A collection of sayings, some humorous, adolescent,
containing a wisp of truth:
A chubby "systems" guy
"I was nauseous and tingly all over. I was either in love
or I had smallpox."
Woody Allen
"My parrot is smarter than my graduate student."
Anonymous Professor [not original source]
"Lord make me chaste -- but not yet."
Augustine of Hippo
"There, there it is again -- the invisible hand of the marketplace
giving us the finger."
Charles Barsotti
"I didn't lose a war and nobody died."
Boris Becker
"When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long
and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones
which open for us."
Alexander Graham Bell
"Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage."
Ambrose Bierce
"No man can ever be secure until he has been forsaken by Fortune."
Anicius Boethius
"There is no Steve Jobs figure in American liberalism insisting that
the designers keep government simple, elegant and user-friendly."
David Brooks
"Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers; pray for powers equal
to your tasks."
Phillips Brooks [original source?]
"And cave divers wear a helmet to prevent any further brain damage."
Pete Bucknell
"I have seen the builder of the house."
Buddha
"Speak to the Sakyans, Ananda ... My back is aching and I need to
stretch myself."
Attributed to Buddha
"Only when the tide goes out do you see who's been swimming naked."
Warren Buffett
"Forecasts usually tell us more of the forecaster than of the future."
Warren Buffett
"The best laid plans of mice and men oft go astray."
Robert Burns
"My philosophy is no pain, no pain."
George Carlin
"Just as the presence of a thief prevents negligence with our possessions,
so the reminder of the hindrances should prevent negligence in our
concentration."
Ajahn Chah
"If it's hot and difficult, that's it; that's the place of practice."
Ajahn Chah
"Someone said that when a man is smitten with a beautiful woman,
he should remember that somebody somewhere is tired of her."
Steve Chapman
"Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the U.S. media."
Noam Chomsky
"The best lesson life has taught me is that the idiots in many cases
are right."
Winston Churchill
"To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than
three, two of whom are absent."
Robert Copeland
"Look, I only have one eye. Do you want me to keep it on the
speedometer or on the road?"
Moshe Dayan
"Bene qui latuit, bene vixit."
Descartes
"He's an egghead who surrounds himself with eggheads,
even when they have helped wreck the economy he's trying to save."
Maureen Dowd
"From want to clinging,
localized are mind states,
fettered to bodily sensation,
withered by entropy."
Editorial Professor
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity,
and I'm not sure about the former."
Albert Einstein
"What you have to do is you plug in an Ethernet cable with superglue,
and then saw the little head off it."
Jonathan Franzen
"Let your wounds be on your chests, not on your backs."
Attributed to Mahatma Gandhi
"Monks, I know of no physical appearance that reduces a
man's mind to slavery as does that of women."
Siddharta Gautama
"The gut is not an organ from which you wish to receive frequent
progress reports."
Michael Gershon
"Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life
is serious."
Brendan Gill
"We do not have the power to choose the result, but we can choose
our actions."
S. N. Goenka [original source?]
"The truth of suffering must be explored to its end."
Siddhata Gotama
"For me, and I think we saw this at the Masters, he looks like he's
playing 'golf-swing' and not golf."
Butch Harmon
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
Hanlon's razor
"When an expectation is not met, the fault lies entirely with the expecter."
Imprudent Professor
"If the flesh came into being because of spirit, that is a marvel, but if
spirit came into being because of the body, that is a marvel of marvels."
Attributed to Jesus
"Never argue with an idiot. They will only bring you down to their
level and beat you with experience."
Greg King [original source?]
"University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are
so small."
Henry Kissinger
"Politicians are the same the world over. They all promise to build a
bridge, even where there is no river."
Nikita Khrushchev
"A bunch of decent players surrounding one great one."
Sam Laird
"I never heard from Cousteau again, only of his fame."
Yves Le Prieur
"We are, as has often been stated, all guinea pigs in a
great big decompression experiment."
Steve Lewis
"It offers a solution to a problem that we do not have."
Machteld Ligtvoet
"I want Him to say, 'You see, Jim, you were wrong. I exist.
But you may come in anyway.'"
James Lipton
"Let go of this sense that you are at the center of the universe and
that the world is something set up for you."
Katherine MacLean
"Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill
your enemies."
Nelson Mandela
"The potato chip junkie eyes the bag of chips with newfound suspicion."
Kelly McGonigal
"In the arithmetic of love, one plus one equals everything,
and two minus one equals nothing."
Mignon McLaughlin
"Mike Tyson once said everyone has a plan until you punch them
in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore."
Jim Messina
"Be like a lion, who, rather than chasing after the stick, turns to
face the thrower."
Milarepa
"One's destination is never a place, but rather a new way
of looking at things."
Henry Miller
"Cogito ergo cogito."
Minimalist Professor
"So when a person's intellect overcomes his sensuality, he is better
than the angels, but when his sensuality overcomes his intellect, he is
worse than the beasts."
Muhammad
"There is pleasure when a sore is scratched,
but to be without sores is more pleasurable still.
Just so, there are pleasures in worldly desires,
but to be without desires is more pleasurable still."
Nagarjuna
meditation v. wisdom
"There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're
talking about."
John von Neumann
"One should never know too precisely whom one has married."
Friedrich Nietzsche
"Tonight I feel like Zsa Zsa Gabor's fifth husband. I know what to
do but how do I make it interesting?"
David Niven
"Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed;
everything else is public relations."
Attributed to George Orwell
"This isn't right, this isn't even wrong."
Wolfgang Pauli
"Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being
governed by those who are dumber."
Plato
"It often happens that I wake at night and begin to think about a
serious problem and decide I must tell the Pope about it. Then I wake
up completely and remember that I am the Pope."
Pope John XXIII
"I base most of my fashion sense on what doesn't itch."
Gilda Radner
"Sip it, savor it, cup it, photostat it, underline it in red,
put it in the album, hang it on the wall: George Bush is the next
president of the United States."
Dan Rather
"We're running around like idiots until we find a good
woman who can tell us what to do."
Rob Reiner
"You fight until hell freezes over. Then you fight on the ice."
Richard Russell
"Science always triumphs over bull****."
Dick Rutkowski
"Only the guy who isn't rowing has time to rock the boat."
Jean-Paul Sartre
"Death is a continuation of my life without me."
Jean-Paul Sartre
"The optimist believes that we live in the best of all possible
worlds, whereas the pessimist, it is said, fears this is true."
Amartya Sen [original source?]
"Where is there enough leather to cover the surface of the earth?
But just by having leather on the soles of one's feet is the
same as covering the whole earth."
Shantideva
"The main rule of marriage seems to be that you can't have sex
with other women."
Joel Stein
"My music is best understood by children and animals."
Igor Stravinsky
"The sun will set without thy assistance."
The Talmud
"If smoking cigars is not permitted in heaven, I won't go."
Mark Twain
"Some theorists believe that sleep does nothing but keep us
out of trouble for a few hours."
Frank Vertosick
"We spent several decades not producing many civil engineers and
producing a huge number of financial engineers. And the result is
shitty bridges and a shitty financial system."
Paul Volcker
"Doubt is not an agreeable condition, but certainty is an
absurd one."
Voltaire
"For instance, noses were made to support spectacles, hence
we wear spectacles. So those who say that everything is well
are speaking foolishly; they should say that everything is
best."
Voltaire
"Like Pascal, they were interested in people's quiet struggle with
the apparent meaninglessness of life and the use of diversion to escape
from boredom."
Wikipedia
"Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable."
Wizard of Oz
"No farmer ever plowed a field by turning it over in his mind."
George Woodbury [original source?]
"Alternative energy is not a free ride, just a different ride."
Ozzie Zehner
