantined, but the more I look around, the more I think it might not be a bad idea.
Garlin, George	Spirituality is just one more way of distracting yourself from who you really are.
Gibboney, Richard	The intellectual level of the schools can be no higher than the intellectual level of the culture in which they float.
Gibran, Khalil	Your clothes conceal much of your beauty, yet they hide not the unbeautiful. And though you seek in garments the freedom of privacy, you may find in them a harness and a chain. Would that you could meet the sun and the wind with more of your body and le	The Prophet
Gill, AA	A lot of the fury about porn is, in fact, a displaced fear and misunderstanding of adult male masturbation. The disproportionate fury some women display when they find magazines and videos under the bed is really about something they see as a replacement for sex - an essentially dirty and adolescent performance that should have stopped when he started having real grown-up sex.	The Times; 29 April 2000
Godard, Jean-Luc	Eroticism ... is consenting to live.
Godwin, Gail	Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theatre.
Goebbels	It is far easier to confirm what people think than to change their mind
Goethe	Whatever you can do / Or dream you can, begin it. / Boldness has genius, power / And magic in it.
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von	If you treat people the way they are, you make them worse. If you treat them the way they ought to be, you make them capable of becoming what they ought to be.
Gold, Thomas	New ideas in science are not right just because they are new. Nor are old ideas wrong just because they are old. A critical attitude is clearly required of every seeker of truth. But one must be equally critical of both the old ideas as of the new. Whenever the established ideas are accepted uncritically and conflicting new evidence is brushed aside or not even reported because it does not fit, that particular science is in deep trouble.
Graham, Paul	To launch a taboo, a group has to be poised halfway between weakness and power. A confident group doesn't need taboos to protect it. It's not considered improper to make disparaging remarks about Americans, or the English. And yet a group has to be powerful enough to enforce a taboo. Coprophiles, as of this writing, don't seem to be numerous or energetic enough to have had their interests promoted to a lifestyle. / / I suspect the biggest source of moral taboos will turn out to be power struggles in which one side only barely has the upper hand. That's where you'll find a group powerful enough to enforce taboos, but weak enough to need them.	What You Can't Say; www.paulgraham.com/say.html; January 2004
Grant, Amy	[Sunbathing nude] was a liberating experience. It felt unbelievably crazy to take off all my clothes and play in the sun. I've not had that much fun in so long.
Greeley, Andrew	Radical feminists demand the impossible when they require that we do not admire the human female body. That body is designed to be the most lovely object in all creation. Theologically, God created women gorgeous so they could reveal to themselves and us Her seductive beauty. To refuse to appreciate such beauty - respectfully and reverently, of course - is an insult to God.
Greenleaf, Robert	In saying what I have in mind, will I really improve on silence?	The Servant as Leader
Griffin, Richard	No doubt it was some new Health & Safety regulation that required it. And as we know to our cost, the recommendations of these are implemented without regard to cost, side-effects or usefulness, in the nannyfied 'Safety Paranoia' climate of today.	uk.transport.london, 18 November 1999
Groening, Matt	Trying is the first step to failure.	Homer Simpson in The Simpsons
Hagel, Senator Chuck	To question your government is not unpatriotic - to not question your government is unpatriotic.	15-Nov-05
Haldane, JBS	The Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.
Hall, James	[For Powell, life] is a series of small shocks to be met with slightly raised eyebrows and the instantaneous question of how it all fits. Above everything else, Nick wants to know within a safe margin of error where he is at any given moment.	Essays in Criticism; April 1962
Hall, James	When I first read Powell, I thought a successful novel could not be written in sentences like these, but presently the style seemed so accurate a projector for the slow-motion re-run of the past that I no longer noticed it at all.	Essays in Criticism; April 1962
Harkness, Richard	What is a committee? A group of the unwilling, picked from the unfit, to do the unnecessary.	New York Times [1960]
Harris, Jack	Spherically daft.
Haruki Murakami	If you don't concern yourself with your wife's cat, you will lose something irretrievable between you.	The Wind-up Bird Chronicle
Hawn, Carleen	If your cool new thing doesn't generate enough money to cover costs and make a profit, it isn't innovation. It's art.	Fast Company #78, January 2004
Hegel	We learn from history that men never learn anything from history.
Heideger	Why is Science such nonsense? Because it has answers.
Hein, Dick	Some day people will grow up and realize that the only thing vile about human bodies is the small minds some people have developed within them.
Hein, John	I do trust that you will feel able to accept this apology in the spirit in which it is intended.	Cix railtack conference; 22 July 2005
Hein, John	[X ]apologises unreservedly to [Y ]for the hurt to its corporate fundament and damage to its public image caused by this false and calumnious statement.	Cix railtack conference; 22 July 2005
Heinlein, Robert	There are perhaps 5% of the population that simply can't think. There are another 5% who can, and do. The remaining 90% can think, but don't.
Heinlein, Robert	Sin lies only in hurting others unnecessarily. All other "sins" are invented nonsense.
Heinlein, Robert	Anyone who can worship a trinity and insist that his religion is a monotheism can believe anything just give him time to rationalize it.	Job: A Comedy of Justice
Hellman, Lillian	Since when do you have to agree with people to defend them from injustice?
Henderson, Nelson	The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
Hewitt, Prof. Gordon	The gap between strategic rhetoric and operational reality remains dangerously wide.
Higgs, Russell	I am not a naturist, a nudist, a streaker, nor an exhibitionist. Labels are for clothes. My unclothed appearance is also not motivated sexually nor out of any gratuitous need to seek attention. I believe that while society continues to have a fundament
Hill, Benny	Just because nobody complains doesn't mean all parachutes are perfect.
Hockenberry, John	Time, I think, is a little bit like love. It's accessible to all of us; it is intuitively experienced by all of us in the same way; yet it retains its mystery at whatever level you weigh in on it. It is a mysterious force that we all can experience and share.	World Science Festival in New York, 2009
Hofstadter, Douglas	The following statement is false. The preceding statement is true.	Godel, Escher, Bach: An eternal Golden Braid
Holobom, Dr Jamrach	In each human heart are a tiger, a pig, an ass and a nightingale. Diversity of character is due to their unequal activity.
Horsley, Sebastian	When asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I replied "a woman". You get to dress up and you don't have to play rugby. You can pretend to be more stupid than you are and no-one is surprised. You can rule the world by flashing your eyelashes. What more do you girls want?	The Erotic Review, September 1999
Housman, AE	And malt does more than Milton can to justify God's ways to man.
Howard, Philip	Fantasy is fun, and he is a dry stick who has no room for it in his life.
Hungarian Catholic Priest	We Christians are disciples of a Jew who committed 'hara kiri'.
Huxley, Aldous	An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex.
Huxley, Thomas	It is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresy and end as superstition.
Iannucci, Armando	I have the same amounts of liberalism and snobbery in my system as most people do, and am possibly both well-read and a philistine.	Daily Telegraph; 06 April 1998
Idle, Eric	Life doesn't make any sense, and we all pretend it does. Comedy's job is to point out that it doesn't make sense.
Ingersoll, Robert Green	Whoever imagines himself a favourite with God holds others in contempt.
Jackson, Andrew	The most valuable of talents is that of never using two words when one will do
Jackson, Andrew	Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty
Jackson, Andrew	One man with courage makes a majority
Jackson, Andrew	He who permits himself to lie once, finds it much easier to do a second time
Jay, Peter	I give confidential press briefings. / You leak. / He's been charged under Section 2 of the Official Secrets Act.	Yes Prime Minister
Jay, Peter	I have an independent mind. / You're an eccentric. / He's round the twist.	Yes Prime Minister
Jefferson, Thomas	Error is the stuff of which the web of life is woven; and he who lives longest and wisest is only able to wear out the more of it.
Johnson, Samuel	Nothing will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must be first overcome.	1759
Jones, Arthur	All organisations are perfectly designed to get the results they get. To get better results, you need to improve the design of the organisation.
Jones, David Martin	Powell creates a fictional memoirist (Nick) and Dance is an imaginative creation and depiction of his memory. Nick has to order his memories and interrogate them sequentially. Thus rather than plot organising the narrative, character interaction drives narrative development.	2016 AP Conference paper
Jones, FP	Experience is that marvellous thing that enables you recognize a mistake when you make it again.
Kant, Immanuel	We do not see things as they are, but as we are.
Karlin, Jerry	Even Moses was given tablets by the Good Doctor, and he didn't make it to the Promised Land either.
Kennedy, John F	Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate
Kennedy, John F	Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names
Kennedy, John F	A child mis-educated is a child lost
Khatami, Mohammed	No viewpoints are banned. Except those banned by the law.
Kirby, Robert	I've raised children, lived around children, tended other people's children, and even been a child myself. I know that children are evil. Children are to a peaceful and enjoyable life what the Goths were to Roman social order	The Salt Lake Tribune, 04 March 1995
Klum, Heidi	My parents were free about nudity, and we are too. I'd like our children to feel unashamed of whatever shape they are. People should worry about other things.	In Style; September 2007
Knell, Barry	Take off your shoes and feel the grass beneath your feet. Then take off your clothes and feel the sun and the air and the world.
Koestler, Arthur	If the creator has a purpose in equipping us with a neck, he surely meant us to stick it out.
Kopp, Sheldon B	Once a patient realizes that he has no disease, and so can never be cured, he might as well terminate his treatment. He may have been put in touch with good things in himself, and may even still be benefiting from the relationship with the therapist, but once he realizes that he can continue as a disciple in psychotherapy forever, only then can he see the absurdity of remaining a patient, only then does he feel free to leave.	If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him!
Kroto, Prof Sir Harry	A university without a chemistry department should be stripped of the title and redesignated a liberal arts college, which is all it is.	The Sunday Times; 28 November 2004
Lakshmi, Padma	I like me better naked. I don't mean that in a vain way ... When you put clothes on, you immediately put a character on. Clothes are adjectives, they are indicators. When you don't have any clothes on, it's just you, raw, and you can't hide.
Lamont, Norman	It seems to me to be absurd that the Government should be held to ransom by a taxiful of flotsam and bobtail.	The Times; 24 December 2004
Lancaster, Osbert	[The Arts ]were judged to be but enjoyable pastimes, more praiseworthy than bridge but less ennobling than riding.
Lao Tzu	Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.
Lao Tzu	They who tell do not know; they who know do not tell.
Le Guin, Ursula K	Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.
Leary, Timothy	People use the word 'natural'... What is natural to me is these botanical species which interact directly with the nervous system. What I consider artificial is 4 years at Harvard, and the Bible, and Saint Patrick's cathedral, and the sunday school teachings.	Methods of Control
Leclerc, Henri	I challenge you to distinguish a naked prostitute from any other naked woman.
Lennon, John	The main hangup in the world today is hypocrisy and insecurity. If people can't face up to the fact of other people being naked, or whatever they want to do, then we're never going to get anywhere. People have got to become aware that it's none of their
Leno, Jay	I've never understood why women love cats. Cats are independent, they don't listen, they don't come in when you call, they like to stay out all night, and when they're home they like to be left alone and sleep. In other words, every quality that women hate in a man, they love in a cat.
Levi, Eliphas	To know. To will. To dare. To be silent.
Lewis, CS	Of all the tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.	God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics
Lewis, CS	The great thing is, if one can, to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions in one's "own" or "real" life. The truth is, of course, that what one regards as interruptions are precisely one's life.
Lincoln, Abraham	It has been my experience that folks who have no vices, have few virtues
Lincoln, Abraham	The best thing about the future is that it only comes one day at a time
Lincoln, Abraham	Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?
Lincoln, Abraham	I don't think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday
Lincoln, Abraham	Tact: The ability to describe others as they see themselves
Long, Lazarus	Your enemy is never a villain in his own eyes. Keep this in mind. It may offer a way to make him your friend. If not, you can kill him without hate - and quickly.
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth	It takes less time to do a thing right, than it does to explain why you did it wrong.
Lopez, Jennifer	I grew up walking around naked in my house. My mom was like that, and my sisters.
Lorenz, Edward N	We must wholeheartedly believe in free will. If free will is a reality, we shall have made the correct choice. If it is not, we shall still not have made an incorrect choice, because we shall not have made any choice at all, not having a free will to do so.	The Essence of Chaos
Lucky, Robert W	What a wonderful world this is! I click a mouse somewhere, bits fly through optics, go to some undisclosed place, money electronically changes hands, and then atoms in useful arrangement are flown in airplanes and hand-carried to my doorstep. When you think about it, this is miraculous.	Reflections; November 2005
Lucretius	Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum. / [Such an enormity of evil has religion been able to instigate.]	De Rerum Natura 1.101
Lyall, Sir Charles James	There are four things that hold back human progress: ignorance, stupidity, committees and accountants.
Macdonald, Richard	The Nature of God. Pretend for a moment you are the wisest person alive in the universe. I come to you and ask, "What is the nature of God?" You can answer anything you like. Just say the first thing that comes into your head. Don't think about it for a single second. Whatever you say is the truth. This is the actual reality of God, because whatever you say is true. God is everything, everywhere and everywhen. Therefore, whatever you say will incorporate some aspect of God. You will have accurately described God without ever having met him. You will also have been able to put into words simply and easily that which hermits, priests, religious leaders and poets have struggled with for thousands of years. In an instant you have indeed become the wisest person in the entire universe.	The 7 Bad Habits of Highly Ineffective People, 2003
Maclaren-Ross, Julian	Mr Powell is, mercifully, a writer without a 'message', either philosophical, religious or political; he is content to examine without comment, and to illustrate through character in action, the changes in human nature brought about by the changing face of the social order in which we live: in other words, he is attempting to fulfil the novelist's only true function.
MacPherson, Elle	I come from a country where you don't wear clothes most of the year. Nudity is the most natural state. I was born nude and I hope to be buried nude.
Madison, James	In no instances have the churches been guardians of the liberties of the people.
Madrik, Richard	Exercise is bunk, if you are healthy, you don't need it: if you are sick, you shouldn't take it.
Mahoney, David	You'll never have all the information you need to make a decision. If you did, it would be a foregone conclusion, not a decision.
Malcolm B	There is evidence that a relaxed attitude to nudity leads to a much healthier attitude to life. The pregnancy rates for under 16s seems to show an inverse correlation with a liberal approach to nudity.	uk.rec.naturist newsgroup; 06 November 1999
Malcolm B	There was a copy of "USA Today" in our staff room a couple of weeks ago. On pages 2 and 3 facing each other were articles on naturism and gun control. The former is being slowly whittled away by a local law makers and what little gun control there is is also being whittled away. Ban the demonstrably good and encourage the demonstrably evil. Just how perverted can you get? ... A suggestion for an honest political slogan. "Vote for [the religious right ]and make it 20 times more likely that your teenage daughter will become pregnant." Unfortunately they miss out the second part of that sentence which I have based on the teenage pregnancy rates in the USA and the Netherlands. The correlation between body shyness/guilt and teenage pregnancy rates is striking. Likewise deaths from testicular and colonic cancer.	uk.rec.naturist newsgroup; 21 October 1999
Marks, Jonathan	The classic mark of pseudoscience is the challenge to others to prove them wrong; in science the burden of proof has to lie with the person making the positive statement, not the sceptic. You can't prove there aren't genes for knitting, any more than you can prove there aren't angels, or giant boll weevils on the planet Neptune. But what constitutes this as science is that you don't have to prove it; the person who makes the claim has to prove it, or at least make the case for its being reasonably likely.
Marshall, Keith	Fairy, fairy, quite contrary / How does your penis grow? / With cockle shells / And magic spells / And seamen all in a row.	11 January 2003
Marshall, Keith	Risk assessment is impossible. The risks are unimaginable and infinite.
Martin, Judith	Freedom is always appealing until you are forced to try to put up with someone else's.
Martineau, Harriet	Readers are plentiful; thinkers are rare.
Marx, Groucho	Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.
Marx, Groucho	Well, art is art, isn't it? Still, on the other hand, water is water! And East is East and West is West and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste more like prunes than a rhubarb does. Now you tell me what you know?
McEwan, Ian	Atheists have as much conscience, possibly more, than people with deep religious conviction, and they still have the same problem of how they reconcile themselves to a bad deed in the past. It's a little easier if you've got a god to forgive you.	Sunday New York Times Magazine, 02/12/2007
McIntyre, Peter T	Confidence comes not from always being right but from not fearing to be wrong.
McLuhan, Marshall	I wouldn't have seen it if I had not believed it.
McNulty, John	The cow is nothing but a machine which makes grass fit for us people to eat.
Mead, Margaret	Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
Meir, Golda	You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist
Mencken, HL	Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and / tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on 'I am not too sure.'	Minority Report; 1956
Mencken, HL	The great artists of the world are never Puritans and seldom respectable. No virtuous man - that is, virtuous in the YMCA sense - has ever painted a picture worth looking at, or written a symphony worth hearing, or a book worth reading.
Mencken, HL	I believe there is a limit beyond which free speech cannot go, but it's a limit that's very seldom mentioned. It's the point where free speech begins to collide with the right to privacy. I don't think there are any other conditions to free speech. I've got a right to say and believe anything I please, but I haven't got a right to press it on anybody else ... Nobody's got a right to be a nuisance to his neighbours.
Mencken, HL	Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.
Mencken, HL	For every problem, there is one solution which is simple, neat and wrong.
Michelangelo	What spirit is so empty and blind, that it cannot recognize the fact that the foot is more noble than the shoe, and skin more beautiful that the garment with which it is clothed?
Millar, Jeremy	The Countryside is invented after cities are built, and then only when people who live in cities start to visit it.
Miller, Ben	Those who have never worked nude outdoors just can't imagine how much better a breeze feels on their skin than an item of sweaty clothing.
Miller, Brandon	Some people just can't understand that they can't understand what they can't understand.
Miller, Jonathan	At the moment there happens to be a hideous concatenation of idiotic, mindless, suburban, patriotic Christianity in America and atrocious zealotry in Islam.	The Times; 11 October 2004
Miller, Jonathan	The notion [God ]is infantile. I'm amazed that people who can find their way to the toilet without advice can entertain such logically incoherent ideas.	The Times; 11 October 2004
Miller, Jonathan	Emile Zola famously declared that "civilisation will not be achieve perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest".	The Times; 11 October 2004
Milligan, Spike	We have no plans therefore nothing can go wrong.
Milne, AA	One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making new discoveries.
Mokhonoana, Mokokoma	It's the invention of clothes, not nature, that made “private parts” private.
Monroe, Marilyn	The body is meant to be seen, not all covered up.
Montaigne	Man is the sole animal whose nudity offends his own companions, and the only one.
Montaigne, Michel	I never met a man who thought his thinking was faulty.
Monty Python	Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony ... You can't expect to wield supreme executive power just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you! ... I mean, if I went around sayin' I was an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me they'd put me away!	Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Moorcock, Michael	The true challenge comes in making sense of one's life, imbuing it with purpose based on one's own principles.	The Dragon in the Sword
Moore, Vaughan	It now costs more to amuse a child than it once did to educate his father.
Moravia, Alberto	The ratio of literacy to illiteracy is constant, but nowadays the illiterates can read and write.
Morgan-Giles, Rear-Admiral Sir Morgan	Pro bono publico, nil bloody panico.
Mount, Ferdinand	When Powell’s Dance to the Music of Time began to gain popularity, Uncle Frank claimed that the character of Widmerpool was based on him, which is not a thing most people would wish to claim, but suited his book perfectly since he was both claiming to recognise himself in the villain, thus advertising his humility, and also laying claim to the only character in the book who was becoming one of the immortals. In reality he possessed more of the characteristics of Lord Erridge, the narrator’s ascetic, high-minded and annoying brother-in-law. That he never claimed to be the original of Erridge suggests that he had not actually read the books. On the other hand, I do remember catching sight of him, by then in his late eighties, jogging in a filthy old tracksuit through the lanes of East Sussex – a spectacle which cannot help recalling the scene at the end of Powell’s novel when Widmerpool collapses and dies of a heart attack while on a run with his acolytes. But then I imagine that saints quite often possess Uncle Frank’s traits, not excluding publicity mania.	Cold Cream
Muggeridge, Malcolm	The essence of a bore is that he takes the greatest pleasure in telling you at great lengths what you know already.
Naismith	Never do for yourself what you can con an expert into doing for you.	On War
Nash, Ogden	Progress might have been all right once, but it's gone too far.
Nash, Ogden	A family is a unit composed not only of children but of men, women an occasional animal and the common cold.
Nicoll, James D	The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.
O'Connor, Flannery	Everywhere I go I'm asked if the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.
O'Rourke, PJ	No drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the sources of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.
Ollard, Richard	The three authors more nearly contemporary with Henry Green and more nearly his equals in reputation, George Orwell, Cyril Connolly and Anthony Powell, provide matter for debate. On the evidence of A Question of Upbringing one would not have thought that Eton, incurious, self-satisfied and eccentric though it might appear, was snobbish. It was not a world that looked down on others so much as a world that did not look. But unlike the author of Decent Fellows Anthony Powell is an imaginative artist. His book was not written to praise or censure Eton.	An English Education: A Perspective of Eton; 1982
Orwell, George	The girl with dark hair was coming towards him across the field. With what seemed a single movement she tore off her clothes and flung them disdainfully aside. Her body was white and smooth, but it aroused no desire in him, indeed he barely looked at it	Nineteen Eighty-Four
Outerbridge, Paul	Nudity is a state of fact; lewdity, to coin a phrase, is a state of mind.
Parker, Dorothy	Brevity is the soul of lingerie.
Parker, Robert B	University politics is very odd. You get a lot of people gathered together, who, if they couldn't do this, really couldn't do anything. They are given to think that they are both intelligent and important because they have PhDs and most people don't. Often, though not always, the PhD does indicate mastery over a subject. But that's all it indicates, and, unfortunately, many people with PhDs think it covers a wider area than it does. They think it empowers their superior insight into government and foreign policy and race relations and such. In addition these people are put into an environment where daily, they judge themselves against a standard set by eighteen- or twenty-year-old kids who know little if anything about the subject matter in which their professors are expert.	Hush Money, 1999
Parris, Matthew	You could argue that 'classical' music has bored itself to death, traipsing off into the wilderness in the last century, to die interestingly though almost unobserved.	The Spectator; 9 July 2005
Patrick@Cix	I'm not too sure that the Butler report is the whitewash which it seems to be at first glance. ISTM to be a humorous combination of a slow-motion train crash and a prose version of Albert and the Lion". It praises Mr Scarlet yet it demonstrates how the doubtful intelligence he received concerning WMD was transformed into sure and certain knowledge by the time Tony released it ... even though the single source had been deemed unreliable by our own intelligence services. Perhaps the report might be clearer if we commissioned a translation from Mandarin to English."
Patton, George	A pint of sweat is worth a gallon of blood
Pauli, Wolfgang	So young, and already so unknown.
Paxman, Jeremy	This wouldn't be Britain if the Dome didn't open to a low whine interrupted by a chorus of raspberries.	BBC2 Newsnight; ca. December 1999
Peter Cook	Californians have got this thing about open spaces. They have lots of it. Mostly between the ears.
Petronius, Caius	I was to learn later in life that we tend to-meet any situation by reorganizing, and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress, while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization.
Petronius, Caius	We trained hard ... but it seemed every time we were beginning to form up into teams we were reorganised. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any situation by reorganising, and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency & demoralisation.	66AD
Phelps, William Lyon	At a certain age some peoples' minds close up; they live on their intellectual fat.
Pogo	We have met the enemy, and he is us.
Poincaire, Henri	Science is facts; just as houses are made of stones, so is science made of facts. But a pile of stones is not a house, and a collection of facts is not necessarily science.
Pope, Alexander	All nature is but art, unknown to thee / All chance, direction which thou canst not see / All discord, harmony not understood / All partial evil, universal good.	Essay on Man
Pope, Alexander	Blessed is he who expects nothing for he shall never be disappointed.
Powell, AD	That on 7th July 17 Eliz. (1575), one Robert Lowes of Glawstrie co. Radnor, gent., Meredith ap Thomas ap Harry … Robert ap Griffithe ap Lewes, Robert William & Edward Smithe, in the company of one Sybell Lewes, wife of Jenn Lewes, Esq., "and also being very lighte, lewde, wylde, ryotous and disordered persons & common quarrellers", with other evil disposed persons to the number of at least 40, being all armed with swords, etc., walked up and down the town of Huntington for three hours at least, espying some person to take revenge upon.	"Abstracts from Miscellaneous Star Chamber Cases of the Radnor-Hereford Border", Transactions Radnorshire Society, 35 (1965), 36-42
Powell, AD	The pedigree of Lewis of Harpton, on the other hand, is to be found in Dwnn's Visitations of Wales and elsewhere. Dwnn shows this Lewis descent as left-handed in the 15th century, though it should be borne in mind that in mediaeval Wales such irregularity would not be regarded with undue dismay; indeed if any dismay at all.	"The Powell Descent from Llewelyn Crûgeryr and the Princes of Deheubarth", Transactions Radnorshire Society, 31 (1961), 3-17
Powell, Anthony	... the libidinous gymnastics of the goat-god whose ice-cold sperm fathers monsters on writhing witches in coven?	The Kindly Ones
Powell, Anthony	“Books have been dull over here … I really think it is a bit delicate to review one’s fellow novelists unless one can praise them … I was glad to see that Edmund Wilson said that odious as Kingsley Amis’s characters were, they were not so odious as mine.”	Letter to Robert Vanderbilt of 18 May 1956
Powell, Anthony	… for a moment, the terrible suspicion even suggested itself that, night after night, he danced his life away through the ballrooms of London in the unshakable conviction that the whole thing was a sham.	A Buyer's Market
Powell, Anthony	Court at your peril those spirits that dabble lasciviously with primeval matter, horrid substances, sperm of the world, producing monsters and fantastic things, as it is written, so that the toad, this leprous earth, eats up the eagle.	Temporary Kings
Powell, Anthony	For reasons not always at the time explicable, there are specific occasions when events begin suddenly to take on a significance previously unexpected; so that, before we really know where we are, life seems to have begun in earnest at last, and we ourselves, scarcely aware that any change has taken place, are careening unconsciously down the slippery avenues of eternity.	A Buyer's Market
Powell, Anthony	Gwatkin shook my hand too. He smiled in an odd sort of way, as if he dimly perceived it was no good battling against Fate, which, seen in right perspective, almost always provides a certain beauty of design, sometimes even an occasional good laugh.	The Valley of Bones
Powell, Anthony	How few people do anything for its own sake, from making love to practising the arts.	The Valley of Bones
Powell, Anthony	I occasionally get asked specific questions about the events of the narrative, and always point out that the story is, so to speak, merely "told over the dinner table", the Narrator only knows what he guesses or is revealed to him.	Letter to Laurie Adams Frost, 19 August 1987
Powell, Anthony	I thought of Pepys, and the ‘great black maid’; and immediately Widmerpool’s resemblance to the existing portraits of the diarist became apparent. He had the same obdurate, put-upon, bad-tempered expression. Only a full-bottomed wig was required to complete the picture.	At Lady Molly's
Powell, Anthony	It is extraordinary those two should be engaged. Women may show some discrimination about whom they sleep with, but they’ll marry anybody.	Dance
Powell, Anthony	Later in life I learnt that many things one may require have to be weighed against one's dignity	Dance
Powell, Anthony	Lebedev – the name always reminded one of the character in The Idiot who was good at explaining the Apocalypse, though otherwise unreliable – rarely spoke; nor did he more than usually attend more than very briefly – so our Mission working with the Russians reported – the occasional parties given by their Soviet opposite numbers, where drinking bouts attained classical proportions, it was alleged.	The Military Philosophers
Powell, Anthony	Literature only illuminates life for those to whom books are a necessity.	The Valley of Bones
Powell, Anthony	One of Joyce´s most valuable bequests to writers is that none of them ever need to write a novel like Ulysses again; a benefaction unhappily sometimes disregarded, especially in the US. One feels that Joyce, even if pretty able, is not quite in the Proust, Dostoevsky, even Balzac, class; useful to be learnt from, but not to be imitated. […] His obsession with himself, paying a good dividend in certain respects, was a handicap in others, narrowing the sphere of vision. As regards the novel itself, one wishes the Brothel scene was done in the same manner as the Martello Tower. I feel certain Joyce simply found himself unable to bring that off, falling back faute de mieux on ‘experimental’ methods, not because those really gave a better picture. Perhaps it might be argued this stuck closer to the Ulysses myth.	Journals 1982-1986
Powell, Anthony	She is called Betty. I can never remember her married name. Taylor is it? Porter? Something like that. We met at a dreadful bridge party the other day. Her husband is only interested in making money, she says. I can't imagine what she finds amiss with that. Rather a peach, isn't she?	At Lady Molly's
Powell, Anthony	Simple-lifers, utopian socialists, spiritualists, occultists, theosophists, quietists, pacifists, futurists, cubists, zealots of all sorts in their approach to life and art … were then [1914] thought of by the unenlightened as scarcely distinguishable from one another …	The Kindly Ones
Powell, Anthony	The excruciating boredom of exclusively male society.	The Valley of Bones
Powell, Anthony	The Household Cavalry has been suggested, too. One is said – for some reason – to have a good time in The Tins.	A Question of Upbringing
Powell, Anthony	There was nothing like facing facts. They blew into the face hard, like a stiff, exhilarating, decidedly gritty breeze, which brought sanity with it, even though sanity might be unwelcome.	The Kindly Ones
Powell, Anthony	True interest in yourself is comparatively rare, sharply to be differentiated from mere egotism and selfishness; characteristics often immoderately developed in persons not in the least interested in themselves intellectually or objectively. Indeed not everyone can stand the strain of gazing down too long into the personal crater, with its scene of Hieronymus Bosch activities taking place in the depths.	To Keep the Ball Rolling
Powell, Anthony	[Mrs. Conyers] “Have you read anything else interesting, Nicholas? I always expect people like you to tell me what to put down on my library list.” “I´ve been reading something called Orlando," said the General. "Virginia Woolf. Ever heard of it?" [Nicholas Jenkins:] “I read it when it first came out.” “What do you think of it?” “Rather hard to say in a word." “You think so?” “Yes.” He turned to Frederica. “Ever read Orlando?” “No,” she said. “But I've heard of it.” “Bertha didn't like it,” he said. “Couldn't get on with it”, said Mrs. Conyers, emphatically ... “Odd stuff, Orlando", said the General, who was not easily shifted from his subject. “Starts about a young man in the fifteen-hundreds. Then, about eighteen-thirty, he turns into a woman. You say you´ve read it?” “Yes.” “Did you like it? Yes or no?” “Not greatly.” ”You didn´t?” “No.” “The woman can write, you know.” “Yes, I can see that. I still didn´t like it.”	At Lady Molly's
Powell, Anthony	"Some royalty in a motorcar have been involved in a nasty affair today. Heard the news in Aldershot. Fellow I went to see was told on the telephone. Amazing, isn´t it, hearing it so soon. They´ve just assassinated an Austrian Archduke down in Bosnia. Did it today. Only happened a few hours ago." Uncle Giles muttered, almost whispered these facts, speaking as if he were talking to himself, not at all in the voice of a man announcing to the world in general the close of an epoch; the outbreak of Armageddon; the birth of a new, uneasy age. He did not look in the least the harbinger of the Furies. "Franz-Ferdinand?" asked General Conyers sharply. "And his morganatic wife. Shot ´em both." "When did you say this happened?" "This afternoon". "And they are both dead?" "Both of them." "There will be more trouble about this", said the General. He inserted the starting-handle and gave several terrific turns. "Bad trouble" he said. "They´ll have to postpone tomorrow´s State Ball. No doubt about it. This was a Servian, I suppose." "They think so." "Was he an anarchist?" asked Mrs Conyers. "One of those fellows," said Uncle Giles. "Mark my words, said General Conyers, "this is a disaster. Well, the engine has started. We´d better be off in case it stops again. Good-bye to you both, thank you again enormously. No, no, not another word. I only hope the whole matter settles down all right, Good-bye, Giles. Good-bye Nicholas. I don´t at all like the news." They went off down the hill. We all waved. My mother looked worried. "I don´t like the news either," she said. (KO, 73; Fontana) from Peter Kislinger	The Kindly Ones
Powell, Anthony	'I've found an iron Beryl lent me. I don't exactly like to send it back without saying anything. Equally I don't want to have to write to her. I wondered whether you could take charge of it and hand it back when you get the chance.' 'A flat iron?' 'A golf-club, you bloodool.'	What's Become of Waring
Powell, Anthony	When I wrote earlier in these Memoirs of Alfred Turner – a general, a distant relation, an eccentric – I saw at once that General Turner (among other things keen on psychical research) could be marked down as model for General Conyers in my novel. So far as General Conyers had a model (he is in any case composite in his role of courtier), that was a cousin on my mother's side, Brigadier- General RLA Pennington (grandson of the Peninsular veteran and in his regiment), a soldier of altogether different stamp from Major-General Sir Alfred Turner. The latter never crossed my mind when projecting General Conyers, but the principle is thereby illustrated of the novelist's attempt to create a 'character' based on someone known, who will be of more universal application than the mere sketching (as in Memoirs) of a familiar figure. To the novelist the characters in his novel are known as those in a dream are known; the texture too complicated to be explained. I have paused – perhaps too long – on this subject, because Stonehurst was, indeed, much as suggested in The Kindly Ones, even if not in every character and incident. Among the factual elements was the strange cult, with odd costumes and bearded leader, going for runs past our gate. James was our cook (until he left to get married), and some of his remarks as Albert are authentic. My father's soldier- servant was Thorne (later wounded at La Bassee, and visited in hospital), who used to accompany rides on my donkey, Jock, and disparage the military policemen jogging through the heather, Thorne also took me to see an inter-regimental rugger match at Bordon; but he did not in the least otherwise resemble Bracey, the batman in the novel.	Infants of the Spring
Powell, Anthony	“Do you ever come in contact with the Soviet legation?” “Not as a rule. But you ought to. I met one of their secretaries the other day at a tea-party. We were both lodged in a corner and he thought I was an American engineer on his way to some mines out in Russia and I thought he was a French author on his way back. They have invented an entirely new form of boredom, like the worst moments of being in the boy scouts at one’s preparatory school. He was a fine example of it.”	Venusberg
Powell, Anthony	But if the consolation for life is art, what may the artist expect from life? An incident mentioned quite casually in Vasari's Lives of the Most Excellent Italian Architects, Painters and Sculptors always seems to me worth recalling. It teaches several lessons: that if you want something done get the best executant available to do it; that minor jobs are often worth taking on; that duration in time should not necessarily be the criterion in producing a work of art. Vasari says that on a winter day in Florence, when snow was deep on the ground, one of the Medici sent for Michaelangelo to build a snowman in the courtyard of the Medici palace. Notwithstanding those (like Constant Lambert) who dislike the High Renaissance one can scarcely doubt that the finest snowman on record took shape.	The Strangers All Are Gone
Powell, Anthony	So about noon we came to Dogdene, and I was fain to see the house, and that part newly builded whereof Dr Wren did formerly hold converse with me, telling me here was one of the first mansion houses of England contrived as a nobleman’s seat rather than a keep moated for warfare. My Lord Sleaford is yet in town, where ’tis said he doth pay court to my Lady Castlemaine, at which the King is not a little displeased, ’tho ’twas thought she had long since lost her place. The Housekeeper was mighty civil, and showed us the Great Hall and stately Galleries, and the picture by P Veronese that my Lord’s grandfather did bring with him out of Italy, a most rare and noble thing. Then to the Gardens and Green Houses, where I did marvel to see the quickening of the Sensitive Plant. And so to the Still Room, where a great black maid offered a brave glass of metheglin, and I did have some merry talk with her begging her to show me a painted closet whereof the Housekeeper had spoken, yet had we not seen. Thither the bold wench took me readily enough, where I did kiss her twice or thrice and toyed wantonly with her. I perceive that she would not have denied me que je voudray, yet was I afeared and time was lacking. At which afterwards I was troubled, lest she should speak of what I had done, and her fellows make game of me when we were gone on our road.	At Lady Molly's
Powell, Anthony	To be told something that comes as a surprise, then find everyone has known about it for ages, is no uncommon experience.	Hearing Secret Harmonies
Powell, Anthony	This seems so typical of a lot of criticism that one wonders whether it does not derive from what is basically a dislike for reading novels at all [...] A moment’s thought never seems to be spared for what the author is trying to do.	Daily Telegraph; 11 November 1971
Powell, Anthony	When she [Audrey Maclintick] opened the door to us, her formidable discontent with life swept across the threshold in scorching, blasting waves.	Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant
Powell, Anthony	There is nowhere else in the world except these islands where women of Miss Butler's kind are produced, scholarly and daring ladies, never wholly out of touch, with a kind of Jane Austen primness even at their most rebellious and outspoken, and in the midst of unlikely adventures.	Daily Telegraph; 6 March 1959
Powell, Anthony	Women may show some discrimination about whom they sleep with, but they’ll marry anybody.	At Lady Molly’s
Powell, Anthony	Christmas has already begun to set in here both morally and physically. Our best wishes to you … for the whole trying period, and New Year.	Letter to Robert Vanderbilt Jr; 18 December 1952
Powell, Anthony	Nothing is interesting unless you are interested, and conversely.	Writer's Notebook
Powell, Anthony	Self-love is so often unrequited.	Writer's Notebook
Powell, Anthony	It will pass, sir, like other days in the army.	Journals 1990-1992, p157
Powell, Anthony	Riding a hippogryph ... Astolpho undertook a journey to the Moon. There, in one of its valleys, he was shown all things lost on Earth: lost kingdoms: lost riches: lost reputations: lost vows: lost hours: lost love. Only lost foolishness was missing from this vast stratospheric Lost Property Office, where by far the largest accretion was lost sense ... Astolpho had a duty to perform here, which was to bring back from his spacetrip the wits ... of his old friend and comrade-in-arms, Orlando. It was Astolpho's achievement - if so to be regarded - to restore to Orlando his former lifestyle, make feasible for him the resumption of the Heroic Life.	Hearing Secret Harmonies
Powell, Anthony	“That boy will be the death of me,” said Stringham, as we walked quickly together up the road.	A Question of Upbringing
Powell, Anthony	He’s a real original, absolutely himself and no one else. He’s got that particular turn of caricature which shows inner knowledge – he knows what it’s like from the inside ... the most astonishing thing about him is the standard he’s kept up with the pocket cartoons over the years. Really there were no pocket cartoons till he invented them. Now they’re so commonplace we tend to forget how original the idea was when he began it.	On Osbert Lancaster
Powell, Anthony	As I reached the outskirts of Shepherd Market, at that period scarcely touched by rebuilding, I regained once more some small sense of exultation, enjoyed whenever crossing the perimeter of that sinister little village, that I lived within an enchanted precinct. Inconvenient, at moments, as a locality: noisy and uncomfortable: stuffy, depressing, unsavoury: yet the ancient houses still retained some vestige of the dignity of another age; while the inhabitants, many of them existing precariously on their bridge earnings, or hire of their bodies, were – as more than one novelist had, even in those days, already remarked – not without their own seedy glory. Now, touched almost mystically, like another Stonehenge, by the first rays of the morning sun, the spot seemed one of those clusters of tumble-down dwellings depicted by Canaletto or Piranesi, habitations from amongst which arches, obelisks and viaducts, ruined and overgrown with ivy, arise from the mean houses huddled together below them. Here, too, such massive structures might, one felt, at any moment come into existence by some latent sorcery, for the place was scarcely of this world, and anything was to be surmised.	A Buyer’s Market
Powell, Anthony	Nothing is interesting unless you are interested, and conversely.	A Writer’s Notebook
Powell, Anthony	But anyway, it takes a bit of time to realize that all of the odds and ends milling about round one are the process of living.	Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant
Powell, Anthony	Life becomes more and more like an examination where you have to guess the questions as well as the answers. I’d long decided there were no answers. I’m beginning to suspect there aren’t any questions either, none at least of any consequence, even the old perennial, whether or not to stay alive.
Powell, Anthony	Sorceresses, more than most, are safer allowed their professional amour propre.	Temporary Kings
Powell, Anthony	All human beings, driven as they are at different speeds by the same Furies, are at close range equally extraordinary.	The Acceptance World
Powell, Anthony	Oh, my brethren, think on that open valley, think on it with me [...] a valley, do I picture it, by the shaft of a shut-down mine, where, under the dark mountain side, the slag heaps lift their heads to the sky, a valley such as those valleys in which you yourselves abide [...] Journey with me, my brethren, into that open valley, journey with me [...] Know you not those same dry bones? [...] You know them well ... Bones without flesh and sinew, bones without skin and breath [...] They are our bones, my brethren, the bones of you and of me, bones that await the noise and the mighty shaking, the gift of the four winds of which the prophet of old did tell [...] Must we not come together, my brethren, every one of us, as did the bones of that ancient valley, quickened with breath, bone to bone, sinew to sinew, skin to skin [...] Unless I speak falsely, an exceeding great army.	The Valley of Bones
Powell, Anthony	War left, on the one hand, a passionate desire to tackle a lot of work; on the other, never to do any work again. It was a state of mind Robert Burton [...] would have well understood. Irresolution appealed to him as one of the myriad forms of Melancholy, although he was, of course, concerned in the main with no mere temporary depression or fidgetiness, but a “chronic or continued disease, a settled humour”. Still, post-war melancholy might have rated a short subsection in the great work: The Anatomy of Melancholy [...]	Books Do Furnish a Room
Powell, Anthony	I began to brood on the complexity of writing a novel about English life, a subject difficult enough to handle with authenticity even of a cruddy naturalistic sort, even more to convey the inner truth of things observed [...] Intricacies of social life make English habits unyielding to simplification, while understatement and irony – in which all classes of this island converse – upset the normal emphasis of reported speech.
Powell, Anthony	Any but the most crude indication of my own personality would be, I reflected, equally hard to transcribe; at any rate one that did not sound a little absurd. It was all very well for Mrs Erdleigh to generalize; far less easy to take an objective view oneself. Even the bare facts had an unreal, almost satirical ring when committed to paper, say in the manner of the innumerable Russian stories of the nineteenth century: “I was born in the city of L–, the son of an infantry officer ...” To convey much that was relevant to the reader’s mind by such phrases was in this country hardly possible. Too many factors had to be taken into consideration. Understatement, too, had its own banality; for, skirting cheap romanticism, it could also encourage evasion of unpalatable facts.	The Acceptance World
Powell, Anthony	'Hullo, Nicholas. I hope my dear old Finn is not still cross with me about Szymanski ?' 'There may still be some disgruntlement, sir.' ‘Disgruntlement', one was told, was a word that could be used of all ranks without loss of discipline. As I heard myself utter it, I became immediately aware of the manner in which Farebrother, by some effort of the will, made those with whom he dealt as devious as himself. It was not the first time I had noticed that characteristic in him.	The Military Philosophers
Powell, Anthony	A single oil lamp threw a circle of dim light round the dining table of the farm parlour where we ate, leaving the rest of the room in heavy shadow, dramatising by its glow the central figures of the company present. Were they a group of conspirators – something like the Gunpowder Plot – depicted in the cross-hatchings of an old engraved illus- tration? It was not exactly that. At the same time the hard lights and shades gave the circle of heads an odd, mysterious unity. The faces of the two colonels, bird and beast, added a note deliberately grotesque, surrealist, possibly indicating a satirical meaning on the part of the artist, a political cartoonist perhaps. The colonels were placed on either side of General Liddament, who sat at the head of the table, deep in thought. His thin, cleanshaven, ascetic features, those of a schoolmaster or priest […] were yellowish in complexion. Perhaps that tawny colour clarified the imagery, for now it became plain. Here was Pharaoh, carved in the niche of a shrine between two tutelary deities, who shielded him from human approach. All was manifest. Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson and Colonel Pedlar were animal-headed gods of Ancient Egypt. Colonel Hogbourne-Johnson was, of course, Horus, one of those sculptured representations in which the Lord of the Morning Sun resembles an owl rather than a falcon; a bad-tempered owl at that. Colonel Pedlar's dog's muzzle, on the other hand, was a milder than normal version of the jackal-faced Anubis, whose dominion over Tombs and the Dead did indeed fall within A&Q's province. Some of the others round about were less easy to place in the Egyptian pantheon. In fact, one came finally to the conclusion, none of them were gods at all, mere bondsmen of the temple. For example, Cocksidge, officer responsible for Intelligence duties, with his pale eager elderly-little-boy expression – although on the edge of thirty – was certainly the lowest of slaves, dusting only exterior, less sacred precincts of the shrine, cleaning out with his hands the priest's latrine, if such existed on the temple premises. Next to Cocksidge sat Greening, the General's ADC, pink cheeked, fair haired, good-natured, about twenty years old, probably an alien captive awaiting sacrifice on the altar of this anthropomorphic trinity. Before anyone else could be satisfactorily identified, Colonel Pedlar spoke.	The Valley of Bones
Powell, Anthony	Our billet was a VIP one, a requisitioned hotel presided over by a brisk little cock-sparrow of a captain, who evidently knew his job. 'We had the hell of a party here the other night,' he said. 'A crowd of senior officers as drunk as monkeys, brigadiers rooting the palms out of the pots.' His words conjured up the scene in Antony and Cleopatra, when arm-in-arm the generals dance on Pompey's galley, a sequence of the play that makes it scarcely possible to disbelieve that Shakespeare himself served for at least a period of his life in the army. The Military Philosophers	The Military Philosophers
Powell, Anthony	With unexpectedly delicate movements of the hands, the Field-Marshal began to explain what had been happening. We were in an area […] immemorially campaigned over. In fact the map was no less than a great slice of history. As the eye travelled northward, it fell on Zutphen, where Sir Philip Sidney had stopped a bullet in that charge against the Albanian cavalry. One wondered why Albanians should be involved in this part of the world at such a time. Presumably they were some auxiliary unit of the Spanish Command, similar to those exotic corps of which one heard rumours in the current war […] The thought of Sidney, a sympathetic figure, distracted attention from the Field-Marshal's talk. One felt him essentially the kind of soldier Vigny had in mind when writing of the man who, like a monk, submitted himself to the military way of life, because he thought it right, rather than because it appealed to him.	The Military Philosophers
Powell, Anthony	'Not all the fruits of Victory are appetising to the palate,' said Pennistone. 'An issue of gall and wormwood has been laid on.'	The Military Philosophers
Powell, Anthony	Not long before the Victory Service […] Prasad's Embassy gave a party on their National Day. It was a bigger affair than usual on account of the advent of Peace, primarily a civilian gathering, though a strong military element was included among the guests. The huge saloons, built at the turn of the century, were done up in sage green, the style of decoration displaying a nostalgic leaning towards Art Nouveau, a period always sympathetic to Asian taste. Gauthier de Graef, ethnically confused, had been anxious to know whether there were eunuchs in the ladies' apartments above the rooms where we were being entertained.	The Military Philosophers
Powell, Anthony	Snow fell, east winds blew, pipes froze, the water main (located next door in a house bombed out and long deserted) passed beyond insulation or control. The public supply of electricity broke down. Baths became a fabled luxury of the past. Humps and cavities of frozen snow, superimposed on the pavement, formed an almost impassable barrier of sooty heaps at the gutters of every crossing, in the network of arctic rails.	Books Do Furnish a Room
Powell, Anthony	What are the English like? Worse answers might be given than 'Read Aubrey's Brief Lives and you will see'.	John Aubrey and His Friends
Powell, Anthony	One of the basic human rights is to make fun of other people, whoever they are.
Powell, Anthony	What’s the use of being at Eton and Balliol with the poet Swinburne if you don’t remember anything about it? My mother’s family lived about six miles from Tennyson for six years and they too had absolutely nothing to say about it.
Powell, Anthony	'I am sure you will agree with me, Lady Warminster, in thinking, so far as company is concerned, enough is as bad as a feast, and half a loaf in many ways preferable to the alternative of a whole one or the traditional no bread. How enjoyable, therefore, to be just as we are.'	Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant
Powell, Anthony	Cocksidge’s demeanour to his superiors always recalled a phrase used by Odo Stevens when we had been on a course together at Aldershot: ‘Good morning, Sergeant-Major, here’s a sparrow for your cat.’ Cocksidge was, so to speak, in a chronic state of providing, at a higher level of rank, sparrows for sergeant-majors’ cats. [SA 37]	The Military Philosophers
Powell, Anthony	So it was with Mrs Maclintick. I was not prepared for her in the flesh. When she opened the door to us, her formidable discontent with life swept across the threshold in scorching, blasting waves. She was a small dark woman with a touch of gipsy about her, this last possibility suggested by sallow skin and bright black eyes. Her black hair was worn in a fringe. Some men might have found her attractive. I was not among them, although at the same time not blind to the fact that she might be capable of causing trouble where men were concerned. Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant	Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant
Powell, Anthony	One of the worst things about life is not how nasty the nasty people are. You know that already. It is how nasty the nice people can be.	The Kindly Ones
Powell, Anthony	... that indeterminate territory eternally disputed between tarts and art students ...	Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant
Powell, Anthony	'An exceedingly well-informed report,' said the General. 'You have given yourself the trouble to go into matters thoroughly, I see. That is one of the secrets of success in life.'	The Kindly Ones
Powell, Anthony	Men who talked or slept with her were often found frozen to death.	A Writer’s Notebook
Powell, Anthony	... on the last day of September 1934. The condition of being engaged was in those days allowed more attention than today ... we had known each other about three weeks.	Messengers of Day
Powell, Anthony	The nearest some women get to being faithful to their husband is making it unpleasant for their lover.	The Valley of Bones
Powell, Anthony	He fell in love with himself at first sight and it is a passion to which he has always remained faithful. Self-love seems so often unrequited.	The Acceptance World
Powell, Anthony	Few persons who have ever sat for a portrait can have felt anything but inferior while the process is going on.	Observer; 9 January 1983
Powell, Anthony	Growing old’s like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven’t committed.	Temporary Kings
Powell, Anthony	The mere phrase “artificial manure” told the whole story.	A Buyer’s Market
Powell, Anthony	His manner of asking personal questions was of that kind not uncommonly to be found which is completely divorced from any interest in the answer	At Lady Molly’s
Powell, Anthony	He was bald but seemed to be bearing up well.	Afternoon Men
Powell, Anthony	He was an oldish man, furrowed with the minor dishonesties of uncounted years.	Afternoon Men
Powell, Anthony	Atwater . . . began to bite the apple. It was green and tasted of absolutely nothing. It was like eating material in the abstract.	Afternoon Men
Powell, Anthony	He may have a profile like Apollo, but he’s got a mind like Hampstead Garden Suburb.	Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant
Powell, Anthony	Lushington stood and looked through the doorway of the bedroom. Here then was that rather astonishing mystery about which so much had been said that, when the fact itself was there, no further comment was possible. For the moment no near-at-hand formula seemed at all adequate. This was something well-defined and at the same time not easy to believe in. It seemed absurd, overdone. Lacking in proportion, like other people’s love affairs. Here were all the signs of a loss of control. A breakdown of the essential machinery. The sort of thing no one could be expected to be on the look-out for.	Venusberg
Powell, Anthony	Nothing dates individuals more precisely than the standards against which they choose to rebel.
Powell, Anthony	[Strindberg] is very conscious of the importance to be attached to the coincidences of life, things that happen all the time, yet seem to be magic.	Messengers of Day
Powell, Anthony	Mr Trilling obviously knows his material well and he is dexterous in presenting – with all the innocence in the world – the peculiar combination of arrogance and imbecility found at certain levels of intellectual life.	TLS; 16 October 1948
Powell, Anthony	'I was attending the private view, partly for business reasons, partly from a certain weakness for bad pictures, especially bad portraits. Such a taste is hard to justify. Perhaps the inclination is no more than morbid curiosity to see how far the painter will give himself away. Pictures, apart from their aesthetic interest, can achieve the mysterious fascination of those enigmatic scrawls on the walls, the expression of Heaven knows what psychological urge on the part of the executant...'	The Acceptance World
Powell, Anthony	If you bring off adequate preservation of your personal myth, nothing much else in life matters. It is not what happens to people that is significant, but what they think happens to them.	Books Do Furnish a Room
Powell, Anthony	And so she was gone, ridiculous, lovely creature, absurdly hopeless and impossible love who was and always had been so far away. Absurdly lovely, hopeless creature who was gone away so that he would never see her again and would only remember her as an absurdly hopeless love.	Afternoon Men
Powell, Anthony	[Bithel] "Told me you were quite a reader – like me – didn't you?" [Jenkins] "Yes, I am. I read quite a lot." I no longer attempted to conceal the habit, with all its undesirable implications. At least admitting to it put one in a recognisably odd category of persons from whom less need be expected than the normal run.	The Soldier's Art
Powell, Anthony	It was not easy to discern what lay about us in a Daumier world of threatening, fiercely slanted shadows, in the midst of which two feeble jets of bluish gas, from which the pungent smell came, gave irregular, ever-changing contours to the amorphous mass of foggy cubes and pyramids.	The Valley of Bones
Powell, Anthony	My father had few friends. The cause of that was not, I think, his own ever smouldering irascibility. People put up surprisingly well with irascibility, some even finding in it a spice to life otherwise humdrum. There is little evidence that the irascible, as a class, are friendless, and my father's bursts of temper may, for certain acquaintances, have added to the excitement of knowing him. It was more a kind of diffidence, uncertainty of himself (to some extent inducing the irascibility) that also militated against intimacy.	Temporary Kings
Powell, Anthony	… [to] have your pocket picked while standing on the outside platform of a crowded tram is a misadventure to fall to anyone's lot. On the other hand, for a French porter's carrying-strap to split asunder as he mounted the gangway of a Channel steamer with two suitcases across his shoulder, precipitating both into Dieppe Harbour, was likely to befall only a traveller in a peculiar degree subject to such tribulations.	Temporary Kings
Powell, Anthony	Circumstances came to Glober's aid at that moment, in the manner they do with persons of adventurous temperament put in momentary difficulty.	Temporary Kings
Powell, Anthony	His [Templer's] habitual tendency was to look just a little too well dressed, and that evening he gave the appearance of having walked straight out of his tailor's wearing an entirely new outfit.	At Lady Molly’s
Powell, Anthony	"What will happen to people like him [Dr Trelawney ] as the world plods on to standardisation? Will they cease to be born, or find jobs in other professions? I suppose there will always be a position for a man with first-class magical qualifications.”	The Kindly Ones
Powell, Anthony	Others – Evadne Clapham led this school of thought – dismissed such brooding with execrations against priggishness, assurances that Trapnel would ‘grow up’. When Evadne Clapham expressed this latter presumption, Mark Members observed that he could think of no instance of an individual who, having missed that desirable attainment at the normal stage of human development, successfully achieved it in later life. If was hard to disagree.	Books Do Furnish a Room
Powell, Anthony	When it comes to the recapitulation of what is known of a dead friend, for the benefit of a third party (whether or not writing a biography), remnants transmissible in a form at once lucid, unimpeded by subjective considerations, are astonishingly meagre.	Temporary Kings
Powell, Anthony	The stairs above the second floor led up into a rookery of lesser activities, some fairly obscure of definition. On these higher storeys dwelt the Civil branches and their subsidiaries, Finance, Internal Administration, Passive Air Defence, all diminishing in official prestige as the altitude steepened. Finally the explorer converged on attics under the eaves, where crusty hermits lunched frugally from paper bags, amongst crumb-powdered files and documents ineradicably tattooed with the circular brand of the teacup. At these heights, vestiges of hastily snatched meals endured throughout all seasons, eternal as the unmelted upland snows. Here, under the leads, like some unjustly confined prisoner in the Council of Ten, lived Blackhead. It was a part of the building rarely penetrated, for even Blackhead himself preferred on the whole to make forays on others, rather than that his own fastness should be invaded.	The Military Philosophers
Powell, Anthony	In the seven years or so that had passed since I had last seen him, Sir Magnus Donners had grown not so much older in appearances, as less like a human being. He now resembled an animated tailor’s dummy, one designed to recommend second-hand, though immensely discreet, clothes (if the suit he was wearing could be regarded as a sample) adapted to the taste of distinguished men no longer young. Jerky movements, like those of a marionette – perhaps indicating all was not absolutely well with his physical system – added to the impression of an outsize puppet that had somehow escaped from its box and begun to mix with real people, who were momentarily taken in by the extraordinary conviction of its mechanism.	The Military Philosophers
Powell, Anthony	Until you have dealings with Blackhead, the word “bureaucrat” will have conveyed no meaning to you. He is the super-tchenovnik of the classical Russian novel. Even this building can boast no on else quite like him … ‘Blackhead is a man apart,’ said Pennistone. ‘Even his colleagues are aware of that. His minutes have the abstract quality of pure intention.’	The Military Philosophers
Powell, Anthony	Trapnel wanted, among other things, to be a writer, a dandy, a lover, a comrade, an eccentric, a sage, a virtuoso, a good chap, a man of honour, a hard case, a spendthrift, an opportunist, a raisonneur; to be very rich, to be very poor, to possess a thousand mistresses, to win the heart of one love to whom he was ever faithful, to be on the best of terms with all men, to avenge savagely the lightest affront, to live to a hundred full of years and honour, to die young and unknown but recognized the following day as the most neglected genius of the age.	Books Do Furnish a Room
Powell, Violet	Some little time after A Question of Upbringing had appeared, Anthony called to me to look out of the window of 1 Chester Gate. In the road outside, a hole had been dug and the workmen had lighted a brazier beside it. Deliberate snowflakes were falling, hissing as they hit the brazier. Prevision of something that may well happen is a gift belonging to the craft of novel writing, and the snow falling on the brazier could be called a classical example of this insight.	The Departure Platform
Pratchett, Terry	‘I’ll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there’s evidence of any thinking going on inside it.’	alt.fan.pratchett
Pratchett, Terry	The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.	Diggers
Pratchett, Terry	… isolated cabins on chilly mountains, whose only mark on history is to be the incredibly ordinary place where something extraordinary started to happen. Often there is no more than a little plaque to reveal that, against all gynaecological probability, someone very famous was born halfway up a wall.	Equal Rites
Pratchett, Terry	[I]f you ignore the rules people will, half the time, quietly rewrite them so that they don't apply to you.	Equal Rites
Pratchett, Terry	[I]t is well known that a vital ingredient of success is not knowing that what you’re attempting can't be done.	Equal Rites
Pratchett, Terry	[S]he was opposed to books on strict moral grounds, since she had heard that many of them were written by dead people and therefore it stood to reason reading them would be as bad as necromancy.	Equal Rites
Pratchett, Terry	… discredited gods and unlicensed thieves, ladies of the night and pedlars in exotic goods, alchemists of the mind and strolling mummers; in short, all the grease on civilization’s axle.	Equal Rites
Pratchett, Terry	It is well known that stone can think, because the whole of electronics is based on that fact.	Equal Rites
Pratchett, Terry	[W]riting was only the words that people said, squeezed between layers of paper until they were fossilized	Equal Rites
Pratchett, Terry	[S]omeone had decided to brighten the ancient corridors of the University by painting them, having some vague notion that Learning Should Be Fun. It hadn’t worked. It's a fact known throughout the universes that no matter how carefully the colours are chosen, institutional décor ends up as either vomit green, unmentionable brown, nicotine yellow or surgical appliance pink. By some little-understood process of sympathetic resonance, corridors painted in those colours always smell slightly of boiled cabbage – even if no cabbage is ever cooked in the vicinity.	Equal Rites
Pratchett, Terry	Granny grasped her broomstick purposefully. "Million-to-one chances," she said, "crop up nine times out of ten."	Equal Rites
Pratchett, Terry	[I]ts main ambition was to hit the ground with as much rain as possible. It was the kind of storm that suggests that the whole sky has swallowed a diuretic. The thunder and lightning hung around in the background, supplying a sort of chorus, but the rain was the star of the show. It tap-danced across the land.	Equal Rites
Pratchett, Terry	Just erotic. Nothing kinky. It's the difference between using a feather and using a chicken.	Eric
Pratchett, Terry	‘Always remember that the crowd that applauds your coronation is the same crowd that will applaud your beheading. People like a show.’	Going Postal
Pratchett, Terry	God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players [i.e. everybody], to being involved in an obscure and complex variant of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.	Good Omens
Pratchett, Terry	Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.	Hogfather
Pratchett, Terry	It is well known that a vital ingredient of success is not knowing that what you’re attempting can’t be done.	http://brightside.me/article/terry-pratchetts-magnificent-sense-of-humor-in-36-quotes-82855/
Pratchett, Terry	Always remember that the crowd that applauds your coronation is the same crowd that will applaud your beheading. People like a show.	http://brightside.me/article/terry-pratchetts-magnificent-sense-of-humor-in-36-quotes-82855/
Pratchett, Terry	Most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally evil, but by people being fundamentally people.	http://brightside.me/article/terry-pratchetts-magnificent-sense-of-humor-in-36-quotes-82855/
Pratchett, Terry	If cats looked like frogs, we’d realize what nasty, cruel little bastards they are. Style. That’s what people remember	http://brightside.me/article/terry-pratchetts-magnificent-sense-of-humor-in-36-quotes-82855/
Pratchett, Terry	Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving	http://brightside.me/article/terry-pratchetts-magnificent-sense-of-humor-in-36-quotes-82855/
Pratchett, Terry	The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they’ve found it.	Monstrous Regiment
Pratchett, Terry	Scientists have calculated that the chances of something so patently absurd actually existing are millions to one. But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.	Mort
Pratchett, Terry	The whole of life is just like watching a film. Only it’s as though you always get in ten minutes after the big picture has started, and no-one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it out all yourself from the clues.	Moving Pictures
Pratchett, Terry	‘PEOPLE’S WHOLE LIVES DO PASS IN FRONT OF THEIR EYES BEFORE THEY DIE. THE PROCESS IS CALLED "LIVING".'	The Last Continent
Pratchett, Terry	The world changed mightily, and within a few days humans considered it was normal. They had the most amazing ability to shut out and forget what didn't fit. They told themselves little stories to explain away the inexplicable, to make things normal.	Thief of Time
Pratchett, Terry	And if you want the story, then remember that a story does not unwind. It weaves. Events that start in different places and different times all bear down on that one tiny point in space-time, which is the perfect moment.	Thief of Time
Pratchett, Terry	And what is this? "It is a cat. It arrived. It does not appear to wish to depart." The cat, a feral ginger tom, flicked a serrated ear and curled up in a tighter ball. Anything that could survive in Ankh-Morpork’s alleys, with their abandoned swamp dragons, dog packs and furriers' agents, was not about to open even one eye for a bunch of floating nightdresses.	Thief of Time
Pratchett, Terry	Death was nonplussed. It was like asking a brick wall what it thought of dentistry. As a question, it made no sense.	Thief of Time
Pratchett, Terry	Eight hundred years had taught Lu-Tze that what happens stays happened. It might stay happened in a different set of dimensions, if you wanted to get technical, but you couldn't make it un-happen.	Thief of Time
Pratchett, Terry	For something to exist, it has to be observed. For something to exist, it has to have a position in time and space. And this explains why nine-tenths of the mass of the universe is unaccounted for. Nine-tenths of the universe is the knowledge of the position and direction of everything in the other tenth.	Thief of Time
Pratchett, Terry	He went back to his desk and opened a drawer. There was a thick book there, bound in night.	Thief of Time
Pratchett, Terry	It was hard to deal with people when a tiny part of you saw them as a temporary collection of atoms that would not be around in another few decades.	Thief of Time
Pratchett, Terry	Most people have some means of filling up the gap between perception and reality, and, after all, in those circumstances there are far worse things than gin.	Thief of Time
Pratchett, Terry	Nine-tenths of the universe, in fact, is the paperwork.	Thief of Time
Pratchett, Terry	The Auditors had tried to understand religion, because so much that made no sense whatsoever was done in its name. But it could also excuse practically any kind of eccentricity.	Thief of Time
Pratchett, Terry	They were not life forms. They were … non-life forms. They were the observers of the operation of the universe, its clerks, its auditors. They saw to it that things spun and rocks fell. And they believed that for a thing to exist it had to have a position in time and space. Humanity had arrived as a nasty shock. Humanity practically was things that didn’t have a position in time and space, such as imagination, pity, hope, history and belief. Take those away and all you had was an ape that fell out of trees a lot.	Thief of Time
Pratchett, Terry	We will have to build … devices that will store and release time to where it is needed, because men cannot progress if they are carried like leaves on a stream. People need to be able to waste time, make time, lose time and buy time.	Thief of Time
Pratchett, Terry	You had to hand it to human beings. They had one of the strangest powers in the universe […] No other species anywhere in the world had invented boredom.	Thief of Time
Pratchett, Terry	A city with a history the length of Ankh-Morpork’s accumulated all kinds of artistic debris, and in order to prevent congestion in the streets it needed some sort of civic attic in which to store it.	Thief of Time
Pratchett, Terry	As you accumulate years, you will learn that most answers boil down, eventually, to "Because".	Thief of Time
Pratchett, Terry	Historians climbed library ladders, fumbled books onto their lecterns and generally rebuilt the image of the past to suit the eyesight of today.	Thief of Time
Pratchett, Terry	People have been messing around with time ever since there were people. Wasting it, killing it, sparing it, making it up.	Thief of Time
Pratchett, Terry	"The cosmic quantum tick is […] the time it takes to go from now to then. The time it takes an atom to think of wobbling. It's—" "It’s the time it takes for the smallest thing that's possible to happen to happen?" said Lobsang. "Exactly. Well done," said Lu-Tze. He took a deep breath. "It's also the time it takes for the whole universe to be destroyed in the past and rebuilt in the future."	Thief of Time
Pratchett, Terry	"In the cup of the hand there is no past, no future. There is only now. There is no time but the present. We have a great deal to do."	Thief of Time
Pratchett, Terry	"Everything is as important as everything else," he said.	Thief of Time
Pratchett, Terry	"In life, as in breakfast cereal, it is always best to read the instructions on the box"	Thief of Time
Pratchett, Terry	"Look at the bird." It was perched on a branch by a fork in the tree, next to what looked like a birdhouse, and nibbling at a piece of roughly round wood it held in one claw. "Must be an old nest they’re repairing," said Lu-Tze. "Can’t have got that advanced this early in the season." "‘Looks like some kind of old box to me," said Lobsang. He squinted to see better. "Is it an old … clock?" he added. "Look at what the bird is nibbling," suggested Lu-Tze. "Well, it looks like … a crude gearwheel? But why—" "‘Well spotted. That, lad, is a clock cuckoo."	Thief of Time
Pratchett, Terry	Look, that's why there's rules, understand? So that you think before you break 'em.	Thief of Time
Pratchett, Terry	"Maybe there are things worth putting up a fight for." "And they are—?" said Pestilence, looking round. "Salad-cream sandwiches. You just can’t beat them. That tang of permitted emulsifiers? Marvellous."	Thief of Time
Pratchett, Terry	"Questions don't have to make sense, Vincent," said Miss Susan. "But answers do."	Thief of Time
Pratchett, Terry	Wen considered the nature of time and understood that the universe is, instant by instant, recreated anew. Therefore, he understood, there is in truth no past, only a memory of the past. Blink your eyes, and the world you see next did not exist when you closed them. Therefore, he said, the only appropriate state of the mind is surprise. The only appropriate state of the heart is joy. The sky you see now, you have never seen before. The perfect moment is now. Be glad of it.	Thief of Time
Pratchett, Terry	And everything contains all possible things that can happen at all possible times in all possible worlds.	Thief of Time
Pratchett, Terry	This book was written using 100% recycled words.	Wyrd Sisters
Pratchett, Terry	Questions don't have to make sense, Vincent,' said Miss Susan. 'But answers do.'	Thief of Time
Pratchett, Terry	Sam Vimes could parallel-process. Most husbands can. They learn to follow their own line of thought while at the same time listening to what their wives say. And the listening is important, because at any time they could be challenged and must be ready to quote the last sentence in full. A vital additional skill is being able to scan the dialogue for tell-tale phrases, such as 'and they can deliver it tomorrow' or 'so I've invited them for dinner' or 'they can do it in blue, really quite cheaply'	The Fifth Elephant
Pratchett, Terry	Do not put all your trust in root vegetables. What things seem may not be what things are.	The Truth
Pratchett, Terry	A chocolate you did not want to eat does not count as chocolate. This discovery is from the same branch of culinary physics that determined that food eaten while walking along contains no calories.	Thief of Time
Pratchett, Terry	She was already learning that if you ignore the rules people will, half the time, quietly rewrite them so that they don't apply to you	Equal Rites
Pratchett, Terry	Chaos is found in greatest abundance wherever order is being sought. It always defeats order, because it is better organised.	Interesting Times
Pritchard, William H	Is there anything in high art that even approaches the soap in its hopefully endless proliferation? I hadn’t thought of one until the fiercely outspoken reviewer Marvin Mudrick called a novel from Anthony Powell’s series A Dance to the Music of Time “the most interminable soap-opera since Australopithecus”—whoever he was. Mudrick’s aim was to abuse Powell’s novels, but since I love the book he was disparaging, it reminded me that I never wanted Powell’s Dance to end, would have been content to read on and on.	Weekly Standard, 9 March 2015
Proust, Marcel	We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.
Proust, Marcel	The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes, but in having new eyes, in seeing the universe with / the eyes of another, of hundreds of others, in seeing the hundreds of universes that each of them sees.
Proust, Marcel	Do not wait for life. Do not long for it. Be aware, always and at every moment, that the miracle is in the here and now.
Proverb, Chinese	The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name.
Puerto, Steven	Enlightenment is the conversion of religious experience to religious life.
Quindlen, Anna	I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.
Ralston, Peter	Most people fail to realize that the dictates of any belief system are not the truth, and that memorizing beliefs often Replaces authentic investigation.	Zen Body-Being
Rickover, Admiral HG	It is hard to soar like an eagle when you work with turkeys!
Robert Robinson	Anthony Powell’s sequence of novels A Dance to The Music of Time was described as ‘a sort of up market Mrs Dales Diary’.	BBC Radio 4; Brain of Britain
Roberts, Stephen	I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.
Robinson, Holly	In fact, research suggests that children who have seen their parents nude do not grow up to be emotionally scarred, but instead are more likely to be accepting of their own bodies and comf”ortable with their own sexuality.
Roe, Prof. John	Nick Jenkins himself is badly shaken by his one great passionate encounter, with Jean Templar, after which he retreats gratefully into the safety of uxorious normality with Isobel Tolland.	AP Conference paper; 2011
Rogers, Adam	Space is one big pinball machine, in which any wildly racing orb could make Earth go TILT - or worse.	Newsweek; 23 March 1998
Rogers, Will	Everybody is ignorant - only on different subjects.	1879
Rohn, Jim	You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons or the wind, but you can change yourself. That is something you have charge of.
Roman, Mario	We are so narrow minded that we show war, murder, and rape on TV, but we are not allowed to show one of the most wonderful creations (the human body) in its natural form.
Roosevelt, Theodore	Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure ... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in a grey twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.
Roosevelt, Theodore	Never before have we had so little time in which to do so much
Roosevelt, Theodore	There is no indispensable man
Roosevelt, Theodore	The truth is found when men are free to pursue it
Roosevelt, Theodore	No man is above the law and no man is below it
Roosevelt, Theodore	Obedience of the law is demanded, not asked for as a favour
Roosevelt, Theodore	No man is justified in doing evil on the grounds of expediency
Roosevelt, Theodore	Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Roosevelt, Theodore	The only thing we have to fear is fear itself
Rose, Flemming	Religious feelings cannot demand special treatment in a secular society. In a democracy one must from time to time accept criticism or become a laughingstock.	Cultural Editor of Danish newspaper "Jyllands-Posten", 02/2006
Rowe, Dorothy	What determines our behaviour is not what happens to us, but how we interpret what happens to us. In life. some of us get off fairly lightly - nobody gets off altogether - while others seem to suffer one blow after another. ... You're lucky or unlucky, that's it.	Saga Magazine, March 2004
Rowe, Dorothy	Self-help books invent disorders and ways of curing them. They simplify things in a way that isn't real. The truth is that life is full of difficulties and dilemmas that can't always be resolved.	Saga Magazine, March 2004
Rudner, Ruth	My husband and I are either going to buy a dog or have a child. We can't decide whether to ruin our carpet or ruin our lives.
Russell, Bertrand	I am as firmly convinced that religions do harm as I am that they are untrue.
Russell, Lord Bertrand	The taboo against nakedness is an obstacle to a decent attitude on the subject of sex.	Marriage and Morals (1929)
Ryokan	Cling to truth and it becomes falsehood / Understand falsehood and it becomes truth.
Sachs, Judge J "Albie"	Openness of government promotes both the rationality that the rule of law requires, and the accountability that multi-party democracy demands. In our constitutional order, the legitimacy of laws made by Parliament comes not from awe, but from openness.	South African Constitutional Court; 27 February 2006
Sagan, Carl	Another writer again agreed with all my generalities, but said that as an inveterate skeptic I have closed my mind to the truth. Most notably I have ignored the evidence for an Earth that is six thousand years old. Well, I haven't ignored it; I considered the purported evidence and then rejected it. There is a difference, and this is a difference, we might say, between prejudice and postjudice. Prejudice is making a judgment before you have looked at the facts. Postjudice is making a judgment afterwards. Prejudice is terrible, in the sense that you commit injustices and you make serious mistakes. Postjudice is not terrible. You can't be perfect of course; you may make mistakes also. But it is permissible to make a judgment after you have examined the evidence. In some circles it is even encouraged.	The Burden of Skepticism
Sagan, Carl	A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to supress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.	Contact
Salk, Dr Lee	Being natural and matter-of-fact about nudity prevents your children from developing an attitude of shame or disgust about the human body. If parents are very secretive about their bodies and go to great lengths to prevent their children from ever seeing
Saramago, Jose	Don't worry about things not making sense, a journey only makes sense if you finish it.	The Stone Raft?
Schopenhauer, Arthur	What a man is contributes much more to his happiness than what he has, or how he is regarded by others.
Schweitzer, Albert	No ray of sunshine is ever lost, but the green which it awakens into existence needs time to sprout, and it is not always granted for the sower to see the harvest. All work that is worth anything is done in faith.
Scruton, Roger	When people refer to animal rights, either they are making a mistake about the nature of animals, or they are using this word 'rights' in a very loose way to refer to our duties towards animals. If animals really have rights in the way that we do, then they have to be fully part of the moral realm, the realm of negotiation. Therefore, they must be accorded not only the benefits of morality, but also the burdens, which are huge. Cats would have to be treated as serial killers, for a start. And we don't want to inflict the penalties on them that that would imply.	Animal Rights and Wrongs
Seattle, Chief	All things are connected - man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand of it. Whatever he does to the web he does to himself.	1854
Seeger, Pete	If it's good for ancient Druids, runnin' nekkid through the wuids, Drinkin' strange fermented fluids, it's good enough for me!
Seneca	The mind ought not to be always occupied with deep and serious considerations. One must also know how to have fun ... The intellect must be allowed to relax, because after a rest it revives and is more certain and lively.	De Tranquillitate Animi XVII 4-8
Seung Sahn	The great way has no gate. / Clear water has no taste. / The tongue has no bone. / In complete stillness, a stone girl is dancing.
Seymour-Smith, Martin	Powell is one of the most serious and technically adroit novelists since Dickens. His procedures are in fact unobtrusively modernistic, but are in the interests of an essentially conservative (with a small c) morality based not on puritanism but on freedom and on an exceedingly complex notion of, to put it necessarily crudely, decency. Jenkins is skeptical but – despite his coolness – obsessed, in his apparently casual way, with decency. He is almost paralysed by decency, as Powell shows us. Widmerpool is the foil to him: the ambitious go-getter, amoral, wanting to have his cake and eat it. Each book [in Dance] betters its predecessor but only because of its predecessor ... At the end we recognize that the old charges against Powell – he could not deal with the lower classes, he was a snob, he was limited, and so on – have all been dealt with by him ... Powell has very intelligently employed reader-reaction as feedback, and has succeeded in accomplishing almost all of the things he was supposed not to be able to do. This fundamental modesty has helped him to achieve one of the masterworks of his time ... [Dance] is humane, poetic, and moving: not a comic work, as is so often supposed, but a tragi-comic one of enormous sensibility, subtlety, and compassion.	Guide to Modern World Literature
Shakespeare, William	Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see the things thou dost not.	King Lear, IV v ll 160-162
Shakespeare, William	There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy	Hamlet, Act1, Scene 5
Shakespeare, William	Come what come may / Time and the hour run through the roughest day.	Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 3
Shakespeare, William	In converting Jews to Christians, you raise the price of pork.
Shakespeare, William	Love all. Trust a few. Do wrong to none.
Shaw, George Bernard	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.
Shaw, George Bernard	There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.
Shaw, George Bernard	Every man over forty is a scoundrel.
Shaw, George Bernard	The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact than a drunken man is happier than a sober one.
Shaw, George Bernard	NAPOLEON: What shall we do with this soldier, Giuseppe? Everything he says is wrong. / GIUSEPPE: Make him a general, Excellency, and then everything he says will be right.
Shaw, George Bernard	Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
Shaw, George Bernard	All professions are conspiracies against the laity.	The Doctor's Dilemma; 1911
Shaw, George Bernard	He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.
Shaw, George Bernard	Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.
Shaw, George Bernard	The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.
Shaw, George Bernard	Confusing monogamy with morality has done more to destroy the conscience of the human race than any other error.
Shaw, George Bernard	Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!
Shilling, Jane	If you are not dysfunctional when you begin reading a self-help volume, you will be by the time you stop.	The Times; 22 December 1997
Shirley, John	Weekends are a bit like rainbows; they look good from a distance but disappear when you get up close to them
Short, Solomon	I'm all in favour of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters.
Signoret, Simone	Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads, which sew people together through the years.
Sions, Harry	I know of no writer who is more sensitive to the special worlds in which his characters live, whether it be publishing, the military, politics, sexual fantasy or whatever; but he treats these worlds and their people in his own special way. Anthony Powell, perhaps more than any other writer in the world today, is not influenced by doctrine, by any special political point of view. His people are not conformists: they are individuals, with their special charms and madnesses. They may infuriate or entrance you, but they never bore you.	“‘The Relevance of Anthony Powell”; Summary; Autumn 1970
Skinner, BF	Education is what survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten.	New Scientist, 21 May 1964
Smith & Jones	The philosophy exam was a piece of cake, which was something of a surprise, since I was expecting a sheet of paper with questions on it.
Smith, John Maynard	[Life is ]any population of entities which has the properties of multiplication, heredity and variation.	New Scientist, 18 November 2006
Smith, Phil	If God has to obey his own laws, then he's not omnipotent.
Soaper, Senator	Democracy is a form of government in which it is permitted to wonder aloud what the country could do under first-class management.
Ssali, Shaka	The only reason one will respect you as a journalist is because of your integrity. Your integrity is based on your credibility. Your credibility comes from your truthfulness. All these come from you submitting yourself as a servant of the truth, a servant of issues.
St Augustine	Suppress prostitution, and capricious lusts will overthrow society.
St Thomas Aquinas	Prostitution in the towns is like the cesspool in the palace: take away the cesspool and the palace will become an unclean and evil-smelling place.
Stanton, Corky	Forcing Americans to always wear clothing while swimming or sunbathing even in designated or secluded areas is as bad as forcing women to always wear burkhas.
Stevens, US Justice John Paul	As a matter of constitutional tradition, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, we presume that governmental regulation of the content of speech is more likely to interfere with the free exchange of ideas than to encourage it. The interest in encouraging freedom of expression in a democratic society outweighs any theoretical but unproven benefit of censorship.	Court Judgement; 26 June 1997
Stewart, Jon	He treats reality like it's out to get him. [Comment on George W Bush]	The Daily Show, 10/06/2008?
Stibrany, Peter	When failure is not an option, success can get expensive.
Stok, Toby	Was it a proper Henry Moore, or was it one that looked like something?
Storey, Mark	The fear that seeing naked people in some way harms children is not supported, however, by academic research. The small handful of studies on this topic in psychology and sociology have shown, instead, that children reared in an atmosphere containing fam	Children, Social Nudity and Scholarly Study
Strauss, Howard J	What we really need instead of smart classrooms is smart teachers and smart learners.
Stravinsky, Igor	Music is, by its very nature, powerless to express anything at all. Music expresses itself.
Strong, Sir Roy	The monarchy has shot itself in the crown.	16 September 1996
Sykes, Eric	My theory is that we are all idiots. The ones who don't think they're idiots are dangerous.
Szilard, Leo	In science it is not enough to think of an important problem on which to work. It is also necessary to know the means which could be used to investigate this problem.
Tao Te Ching	The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. / The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth.
Tao Te Ching	In dwelling, live close to the ground. In thinking, keep to the simple. In conflict, be fair and generous. In governing, don't try to control. In work, do what you enjoy. In family life, be completely present.
Taylor, AJP	All that is wrong with Mr Powell's books is that there are not enough of them and they are too short.
Taylor, DJ	It's almost impossible to imagine … One of his closest friends, the novelist Anthony Powell, suggested in his journals that Orwell's politics would have drifted rightwards. He would have been anti-CND, in favour of the Falklands war, disapproved of the miners' strikes. Powell was a high Tory right winger, but he was very close to Orwell and so those possibilities of what he would have been like had he lived on shouldn't be dismissed.	Guardian; 24 January 2013
Theron, Charlize	I didn't grow up with a mother telling me what was under my clothes was bad or evil.
Thody, Philip	[T]he ultimate comparison between Powell and Proust, and the one which perhaps fixes itself most permanently in the reader's mind, is that of two authors whose characters grow old. It is so rare a feature of the novel that it deserves to remain as the ultimate justification for bringing together two writers whose books do, above everything else, make us conscious of the passage of time.	"The English Proust" in Robert Gibson (ed), Studies in French Fiction in Honour of Vivienne Mylne
Thornton, Ben	Warning: Clothing has been shown to cause extreme psychological dependence. Wear it at your own risk.
Tikkanen, Henrik	Truly great madness cannot be achieved without significant intelligence.
Tilley, Simon	Any suggestions would be gratefully received - as long as they don't involve ancient sexual rituals or giraffes (ancient or otherwise).	Email to Keith Marshall, 9 August 2001
Timberlake, Justin	I was born naked and I'm going to die naked so I don't see anything wrong with it.
Tolkein, JRR	"It is also said," answered Frodo: "Go not to the Elves for counsel, for they will say both no and yes." / "It is indeed?" laughed Gildor. "Elves seldom give unguarded advice, for advice is a dangerous gift, even from the wise to the wise, and all courses may run ill..."	Lord of the Rings
Tolkien, JRR	Hill. Yes, that was it. But it is a hasty word for a thing that has stood here ever since this part of the world was shaped.
Torday, Paul	This extended novel portraying life (a mixture of the bohemian and the aristocratic) in the Thirties, Forties and Fifties has so much content it will bear any amount of re- reading. The plot evolves around the appearance and reappearance of a few central characters, all linked by the narrator, Nick Jenkins. The ghastly Widmerpool is perhaps the most memorable of these. The volumes dealing with the narrator's experiences in World War II are among the most effective.	Daily Mail,; 25 January 2013
Tracey, Minerva	The genius of Powell is comic … there is high comedy at every turn but it is Widmerpool who provides the custard pie element. It is a sad commentary on our times that success rides on an ability to triumph over the custard pie.	Presentation to Saskatoon Literary Society; mid-1960s
Trubshaw, Bob	All too often academic specialists live in a different belief system to the outside world.	www.indigogroup.co.uk/edge/paganism.htm
Truman, Harry S	I always considered statesman more expendable than soldiers
Truman, Harry S	If you can't convince them, confuse them
Tucker, James	Keep calm, keep steady, keep individual ... Hear the secret harmonies if you can; listen to the music of time and observe the dancers. That will do. Otherwise we should cultivate our garden.	The Novels of Anthony Powell, Macmillan, 1976, p192
Turing, Alan	Science is a differential equation. Religion is a boundary condition.	New Scientist, 18 November 2006
Twain, Mark	A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.
Twain, Mark	An honest and upright idiot.
Twain, Mark	Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.
Twain, Mark	I never let schooling interfere with my education.
Twain, Mark	It’s no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.
Twain, Mark	The man who doesn’t read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.
Twain, Mark	Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones that you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
Twain, Mark	An experienced, industrious, ambitious, and quite often picturesque liar.
Twain, Mark	God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board.
Un-named Israeli Official	We do not envisage that pigs will be drafted into the Israeli army any time soon.	Sunday Telegraph, 5 October 2003
Unknown	Father Gerard Irvine, who died on January 13 aged 90, was almost certainly the last of an older style of Anglo-Catholic priest who accorded the highest priority to colourful worship [… … ] The house was described by Anthony Powell in his journals as “somewhere between a Firbank novel and Cruikshank’s illustrations of the Old Curiosity Shop”.	http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new s/obituaries/827 2305/Father- Gerard- Irvine.html
Unknown	The thing that happens to senior novelists as they speed towards their threescore years and ten (and the rule applies to Iris Murdoch and Anthony Powell as much to Frederick Forsyth and Jack Higgins) is that they start becoming even more like themselves as writers than they were to begin with. Graham Greene, famously, once won a prize in a New Statesman competition that invited a pastiched opening paragraph from one of his own books.	Private Eye; 12 January 2001
Unknown	Mary had a little lamb, her father shot it dead. Now she goes to school with it, between two lumps of bread.
Unknown	Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy, and good with ketchup.
Unknown	Every opinion must have objection.
Unknown	This obsessive, arcane book is an example of everything that is wrong with legal scholarship. Other disciplines have simple, easy-to-understand citation systems, but not law. Someone should do an analysis of the people who have worked on this book to see how many of them have gone mad.
Unknown	Make it idiot proof and someone will make a better idiot.
Unknown	The Tao is nameless / Like uncarved wood / As soon as it is carved / Then there are names / Carve carefully / And along the grain
Unknown	Laws are society's common sense, written down for the stupid. The stupid refuse to read. Their lawyers read to them.
Unknown	We will defend, to the death, your right to freedom of speech online. But you need not expect anybody to listen to you.
Unknown	Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.
Unknown	It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
Unknown	Sing like no one is listening. Dance like no one is watching. Love like you've never been hurt. Live like it's Heaven on Earth.
Unknown	Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion with confidence.
Unknown	Due to a shortage of devoted followers, the production of great leaders has been discontinued.
Unknown	Wu-Wei is the Taoist expression for the power of positive not-doing. It is the action in non-action, the knowing in not-knowing, the something in nothing, the doing in not-doing. Wu-Wei is following the way of the water, the way of the wind. It is the not absence of action, but it is the absence of trying. Wind is never still, but it has no intention. Water ever seeks its own level, but not on purpose.
Unknown	Due to current financial stringencies, the light at the end of the tunnel has been switched off until further notice.
Unknown	You should never have started [driving ]on a vehicle of this description. What you need is a dodgem.	Eric Sykes Film
Unknown	People may fail many times, but they become failures only when they begin to blame someone else.
Unknown	No system is ever fully debugged and documented until the last user is dead.
Unknown	A lack of planning on your part does not constitute a crisis on my part.
Unknown	Mr Spock ... We're trapped in an eerie, brain numbing madhouse! Any answers?	Star Trek Annual, 1972
Unknown	Nudists are people who wear one-button suits.
Unknown	Controlled flight into terrain.
Unknown	Everything in life is possible, except skiing through a revolving door.
Unknown	If you have a black and white dog should the licence be cheaper?	Internet Magazine; January 1998
Unknown	Duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the Universe together.
Unknown	Aliens must be seated in non-smoking.
Unknown	The scenery only changes for the lead dog.
Unknown	When you are sick of Croydon, you have regained your interest in life.
Unknown	IMPORTANT - ANTI-DISCLAIMER - This e-mail is not and cannot, by its nature, be confidential. En route from us to you, it will pass across the public Internet, easily readable by any number of system administrators along the way. If you have received this message by mistake, it would be ridiculous for us to tell you not to read it or copy to anyone else, because, let's face it, if it's a message revealing confidential information or that could embarrass us intensely, that's precisely what you'll do. Who wouldn't? / Likewise, it is superfluous for us to claim copyright in the contents, because we own that anyway, even if you print out a hard copy or disseminate this message all over the known universe. We don't know why so many corporate mail servers feel impelled to attach a disclaimer to the bottom of every e-mail message saying otherwise. If you don't know either, why not e-mail your corporate lawyers and system administrators and ask them why they insist on contributing so much to the waste of bandwidth?
Unknown	Please to stand by while we perform percussive maintenance on the offending parts.
Unknown	Wasting time is an important part of living.
Unknown	Today I will not imagine what I would do if things were different. They are not different. I will seek success with what material I have.
Unknown	Our children are adventurous. Your children are boisterous. Their children are pocket terrorists.
Unknown	To err is human. To really screw up requires a computer. To screw up a computer requires a programmer.
Unknown	Tips for Cultist. If the creature that you have summoned looks like Demi Moore, starts stripping and invites you to step out of the pentagram, DON'T. Use common sense: a) demons change shape easily and b) do you seriously believe that Demi Moore digs ne
Unknown	There are two types of fool: one says 'This is old and therefore good.', the other says 'This is new, and therefore better.'
Unknown	The Eightfold Path / 1. Right Understanding / 2. Right Intention / 3. Right Speech / 4. Right Action / 5. Right means of livelihood / 6. Right effort / 7. Right awareness / 8. Right meditation
Unknown	Sitting quietly, doing nothing, / Spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.	The Zenrin
Unknown	Actually, 2+2=5. For sufficiently large values of 2, that is.
Unknown	Sorry, we don't serve fast food. We serve good food as fast as possible.	The Cherub Inn, Dartmouth, UK
Unknown	The goal of science is to build better mousetraps. The goal of nature is to build better mice.
Unknown	Remember, even if you win the rat race - you're still a rat.
Unknown	Stupidity comes in many forms. The trick is to find the right one for you.
Unknown	Every great achievement was once considered impossible.
Unknown	The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning, and does not stop until you get to school.
Unknown	A scientist is someone who looks for a black cat in a dark room. A philosopher is someone who looks for a black cat in a room in which there's no black cat.
Unknown	Though the tough cough and hiccough plough me through / O'er life's rough lough my thorough course I'll hew.
Unknown	Veni, vidi, visa. / I came, I saw, I did a little shopping.
Unknown	His and hers / Its, theirs and whose / apostrophes / they do not use.
Unknown	The moment that final screw secures the lid, the hardware will demand instant attention.
Unknown	A truly wise man never plays leapfrog with a unicorn.
Unknown	Unquestioned answers are more dangerous than unanswered questions.
Unknown	Order requires a leader. Where there's a leader, there is eventually a nation to support him, and once you create a nation you create exile.
Unknown	Today I refuse to spend my time worrying about what might happen - it usually doesn't. I am going to spend time making things happen.
Unknown	Most people use statistics as a drunk uses a lamp-post: as support rather than illumination.
Unknown	It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.
Unknown	Beware of the dragon - trespassers will be flame-grilled!
Unknown	Blessed are the cracked, for they let in the light.
Unknown	Bad behaviour is one of the few privileges of old age.
Unknown	Most of the world's problems are caused by man's inability to sit still and do nothing for five minutes.
Unknown	Scientific Equivalents / 1. Ratio of an igloo's circumference to its diameter = Eskimo Pi / 2. 2000 pounds of Chinese soup = Won ton / 3. 1 millionth of a mouthwash = 1 microscope / 4. Time between slipping on a peel and smacking the pavement = 1 bananosecond / 5. Weight an evangelist carries with God = 1 billigram / 6. Time it takes to sail 220 yards at 1 nautical mile per hour = Knotfurlong / 7. 365.25 days of drinking low calorie beer because it's less filling = 1 lite year / 8. 16.5 feet in the Twilight Zone = 1 Rod Serling / 9. Half of a large intestine = 1 semicolon / 10. 1,000,000 aches = 1 megahurtz / 11. Basic unit of laryngitis = 1 hoarsepower / 12. Shortest distance between two jokes = A straight line / 13. 453.6 graham crackers = 1 pound cake / 14. 1 million microphones = 1 megaphone / 15. 1 million bicycles = 2 megacycles / 16. 365.25 days = 1 unicycle / 17. 2000 mockingbirds = two kilomockingbirds / 18. 10 cards = 1 decacards / 19. 1 kilogram of falling figs = 1 Fig Newton / 20. 1000 grams of wet socks = 1 literhosen / 21. 1 millionth of a fish = 1 microfiche / 22. 1 trillion pins = 1 terrapin / 23. 10 rations = 1 decaration / 24. 100 rations = 1 C-ration / 25. 2 monograms = 1 diagram / 26. 8 nickels = 2 paradigms / 27. 2.4 statute miles of intravenous surgical tubing at Yale University Hospital = 1 I.V. League / 28. 1 nostril = a semibreve
Unknown	All that mankind has done, thought, gained or been, it is all lying in magic preservation in the pages of books.
Unknown	I have a plan so cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel.	Blackadder III
Unknown	Faster, better, cheaper - choose two of the above.
Unknown	Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways - Chardonnay in one hand, strawberries in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and screaming 'Woo Hoo! What a Ride!'.
Unknown	We the willing, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much, with so little, for so long, we are now qualified to do anything, with nothing.
Unknown	Life is full of opportunities. The trick is when they pop up, if we are open to them and take a chance, good things will come. You don't have to force things to happen. You just allow space and when it beacons, go for it.
Unknown	For a believer no proof is necessary. For a sceptic no proof is ever enough.
Unknown	Q: "Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?" / A: "No." / Q: "Did you check for blood pressure?" / A: "No." / Q: "Did you check for breathing?" / A: "No." / Q: "So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?" / A: "No." / Q: "How can you be so sure, Doctor?" / A: "Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar." / Q: "But could the patient have still been alive nevertheless?" / A: "It is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law somewhere."
Unknown	All people are free to think, believe and act as they choose, as long as they do not infringe on the equal freedom of others.
Unknown	Scire ubi aliquid invenire possis, ea demum maxima pars eruditionis est. [To know where to find anything is, after all, the greatest part of education.]
Unknown	A Nudist is simply a human being without 'Artificial Additives'!
Unknown	Because naturists don't think of sex when they undress, because naturists don't think of sex when they are engaged in wholesome family activities. Because naturists don't grab a towel for cover, after taking a shower in fear of having others view them in
Unknown	Being naked is natural and beautiful.
Unknown	I think the key to acceptance of social nudity is in seeing people doings things clothes free you might ordinarily do clothed.
Unknown	Sure, some people might believe they are offended by nude bathers, but, if you never encounter anything that offends you in your community, you are not living in a free society.
Unknown	The best thing to do would be to designate everywhere as clothing optional, and we could leave little fenced in areas for the prudes to prance around in. Call them “Prudist Camps”. They could peer out of their fences and indulge in their offensive “I'm
Unknown	Why would anyone want to teach their children their bodies are disgusting, unacceptable and offensive to even look at? Why would anyone want to teach their children self shame, self disgust and to despise their body or any one else's body?
Valis, Philip K Dick	Reality is what refuses to disappear when you stop believing in it.
Vidal, Gore	As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.
Voltaire, Francois Marie Arouet de	Life is a shipwreck but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.	Bottiglia
Walmsley, Peter	After all, a thousand lemmings cannot be wrong.
Walpole, H	The world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel.
Warner, Brad	A lot of people consider Buddhism a form of atheism. In a sense it is, in that it does not have a god in the usual sense of the word. We don’t have a deity figure. We don’t have a creation myth. We don’t fear reprisals from some cosmic grandpa if we fail to worship him properly.	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	A person’s sexual orientation has never been considered a key issue in Buddhism.	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	Action and its results are one and the same. Time, the thing which makes us see them as separate matters, is the illusion. Time is no more than a clever fiction we humans have invented to help organize stuff in our brains.	http://hardcorezen.blogspot.com
Warner, Brad	Actions hurt people. Thoughts don’t. Whatever you’re thinking about me right now doesn’t harm me.	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	Although the sex portrayed in porn is totally unrealistic, ironically enough people’s attitudes toward sex seem to be far more realistic and healthier in cultures that allow porn than in cultures that suppress it.	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	An old Chinese Zen master once said, "From birth to death it's just like this!"	Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
Warner, Brad	And philosophy, the academically sanctioned state religion of the Western world, isn't any better. Philosophies offer clever suppositions phrased in five-dollar words. Sure, philosophy can lead to a deep-ass insight or two […] but soon enough you look around and the world is still the same old screwed-up mess.	Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
Warner, Brad	As far as Buddhism is concerned there is no sin in masturbation since there is no concept of sin to begin with. Personally I think masturbation is probably one of the least entangling ways of relieving sexual tension. It’s something you can do if you know you’re in a highly sexual frame of mind and want to avoid imposing that on others. So I think it’s probably a very good activity for monks, especially those who have taken vows of celibacy.	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	As I understand Christian cosmology, the idea is that every human being has a unique soul. This soul is created by God sometime before the person is born. The soul then takes human form so that it can act according to its own free will. It is completely innocent at birth but gradually becomes less innocent the longer it lives. Then the person dies, and the soul is judged by God according to the actions it took during its human life. If the person has dedicated his or her life to Christ, the soul goes to heaven. If not, the flames and torments of hell await. If you abort a baby you are robbing that soul of its one and only opportunity to live a mortal life. Moreover, you prevent that soul from doing anything either good or evil, thereby foiling God in his one and only chance to judge that soul. He then has no idea if the soul he created was good or evil, so he has no idea where to send it. That’s a huge crime against God. It makes the person who does the abortion more powerful than God, since God can’t prevent him or her from doing it.	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	Atheism, as rational and sensible as it is, will never be an adequate substitute for religion. It’s like trying to substitute actual eating with a superbly argued essay on food. It’s an intellect- based solution for a problem that has nothing at all to do with the intellect.	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	Being without preference means that when you have preferences — and you always will — you let go of any notion that you should not have them. You let go of your preference for being free of preferences. Even having preferences is not a problem. The real root of our problems as human beings is the way we fly off into imagining how things could, or should, be.	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	Boredom is important. Most of your life is dull, tasteless and boring.	http://hardcorezen.blogspot.com
Warner, Brad	Buddha taught the Middle Way, the way that avoids the extremes of hedonistic excess and the extremes of self-mortification and denial. He didn’t say what he said because he wanted us to be more repressed and inhibited. I am fully convinced that what Buddha was really after was a life that did not suck. That is, after all, the basis of the philosophy. The common interpretation of Buddha’s famous First Noble Truth amounts basically to “life sucks.” His main interest was in finding out what we could do to make life not suck so much.	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	Buddhism is a way of walking, a way of eating your Reece’s Pieces™, a way of wiping your ass after you take a dump. It has nothing whatsoever to do with any of the trappings of a usual religion or philosophy.	http://hardcorezen.blogspot.com
Warner, Brad	Buddhism is about Reality. Religion is about thought. Reality is not the same as thought.	http://hardcorezen.blogspot.com
Warner, Brad	Buddhism is an attitude. It’s a way of approaching what life presents you with. I believe the Buddhist attitude, when applied to sexuality, can provide a means to make sex more rational, safer, less harmful, and perhaps most important, a whole lot more enjoyable than any other attitude we humans have tried so far. Life is a whole lot more fun when you can put aside your delusions about who you are and what you want and actually simply be who you are and do the things you truly want to do.	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	Buddhism is emphatically not about running away from the world into some beautiful cosmic Lala Land where nothing matters and nothing can ever bother you again. It's about seeing your real troubles, your real trials, all your real difficulties and real joys in your ordinary life as they actually are without all the overblown drama we usually ladle on top of them.	http://hardcorezen.blogspot.com
Warner, Brad	Buddhism is emphatically not about running away from this world into some beautiful cosmic la-la land where nothing matters and nothing can ever bother you again. It's about seeing your real troubles, your real trials, all your real difficulties and real joys as they actually are, without the overblown drama we usually ladle on top of them.	Sit Down and Shut Up
Warner, Brad	Buddhism is not a religion in the usual sense. It has no creator deity and no belief in spiritual forces that control nature. At the same time, though, Buddhism does not deny a spiritual aspect to nature. It takes the view that because we human beings have a spiritual aspect to our own natures, it is reasonable to assume that all creation — sentient and insentient beings included — possesses a similar spiritual dimension.	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	Buddhism isn’t about how to find a life that fits our deluded ideas of perfection. But it is about how to find the real perfection in the life you’re leading right now, no matter how ridiculously far it is from your ideas about what your life ought to be like.	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	Buddhism says that no matter how we slice up reality to fit it into our brains […] reality itself remains forever unsliced, remains forever just as it is. And it further asserts that the sliced-up image of reality in our heads never, ever in a million billion, quadrillion years matches up with reality itself.	Sit Down and Shut Up
Warner, Brad	Buddhism won’t give you the answer. Buddhism might help you find your own right question, but you've gotta supply your own answers. Sorry. No one else's answer will ever satisfy you – nor should it. But the real magic is that once you have your own true answer, you'll find you're not alone.	Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
Warner, Brad	Bunnies are made to be eaten.	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	Bunnies turn grass into fox food because foxes can’t eat grass.	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	But it's the most wonderful thing in the world to do that because the most boring experiences in your life are the boring experiences of God himself experiencing the most boring aspects of God himself – which he created because he wanted to know the experience of true boredom. How could anything be better? How could you want anything more than that?	Sit Down and Shut Up
Warner, Brad	Compassion doesn’t need to be big. It can be very small.	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	Defining oneself as straight, gay, bisexual, kinky, or whatever designation you prefer is one way for the ego to try and delineate itself. Such a definition may be provisionally true and may have some use. But ultimately it’s not who you truly are. Buddhist practice is about trying to uncover something far more fundamental.	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	Do what needs to be done right now. Then do the next thing. And the next. And the next. Dust off that pile of old Van Halen records without worrying about whether that action in and of itself is going to end up making the entire room look like the bright and spotless room in your imagination. Do that and then dust off something else. Do what you can, and do it now. Eventually, if you do enough of that, your room gets clean. It may happen quickly, or it may happen slowly. It all depends on how much you messed up your room to begin with and how willing you are to deal with that mess. And those are the only things it depends on.	Sit Down and Shut Up
Warner, Brad	Electricity in the brain is an amazing thing. It's a mystical thing. No doubt about it. Just look at what that electricity is doing right now. It's creating whole worlds out of nothing more than some squiggly black shapes on a piece of paper. You are reading my mind just by looking at those shapes. What's more, we can communicate with Dogen, a guy who died eight hundred years before our grandparents were even born, just by looking at tiny little marks on pieces of paper. And that's just the tip of the iceberg of what electrical impulses in the brain are capable of.	Sit Down and Shut Up
Warner, Brad	Even when I played hardcore punk, I wore hippie-style clothes and refused to cut my hair because I liked seeing how supposedly “nonconformist” punks got so upset at somebody who didn’t conform to their punk society.	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	Faith keeps you going, but doubt keeps you from going off the deep end.	Sit Down and Shut Up
Warner, Brad	For what it's worth, let me give you my take on this whole "self" thing. There is something, some segment of the vast and wide universe, that you carve out and call "self" and say belongs to "you". It's an odd idea, you know, that "you" belong to "you". When you were very young, you noticed this aspect of the universe, and your parents and teachers and friends all told you in overt and subtle ways that this something was your unique "self". They might have even referred to this something as your "soul". Everyone has one of these, they told you, and each one is unique, individual, eternally separate from all the others. You accepted this explanation and based your interpretation of all your experiences on this way of looking at things. It's only natural that you did so because nearly all the great religious, scientific, and philosophical works across the world are based on this understanding. There are virtually no alternatives. So when some book by some old dead Japanese dude comes along and says otherwise, it's pretty hard to accept.	Sit Down and Shut Up
Warner, Brad	Here's one of my beliefs: Everything is sacred. Every blade of grass, every cockroach, every speck of dust, every flower, every pool of mud outside a graffiti-splattered house is God. Everything is a worthy object of worship … On the other hand, nothing is sacred and nothing is profane. Not even your sorry ass. If we hold anything sacred above anything else – ever – we're riding along in the fast-lane to hell. And by "anything" I mean anything – our family, our friends, our country, our God.	Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
Warner, Brad	I cannot judge so I do not judge.	http://hardcorezen.blogspot.com
Warner, Brad	I don't know what's waiting at the end of our lives. No one does. But it's not the future that matters. Right now is what counts. If you want to believe in reincarnation, you have to believe that this life, what you're living through right now, is the afterlife.	Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
Warner, Brad	I have no problems with gay sex. It’s just not something I’m interested in trying for myself.	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	If you really take a look at your ordinary boring life, you'll discover something truly wonderful. Our regular old pointless lives are incredibly joyful – amazingly, astoundingly, relentlessly, mercilessly joyful. You don't need to do a damned thing to experience such joy either. […] Just be what you are, where you are. Clean the toilet. Walk the dog. Do your work. That's the most magical thing there is.	http://hardcorezen.blogspot.com
Warner, Brad	In the movie Stardust Memories, Woody Allen meets some aliens and starts asking them all the Big Questions About Life. They tell him, "You're asking the wrong questions. If you want to make the world a better place, tell funnier jokes!"	Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
Warner, Brad	It appears to me that in societies like ours, where porn is allowed, there is greater equality for women, lower incidence of institutionalized sexual violence, a greater tolerance for people of nonstandard sexual orientation, and so on than there is in societies where porn is forbidden, such as in most of the Middle East.	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	It is up to you, not me, what you do in your life.	http://hardcorezen.blogspot.com
Warner, Brad	It’s not that I hate the whole idea of there being, like, two dozen different genders and whatever else they’re saying nowadays. I just really don’t care. I know that probably sounds blasphemous to some of you. Please understand that I have no difficulty with any of the ways people choose to define themselves in terms of gender, sexual orientation, or whatever other factors we use to enhance our ego-based notions of self. I understand the social usefulness of these new ways of defining ourselves, and I’m not against them in any way. Others have written about that subject far more eloquently than I ever could. It’s just that I personally don’t have a whole lot of interest in ego-based notions of self.	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	It’s not that I regret anything I’ve done. Even if I did there’s no point in regret.	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	It's only when people believe that their beliefs are above questioning, that their beliefs alone are beyond all doubt, that they can be as truly horrible as we all know they can be. Belief is the force behind every evil mankind has ever done. You can't find one truly evil act in human history that was not based on belief – and the stronger their belief, the more evil human beings can be.	Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
Warner, Brad	Just do good and avoid doing bad.	http://hardcorezen.blogspot.com
Warner, Brad	Make peace with your darkness. Don’t try and become an unbalanced mass of pure love. Be your hate as well as your love. Act out of real compassion, not out of misguided love.	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	Marriage turns the natural inclination of humans to pair-bond into a legal institution. This is fine. We humans do a lot of this sort of thing. We’ve reined in our natural inclination to eat whenever we’re hungry and turned it into an institution of eating at three specified times of day. We’ve turned our natural inclination to care for the members of our community into a bizarre system of taxation and government.	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	When I tried doing those rituals, I could clearly see the reasons for them. It’s impossible to articulate. There’s just a tremendous sense of rightness to this kind of activity. Try it sometime and see for yourself.	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	When I used to hang out with the Hare Krishnas I was amazed that some of them believed they knew what the karmic outcome of any given event would be. One guy assured me that John Lennon had been reborn as a tree. Apparently one time the head of the Krishnas visited Lennon, and he answered the door naked. This proved he was an exhibitionist, and exhibitionists get reborn as trees because trees have to stand naked and be looked at all the time.	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	When the ideal relationship is your goal, that means your goal is an ideal — remove the “l” at the end and it means your goal is an idea. It’s an image.	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	When we project our expectations about what a divine being ought to be onto real people, what else can we hope for besides disappointment?	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	When you identify rigidly with certain aspects of yourself you’re actively suppressing those aspects that don’t fit that identity.	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	While Christianity teaches that man was expelled from the Garden of Eden, Zen teaches that we are living in paradise right now, even amid all the shit that's going down. This world is the Pure Land. This world is paradise. In fact, this world is better than paradise – but all we can do is piss and moan, and look around for something better. […] And I'll say it again: This world is better than paradise, better than any Utopia you can imagine. I say that in the face of war and starvation and suicide bombings and Orange Terror Alerts. This world is better than Utopia because – and follow this point carefully – you can never live in Utopia. Utopia is always somewhere else. That's the very definition of Utopia.	Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
Warner, Brad	Women who strip or who appear naked on the Internet are hardly a major cause of human suffering. It’s socially acceptable to enough people that we really don’t need to worry much about those to whom it’s not yet acceptable. Those folks had just better get used to it, I say, because it isn’t going away any time soon. There’s also nothing inherently wrong with looking at naked people. That’s absurd.	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	You cannot possibly honor God if you can't honor every last one of God's manifestations. Killing someone in God's name is ridiculous. If we do that, we are killing God and killing truth.	Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
Warner, Brad	You must never allow anyone else to choose for you what's right and what's wrong or you're lost forever.	http://hardcorezen.blogspot.com
Warner, Brad	You need that which you hate. It’s part of you. It’s fundamental to what you are. Even if you don’t like it, or wish it weren’t there, it’s still you. It makes you what you are. When you can live with the things you hate, then hate transforms itself. Hate is no longer evil. It’s just hate. In some strange way, you learn to love your hate and learn to love the objects of hatred. That which you hate, that which is eternally separate from what you think of as your “self,” makes you, you.	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	You should always be true to who you really are and never just accept what society tells you that you ought to be. But it takes a lot of work to discover exactly who you are.	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	Your brain is all cloudy, but you’d prefer that it not be. The difference between what you are and what you think you ought to be causes your imagination to leap wildly. You want to go from where you actually are to some idealized state your confused mind has created. But it’s a losing battle, because the attempt to change from what you are to what you think you should be is the very problem.	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	Zen is a philosophy of action. That means it isn't just a philosophy you read about and think about. It's a philosophy you do. You can't possibly truly understand Zen Buddhism without practicing zazen.
Warner, Brad	Zen replaces all objects of belief with one single thing: reality itself. We believe only in this universe. We don't believe in the afterlife. We don't believe in the sovereignty of nations. We don't believe in money or power or fame. We don't believe in our idols. We don't believe in our positions or our possessions. We don't believe we can be insulted, or that our honor or the honor of our family, our nation or our faith can be offended. We don't believe in Buddha. We just believe in reality. Just this.	Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
Warner, Brad	“As our ancestors developed a sensitivity to the thoughts of others as an aid to second-guessing their outward and visible behavior, they would have started to see an intelligent creative force wherever they looked. An individual watching another chip away at a flint would attribute to him a purpose similar to his own when he created a tool. So too would he assume that lightning, rain, the sun, the stars, the moon must have had some sort of purposeful creative force behind them. Here lie the very deepest roots of our religious beliefs.”	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	“If we hate whatever might become the object of sexual greed, all men and women will hate each other, and we will never have any chance to attain salvation.” I always think of this when I hear people talking about the supposedly great virtue in the way some religions force women to cover their bodies, lest men become sexually greedy. If we follow that logic, then an oil magnate who owns a flashy Cadillac ought to drive around with it covered in a burlap sack to keep those who can’t afford such cars from suffering the sin of envy.	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	“Our way is to accept what is, as it is, and to help it be its best.”	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	“The Great Way is not difficult, just avoid preferences. When love and hate are absent, everything becomes clear and undisguised.”	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	A guy walks up to a Zen master and asks, "Is there life after death?" The Zen Master says, "How should I know?" The guy replies indignantly, "Because you're a Zen master!" "Yes," says the Zen master, "but not a dead one."	Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
Warner, Brad	Morality is a personal matter.	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	Most of the people I asked about God didn't have any better idea what He, She, It was than I did. The few people I encountered who did have a fixed idea of what the heck God was supposed to be always came off as a little weird to me. They seemed to just blindly accept the existence of this, I dunno, this something or other they couldn't really describe but that they believed was very big and very, very scary. But the evidence they had to support such an all-consuming belief looked pretty flimsy to me. They had this book – some had dif- ferent books than others, but they all had a book – which had been around for an awful long time, and they had a community of other people who professed the same belief in this invisible whatever it was that was out there somewhere and which they were certain could really hurt them if they got on its bad side. The old book(s) said that God used to pull off a lot of miracles and stuff. But God didn't seem to do any of those things anymore. So if you wanted to believe in him, you needed to have what they called "faith".	Sit Down and Shut Up
Warner, Brad	Most of us, when we think about how we’d like to live, want to find some magic formula that gets us all the happiness and none of the misery	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	Of course gays should marry. They should be as unhappy as the rest of us, as one comedian put it.	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	Our society is generally pretty fucked up. And this is the cause of much of our mental illnesses and depression. Rather than finding a different way to live, though, we turn to medications that make our fucked up situation bearable. And so the root problem goes unaddressed.	http://hardcorezen.blogspot.com
Warner, Brad	Politicians can't solve the problem of how to find their own asses with two hands and a flashlight, let alone figure out anything more complex and subtle.	Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
Warner, Brad	Reality is not a bunch of individual things sitting around on top of some other thing called the universe. There is only one continu- ous and undivided whole stretching on through infinite space and infinite time. Our brains carve this up into bite-sized chunks that we can manipulate. But this manipulation we do in our heads is just a very poor model of what actually happens. That's why nothing ever goes according to plan, no matter how carefully you plan it out. Every action affects the entire universe in ways both obvious and subtle that we cannot possibly work into our calculations.	Sit Down and Shut Up
Warner, Brad	Religions, the supposed institutional repositories of humanity's understanding of the deeper mysteries of the universe, have never offered anything more to me than sophisticated methods of avoiding the truth, of building elaborate fantasies in place of reality. As far as I'm concerned, religions obscure reality rather than reveal it more clearly. They serve up vapid platitudes in place of answers to the genuine and crucial questions that burn in our guts. Pretty buildings full of vacant-eyed people with freeze- dried brains all pretending to agree with each other that the empty words the guy up front wearing the funny costume says actually mean anything at all let alone anything actually useful – that whole scene never did a lot for me. Religions offer authority figures: Trust the wise people's learned excretions and you'll be fine […]	Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
Warner, Brad	Running away is futile. Even if you run very far away from home to a remote mountain monastery, as long as you carry the same attitude you always had, you’ll never truly get away. You’ll just end up transferring all the stuff from home onto the other people in the monastery. This happens all the time. People today who want to dump their spouses and kids to run off to the mountains ought to examine themselves and their motivations very, very carefully. Lots of people run away from responsibilities to “find themselves.” But not so many of them have a real commitment to the truth. It would be better to find the truth in the life you’re living, with the responsibilities you’ve already accepted.	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	Simply forgo preferences. Don’t make any effort to be what you’re not. Just allow what you are to fully manifest.	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	Suffering occurs when your ideas about how things ought to be don't match how they really are. Stop for a second and look at this in your life right now. It's important.	Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
Warner, Brad	Sugar frosted meditative Hoo-hah™	http://hardcorezen.blogspot.com
Warner, Brad	That life is what it is, that you are what you are, that the universe is what it is […] You can't even explain what the universe is. It just is what it is. That's it.	http://hardcorezen.blogspot.com
Warner, Brad	The acceptance of pornography is a sign that civilization is moving toward a more balanced state. It may not be pornography itself that moves society forward in a positive way. In fact, it’s hard to imagine it does. But openness to porn seems to come hand in hand with openness in general.	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	The Dalai Lama said, “There is no greater wisdom than compassion.”	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	The Diamond Sutra says, "The mind of the past is unknowable, the mind of the future is unknowable, the mind of the present is unknowable."	Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
Warner, Brad	The fact that Zen Buddhism doesn't have any set lists of hard- and-fast rules which are supposed to work anywhere at anytime for anyone at all does not mean that everything is OK. Right and wrong still exist.	http://hardcorezen.blogspot.com
Warner, Brad	The first step in effectively changing something that clearly needs to be changed is accepting the way it actually is.	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	The first thing you gotta know is that in Buddhism there's no such thing as sin. The most overt expression of this fact I know of is the Japanese attitude toward sex. A quick trip to any well-stocked Tokyo book- store or video shop will bring this attitude graphically into view. Magazines full of pictures of nekkid ladies flash their lurid covers right there on the lowest shelves where kiddies browse. Bondage fetishists the world over know the most explicit S and M porn comes from the Land of the Rising Sun and the high-rise leather boot. One of Japan's funniest cartoon shows – Crayon Shinchan – features a five-year-old boy who's constantly trying to look up ladies' dresses or make awkward passes at his mother's cute friends. This isn't some ironic postmodern late-night cable show for adults, either; it runs in the early evening – prime children's viewing hours in Japan. All this because sex, in Buddhist Japan, has never been consid- ered sinful.	Sit Down and Shut Up
Warner, Brad	The issue of a person’s sexual orientation is so trivial as to be irrelevant to their practice.	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	The key aspect that makes the Buddhist attitude toward sex utterly different is that the concept of sin does not exist in Buddhism.	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	The past and the future – even the present – are just inventions by the conscious mind for dealing with reality in an organized way. They're symbolic representations. And representations aren't reality.	Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
Warner, Brad	The people we meet, the people we ourselves actually are, and world we see in front of us don't match this idea called "perfection" we carry around in our brains. In fact nothing we encounter ever does. Yet we stick to believing in perfection rather than believing in what we really encounter.	http://hardcorezen.blogspot.com
Warner, Brad	The power to see what you truly are is yours and yours alone. No one can awaken you any more than they can look at the world with your eyeballs.	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	The present moment is eternal. It's always there. It is unborn and it cannot die. And it does not reincarnate.	Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
Warner, Brad	The reason beliefs don't make us comfortable is stupidly clear if you ever take a moment to look. Life never works the way we think it will and in our heart of hearts every single one of us knows this for a fact every bit as clearly as we know how to breathe and how to make wee-wee.	http://hardcorezen.blogspot.com
Warner, Brad	The truth is not open to negotiation – not by you, not by me, and not by the Leader of the Free World or the Moral Majority. The truth simply is.	Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
Warner, Brad	The Ultimate Truth is not hidden from view. It's not far off in the outer reaches of intergalactic space. It's not contained within the profound words of some ancient book. It can't be taught to you by someone who possesses secret knowledge. It's not in a formula or on a graph. It can't be reasoned out and set in type. It's not a principle, divine or otherwise. It's not buried in the past or concealed in the future. The Ultimate Truth is not a secret. Don't ever let anybody tell you that it is, 'cuz they will try to. But that's all marketing. It's non- sense. It's a lie. The Ultimate Truth is right there in front of your eyes at all times. There is nowhere you can run to to get away from it. Nowhere you can hide from it. It never leaves you. It couldn't. You are an expression of the Ultimate Truth.	Sit Down and Shut Up
Warner, Brad	The universe is more than just facts – more, even, than the sum of all the facts that make it up. The universe is meaningful. The universe is meaning – as well as matter. The two are not different. What we call matter is meaning, and what we call meaning is matter. In purely scientific terms that little girl may indeed be nothing more than a lump of carbon-based matter. But to say that's all she is would be wrong. By the same token, the universe may indeed be described as a mere collection of molecules and atoms thrown together more or less at random. But that's just one side of the coin.	Sit Down and Shut Up
Warner, Brad	There are some things you just can’t force to happen. In fact, I’d say most things in life fall into that category, especially great interpersonal relationships.	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	There are two sides to the universe. Spiritual people always talk about oneness, about dissolving into the embrace of universal love. But that’s only one side of reality. The other side is hate, separation, aloneness. Both are real. When love and hate are balanced there is compassion and wisdom. Love alone is beautiful but powerless. Hate alone is powerful but too dangerous.	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	There is no optimal state of consciousness. Optimal is just an idea, another manifestation of the Great Somewhere Else. Consciousness is just an idea.	Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
Warner, Brad	Things can never be other than they are. This moment can never be other than it is. So the "desire" often spoken of by Buddhist teachers isn't just the fact that we desire that big car or […] Everyone has desires. We can't live without them. Nor should we. The problem isn't that we have natural desires and needs. It's that we have a compulsive (and ultimately stupid!) desire for our lives to be something other than what they actually are. We have a world in our minds that we call "perfect" and a world in front of us (and within us) that can't possibly match that image. The problem is the way we let our desires stand in the way of our enjoyment of what we already have.	Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
Warner, Brad	Time in the Buddhist sense, in which there is no real past or future, only the eternal present moment. In the present moment there can be no such thing as a result because what is is just what is.	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	To "know" that what you believe is absolutely 100 percent now- and-forever utterly and completely True is the sickest, most vile, and most foul perversion of everything worthwhile in humanity, of all that is right in the world. Truth can never be found in mere belief. Belief is restricted. Truth is boundless.	Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
Warner, Brad	To me God is what you get when you take everything in the uni- verse as a whole and call it by one name. And God is also you and me in the sense that we are the means by which God observes his creation. If God is omniscient, he must also therefore be nonomniscient. I mean, if he knows all and sees all – and I mean all, as in every last thing – he must also know the state of not knowing all and not seeing much of anything. I don't want to get too psychedelic on you here. But if God is everything, as most true believers say, then God must also be you, reading this book. And if God knows everything, he must also know the state in which he cannot possibly know if he exists.	Sit Down and Shut Up
Warner, Brad	True compassion is a spontaneous response to circumstances. It’s not situational ethics. It doesn’t come from thought. It isn’t a dream of some utopia that would exist if only this or that or the other condition could be met. It’s real action here and now that makes things better.	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	Truly compassionate action arises spontaneously without thought and is carried out in real action with no anticipation of reward and, indeed, no concept of a doer of that action.	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	Ungulate animals […] role in the world is to turn sunlight into protein for other animals to ingest. They eat grass and turn it into meat.	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	We always imagine that there's got to be somewhere else better than where we are right now – this is the Great Somewhere Else we all carry around in our heads. We believe Somewhere Else is out there for us if only we could find it. But there's no Somewhere Else. Everything is right here.	Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
Warner, Brad	We have all devoted ourselves to developing habits that obstruct our ability to notice what’s right in front of us. We obstruct our own view almost instantly. We can’t see our own intuitive response because we’re so used to responding only to our thoughts.	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	We must act with compassion if we want to create a peaceful world. That’s true. But compassion is also beyond love and hate. Compassion is a spontaneous response to what needs to be done right here and now.	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	We started wearing clothes, and being covered up came to be seen as natural. But it isn’t really. So perhaps we need to get used to seeing each other naked again, and maybe the widespread availability of pornography is part of that process.	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	We usually believe that the past creates memory. Real events occurred in the real past and we remember them – but in fact that's only half the truth. The other half, every bit as important, is that memory creates the past. We are actively constructing our own past right now every bit as much as we create our own future.	Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
Warner, Brad	Well, no, actually. Buddha himself said in the Kalama Sutra, Rely not on the teacher, but on the teaching. Rely not on the words of the teaching, but on the spirit of the words. Rely not on theory, but on experience. Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. Do not believe anything because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything because it is written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and the benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.	Sex, Sin and Zen
Warner, Brad	We're no more than a transitional phase of a particular glob of matter and energy within the vast universe. Yet the vast universe is as much a part of us as we are a part of it.	Sit Down and Shut Up
Warner, Brad	What you perceive as words written on this page are just funny shapes that trigger images that already exist in your mind. What's more, they don't necessarily trigger quite the same images in your mind as the ones that were in my mind when I wrote the words. But they're close enough that we can communicate. Ultimately, though, the ideas in this book don't come from me or from Dogen or from Buddha. They come from you – from your previous experiences with similar words, from all the things your family and your teachers and the cartoon shows and commercials on TV told you about what certain concepts mean, and so on and on.	Sit Down and Shut Up
Warner, Brad	When I really observed my anger, it became apparent that it wasn't some substance that built up inside me that I could "let out" and be rid of. There was nothing into which anger could be bottled. That something I called "me" and that something I called "anger" were completely indistinguishable.	Sit Down and Shut Up
Warner, Charles Dudley	To own a bit of ground, to scratch it with a hoe, to plant seeds, and watch the renewal of life - this is the commonest delight of the race, the most satisfactory thing a man can do.	My Summer in a Garden, 1870
Washington, Booker T	Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way
Watson, Don	Contrary to popular opinion, facts are not established by popular opinion.
Watson, James	You only ask someone for advice if you're going to take it
Waugh, Alexander	I cannot easily explain how Granny [Laura Herbert?], who was so strangely detached from the world and all the people in it, came to be loved so passionately by those who knew her – but that was how it was. Anthony Powell described her as 'extremely dim to put it mildly', but he hardly knew her and his reckoning was erroneous. She was clever in many ways – much cleverer in some than Powell. I am sure she could have completed The Times crossword in the time it took him to digest the first clue, but she was no show-off. Papa believed her to have been more remarkable than his father, and felt her death more deeply than his. Her humour was warm and her personality gentle. She was companionable. I particularly liked the smell that attached to all her jerseys – sherry, French cigarettes and dog baskets all blended into one, a lovely Granny fragrance.	Fathers and Sons: The Autobiography of a Family
Waugh, Alexander	The novelist Anthony Powell once claimed of Alec that he was curiously attracted to boredom and boring people and it was for this reason that he was such a popular dinner guest: he could be seated next to anyone, however dreary, and get along fine. Alec was, it is true, an excellent listener, which made him popular with egomaniacs and saloon-bar moralists. Recently I chanced on a collection of his essays, On Doing What One Likes, privately printed in 1926, the year he escaped from Chapman and Hall, and was surprised to find in it a passage extolling the virtues of boredom in literature, which seemed to support Powell's thesis: We cannot deny, if we are honest with ourselves, that we have rarely read a classic without being for quite long intervals considerably bored by it. And yet it is the reading of those books that we recall with the most enjoyment; precisely, I sometimes think, because of those tedious interludes; those long accounts of trivial people and uninteresting conversations which provided so admirable a contrast for such sensations as the novelist had subsequently to offer. They were the breathing space. They bored him so that he should be able to relish more keenly the excitement when it came. So much for literary criticism. But what Powell had been trying to say was that Alec was attracted to Joan Chirnside, not because she was rich or pretty or charming, but because she was boring. A far-fetched notion, but there it is. In any case, if it were true, Joan was clearly not boring enough, for Alec soon became restless in married life and longed to escape their Hampshire home and return to the Tahitian palm-tree and beach romances of the last six years.	Fathers and Sons: The Autobiography of a Family
Waugh, Arthur	One takes away from Oxford much more than one's degree.
Waugh, Evelyn	"The Welsh," said the Doctor, "are the only nation in the world that has produced no graphic or plastic art, no architecture, no drama. They just sing," he said with disgust, "sing and blow down wind instruments of plated silver."	Decline and Fall; 1928
Weinberg, Gerald M	If you don't care about quality, you can meet any other requirement.
West, Jessamyn	We want the facts to fit the preconceptions. When they don't, it is easier to ignore the facts than to change the preconceptions.
West, Rebecca	I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.	1913
Westlake, Donald	My admirations are not necessarily my influences. My favourite living novelist is Anthony Powell. If I ever took an influence from him it would destroy me because he writes such a controlled but leisurely way that if I put anything of that into my stuff, it would break the springs. I love those books.
Westlake, Donald	I've always been a catholic reader, but also a bit of a sponge, taking on characteristics of what I'm reading, if I'm not careful. If I read too much Anthony Powell, my sentences gradually become longer and longer and less and less gainly.
Wheatley, Katy	They were not naughty. They were just small boys. Together.	http://katyboo1.wordpress.com; 10/02/2010
Whitehead, Alfred North	Everyone is a philosopher. Not everyone is good at it.
Whitman, Walt	This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labour to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and Indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families. read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.
Whitman, Walt	Is not nakedness indecent? No, not inherently. It is your thought, your sophistication, your fear, your respectability, that is indecent.
Whittemore, Edward	All lives are secret tapestries that swirl and sweep through the years with souls and strivings as the colours, the threads. And there may be little knots of tangled meaning everywhere beneath the surface, tying the colours and threads together, but the little knots aren't important finally, only the sweep itself, the tapestry as a whole.	The Jerusalem Quartet
Wilde, Oscar	Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
Wilde, Oscar	The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.	The Picture of Dorian Gray
Wilde, Oscar	The well-bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.
Wilde, Oscar	Education is a fine thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
Wilde, Oscar	If we were meant to be nude, we would have been born that way.
Wilkins, Dave	Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional.
Williams, Chester	There is no such thing as a career path; it's only crazy paving and you lay it yourself.
Wilson, Dan	I'm involved in the healing scene in England, where alternative therapies are gradually being tidied up and regulated. The reasons that "cure" is never mentioned are straightforward:- / 1. You can't know you've cured anyone until you've waited 20 or 30 years / 2. You can't know you've cured anyone unless you know for certain they were doing nothing else to help themselves and that no-one else was helping from a distance, which is practically impossible / 3. Only doctors and charlatans lightly employ such a profound term as "cure" / 4. (Religious/spiritual healers only) The healer does nothing. God, or Spirit, or something else does it. / I have several ex-clients who were very ill with cancer when I met them and are now apparently extremely well. This proves nothing, but the coincidence is enough to persuade me to continue.
Wilson, Dan	His resonance theories always struck me as a very elegant way of making dowsing impossibly difficult.
Wilson, Dan	A case of the philosophical application of paranoia to medical novelties.
Winner, Michael	A team effort is a lot of people doing what I say.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig	Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent.
Wojtyla, Karol Cardinal	The human body is not in itself shameful, nor for the same reasons are sensual reactions, and human sensuality in general. Shamelessness (just like shame and modesty) is a function of the interior of a person.
Wooden, John	Failure to prepare is preparing to fail
Wooden, John	Do not let what you can't to interfere with what you can do
Wyndham, John	The essential quality of life is living; the essential quality of living is change; change is evolution: and we are part of it.	The Chrysalids
Yeats, WB	The problem with some people is that when they aren't drunk, they're sober.
Yeats, WB	Education is not the filling of a bucket but the starting of a fire.
Zappa, Frank	Bad facts make bad law, and people who write bad laws are in my opinion more dangerous than songwriters who celebrate sexuality.	Statement to the Senate Hearing on "Porn Rock," 1985
Zappa, Frank	Children are naïve - they trust everyone. School is bad enough, but, if you put a child anywhere in the vicinity of a church, you're asking for trouble.
Zappa, Frank	It has never mattered to me that thirty million people might think I'm wrong. The number of people who thought Hitler was right did not make him right ... Why do you necessarily have to be wrong just because a few million people think you are?	The Real Frank Zappa Book
Zappa, Frank	You can't always write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say, so sometimes you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream.
Zappa, Frank	Beware of the fish people, they are the true enemy.
Zenrin, The	Sitting quietly, doing nothing, / Spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.
Zhuang Zi	No-one else is he and thus cannot deny that he knows when fish are happy.
Zola, Emile	Civilisation will not be achieve perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest.

---

Some Other Sites Featuring Quotation Lists

• Wikiquote
• Quoteland
• Quotations From Famous People
• Books of quotations on Bartleby

---

© Copyright Keith C Marshall, 2021. All rights reserved.
Last updated: 8 October 2021, Keith Marshall