The Quotations Archive currently contains 1744 quotations.

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But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

-- Carl Sagan

It is best to learn as we go, not go as we have learned.

-- Leslie Jeanne Sahler

Self-reliance is the only road to true freedom, and being one's own person is its ultimate reward.

-- Patricia Sampson

A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on.

-- Carl Sandburg

A man's feet should be planted in his country, but his eyes should survey the world.

-- George Santayana

Beauty as we feel it is something indescribable; what it is or what it means can never be said.

-- George Santayana

Each religion, by the help of more or less myth which it takes more or less seriously, proposes some method of fortifying the human soul and enabline it to make its peace with its destiny.

-- George Santayana

Fanaticism consists of redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.

-- George Santayana

Friends need not agree in everything or go always together, or have no comparable other friendships of the same intimacy. On the contrary, in friendship union is more about ideal things: and in that sense it is more ideal and less subject to trouble than marriage is.

-- George Santayana

Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experience.

-- George Santayana

Matters of religion should never be matters of controversy. We neither argue with a lover about his taste, not condemn him, if we are just, for knowing so human a passion.

-- George Santayana

Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer: there is nobility in preserving it coolly and proudly through long youth, until at last, in the ripeness of instinct and discretion, it can be safely exchanged for fidelity and happiness.

-- George Santayana

The lover knows much more about absolute good and universal beauty than any logician or theologian, unless the latter, too, be lovers in disguise.

-- George Santayana

There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.

-- George Santayana

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

-- George Santayana

To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.

-- George Santayana

Good friends are good for your health.

-- Irwin Sarason

Hell is other people.

-- Jean-Paul Sartre

There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, you can't take part. And you've got to put your body upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop.

-- Mario Savio, (1943-1996)

Happiness is not having what you want, but wanting what you have.

-- Rabbi H. Schachtel, The Real Enjoyment of Living

I'm not indecisive. Am I indecisive?

-- Jim Scheibel, mayor, St. Paul MN

A good cook is like a sorceress who dispenses happiness.

-- Elsa Schiapirelli

If we were not all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.

-- Schopenhauer

To marry is to halve your rights and double your duties.

-- Arthur Schopenhauer

What would you attempt if you knew you could not fail?

-- Robert Schuller

What would you attempt to do if you knew you would not fail?

-- Robert Schuller

Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia.

-- Charles Schultz

There are two means of refuge from the misery of life - music and cats.

-- Albert Schweitzer

They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist---

-- John B. Sedgwick, general, dying words, 1864

Actually, the only memory I have of being a Cub Scout was trying to get my hat back. That was all I did. Run back and forth at my bus stop going "Quit it."

-- Jerry Seinfeld

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.

-- Semisonic, Closing Time

It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.

-- Seneca

We never reflect how pleasant it is to ask for nothing.

-- Seneca

We can say 'Peace on Earth,' we can sing about it, preach about it or pray about it, but if we have not internalized the mythology to make it happen inside us, then it will not be.

-- Betty Shabazz

The course of true love never did run smooth.

-- William Shakespeare

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.

-- William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act i. Sc. 1.

Now join your hands, and with your hands your hearts.

-- William Shakespeare, King Henry the Sixth

I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.

-- William Shakespeare, King Richard II, Act V, Scene V

Truth is truth
To the end of reckoning.

-- William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, Act v. Sc. 1.

... then the world 's mine oyster

-- William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor

A critic is one who leaves no turn unstoned.

-- George Bernard Shaw

A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.

-- George Bernard Shaw

A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend upon the support of Paul.

-- George Bernard Shaw

Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.

-- George Bernard Shaw

Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it.

-- George Bernard Shaw

Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.

-- George Bernard Shaw

Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for the appointment by the corrupt few.

-- George Bernard Shaw

Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.

-- George Bernard Shaw

If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion.

-- George Bernard Shaw

It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.

-- George Bernard Shaw

It is most unwise for people in love to marry.

-- George Bernard Shaw

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.

-- George Bernard Shaw

Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

-- George Bernard Shaw

Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

-- George Bernard Shaw

Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else.

-- George Bernard Shaw

Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.

-- George Bernard Shaw

Morality consists in suspecting other people of not being legally married.

-- George Bernard Shaw

Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it.

-- George Bernard Shaw

The fickleness of the women I love is only equalled by the infernal consistency of the women who love me.

-- George Bernard Shaw

The longer I live the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains that I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time.

-- George Bernard Shaw

The perfect love affair is one which is conducted entirely by post.

-- George Bernard Shaw

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

-- George Bernard Shaw

The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.

-- George Bernard Shaw

There are some experiences in life which should not be demanded twice from any man, and one of them is listening to the Brahms Requiem.

-- George Bernard Shaw

There is no sincerer love than the love of food.

-- George Bernard Shaw

We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.

-- George Bernard Shaw

Youth is wasted on the young.

-- George Bernard Shaw

The Churches must learn humility as well as teach it.

-- George Bernard Shaw, St. Joan

If absolute power corrupts absolutely, does absolute powerlessness make you pure?

-- Harry Shearer

If the French were really intelligent, they'd speak English.

-- Wilfred Sheed

Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.

-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

Soul meets soul on lovers lips.

-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

We have to keep trying things we're not sure we can pull off. If we just do the things we know we can do... you don't grow as much. You gotta take those chances on making those big mistakes.

-- Cybill Shepherd

Smoking kills. If you're killed, you've lost a very important part of your life.

-- Brooke Shields, during an interview to become spokesperson for a federal anti-smoking campaign

Trouble is a part of your life, and if you don't share it, you don't give the person that loves you enough chance to love you enough.

-- Dinah Shore

The church is the great lost and found department.

-- Robert Short

Everything is drive-through. In California, they even have a burial service called Jump-In-The-Box.

-- Wil Shriner

You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try.

-- Beverly Sills

The reason most people play golf is to wear clothes they would not be caught dead in otherwise.

-- Roger Simon

The public will believe anything, so long as it is not founded on truth.

-- Edith Sitwell

The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.

-- B. F. Skinner

Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.

-- B.F. Skinner

A man gazing at the stars is proverbially at the mercy of the puddles in the road.

-- Alexander Smith

I cannot imagine any condition which would cause this ship to founder. Modern shipbuilding has gone beyond that.

-- E. I. Smith, Captain of the Titanic

He had occasional flashes of silence that made his conversation perfectly delightful.

-- Sydney Smith, referring to Macaulay

It is always right that a man should be able to render a reason for the faith that is within him.

-- Sydney Smith

Life is to be fortified by many friendships. To love and to be loved is the greatest happiness of existence.

-- Sydney Smith

Marriage resembles a pair of shears, so joined that they cannot be separated; often moving in opposite directions, yet always punishing any one who comes between them.

-- Sydney Smith

Whatever you are from nature, keep to it; never desert your own line of talent. Be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed; be anything else, and you will be ten thousands times worse than nothing.

-- Sydney Smith

One cardinal rule of marriage should never be forgotten: "Give little, give seldom, and above all, give grudgingly." Otherwise, what could have been a proper marriage could become an orgy of sexual lust.

-- Ruth Smythers, Marriage advice for women, 1894

If unix is the face of the future I wanna go back to quill pens.

-- Joseph Snipp

Nothing is so strong as gentleness, and nothing is so gentle as true strength.

-- Ralph Sockman

By all means marry. If you get a good wife you will become happy, and if you get a bad one you will become a philosopher.

-- Socrates

Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parent, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers.

-- Socrates

Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?

-- Socrates, dying words

I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.

-- Socrates

One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: that word is love.

-- Sophocles

Usenet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea -- massive, difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a source of mind-boggling amounts of excrement when you least expect it.

-- Gene Spafford

Marriage: A ceremony in which rings are put on the finger of the lady and through the nose of the gentleman.

-- Herbert Spencer

Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.

-- Dr. Benjamin Spock, American pediatrician, address to new parents

I think every woman is entitled to a middle husband she can forget.

-- Adela Rogers St. John

Start slow and taper off.

-- Walt Stack, marathon runner

If addiction is judged by how long a dumb animal will sit pressing a lever to get a 'fix' of something, to its own detriment, then I would conclude that netnews is far more addictive than cocaine.

-- Rob Stampfli

Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want.

-- Don Stanford

It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.

-- Gertrude Stein

What is the answer? In that case, what is the question?

-- Gertrude Stein, dying words

A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.

-- Gloria Steinem

Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry.

-- Gloria Steinem

Someone once asked me why women don't gamble as much as men do and I gave the commonsensical reply that we don't have as much money. That was a true but incomplete answer. In fact, women's total instinct for gambling is satisfied by marriage.

-- Gloria Steinem

Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will.

-- James Stephens

If you want to sing out, sing out, and if you want to be free, be free, 'cause there's a million ways to be, you know that there are...

-- Cat Stevens, from a song lyric

That's a hard question. I don't answer hard questions.

-- Justice John Paul Stevens

A beauty is a woman you notice; A charmer is one who notices you.

-- Adlai Stevenson

In America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take.

-- Adlai Stevenson

The best reason I can think of for not running for President of the United States is that you have to shave twice a day.

-- Adlai Stevenson

To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.

-- Robert L. Stevenson

A friend is a gift you give yourself.

-- Robert Louis Stevenson

Like a prune, you are not getting any better looking, but you are getting sweeter.

-- N. D. Stice

I once asked my history teacher how we were expected to learn anything useful from his subject, when it seemed to me to be nothing but a monotonous and sordid succession of robber baron scumbags devoid of any admirable human qualities.
I failed history.

-- Sting

Love is stronger than justice.

-- Sting

But a stranger in a strange land, he is no one: men know him not-and to know not is to care not for.

-- Bram Stoker, Dracula, 1897

Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.

-- Tom Stoppard

Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.

-- Harriet Beecher Stowe

Never look at the trombones. You'll only encourage them.

-- Richard Strauss, on conducting

Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.

-- Igor Stravinsky

After finding no qualified candidates for the position of principal, the school board is extremely pleased to announce the appointment of David Steele to the post.

-- Philip Streifer, Superintendent of Schools, Barrington, Rhode Island

I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven't got the guts to bite people themselves.

-- August Strindberg

Ninety percent of everything is crap.

-- Theodore Sturgeon

... it is certain that the real function of art is to increase our self-consciousness; to make us more aware of what we are, and therefore of what the universe in which we live really is. And since mathematics, in its own way, also performs this function, it is not only aesthetically charming but profoundly significant. It is an art, and a great art.

-- John W. N. Sullivan

I've always thought that underpopulated countries in Africa are vastly underpolluted.

-- Lawrence Summers, chief economist of the World Bank, explaining why we should export toxic wastes to Third World countries

Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you an automobile.

-- Billy Sunday

Try praising your wife, even if it does frighten her at first.

-- Billy Sunday

To love is to receive a glimpse of heaven.

-- Karen Sunde

When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in confederacy against him.

-- Johnathan Swift

The mathematician lives long and lives young; the wings of his soul do not early drop off, nor do its pores become clogged with the earthy particles blown from the dusty highways of vulgar life.

-- James Joseph Sylvester

The eyes are not responsible when the mind does the seeing.

-- Publilius Syrus

Boredom is the feeling that everything is a waste of time; serenity, that nothing is.

-- Thomas Szasz

If you talk to God, you are praying; if God talks to you, you have schizophrenia.

-- Thomas Szasz

When a person can no longer laugh at himself, it is time for others to laugh at him.

-- Thomas Szasz, The Second Sin, 1973

Discovery consists of looking at the same thing as everyone else does and thinking something different.

-- Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, 1937 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine