Various

"Celebrity distorts democracy by giving the rich, beautiful, and famous more authority than they deserve."

Maureen Dowd

Success and Fame

Various

Rating: 5.40 (Number of Voters: 5)

"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle "The Sign of Four"

Truth and Falsity

Various

Rating: 6.20 (Number of Voters: 5)

"The supply of words in the world market is plentiful but the demand is falling. Let deeds follow words now."

Lech Walesa

Oration and Silence

Various

Rating: 5.00 (Number of Voters: 1)

"I used to think that running an organization was equivalent to conducting a symphony orchestra. But I don't think that's quite it; it's more like jazz. There is more improvisation."

Warren Bennis

Various

Rating: 3.50 (Number of Voters: 4)

"One should absorb the colour of life, but one should never remember its details. Details are always vulgar."

Oscar Wilde

Life and Death

Various

Rating: 3.50 (Number of Voters: 2)

"It's never just a game when you're winning."

George Carlin

Sports

Various

Rating: 7.00 (Number of Voters: 8)

"A miracle is the violation of mathematical, divine, immutable, eternal laws. By this very statement, a miracle is a contradiction in terms. A law cannot be immutable and violable at the same time."

Voltaire "Philosophical Dictionary"

Various

Rating: 3.67 (Number of Voters: 3)

"Of all the idiots I have met in my life, and the Lord knows they have not been few or little, I think that I have been the biggest."

Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen)

Intellect, Judgement

Various

Rating: 5.60 (Number of Voters: 5)

"A Letter always seemed to me like Immortality, for is it not the Mind alone, without corporeal friend?"

Emily Dickinson from her letter to James D. Clark

Various

Rating: 2.00 (Number of Voters: 3)

"The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand."

Lewis Thomas

Manners and Ethics

Various

Rating: 3.00 (Number of Voters: 1)

"We need God, not in order to understand the why, but in order to feel and sustain the ultimate wherefore, to give a meaning to the universe."

Miguel de Unamuno "The Tragic Sense of Life"

God and Religion

Various

Rating: 8.25 (Number of Voters: 4)

"You have not converted a man because you have silenced him."

John Morley

Various

Rating: 4.20 (Number of Voters: 5)

"Confession is always weakness. The grave soul keeps its own secrets, and takes its own punishment in silence."

Dorothy Dix

Sin and Conscience

Various

Rating: 5.00 (Number of Voters: 4)

"Lots of white people think black people are stupid. They are stupid themselves for thinking so, but regulation will not make them smarter."

Stephen Carter "Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby"

Various

Wisdom and Stupidity

Rating: 5.75 (Number of Voters: 4)

"Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers."

Mignon McLaughin "The Neurotic's Notebook"

Manners and Ethics

Various

Rating: 3.20 (Number of Voters: 5)

"If pregnancy were a book they would cut the last two chapters."

Nora Ephron

Various

Rating: 5.67 (Number of Voters: 3)

"There are two things necessary to Salvation.... Money and gunpowder."

George Bernard Shaw "Major Barbara"

Various

Rating: 2.67 (Number of Voters: 3)

"Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example."

Mark Twain

Anger

Various

Rating: 5.67 (Number of Voters: 3)

"Dance like it hurts,
Love like you need money,
Work when people are watching."

Scott Adams

Various

Rating: 5.17 (Number of Voters: 6)

"The definition of the individual was: a multitude of one million divided by one million."

Arthur Koestler "Darkness at Noon"

Human

Various

Rating: 5.60 (Number of Voters: 5)

"The shadows of things are greater than themselves; and the more exaggerated the shadow, the more unlike the substance."

Herman Melville "Mardi"

Power and Weakness

Various

Rating: 2.50 (Number of Voters: 2)

"If the secret of being a bore is to tell all, the secret of pleasing is to say just enough to be-not understood, but divined."

Rémy De Gourmont "Selected Writings"

Various

Rating: 5.25 (Number of Voters: 4)

"The cost of living is going up and the chance of living is going down."

Flip Wilson

Life and Death

Various

Rating: 5.20 (Number of Voters: 5)

"The road to hell is paved with adverbs."

Stephen King

Good and Evil

Various

Rating: 4.67 (Number of Voters: 3)

"Society, my dear, is like salt water, good to swim in but hard to swallow."

Arthur Stringer

Various

Rating: 3.00 (Number of Voters: 1)

"Criticism is prejudice made plausible."

Henry Louis Mencken

Various

Rating: 5.60 (Number of Voters: 5)

"I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it."

Thomas Jefferson

Happiness

Various

Rating: 5.00 (Number of Voters: 4)

"Advertising is the greatest art form of the twentieth century."

Marshall McLuhan

Art and Culture

Various

Rating: 5.33 (Number of Voters: 3)

"You cannot have both truth and what you call civilization."

Iris Murdoch "A Severed Head"

Truth and Falsity

Various

Rating: 6.50 (Number of Voters: 4)

"Civilization is a movement and not a condition, a voyage and not a harbor."

Arnold Toynbee

History and Nations

Various

Rating: 3.00 (Number of Voters: 3)

"Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance."

Kurt Vonnegut

Human

Various

Rating: 6.50 (Number of Voters: 4)

"I'm not sure I want popular opinion on my side -- I've noticed those with the most opinions often have the fewest facts."

Bethania McKenstry

Intellect, Judgement

Various

Rating: 4.75 (Number of Voters: 4)

"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it."

George Bernard Shaw

Various

Rating: 1.00 (Number of Voters: 1)

"Behind the phony tinsel of Hollywood lies the real tinsel."

Oscar Levant

Success and Fame

Various

Rating: 8.50 (Number of Voters: 4)

"To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than three men, two of whom are absent."

Robert Copeland

Various

Rating: 6.50 (Number of Voters: 4)

"Bureacracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism."

Mary McCarthy "On the Contrary"

Authority, Government

Various

Rating: 5.00 (Number of Voters: 4)

"New York will be a great place when they finish it."

local saying

Various

Rating: 4.67 (Number of Voters: 3)

"Better beware of notions like genius and inspiration; they are a sort of magic wand and should be used sparingly by anybody who wants to see things clearly."

Jose Ortega y Gasset "Notes on the Novel"

Talent and Genius

Various

Rating: 7.67 (Number of Voters: 3)

"There are two kinds of adventurers: those who go truly hoping to find adventure and those who go secretly hoping they won't."

Heat-Moon-William-Least "Blue Highways: A Journey into America"

Various

Rating: 7.50 (Number of Voters: 2)

"Misfortune is never invited. And it comes and sits at the table without permission and it eats, leaving nothing but bones."

Jacques Roumain

Pain and Tears

Various

Rating: 6.20 (Number of Voters: 5)

"The laughter of man is more terrible than his tears, and takes more forms - hollow, heartless, mirthless, maniacal."

James Thurber

Manners and Ethics

Various

Rating: 8.00 (Number of Voters: 3)

"When you stare persistently into an abyss, the abyss also stares into you."

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche "Beyond Good and Evil"

Good and Evil

Various

Rating: 6.00 (Number of Voters: 4)

"Cities have sexes: London is a man, Paris a woman, and New York a well-adjusted transsexual."

Angela Carter

Various

Rating: 4.80 (Number of Voters: 5)

"Young children step on your feet, older children step on your heart."

Various Proverbs

Family and Loneliness

Various

Rating: 7.00 (Number of Voters: 3)

"The golden rule is that there are no golden rules."

George Bernard Shaw

Various

Rating: 9.00 (Number of Voters: 4)

"Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats."

Howard Aiken

Various

Rating: 2.33 (Number of Voters: 3)

"Why do you have to be a nonconformist like everybody else?"

James Thurber

Various

Rating: 6.33 (Number of Voters: 3)

"There are two great pleasures in gambling: that of winning and that of losing."

French Proverbs

Various

Rating: 2.67 (Number of Voters: 3)

Various

"Celebrity distorts democracy by giving the rich, beautiful, and famous more authority than they deserve."

"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

"The supply of words in the world market is plentiful but the demand is falling. Let deeds follow words now."

"I used to think that running an organization was equivalent to conducting a symphony orchestra. But I don't think that's quite it; it's more like jazz. There is more improvisation."

"One should absorb the colour of life, but one should never remember its details. Details are always vulgar."

"It's never just a game when you're winning."

"A miracle is the violation of mathematical, divine, immutable, eternal laws. By this very statement, a miracle is a contradiction in terms. A law cannot be immutable and violable at the same time."

"Of all the idiots I have met in my life, and the Lord knows they have not been few or little, I think that I have been the biggest."

"A Letter always seemed to me like Immortality, for is it not the Mind alone, without corporeal friend?"

"The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand."

"We need God, not in order to understand the why, but in order to feel and sustain the ultimate wherefore, to give a meaning to the universe."

"You have not converted a man because you have silenced him."

"Confession is always weakness. The grave soul keeps its own secrets, and takes its own punishment in silence."

"Lots of white people think black people are stupid. They are stupid themselves for thinking so, but regulation will not make them smarter."

"Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers."

"If pregnancy were a book they would cut the last two chapters."

"There are two things necessary to Salvation.... Money and gunpowder."

"Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example."

"Dance like it hurts, Love like you need money, Work when people are watching."

"The definition of the individual was: a multitude of one million divided by one million."

"The shadows of things are greater than themselves; and the more exaggerated the shadow, the more unlike the substance."

"If the secret of being a bore is to tell all, the secret of pleasing is to say just enough to be-not understood, but divined."

"The cost of living is going up and the chance of living is going down."

"The road to hell is paved with adverbs."

"Society, my dear, is like salt water, good to swim in but hard to swallow."

"Criticism is prejudice made plausible."

"I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it."

"Advertising is the greatest art form of the twentieth century."

"You cannot have both truth and what you call civilization."

"Civilization is a movement and not a condition, a voyage and not a harbor."

"Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance."

"I'm not sure I want popular opinion on my side -- I've noticed those with the most opinions often have the fewest facts."

"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it."

"Behind the phony tinsel of Hollywood lies the real tinsel."

"To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than three men, two of whom are absent."

"Bureacracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism."

"New York will be a great place when they finish it."

"Better beware of notions like genius and inspiration; they are a sort of magic wand and should be used sparingly by anybody who wants to see things clearly."

"There are two kinds of adventurers: those who go truly hoping to find adventure and those who go secretly hoping they won't."

"Misfortune is never invited. And it comes and sits at the table without permission and it eats, leaving nothing but bones."

"The laughter of man is more terrible than his tears, and takes more forms - hollow, heartless, mirthless, maniacal."

"When you stare persistently into an abyss, the abyss also stares into you."

"Cities have sexes: London is a man, Paris a woman, and New York a well-adjusted transsexual."

"Young children step on your feet, older children step on your heart."

"The golden rule is that there are no golden rules."

"Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats."

"Why do you have to be a nonconformist like everybody else?"

"There are two great pleasures in gambling: that of winning and that of losing."

"Dance like it hurts,
Love like you need money,
Work when people are watching."