Quirky Quotes

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

He who has made great moral progress ceases to pray – Immanuel Kant

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one – George Bernard Shaw

Fear prophets…and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them. – Umberto Eco

Some like to understand what they believe in. Others like to believe in what they understand. – Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

In Nature there are neither rewards nor punishments – there are consequences. – Robert G Ingersoll

For the skeptic there remains only one consolation: if there should be such a thing as superhuman law it is administered with subhuman inefficiency – Eric Ambler

Officials are the only guys who can rob you and then get a police escort out of the stadium. – Ron Bolton

But now I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terribly by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth. – Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum

Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are good is like expecting the bull not to charge because you are a vegetarian. – Dennis Whole

Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind. – Dr. Seuss

People won’t remember what you did. People won’t remember what you said. But people will always remember the way you made them feel. – Unknown

Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend.  Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read. – Groucho Marx (Attributed)

An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it makes a better soup. – Bertrand Russell

Men profess to be lovers of music, but for the most part they give no evidence in their opinions and lives that they have heard it. – Henry David Thoreau

Vegetarianism is harmless enough, though it is apt to fill a man with wind and self-righteousness. – Sir Robert Hutchinson

Women have always been the strong ones of the world. The men are always seeking from women a little pillow to put their heads down on. They are always longing for the mother who held them as infants. – Coco Chanel

I never desired to please the rabble. What pleased them, I did not learn; and what I knew was far removed from their understanding. – Epicurus

Any fool can make history, but it takes a genius to write it. – Oscar Wilde

Music is everybody’s possession. It’s only publishers who think that people own it. – John Lennon

I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book. – Groucho Marx

Belief in the truth commences with the doubting of all those “truths” we once believed. –Friedrich Nietzsche

To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries. – Aldous Huxley

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. – Mark Twain

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame. – Oscar Wilde

Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses. – Plato

Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature. – Tom Robbins

Good resolutions are simply cheques that men draw on a bank where they have no account. – Oscar Wilde

The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off. – Gloria Steinem

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t. – Mark Twain

The first duty of a man is to think for himself. – José Martí

I won’t tell you that the world matters nothing, or the world’s voice, or the voice of society. They matter a good deal. They matter far too much. But there are moments when one has to choose between living one’s own life, fully, entirely, completely—or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands. You have that moment now. Choose! – Oscar Wilde

One should always be drunk. That’s all that matters; that’s our one imperative need. […] But with what? With wine, poetry, or virtue as you choose. But get drunk. – Charles Baudelaire

If you trust in yourself. . .and believe in your dreams. . .and follow your star. . . you’ll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren’t so lazy. – Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men

Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything. – Plato

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum…. – Noam Chomsky, The Common Good

May your glass be ever full. May the roof over your head be always strong. And may you be in heaven half an hour before the devil knows you’re dead. – Old Irish Toast

No man needs a vacation so much as the person who has just had one. – Elbert Hubbard

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. – Alvin Toffler

If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character…Would you slow down? Or speed up? –  Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

Life is for the living.
Death is for the dead.
Let life be like music.
And death a note unsaid. – Langston Hughes

Why is propaganda so much more successful when it stirs up hatred than when it tries to stir up friendly feeling? – Bertrand Russell

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all. – Oscar Wilde

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

As I have said, the first thing is to be honest with yourself. You can never have an impact on society if you have not changed yourself… Great peacemakers are all people of integrity, of honesty, but humility. – Nelson Mandela

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world. – Anne Frank

Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones. – Bertrand Russell

To give advice to a man who asks what to do with his life implies something very close to egomania. To presume to point a man to the right and ultimate goal — to point with a trembling finger in the RIGHT direction is something only a fool would take upon himself. – Hunter S. Thompson

[P]erhaps you notice how the denial is so often the preface to the justification. – Christopher Hitchens

Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else. – Leonardo da Vinci

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music. – Aldous Huxley

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all. – Peter F. Drucker

Any love is natural and beautiful that lies within a person’s nature; only hypocrites would hold a man responsible for what he loves, emotional illiterates and those of righteous envy, who, in their agitated concern, mistake so frequently the arrow pointing to heaven for the one that leads to hell. – Truman Capote

Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person. – Mark Twain

One should always be drunk. That’s all that matters…But with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you chose. But get drunk. – Charles Baudelaire

I’ve never known a musician who regretted being one. Whatever deceptions life may have in store for you, music itself is not going to let you down. – Virgil Thomson