Alan's Favorite Quotes

The following are some of my favorite quotes, proverbs, sayings, and other pithy statements (including some from your's truly). There is no intentional order other than grouping quotes from the same source together. Note: these quotes do not necessarily represent my personal views (though many do).

Ask a question and you are a fool for three minutes. Do not ask a question and you are a fool for the rest of your life.

-- Chinese proverb

The man with one clock knows what time it is, while the man with two is never sure.

-- Chinese proverb

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

-- Greek proverb

When you lie down with dogs, you wake up with fleas.

-- Jewish proverb

Like mother, like daughter.

-- Jewish proverb

Speak softly and carry a big stick.

-- West African Proverb

If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.

-- Abraham Maslow

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

-- Lord Acton

God never got around to creating a substitute for experience.

-- Adrian Rogers

We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.

-- Aesop

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

-- Alan Kay

When people attached themselves to a sect or a party, in religion or politics, and they have no good arguments to employ, they attempt to overwhelm their adversaries by bitter and reproachful words.

-- Albert Barnes, 1884

The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

-- Albert Einstein, speech at Princeton Theological Seminary, May 19, 1939

The strength of the constitution lies entirely in the determination of each citizen to defend it. Only if every single citizen feels duty bound to do his share in this defense are constitutional rights secure.

-- Albert Einstein

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

-- Albert Einstein

Any fool can know. The point is to understand.

--Albert Einstein

There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.

--Albert Einstein

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.

--Albert Einstein

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.

-- Albert Einstein

God is subtle but He is not malicious.

-- Albert Einstein

The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.

-- Albert Einstein

Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.

-- Albert Einstein

Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.

-- Albert Einstein

Great spirits have often encountered violent oppostition from weak minds.

-- Albert Einstein

Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it.

-- Albert Einstein

The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.

-- Albert Einstein

The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.

-- Albert Einstein

We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.

-- Albert Einstein

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.

-- Albert Einstein

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

-- Albert Einstein

It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.

-- Albert Einstein

I have no particular talent. I am merely inquisitive.

-- Albert Einstein

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?

-- Albert Einstein

When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.

-- Albert Einstein

Only a life lived for others is a life worth while.

-- Albert Einstein

When the solution is simple, God is answering.

-- Albert Einstein

What we don't know is much more than what we know.

-- Albert Einstein

Intellectuals solve problems. Geniuses prevent them.

-- Albert Einstein

A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again.

-- Alexander Pope

Admit your errors before someone else exaggerates them.

-- Andrew V. Mason

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

-- Aristotle

We are what we repeatedly do.

-- Aristotle

Nothing so clearly distinguishes a spiritual man as his treatment of an erring brother.

-- Augustine

Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

-- Barry Goldwater, acceptance speech in 1964 Republican Convention

One of the greatest tragedies of life is the murder of a beautiful theory by a gang of brutal facts.

-- Benjamin Franklin

If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be if without it?

-- Benjamin Franklin

Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.

-- Benjamin Franklin

Well done is better than well said.

-- Benjamin Franklin

But in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.

-- Benjamin Franklin

We must all hang together, or, assuredly, we shall all hang separately.

-- Benjamin Franklin

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of.

-- Benjamin Franklin, “Poor Richard's Almanac”, June 1746

The truest interpretations are those with the best justification.

-- Bernard Ramm, Protestant Biblical Interpretation

The mistake is made when action is taken in ignorance of a risk, not when the risk makes itself known.

-- Bill Mann, Dec. 10, 2003

Great obstacles make great leaders.

-- Billy Diamond, Cree leader

The right of having and using arms for self-preservation and defense is justly called the primary law of nature, so it is not, neither can it be in fact, taken away by the law of society.

-- Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England

I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone. My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my telephone.

-- Bjarne Stroustrup, inventor of the C++ language

Politics make strange bedfellows.

-- Charles Dudley Warner

He who is not angry at transgression becomes a partaker in it.

-- Charles H. Spurgeon

Men are handicapped when it comes to arguing, 'cause we have a need to make sense.

-- Chris Rock

Science teaches us to doubt.

-- Claude Bernard

To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must cultivate our personal life; and to cultivate our personal life, we must first set our hearts right.

-- Confucius

Forget injuries, never forget kindnesses.

-- Confucius

Study the past if you would define the future.

-- Confucius

Men's natures are alike, it is their habits that carry them far apart.

-- Confucius, “Analects”

Have no friends not equal to yourself.

-- Confucius, “Analects”

Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.

-- Confucius, “Analects”

The superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions.

-- Confucius, “Analects”

What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.

-- Confucius, “Analects”

Uncommon things must be said in common words.

-- Coventry Patmore

When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

-- CS Lewis

But probably ever age gets, within certain limits, the science it desires.

-- CS Lewis, “The Funeral of a Great Myth”

Diplomacy is the act of letting someone have your way.

-- Daniel Vare

The metric system did not really catch on in the States, unless you count the increasing popularity of the nine-millimeter bullet.

-- Dave Barry

Wisdom is knowing what to do next; virtue is doing it.

-- David Starr Jordan

When you realize that you're driving drunk, the best thing you can do is stop driving.

-- David Yen

If you can't see very far ahead...go ahead as far as you can see.

-- Dawson Trotman

There are two kinds of fool. One says, “This is old, and therefore good.” And one says, “This is new, and therefore better.”

-- Dean Inge

Character is what you are in the dark.

-- Dwight L. Moody

There are seldom technical solutions to behavioral problems.

-- Ed Crowley

Life will give you what you ask of here if only you ask long enough and plainly enough.

-- Edith Nesbit

When people insist on perfection or nothing, they get nothing.

-- Edith Schaeffer

I set out with a perfect distrust of my own abilities, a total renunciation of every speculation of my own, and with a profound reverence for the wisdom of our ancestors, who have left us the inheritance of so happy a Constitution and so flourishing an empire, and, what is a thousand times more valuable, the treasury of the maxims and principles which formed the one and obtained the other.

-- Edmund Burke, Mar. 22, 1775

People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors.

-- Edmund Burke, 1790

APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection. It is the language of the future for the programming techniques of the past: it creates a new generation of coding bums.

-- Edsger Wybe Dijkstra

Besides a mathematical inclination, an exceptionally good mastery of one's native tongue is the most vital asset of a competent programmer.

-- Edsger Wybe Dijkstra

Cripples the mind; its teaching should therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense.

-- Edsger Wybe Dijkstra, in reference to COBOL

Mentally mutilated potential programmers beyond hope of regeneration.

-- Edsger Wybe Dijkstra, in reference to BASIC programmers

The church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men.

-- Edward M. Bounds

After man knows the truth, he cannot be too careful of his words.

-- Florence Scovel Shinn, from her book "The Game of Life"

The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is its inefficiency.

-- Eugene McCarthy

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he doesn't become a monster.

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Out of life's school of war: What does not destroy me, makes me stronger.

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

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

-- Galileo Galilei

Discipline without love breeds resentment. Discipline with love builds character.

-- Gary Chapman

To call a child “stupid” reveals more about our own intelligence than it does about the child's.

-- Gary Chapman

Do not become so obsessed by reading books on how to be a parent that you don't have time left over to actually parent.

-- Gary Chapman

With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another.

-- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.

-- George Bernard Shaw

America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.

-- George Clemenceau, 1841-1921

To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them.

-- George Mason, 1788 during Virginia's ratification convention

In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

-- George Orwell

Those who speak most of progress measure it by quantity and not by quality.

-- George Santayana

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

-- George Santayana, "The Life of Reason", 1905

I've seen many politicians paralyzed in the legs as myself, but I've seen more of them who were paralyzed in the head.

-- George Wallace

Great men are very apt to have great faults; and the faults appear the greater by their contrast with their excellencies.

-- Gerald J. Simmons

There will be peace in the Middle East when the Arabs love their children more than they hate us.

-- Golda Meir

The wonderful thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from.

-- Grace Murray Hopper [speaking of technical standards]

It's remarkable how attached we often become to what's familiar. We feel confortable when we know how to do something well – whether or not that “something” fits the needs of others around us.

-- Rev. Greg Parsons

I find television very educating - everytime someone turns on a set, I go into the other room and read a book.

-- Groucho Marx

Well, yes: people write poems when they are in love, but a wise man will not print them.

-- Hans Christian Andersen, "The Goloshes Of Fortune"

How little do the wisest among us know of that which is so important to us all.

-- Hans Christian Andersen, "The Philosopher's Stone"

The wiser a man becomes, the more he will read, and those who are wisest read most.

-- Hans Christian Andersen, "The Philosopher's Stone"

I thank God that I live in a country where dreams can come true, where failure sometimes is the first step to success and where success is only another form of failure if we forget what our priorities should be.

-- Harry Lloyd Hopkins

I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.

-- Helen Keller

It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

-- Henry David Thoreau

Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.

-- Henry David Thoreau

Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.

-- Henry David Thoreau

That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.

-- Henry David Thoreau

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

-- Henry David Thoreau

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.

-- Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Reading, 1854

No amount of artificial reinforcement can offset the natural inequalities of human individuals.

-- Henry P. Fairchild

The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm those only who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes.

-- Henry Palolucci, 1764

Furious Activity is no substitute for understanding.

-- H. H. Williams

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

-- Indira Gandhi

Contempt is a well-recognized defensive reaction.

-- I.A. Richards

Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. Its the transition that's troublesome.

-- Isaac Asimov

In America, we tax work, investment, employment, savings, and production, while we subsidize non-work, consumption, and debt. It's time we reverse this trend.

-- Jack Kemp

Praise God for the King Jamnes Version! It was good enough for the apostle Paul; it's good enough for me.

-- Dr. Jack Van Impe (from “Signs of the Times Part One”)

Children are harmed more by our apathy than our error.

-- Jay Strack

The more Dad and Mom love each other, the more secure their children will feel.

-- Jay Strack

Vendors have learned, this year more than ever, that to simply churn out upgrades that fulfill already-expressed needs simply isn't enough. One goal of all progressive vendors should be to hear these words from a thankful customer: “I didn't even know that this was what I needed.”

-- Jill Duffy, “2006 Front Line Awards”. January 2006 Game Developer magazine

Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment.

-- Jim Horning

There is no God and there is no soul. Hence, there are no needs for the props of traditional religion. With dogma and creed excluded, immutable truth is also dead and buried. There is no room for fixed, natural laws or moral absolutes.

-- John Dewey

It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt.

-- John Philpot Curran, “Speech upon the right of election”, 1790

If your case is just, if your principles are pure, and if your conduct is prudent, you need not fear the multitude of opposing hosts.

-- John Witherspoon

Wisdom has never made a bigot, but learning has.

-- Josh Billings

There is no patch for stupidity.

-- Kevin Mitnik

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

-- Kim Hubbard

We'd all like to vote for the best man but he's never a candidate.

-- Kim Hubbard

"Many Laws, many transgressions." This is akin to a government which draws all things under its guardianship. It trains people for utter dependence rather than responsible independance. The result of this is that the greater number of laws that are given, the fewer are kept. And a worse result in government, education, or family can scarcely be imagined than a decreasing respect for law altogether. The man who could bring us to live under few laws, but would see them fairly administrered from above, and willingly obeyed for conscience' sake from beneath, would be the greatest possible benefactor of the state...the school...the family.

-- Dr. Heinrich Thiersch, "Christian Family Life", 1856 (translated by S. R. Gardiner)

I like to remind myself, as a parent, that God holds me responsible to, not for, my children!

-- Lee Ezell

We will give an account, to God, for our own actions – not our children's reactions.

-- Lee Ezell

War is not courtesy but the most horrible thing in life; and we ought to understand that, and not play at war. We ought to accept this terrible necessity sternly and seriously. It all lies in that: get rid of falsehood and let war be war and not a game.

-- Leo Tolstoy, “War and Peace”

I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explainig to colleagues, proudly taught to others, and which they haven woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.

-- Leo Tolstoy

Why is it when we talk to God, we're said to be praying -- but when God talks to us, we're schizophrenic?

-- Lily Tomlin

It is much easier to suggest solutions when you don't know too much about the problem.

-- Malcolm Forbes, 1919-1990

We shape our tools and then our tools shape us.

-- Marshall McLuhan

Brevity is the soul of wit.

-- Oscar Wilde

Fear of God builds churches, but love of God builds men.

-- Louis O. Williams

Chance favors only the prepared mind.

-- Louis Pasteur

If the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.

-- Madeleine L'Engle

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

-- Mahatma Gandhi

Consensus? Consensus is the negation of leadership.

-- Margaret Thatcher, upon her assumption of leadership over the conservative party in 1975

Honest differences are are often a healthy sign of progress.

-- Mahatma Gandhi

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.

-- Mahatma Gandhi

The workshop of character is everyday life.

-- Maltbie Babcock

A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.

-- Mark Twain

Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

-- Mark Twain

If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.

-- Mark Twain

I was gratified to be able to answer promptly. I said I don't know.

-- Mark Twain

It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress.

-- Mark Twain

Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.

-- Mark Twain

The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.

--Mark Twain

Truth is more of a stranger than fiction.

-- Mark Twain

When in doubt, tell the truth.

-- Mark Twain

The reason we hold truth in such respect is that we have so little opportunity to get familiar with it.

-- Mark Twain

The history of our race, and each individual's experience, are sown thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill and that a lie told well is immortal.

-- Mark Twain

Action speaks louder than words, but not nearly as often.

-- Mark Twain

The report of my death was an exaggeration.

-- Mark Twain, New York Journal, June 2, 1897

Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform.

-- Mark Twain

There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

-- Mark Twain

It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

-- Mark Twain

Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.

-- Mark Twain

Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand.

-- Mark Twain

Get your facts first, and then you can distort 'em as much as you please.

-- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics”.

-- Mark Twain, autobiography

Those who make a distinction between education and entertainment don't know the first thing about either.

-- Marshall McLuhan

In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.

-- Martin Niemoeller, speaking about Nazism in the 1930s.

To be alive is to be vulnerable.

--Madeleine L'Engle

Remember that God is our only sure trust.

-- Mary Washington (Georeg Washington's Mother)

Extreme liberalism is not a political philosophy. It is a mental disorder.

-- Michael Savage, 2003

Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers.

-- Mignon McLaughlin

When I despair, I remember that all through history, the way of truth and love has always won. There have been murderers and tyrants, and for a time they can seem invincible. But in the end they always fall. Think of it, always.

-- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

When you feel you're at the end of your rope, remind yourself whose hand is holding the other end.

-- Nancy Kennedy

Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.

-- Napleon Bonaparte

The problem with wit and wisdom is that you usually get one or the other.

-- NB (Times Literary Supplement, September 28, 2007)

Whereas Europeans generally pronounce my name the right way, Americans invariably mangle it into 'Nickle-less Worth'. This is to say that Europeans call me by name, but Americans call me by value.

-- Niklaus Wirth, Author of the Pascal and Modula programming languages

A government which does not trust its citizens to be armed is not itself to be trusted.

-- Niccolo Machiavelli

Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in amost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in American can not enforce unjust laws by the sword, because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States.

-- Noah Webster, An Examination Into the Leading Principals of the Federal Constitution.

I am not young enough to know everything.

-- Oscar Wilde

Experience is the name everyone gives to his mistakes.

-- Oscar Wilde

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

-- Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan, 1892, Act 3

A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

-- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891

It is not by means of speeches and majority resolutions that the great issues of the day will be decided...but by iron and blood..

-- Otto von Bismarck, 29-September-1862 Gray, 1891

Guard with jealous attention to the public liberty. Suspect every on who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it by downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined.

-- Patrick Henry

When people forget God, tyrants forge their chains; a corrupted public conscience is incompatible with freedom.

-- Patrick Henry

The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone, it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave.

-- Patrick Henry, speech in the Virginia convention, March 23, 1775

Why is it that we often give the most of our time to those who care about us the least, and the least of our time to those who care about us the most? We should prioritize everything on the basis of who will cry at our funeral.

-- Patrick Morley

Priorities are a grid to help us distinguish opportunity from distraction.

-- Patrick Morley

Help us, O Lord, when we want to do the right thing, but know not what it is. But help us most when we know perfectly well what we ought to do, and do not want to do it.

-- Peter Marshall

Unless we stand for something, we shall fall for anything.

-- Peter Marshall

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.

-- Philip K. Dick

The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs...is to be ruled by evil men.

-- Plato

Knavery is the best defense against a knave.

-- Plutarch

Only the Lord knows how many children lose heart because their fathers have hard days.

-- R. Kent Hughes

The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it.

-- P. J. O'Rourke

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.