Quotes

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. - Thomas Edison

Why should I fear death? If I am, death is not. If death is, I am not. Why should I fear that which cannot exist when I do? - Epicurus

The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself. - Sir Richard F. Burton

I don't want any yes-men around me. I want everybody to tell me the truth even if it costs them their jobs. - Samuel Goldwyn

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart, is true for all men - that is genius.... Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.... What I must do, is all that concerns me; not what the people think.... Nothing can bring you peace but yourself; nothing, but the triumph of principles. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve." - George Bernard Shaw

I do not believe that any type of religion should ever be introduced into the public schools of the United States. - Thomas Edison

Too bad the only people who know how to run the country are busy driving cabs and cutting hair. - George Burns

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

There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the real labor of thinking. - Thomas Edison

There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge available to us: observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination. - Denis Diderot

Sarcasm: the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

To know a person's religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance. - Eric Hoffer

It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees. - Mikhail Bakunin

Grow accustomed to the belief that death is nothing to us, since every good and evil lie in sensation. However, death is the deprivation of sensation. Therefore, correct understanding that death is nothing to us makes a mortal life enjoyable, not by adding an endless span of time but by taking away the longing for immortality. For there is nothing dreadful in life for the man who has truly comprehended that there is nothing terrible in not living. Therefore, foolish is the man who says that he fears death,

Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain. - Lily Tomlin

You don't get to choose how you're going to die. Or when. You can only decide how you're going to live. Now. - Joan Baez

Political extremism involves two prime ingredients: an excessively simple diagnosis of the worlds ills and a conviction that there are identifiable villains back of it all. - John Gardner

Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me. - Robert Frost

To die for an idea is to set a rather high price upon conjecture. - Anatole France

Real religion should be something that liberates men. But churches don't want free men who can think for themself and find their own divinity within. When a religion becomes organized it is no longer a religious experience but only superstition and estrangement. - Federico Fellini

Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility. - Sigmund Freud

Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening. - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh. - Voltaire

To those of you who received honors, awards and distinctions, I say, well done. And to the C students, I say to you: you, too, can be president of the United States. - George W. Bush

Be civil to all; sociable to many; familiar with few; friend to one; enemy to none. - Benjamin Franklin

He who hesitates is not only lost, but miles from the next exit. - Unknown

I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires. - Susan B. Anthony

Once we were driving in the Midwest and we pulled into a McDonald's. Someone came up to me and asked me why I have Feynman diagrams all over my van. I replied, "Because I am Feynman!" The young man went, "Ahhhhh!" - Richard P. Feynman

I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark. - Thomas Hobbes's last words

People whose history and future were threatened each day by extinction considered that it was only by divine intervention that they were able to live at all. I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God's will, but as human being become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of respectability at a commensurate speed. - Maya Angelou

If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities. - Voltaire

What's a cult? It just means not enough people to make a minority. - Robert Altman

Emancipation from error is the condition of real knowledge. - Henri Fredric Amiel

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony. - Mohandas K. Gandhi

It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong. - Voltaire

The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations. - David Friedman

Knowledge is power. (Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est.) - Francis Bacon

People who are aware of, and ashamed of, their prejudices are well on the road to eliminating them. - Gordon Allport