Quotes

Oscar Wilde

We [English] have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language.

The youth of America is their oldest tradition. It has been going on now for three hundred years.

Vile deeds like poison weeds bloom well in prison air: it is only what is good in man that wastes and withers there. 

I think that God in creating Man somewhat overestimated his ability.

Only the shallow know themselves.

Children begin by loving their parents. After a time, they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them. 

To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

I can resist anything except temptation.

To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable. 

George Bernard Shaw

You see things, and say why. But I dream things that never were and say, why not? 

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. 

I often quote myself, it adds spice to my conversation. 

Lack of money is the root of all evil.

Richard Dawkins

I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world.

Bill Maher: How can some people [support evolution] and then there is at least half of America who thinks the world was created by a man in a cloud in six days who then needed to rest? I love that! He's so powerful he can create the universe but then he's pooped. How can we have the same brain? / Richard Dawkins: I'm sorry to say we don't have the same brain. One of the main principles of Darwinian theory is plenty variation for natural selection to work on. And there's sure enough very plenty of variation in brain power, all the way from Einstein on the one hand to Sarah Palin on the other (Real Time with Bill Maher, October 2, 2009)

There is no particular reason to pick on the Judeo-Christian God, in which by the sheerest accident you happened to have been brought up, and ask me the question 'What if I'm wrong?' What if you're wrong about the great Juju at the bottom of the sea? [Video]

Others

We prefer self-government with danger to servitude in tranquility. (Kwame Nkrumah)

About Mother Teresa:  She may or may not comfort the afflicted, but she has never been known to afflict the comfortable, (Christopher Hitchens, The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice)

Allen: Tradition is the illusion of permanence. / His sister: You have no values. Your whole life: it's nihilism, it's cynicism, it's sarcasm and orgasm. Allen: You know, in France, I could run on that slogan and win. (Woody Allen, Deconstructing Harry)

Diane Keaton: The deal was: I sit through the ice hockey game and you watch the whole opera. / Allen: I can't listen to that much Wagner, you know, I start to get the urge to conquer Poland. (Woody Allen, Manhattan Murder Mystery)  

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. (Mark Twain) 

A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read. (Mark Twain)

We will not be satisfied “until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” (Amos 5:24, Martin Luther King Jr.)

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. (Martin Luther King Jr.)

The payment of direct taxes is in Africa, as elsewhere, an unwelcome concomitant of progress (Frederick Lugard)

The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. (Theodore Parker)

Liberalism is the trust of people, tempered by prudence; conservatism, distrust of people, tempered by fear. (William E. Gladstone)

Why should a financial engineer be paid four times to 100 times more than a real engineer? A real engineer builds bridges. A financial engineer builds dreams. And, you know, when those dreams turn out to be nightmares, other people pay for it. (Andrew Sheng in "Inside Job")

No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous. (Henry Adams)

I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure. That is all that agnosticism means. (Clarence Darrow)

Nothing changes your opinion of a friend so surely as success - yours or his. (Franklin P. Jones)

This book fills a much-needed gap. (Moses Hadas)

Before I got married I had six theories about bringing up children; now I have six children and no theories. (John Wilmot)

Ethics are so annoying. I avoid them on principle. (Darby Conley)

Blasphemy is a victimless crime.

Thinking is disbelieving.

America has only three cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. Everywhere else is Cleveland. (Attributed to Tennessee Williams)