Great Original Quotes

Philosophy & General

"Opportunity is missed by most because it's dressed in overalls and looks like work." Thomas Alva Edison

"I loved all the ginger ale! I loved it even when I was throwing it up!" -my 6yr old, bragging to his friends about getting soda when he was sick last week

"We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us." -Joseph Campbell

"We have enough youth; what we need is a fountain of smart." - Unknown

"Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow; it empties today of its strength." - Corrie Ten Boom

"If you're going to be a wannabe, make sure you 'wannabe' something great. The most shocking thing about wannabes, is they largely want to be something irrelevant, vein, or just plain petty." -Capt. Andrew Williams, Terreldor Novels

"Heroic actions come from moral men in dire straits" -Capt. Andrew Williams, Terreldor Novels

"People talk about 'lives of significance'--as if there's an alternative. If you're not leading a life of significance, you're not living." -Capt. Andrew Williams, Terreldor Novels

"In the end, failing to plan and planning to fail aren't so different." -Capt. Andrew Williams, Terreldor Novels

"Wisdom doesn't teach fools for long." -Capt. Andrew Williams, Terreldor Novels

"The famous names throughout history—be they heroes or villains—if they accomplished anything notable, they were passionate. Passion is what drives those who accomplish momentous feats, for good or evil." -Capt. Andrew Williams, Terreldor Novels

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"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner. Liberty is the fully-armed lamb contesting the vote." -Unknown (not Ben Franklin)

"Those who lack the wits to decide their likes and preferences for themselves will live as tools for the marketing braches of large corporations." -John Lenza II

"The key to contentedness is not the absence of work; neither is it to cap each day with the witless abandon of hollow entertainment, but to fill your days with that which fills your life with meaning." -Capt. Andrew Williams, Terreldor Novels

"The way we spend our days, of course, is the way we spend our lives." - Annie Dillard, American Author

"All that's needed for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing." - Robert A. Heinlein

"Specialization is for insects... The race of man? He's a whole other creature." -Robert H Heinlein (1st sentence)/ remainder -Unknown

"Love is pain--or something so close the difference is trivial. Think, man--any time you truly, selflessly loved someone, it caused you pain." -Cornelius Neil Ward, Terreldor Novels

"It's possible to love without sacrificing--but who would notice? For love is demonstrated only through sacrifice--without it, love is invisible." -Capt. Andrew Williams, Terreldor Novels

"Net Neutrality and 'high-speed access as a human right' sound all warm and fuzzy, but in reality, Al Gore didn't invent 'teh internets' and donate it to humanity; the US military invented it to ensure communication after nuclear war. In truth, the billions of dollars of equipment your dancing cat video travels along before it makes you giggle like a schoolgirl is owned by large faceless corporations, and they want their money back." - John Lenza III

"Infinite introspection infinitely limits your horizons, relationships, and success. It destroys your capacity for change, and in the ultimate poetic injustice, your happiness as well." -Lady Sally, Terreldor Novels

"Interaction is in the world. Assimilation is of the world." - Dr. Christopher Knight II

"'A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it." -Albert Einstein

"Three can keep a secret... if two of them are dead." Benjamin Franklin

"The more seriously you take yourself, the less others will." -Capt. Andrew Williams, Terreldor Novels

"You can have any one thing in life--if you're willing to give up everything else to get it."

"I've fixed more with galvanized 14 ga. wire and a pair of pliers than with all other tools combined." -John Lenza III

"Of course I'm for gun control! How else would I hit anything?" -John Lenza III

"No, in an ideal world, I would have all 10 fingers on my left hand, so my right hand could just be a fist for punching." - Dwight K. Shrute, character of US Sitcom The Office

"If you can't kill it with paper, you can't kill it with steel" - Askaninja co-authors Kent Nichols & Douglas Sarine

Politics

"A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have." -Gerald Ford, Aug. 12, 1974

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." - Theodore Roosevelt in the Kansas City Star, #149, May 7, 1918

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner. Liberty is the fully-armed lamb contesting the vote." -unknown (not Ben Franklin)

"Being a better-informed voter only helps you better know who not to vote for" -John Lenza III

"No matter what side of the argument you're on, you always find people on your side you wish were on the other." - Jascha Heifetz

"Be wary of ceding new control and power to your goverrnment; you won't easily get it back." -John Lenza III

"Democracy can thrive only while the governed are as powerful as their governors. Our Founding Fathers held this as essential to our continued liberty, though sadly, we've allowed ourselves to be bribed away from this premise at a whore's price." -John Lenza III
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"To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men." - Abraham Lincoln

"I think of politics much as I think of prostitution. Sure, there are a lot of misbehaving pimps out there, but I'm not joining a prostitution ring to try to fix the problem. Today's politics, like prostitution rings, are fundamentally immoral--and this is exactly what you'd expect from the science of misdirecting power from the governed to their self-serving elected rulers and the rich puppeteers who back them." - John Lenza III

Nature

"To lie beneath a tree and gaze up at its crown is a most wonderful way to spend an afternoon." -Lady Sally, Terreldor Novels

"To know something about trees--about even one tree--is to know something profound about the nature of the world and our place in it." -- Gerald Jonas

"Neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who makes things grow" Apostle Paul, 1Cor3:7 NIV

"Trees are good for contemplation: Plato and Aristotle did their best thinking in the groves of olives and figs around Athens, and Buddha found enlightenment beneath a peepul tree." Why We Should Revere Trees, -Colin Tudge

Dreams

"In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls on men, while they slumber on their beds, when he opens the ears of men and terrifies them with warnings, that he may turn aside from his deed and conceal pride from a man" Job 33:15-17 ESV

"Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when awake?" Leonardo da Vinci

"Dreams are often most profound when they seem the most crazy." Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, 1900.

"Whoso regardeth dreams is like him that catcheth at a shadow, and followeth after the wind." Apopcrypha, Ecclesiasticus 34:2.

"Learn from your dreams what you lack." W.H. Auden (1907-73), English poet and playwright.

"Once upon a time, I, Chuang-tzu, dreamt I was a butterfly, flittering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly...suddenly I awoke... Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man." Chuang-tzu, Art of War

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"Let us learn to dream, gentlemen, and then we may perhaps find the truth." F.A. Keule, German chemist, who while trying to discover the molecular structure of benzene, became stumped and so remained until he stumbled upon the answer in his dreams.

"We are such stuff as dreams are made on." William Shakespeare

"Captain Flume slept like a log most nights and merely DREAMED he was awake. So convincing were these dreams of lying awake that he awoke from them each morning in complete exhaustion and fell right back to sleep." Joseph Heller, Catch-22, 1961.

Benjamin Franklin

(The following are selected quotes from Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac. Some are paraphrased. Each quote is accompanied with its original numbering from Poor Richard's Almanac, in case you should desire the exact wording in 18th century English.)

A father's a treasure; a brother's a comfort; a friend is both.

A flatterer never seems absurd

A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.

Anger is never without reason, but seldom with a good one. (41)

At 20 years of age, the will reigns; at 30, wit; at 40, judgement. (69)

Be always ashamed to catch thyself idle (73)

Content and riches seldom meet together. You take riches, contentment I had rather. (98)

Distrust and caution are the parents of security. (114)

Do you love life? Then do not squander time; that's the stuff life is made of. (126)

Drive your business, or it will drive you. (129)

Fools need advice most; but wise men only are better for it. (148)

Give me yesterday's bread, this day's flesh, and last year's cider (159)

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Half the truth is often a great lie (179)

Half-wits talk much but say little (180)

He is a governor who governs his passions, and he a servant who serves them. (193)

He who can compose himself, is wiser than he that composes books. (209)

He who cannot obey, cannot command (212)

He who believes money can do everything, may well be suspected of doing everything for money (223)

He who won't be councilled, can't be helped. (240)

If man could have half his wishes, he would double his troubles (260)

He who lies down with dogs, rises up with fleas (225)

Don't hold a meeting after lunch--full bellies hate thinking as well as acting 248

Hope of gain lessents pain - 252

Idleness is the dead sea that swallows all virtue 256

If passion drives, let reason hold the reigns 261

If you want to be remembered, write things worth reading, or do things worth writing - 285

I saw a few die from hunger, but thousands die from eating. 296

It is ill-manners to silence a fool, and cruelty to let him go on. 300

It's the easiest thing in the world for a man to deceive himself - 304

Let your child's first lesson be obedience, and the second may be whatever you want- 321

Lost time is never found - 332

Lying rides upon debt's back - 340

Cruelty is the parent of insolence - 356