| Week of 02/27/2005: |
“The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him.”
-- Robert Benchley |
| Week of 02/20/2005: |
“Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want
to use it.” -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) |
| Week of 02/13/2005: |
“There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged
to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.”
-- Nelson Mandela, from his autobiography “Long Walk to Freedom” |
| Week of 02/06/2005: |
“Laughter is the closest distance between two people.”
-- Victor Borge, comedian and pianist (1909-2000) |
| Week of 01/30/2005: |
“The most exciting attractions are between two opposites that never meet.”
-- Andy Warhol |
| Week of 01/23/2005: |
“I am taking the applause sign home, putting it in the bedroom.”
-- Johnny Carson (1925-2005), on his final show, May 22, 1992 |
| Week of 01/16/2005: |
“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical
substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.”
-- Carl Jung (1875-1961) |
| Week of 01/09/2005: |
“I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided; and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging the future but by the past.” -- Patrick Henry (1736-99) |
| Week of 01/02/2005: |
“The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.” -- Dolly Parton |
| Week of 12/26/2004: |
“A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.” -- William James (1842-1910) |
| Week of 12/19/2004: |
“Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original
writers borrowed one from another. The instruction we find in
books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbor's, kindle it
at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property
of all.” -- François Marie Arouet de Voltaire (1694-1778) |
| Week of 12/12/2004: |
“Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.” -- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) |
| Week of 12/05/2004: |
“You cannot be a leader, and ask other people to follow you, unless you know how to follow, too.” -- Sam Rayburn (1882-1961), former Speaker of the House |
| Week of 11/28/2004: |
“I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.” -- Harry S. Truman (1884-1972) |
| Week of 11/21/2004: |
“Character is what you are in the dark.” -- Dwight Lyman Moody (1837-99) |
| Week of 11/14/2004: |
“Know the value of time; snatch, seize, and enjoy every moment of it. No idleness, no delay, no procrastination; never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.” -- Earl of Chesterfield |
| Week of 11/07/2004: |
“Do everything. One thing may turn out right.” -- Humphrey Bogart |
| Week of 10/31/2004: |
“The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.” -- Plato (427?-347 B.C.) |
| Week of 10/24/2004: |
“I think your whole life shows in your face and you should be proud of that.” -- Lauren Bacall |
| Week of 10/17/2004: |
“The sum of the whole matter is this, that our civilization cannot survive materially unless it be redeemed spiritually.” -- Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) |
| Week of 10/10/2004: |
“We must remember that any oppression, any injustice, any hatred, is a wedge designed to attack our civilization.” -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945) |
| Week of 10/03/2004: |
“To fly, we have to have resistance.” -- Maya Lin |
| Week of 09/26/2004: |
“None climbs so high as he who knows not whither he is going.” -- Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) |
| Week of 09/19/2004: |
“Of all God's creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the lash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat.” -- Mark Twain |
| Week of 09/12/2004: |
“Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counsellors, and the most patient of teachers.” -- Charles William Eliot (1834-1926) |
| Week of 09/05/2004: |
“There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.” -- Kurt Vonnegut, from his May 2004 essay "Cold Turkey" |
| Week of 08/29/2004: |
“All animals except man know that the principle business of life is to enjoy it.” -- Samuel Butler |
| Week of 08/22/2004: |
“Absence is one of the most useful ingredients of family life, and to do it rightly is an art like any other.” -- Freya Stark |
| Week of 08/15/2004: |
“Our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest, which co-mingle their roots in the darkness underground.” -- William James |
| Week of 08/08/2004: |
“Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” -- Abraham Lincoln |
| Week of 08/01/2004: |
“By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man's, I mean.” -- Mark Twain, Following the Equator (1897) |
| Week of 07/25/2004: |
“An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.” -- George Eliot (1819-80) |
| Week of 07/18/2004: |
“Compromise used to mean that half a loaf was better than no bread. Among modern statesmen it really seems to mean that half a loaf is better than a whole loaf.” -- G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936) |
| Week of 07/11/2004: |
“Every man has a right to his opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts.” -- Bernard Mannes Baruch (1870-1965) |
| Week of 07/04/2004: |
“Peace of mind is that mental condition in which you have accepted the worst.” -- Lin Yutang |
| Week of 06/27/2004: |
“The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.” -- Ambrose Bierce |
| Week of 06/20/2004: |
“Young men think old men are fools, but old men know young men are fools.” -- George Chapman (1559?-1634) |
| Week of 06/13/2004: |
“Perplexity is the beginning of knowledge.” -- Khalil Gibran (1883-1931) |
| Week of 06/06/2004: |
“Love that stammers, that stutters, is apt to be the love that loves the best.” -- Gabriela Mistral |
| Week of 05/30/2004: |
“The most difficult secret for a man to keep is the opinion he has of himself.” -- Marcel Pagnol |
| Week of 05/23/2004: |
“Write down the advice of him who loves you, though you like it not at present.” -- English proverb |
| Week of 05/16/2004: |
“The more he looked inside the more Piglet wasn't there.” -- A.A. Milne (1882-1956), from The House at Pooh Corner |
| Week of 05/09/2004: |
“Solitude is a good place to visit but a poor place to stay.” -- Josh Billings |
| Week of 05/02/2004: |
“A memorandum is written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer.” -- Dean Acheson, Secretary of State 1949-53 |
| Week of 04/25/2004: |
“To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.” -- Anatole France |
| Week of 04/18/2004: |
“If there wasn't something called acting, they would probably hospitalize people like me.” -- Whoopie Goldberg, quoted in Parade (1992) |
| Week of 04/11/2004: |
“You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance.” -- Ray Bradbury (advice to writers) |
| Week of 04/04/2004: |
“I know the price of success: dedication, hard work, and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen.” -- Frank Lloyd Wright |
| Week of 03/28/2004: |
“After ecstasy, the laundry.” -- Zen saying |
| Week of 03/21/2004: |
“Happiness depends upon ourselves.” -- Aristotle |
| Week of 03/14/2004: |
“The art of life lies in a constant readjustment to our surroundings.” -- Kakuzo Okakura |
| Week of 03/07/2004: |
“Our opinion of people depends less upon what we see in them than upon what they make us see in ourselves.” -- Sarah Grand |
| Week of 02/29/2004: |
“To confront a person with his own shadow is to show him his own light.” -- Carl Jung |
| Week of 02/22/2004: |
“He who mounts a wild elephant goes where the wild elephant goes.” -- Randolph Bourne |
| Week of 02/15/2004: |
“California is a fine place to live -- if you happen to be an orange.” -- Fred Allen (1894-1956) |
| Week of 02/08/2004: |
“It's not that I'm afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens.” -- Woody Allen |
| Week of 02/01/2004: |
“The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.” -- H.L. Mencken, Prejudices: Third Series, 1922 |
| Week of 01/25/2004: |
“For all the money we spend on marketing, we know very little about our customers.” -- Robert Thomas, president, Nissan Motor Corporation USA, as quoted in the Wall Street Journal (12/96) |
| Week of 01/18/2004: |
“I belong to an enormous group, very likely a majority, in fact, who are both pro-choice and anti-abortion.” -- Nancy Mairs, Ordinary Time (1993) |
| Week of 01/11/2004: |
“We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.” -- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, poet (1807-1882) |
| Week of 01/04/2004: |
“Remember, there are no small parts, only small actors.” -- Konstantin Stanislavski |
| Week of 12/28/2003: |
“One machine can do the work of 50 ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.” -- Anonymous |
| Week of 12/21/2003: |
“There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.” -- George Santayana |
| Week of 12/14/2003: |
“If you have no confidence in self you are twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence, you have won even before you have started.” -- Marcus Garvey (1887-1940) |
| Week of 12/07/2003: |
“The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.” -- e.e. cummings, US poet (1894-1962) |
| Week of 11/30/2003: |
“When we ask advice we are usually looking for an accomplice.” -- Charles Varlet Marquis de La Grange (1639-1692) |
| Week of 11/23/2003: |
“Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength.” -- Eric Hoffer, 1902-1983 |
| Week of 11/16/2003: |
“Reality is the other person's idea of how things should be.” -- John M. Shanahan (1939-) |
| Week of 11/09/2003: |
“Real happiness is cheap enough, yet how dearly we pay for its counterfeit.” -- Hosea Ballou |
| Week of 11/02/2003: |
“What we must decide is how we are valuable rather than how valuable we are.” -- Edgar Z. Friedenberg |
| Week of 10/26/2003: |
“The only peace, the only security, is in fulfillment.” -- Henry Miller |
| Week of 10/19/2003: |
“To me, old age is always fifteen years older than I am.” -- Bernard Baruch, on his 85th birthday, Aug. 20, 1955 |
| Week of 10/12/2003: |
“It is often merely for an excuse that we say things are impossible.” -- Francois de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) |
| Week of 10/05/2003: |
“Ignorance is never out of style. It was in fashion yesterday, it is the rage today, and it will set the pace tomorrow.” -- Franklin K. Dane |
| Week of 09/28/2003: |
“In some marvelous way I know I have touched the hem of the unknown. But being me, I want to lift that hemline just a little bit more.” -- Diane Arbus |
| Week of 09/21/2003: |
“We only have one life to live on earth. Through television, we have the choice of encouraging others to demean this life or to cherish it in creative and imaginative ways.” -- Fred Rogers |
| Week of 09/14/2003: |
“There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel no one else has a right to blame us.” -- Oscar Wilde |
| Week of 09/07/2003: |
“As far as I'm concerned, 'whom' is a word that was invented to make everyone sound like a butler.” -- Calvin Trillin |
| Week of 08/31/2003: |
“The thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely.” -- Lorraine Hansberry, 'To Be Young, Gifted and Black' |
| Week of 08/24/2003: |
“The old parties are husks, with no real soul within either, divided on artificial lines, boss-ridden and privilege-controlled, each a jumble of incongruous elements, and neither daring to speak out wisely and fearlessly on what should be said on the vital” -- Theodore Roosevelt, August 5, 1912 |
| Week of 08/17/2003: |
“Fifty-three? I mean, what does a guy have to do to make the top 50 around here?” -- "U.S. President Bill Clinton, at the May 1999 White House Correspondents' Association dinner, reacting to the journalist-ranked position of the story of his impeachment (over the Lewinsky scandal) in in Newseum's
Top 100 Stories of the Century" |
| Week of 08/10/2003: |
“I don't handle alcohol very well. One drink and I have to go to my bed. Two drinks and I have to go to your bed.” -- Chrissie Hynde |
| Week of 08/03/2003: |
“I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.” -- Thomas A. Edison (1847-1931) |
| Week of 07/27/2003: |
“If you are all wrapped up in yourself, you are overdressed.” -- Kate Halverson |
| Week of 07/20/2003: |
“Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.” -- Charlotte Whitton, Mayor of Ottawa (quoted in Canada Month, June 1963) |
| Week of 07/13/2003: |
“When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.” -- Eleanor Roosevelt |
| Week of 07/06/2003: |
“A bikini is a thoughtless act.” -- Esther Williams |
| Week of 06/29/2003: |
“We are all one. And if we do not know, we will learn it the hard way.” -- Bayard Rustin (1912-1987), Civil Rights Activist and organizer of the 1963 March on Washington |
| Week of 06/22/2003: |
“The remarkable thing about television is that it permits several million people to laugh at the same joke and still feel lonely.” -- T.S. Eliot |
| Week of 06/15/2003: |
“Morality is contraband in war.” -- Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) |
| Week of 06/08/2003: |
“You live but once; you might as well be amusing.” -- Coco Chanel, fashion designer |
| Week of 06/01/2003: |
“The king says I am the cause of the world's problems because of my outfit. Never mind terrorism, government corruption, poverty and disease, it's me and my pants. I reject that.” -- Mbabane resident Thob'sile Dlamini, reacting to Swazi King Mswati III's public radio sermon stating that women wearing pants are to blame for the world's ills (source: Reuters) |
| Week of 05/25/2003: |
“I prefer the word homemaker, because housewife always implies that there may be a wife someplace else.” -- Bella Abzug (1920-1998), feminist, pacifist, and three-term New York State Congresswoman |
| Week of 05/18/2003: |
“As you go the way of life you will see a great chasm. Jump! It is not as wide as you think.” -- Native American Proverb |
| Week of 05/11/2003: |
“The speed of communications is wondrous to behold. It is also true that speed can multiply the distribution of information that we know to be untrue.” -- Edward R. Murrow (1908-1965) |
| Week of 05/04/2003: |
“If I want to wang dang rock 'n' roll at 69 years old dressed up in an antebellum dress, it ain't nobody's business but mine.” -- Cordell Jackson, rockabilly guitarist and first woman recording engineer in the U.S. |
| Week of 04/27/2003: |
“He should be so lucky.” -- Andrea Mitchell, NBC correspondent and wife of Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, reacting to an ABC News closed captioning error, which broadcast that Greenspan had been hospitalized for "an enlarged prostitute" instead of an enlarged prostate (as quoted in The Washington Post) |
| Week of 04/20/2003: |
“Our ability to disagree, and our inherent right to question our leaders and criticize their actions define who we are. To allow those rights to be taken away out of fear, to punish people for their beliefs, to limit access in the news media to differing opinions is to acknowledge our democracy's defeat.” -- Actor Tim Robbins, speaking to the National Press Club in Washington, DC, April 15, 2003 |
| Week of 04/13/2003: |
“The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin.” -- Mark Twain |
| Week of 04/06/2003: |
“And in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make.” -- John Lennon and Paul McCartney (lyric from Abbey Road's “The End”) |
| Week of 03/30/2003: |
“I'm not a fan of real life. Real life's got some strange kind of rules.” -- Nick Nolte, quoted in the New York Daily News, March 23, 2003 |
| Week of 03/23/2003: |
“Why don't you roll me under the table, and I'll sleep it off until you finish dinner.” -- President George Bush Sr., after vomiting on Japanese prime minister Kiichi Miyazawa in 1992 |
| Week of 03/16/2003: |
“If Fred Astaire is the Cary Grant of dance, I'm the Marlon Brando.” -- Gene Kelly (1912-1996) |
| Week of 03/09/2003: |
“It may be that we shall by a process of sublime irony have reached a stage in this story where safety will be the sturdy child of terror, and survival the twin brother of annihilation.” -- Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of Great Britain (on the hydrogen bomb, news summaries 3 Mar 55, courtesy of Simpson's Contemporary Quotations) |
| Week of 03/02/2003: |
“Our systems, perhaps, are nothing more than an unconscious apology for our faults -- a gigantic scaffolding whose object is to hide from us our favorite sin.” -- Henri Frédéric Amiel (1821-1881) Swiss poet and philosopher |
| Week of 02/23/2003: |
“The choice between love and fear is made every moment in our hearts and minds. That is where the peace process begins. Without peace within, peace in the world is an empty wish. Like love, peace is extended. It cannot be brought from the world to the heart. It must be brought from each heart to another, and thus to all mankind.” -- Paul Ferrini |
| Week of 02/16/2003: |
“After I retire from the N.B.A., I will probably join the mass media, because I have always been bothered by the mass media. And if I cannot beat them, I will join them.” -- Yao Ming, Shanghai native and 7'6" center for the Houston Rockets |
| Week of 02/09/2003: |
“I love my gay male friends so much. When I was a little girl I always wished that I would be constantly surrounded by gorgeous guys and now I am. I should have been more specific.” -- Margaret Cho |
| Week of 02/02/2003: |
“Sculptures are drawings you fall over in the dark.” -- Al Hirschfeld, American caricaturist (1903-2003) |
| Week of 01/26/2003: |
“Luge strategy? Lie flat and try not to die.” -- Carmen Boyle Olympic Luge Gold Medal winner 1966 |
| Week of 01/19/2003: |
“What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.” -- Crowfoot, Native American warrior and orator (1821-1890) |
| Week of 01/12/2003: |
“Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.” -- Mark Twain |
| Week of 01/05/2003: |
“I love Judge Judy so much. I wish that she would run for mayor of New York.” -- David Sedaris |
| Week of 12/29/2002: |
“It's never too late -- in fiction or in life -- to revise.” -- Nancy Thayer |
| Week of 12/22/2002: |
“If my film makes one more person feel miserable, I'll feel I've done my job.” -- Woody Allen |
| Week of 12/15/2002: |
“And it was just that kind of a, you know, platonic, almost father/son relationship that we had.” -- Senator and (now former) Minority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS), as quoted by CNN (12/13/02) |
| Week of 12/08/2002: |
“Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia.” -- Charles M. Schulz |
| Week of 12/01/2002: |
“Good advice costs nothing and it's worth the price.” -- Allan Sherman, “Good Advice” |
| Week of 11/24/2002: |
“Beware the fury of the patient man.” -- John Dryden, poet and dramatist (1631-1700) |
| Week of 11/17/2002: |
“Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.” -- Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882 |
| Week of 11/10/2002: |
“A knowledgeable fool is a greater fool than an ignorant fool.” -- Molière (1622-73), Les Femmes savantes (1672), as quoted in “The Oxford Dictionary of Thematic Quotations” |
| Week of 11/03/2002: |
“Listen, someone's screaming in agony - fortunately I speak it fluently.” -- Spike Milligan, “The Goon Show”, BBC Radio (1959) |
| Week of 10/27/2002: |
“Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.” -- Gertrude Stein |
| Week of 10/20/2002: |
“I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers. Thank you. Now watch this drive.” -- Serious golfer and U.S. President George W. Bush, August 4, 2002 |
| Week of 10/13/2002: |
“The report of my death has been greatly exaggerated.” -- Mark Twain |
| Week of 10/06/2002: |
“He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lites his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.” -- Thomas Jefferson, August 13, 1813 |
| Week of 09/29/2002: |
“Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.” -- W. H. Auden, 1907-1973, English-born American poet |
| Week of 09/22/2002: |
“Nothing is more responsible for the good old days than a bad memory.” -- Franklin Pierce Adams |
| Week of 09/15/2002: |
“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall -- think of it, always.” -- Mahatma Gandhi |
| Week of 09/08/2002: |
“Living your life in the public eye is a series of bad hairdos.” -- Rob Lowe |
| Week of 09/01/2002: |
“A reporter is always concerned with tomorrow. There's nothing tangible of yesterday. All I can say I've done is agitate the air ten or fifteen minutes and then boom -- it's gone.” -- Edward R. Murrow, News Summaries, December 31, 1955 |
| Week of 08/25/2002: |
“Rejoice in nerdiness. It's a faux pas doo dah all the live-long day.” -- Margaret Cho |
| Week of 08/18/2002: |
“Can a Bush — born on third base but thinking he hit a triple — ever really understand the problems of the guys in the bleachers?” -- Maureen Dowd, Slouching Toward Populism, The New York Times, 07/10/2002 |
| Week of 08/11/2002: |
“Fascism is capitalism plus murder.” -- Upton Sinclair |
| Week of 08/04/2002: |
“The sum of human wisdom is not contained in any one language, and no single language is capable of expressing all forms and degrees of human comprehension.” -- Ezra Pound |
| Week of 07/28/2002: |
“Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn.” -- Charlie Parker |
| Week of 07/21/2002: |
“Any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or doing it better.” -- John Updike |
| Week of 07/14/2002: |
“Information. What's wrong with dope and women? Is it any wonder the world's gone insane, with information come to be the only real medium of exchange?” -- Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow |
| Week of 07/07/2002: |
“When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow.” -- Anaïs Nin, The Diaries of Anaïs Nin |
| Week of 06/30/2002: |
“I refuse to accept the idea that the 'isness' of a man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the 'oughtness' that forever confronts him.” -- Martin Luther King, Jr., Nobel Prize acceptance speech (Dec. 11, 1964) |
| Week of 06/23/2002: |
“The market is a tool, and a useful one. But the worship of this tool is a hollow faith. Far more important than any tool is what you make with it.” -- Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation |
| Week of 06/16/2002: |
“No problem is too big to run away from.” -- Charles M. Schulz |
| Week of 06/09/2002: |
“People with honorary awards are looked upon with disfavor. Would you let an honorary mechanic fix your brand-new Mercedes?” -- Neil Simon, 1984 Williams College honorary degree recipient |
| Week of 06/02/2002: |
“Asthma doesn't seem to bother me any more unless I'm around cigars or dogs. The thing that would bother me most would be a dog smoking a cigar.” -- Steve Allen |
| Week of 05/26/2002: |
“Nihilism is best done by professionals.” -- Iggy Pop |
| Week of 05/19/2002: |
“I don't think anybody should write his autobiography until after he's dead.” -- Samuel Goldwyn (1882-1974), film producer |
| Week of 05/12/2002: |
“Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others. If you have that awareness, you have good manners, no matter what fork you use.” -- Emily Post |
| Week of 05/05/2002: |
“A little civility is what Afghanistan needs. If I had guns, people would hate me. Who wants guns?” -- Hamid Karzai, interim leader of Afghanistan (quoted in the NYTimes, 03/26/02) |
| Week of 04/28/2002: |
“Inside every older person is a younger person - wondering what the hell happened.” -- Cora Harvey Armstrong |
| Week of 04/21/2002: |
“How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these.” -- George Washington Carver |
| Week of 04/14/2002: |
“I hate television. I hate it as much as peanuts. But I can't stop eating peanuts.” -- Orson Welles |
| Week of 04/07/2002: |
“I would rather have my fate in the hands of 23 representative citizens of the county than in the hands of a politically appointed judge.” -- Robert Morgenthau, District Attorney, NYC |
| Week of 03/31/2002: |
“Information is the currency of democracy.” -- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) |
| Week of 03/24/2002: |
“The most important thing in acting is honesty. If you can fake that, you've got it made.” -- George Burns |
| Week of 03/17/2002: |
“Credulity is the man's weakness, but the child's strength.” -- Charles Lamb (1775-1834) |
| Week of 03/10/2002: |
“Beware the ides of March.” -- William Shakespeare's mysterious Soothsayer, from Act I Scene II of the play Julius Caesar |
| Week of 03/03/2002: |
“Data, data everywhere, and not a thought to think.” -- Jesse H. Shera, librarian, scholar (1903-1982) |
| Week of 02/24/2002: |
“Every reform, however necessary, will by weak minds be carried to an excess, that itself will need reforming.” -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) |
| Week of 02/17/2002: |
“You're perhaps the most accomplished confidence man since Charles Ponzi. I'd say you were a carnival barker, except that wouldn't be fair to carnival barkers.” -- Senator Peter G. Fitzgerald, in comments to Kenneth L. Lay, former chairman of Enron (NY Times, 2/13/02) |
| Week of 02/10/2002: |
“Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.” -- Groucho Marx |
| Week of 02/03/2002: |
“Sleep quietly and no one cares; snore, and you sleep alone.” -- Billy Brackett, Billy Brackett's Frenzied Filosofy (1905) |
| Week of 01/27/2002: |
“I came out here with one suit and everybody said I looked like a bum. Twenty years later Marlon Brando came out with only a sweatshirt and the town drooled over him. That shows how much Hollywood has progressed.” -- Humphrey Bogart |
| Week of 01/20/2002: |
“If we could sell our experiences for what they cost us we'd be millionaires.” -- Abigail Van Buren (née Pauline Esther Friedman, or “Dear Abby”) |
| Week of 01/13/2002: |
“Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.” -- Jessamyn West |
| Week of 01/06/2002: |
“I never take any notice of reviews — unless a critic has thought up some new way of describing me. That old one about my lizard eyes and anteater nose and the way I sleep my way through pictures is so hackneyed now.” -- Robert Mitchum (1959) |
| Week of 12/30/2001: |
“In my sex fantasy, nobody ever loves me for my mind.” -- Nora Ephron |
| Week of 12/23/2001: |
“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 |
| Week of 12/16/2001: |
“I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.” -- Helen Keller |
| Week of 12/09/2001: |
“To not be allowed to err is to not be allowed to learn; to not be allowed to try at all is to be deprived of the motivation to learn.” -- Gene I. Rochlin, Trapped in the Net: The Unanticipated Consequences of Computerization |
| Week of 12/02/2001: |
“Things I once thought unbelievable, in my life have all taken place.” -- P.J. Harvey, “Good Fortune” (Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea) |
| Week of 11/25/2001: |
“Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home -- so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any map of the world.” -- Eleanor Roosevelt |
| Week of 11/18/2001: |
“Insert Coin. Avoid Missing Ball for High Score.” -- Entire instructions for early video game “Pong” |
| Week of 11/11/2001: |
“The sociologists are going to love the next 100 years.” -- John C. Dvorak (1996) |
| Week of 11/04/2001: |
“I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.” -- Douglas Adams |
| Week of 10/28/2001: |
“I like criticism, but it must be my way.” -- Mark Twain |
| Week of 10/21/2001: |
“To do two things at once is to do neither.” -- Publilius Syrus (Publilii Syri Sententiae) |
| Week of 10/14/2001: |
“My wish, my continuing passion, would be not to point the finger in judgment but to part a curtain, that invisible shadow that falls between people, the veil of indifference to each other's presence, each other's wonder, each other's human plight.” -- Eudora Welty |
| Week of 10/07/2001: |
“Sometimes I fell like a figment of my own imagination.” -- Lily Tomlin |
| Week of 09/30/2001: |
“Ronald Reagan is a tribute to the embalmer's art.” -- Gore Vidal |
| Week of 09/23/2001: |
“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” -- Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790) |
| Week of 09/16/2001: |
“Courage is doing what you're afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you're scared.” -- Eddie Rickenbacker |
| Week of 09/09/2001: |
“The great thing in this world is not so much where we are, but in what direction we are moving.” -- Oliver Wendell Holmes |
| Week of 09/02/2001: |
“Eighty percent of success is showing up.” -- Woody Allen |
| Week of 08/26/2001: |
“Sometimes I feel like an old hooker.” -- Cher |
| Week of 08/19/2001: |
“Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking two or three times a week.” -- George Bernard Shaw |
| Week of 08/12/2001: |
“Prophesy based on extension of the known has substance, while prophesy founded on the unknown is only a doubly involved guess.” -- Vannevar Bush (quoted from his July 1945 Atlantic article “As We May Think”) |
| Week of 08/05/2001: |
“My job is to show up and win the Tour de France. Do I want to throw away a couple of years to build suspense? No.” -- Three-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong |
| Week of 07/29/2001: |
“Acquaintance is the tool humans use to draw inferences, to unravel ambiguities and fill in missing information. Knowing a person makes communication much easier.” -- Nicholas Negroponte, Founder and Director, MIT Media Lab |
| Week of 07/22/2001: |
“I didn't have to get a life when I was a kid. Soul Train was the big event of my week.” -- Cibo Matto's Yuka Honda |
| Week of 07/15/2001: |
“Design is the conscious and intuitive effort to impose meaningful order.” -- Victor Papanek |
| Week of 07/08/2001: |
“The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see.” -- Gilbert H. Chesterton |
| Week of 07/01/2001: |
“A happy person is not a person in a certain set of circumstances, but rather a person with a certain set of attitudes.” -- Hugh Downs |
| Week of 06/24/2001: |
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world; indeed it's the only thing that ever has.” -- Margaret Mead (1901-1978), American Anthropologist |
| Week of 06/17/2001: |
“Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it.” -- Tallulah Bankhead |
| Week of 06/10/2001: |
“Never mistake a clear view for a short distance.” -- Paul Saffo, consultant and information technology futurist |
| Week of 06/03/2001: |
“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” -- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Week of 05/27/2001: |
“You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover will be yourself.” -- Alan Alda |
| Week of 05/20/2001: |
“When a prince's personal conduct is correct, his government is effective without the issuing of orders. If his personal conduct is not correct, he may issue orders, but they will not be followed.” -- Confucius |
| Week of 05/13/2001: |
“Nothing is better than happiness, but a ham sandwich is better than nothing.” -- Sage fortune cookie advice from computer mah-jongg memory game “Shanghai” |
| Week of 05/06/2001: |
“The president just recently asked an important question. He asked 'Is our children learning?' Well, in this budget, they is not.” -- U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA), on education cuts reflected in the budget proposed by George W. Bush |
| Week of 04/29/2001: |
“Too much of a good thing can be wonderful.” -- Mae West |
| Week of 04/22/2001: |
“You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test.” -- President George W. Bush, touting his education-reform plans |
| Week of 04/15/2001: |
“Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.” -- Hector Berlioz (1803-1869), French composer |
| Week of 04/08/2001: |
“Time is what keeps things from happening at once.” -- John Archibald Wheeler, physicist |
| Week of 04/01/2001: |
“Before criticizing people, walk a mile in their shoes. Then when you do criticize them, you will be a mile away, and have their shoes.” -- Jack Handey |
| Week of 03/25/2001: |
“I am a typed director. If I made Cinderella, the audience would be looking for a body in the coach.” -- Alfred Hitchcock |
| Week of 03/18/2001: |
“If you have the same ideas as everybody else but have them one week earlier than everyone else then you will be hailed as a visionary. But if you have them five years earlier you will be named a lunatic.” -- Barry Jones |
| Week of 03/11/2001: |
“Perfection (in design) is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but rather when there is nothing more to take away.” -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery |
| Week of 03/04/2001: |
“A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimension.” -- Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894), father of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., the jurist |
| Week of 02/25/2001: |
“Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.” -- Albert Einstein (1879-1955) |
| Week of 02/18/2001: |
“What we play is life.” -- Louis Armstrong |
| Week of 02/11/2001: |
“The great thing about America is everybody should vote.” -- George W. Bush, Austin, Texas, Dec. 8, 2000 (see more enlightening Bushisms) |
| Week of 02/04/2001: |
“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.” -- Bertrand Russell |
| Week of 01/28/2001: |
“The Information Age is now of an age that deserves the same kind of healthy skepticism applied to the world of bits that we routinely expect in the world of atoms.” -- Neil Gershenfeld, 'When Things Start to Think' |
| Week of 01/21/2001: |
“The most important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them.” -- Sir William Bragg |
| Week of 01/14/2001: |
“Use no word that under stress of emotion you could not actually say.” -- Ezra Pound |
| Week of 01/07/2001: |
“I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.” -- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Week of 12/31/2000: |
“It's extraordinary how extraordinary the ordinary person is.” -- George F. Will |
| Week of 12/24/2000: |
“Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose--a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.” -- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797 - 1851) |
| Week of 12/17/2000: |
“The present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter.” -- Blaise Pascal (1623-62) |
| Week of 12/10/2000: |
“Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.” -- John Lennon (1940 - 1980), from “Beautiful Boy” |
| Week of 12/03/2000: |
“The acme of judicial distinction means the ability to look a lawyer straight in the eyes for two hours and not hear a damn word he says.” -- Chief Justice John Marshall (1755 - 1835) |
| Week of 11/26/2000: |
“Success is simply a matter of luck. Ask any failure.” -- Earl Wilson |
| Week of 11/19/2000: |
“Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won't work.” -- Thomas A. Edison |
| Week of 11/12/2000: |
“Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has been devised.” -- Apsley Cherry-Garrard, the assistant zoologist on the British Antarctic Expedition 1910-13, led by R.F. Scott |
| Week of 11/05/2000: |
“An unanswered question is a fine traveling companion. It sharpens your eye for the road.” -- Rachel Naomi Remen (from Kitchen Table Wisdom) |
| Week of 10/29/2000: |
“In America, anyone can become president. That's one of the risks you take.” -- Adlai E. Stevenson (1900-1965), governor of Illinois, Democratic presidential candidate, and UN ambassador |
| Week of 10/22/2000: |
“I tried reality once; I found it too confining.” -- Lily Tomlin |
| Week of 10/15/2000: |
“I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying.” -- Woody Allen |
| Week of 10/08/2000: |
“Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” -- T. S. Eliot, “The Rock” |
| Week of 10/01/2000: |
“I find that a great part of the information I have was acquired by looking up something and finding something else on the way.” -- Franklin Pierce Adams (1881-1960) |
| Week of 09/24/2000: |
“After listening to you, Anna, I need therapy.” -- My sister's therapist |
| Week of 09/17/2000: |
“When I was a young kid, and you were going into acting, you weren't supposed to have a vowel at the end of your name.” -- Actor Al Pacino, recalling how he considered changing his name to Sonny Scott early his career |
| Week of 09/10/2000: |
“The Times is looking suspiciously like our Pravda.... You read it in order to figure out how you're supposed to think about what is going on in the world.” -- Chalmers Johnson, political scientist and East Asian scholar |
| Week of 09/03/2000: |
“When you come right down to it, most of us ignore much of life because we don't want to look at what it would imply that we ought to do.” -- Barbara T. Christian |
| Week of 08/27/2000: |
“If anyone disagrees with anything I say, I am quite prepared not only to retract it, but also to deny under oath that I ever said it.” -- Tom Lehrer |
| Week of 08/20/2000: |
“A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history--with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila.” -- Mitch Ratliffe, Technology Review, April 1992 |
| Week of 08/13/2000: |
“To play a good game of billiards is the sign of a well-rounded education, but to play too good a game of billiards is the sign of a misspent youth.” -- Lord Chesterfield, in a letter to his son |
| Week of 08/06/2000: |
“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” -- Albert Einstein |
| Week of 07/30/2000: |
“There are four things that hold back human progress. Ignorance, stupidity, committees, and accountants.” -- Charles J. C. Lyall |
| Week of 07/23/2000: |
“That the separation of form and function, of concept and execution, is not likely to produce objects of aesthetic value has been repeatedly demonstrated.” -- Paul Rand |
| Week of 07/16/2000: |
“You never achieve real success unless you like what you are doing.” -- Dale Carnegie |
| Week of 07/09/2000: |
“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” -- Eleanor Roosevelt |
| Week of 07/02/2000: |
“It's an odd thing, but anyone who disappears is said to be seen in San Francisco.” -- Oscar Wilde |
| Week of 06/25/2000: |
“The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes.” -- Goethe |
| Week of 06/18/2000: |
“A friend is a present you give yourself.” -- Robert Louis Stevenson |
| Week of 06/11/2000: |
“And if you haven't noticed yet, I'm more impressionable when my cement is wet.” -- Billy Bragg, “Greetings to the New Brunette (Shirley)” (Talking to the Taxman about Poetry) |
| Week of 06/04/2000: |
“Now, now my good man. It's no time to make enemies.” -- Voltaire, on his deathbed, in response to a priest asking him to renounce Satan |
| Week of 05/28/2000: |
“In a perfect world, 'T. S. Eliot' spelled backward would be 'toilets'.” -- Carrie Fisher |
| Week of 05/21/2000: |
“In connection with bikinis and other treats to the eye, it is generally true that most Europeans are less prudish than most Americans, although this does not mean that their moral standards are any lower.” -- David Dodge, The Poor Man's Guide to Europe (1953) |
| Week of 05/14/2000: |
“Philosophers often fail to recognize that their remarks about the universe apply also to themselves and their remarks. If the universe is meaningless, so is the statement that it is so.” -- Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity |
| Week of 05/07/2000: |
“Take some more tea,' the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly. 'I've had nothing yet,' Alice replied in an offended tone, 'so I can't take more.' 'You mean you can't take less,' said the Hatter. 'It's very easy to take more than nothing.'” -- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland |
| Week of 04/30/2000: |
“I'm not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I'm not dumb... and I also know that I'm not blonde.” -- Dolly Parton |
| Week of 04/23/2000: |
“Without art, the crudeness of reality would make life unbearable.” -- George Bernard Shaw |
| Week of 04/16/2000: |
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” -- Arthur C. Clarke |
| Week of 04/09/2000: |
“The Earth is degenerating today. Bribery and corruption abound. Children no longer obey their parents, every man wants to write a book, and it is evident that the end of the world is fast approaching.” -- Assyrian tablet, c. 2800 BC |
| Week of 04/02/2000: |
“Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.” -- Pablo Picasso |
| Week of 03/26/2000: |
“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.” -- Alice Walker (1944-) |
| Week of 03/19/2000: |
“No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up.” -- Jane Wagner (for Lily Tomlin, “The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe”) |
| Week of 03/12/2000: |
“The blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice.” -- Barry White (“Staying Power”) |
| Week of 03/05/2000: |
“It's embarrassing you try to overthrow the government and you wind up on the Best Seller's List.” -- Abbie Hoffman |
| Week of 02/27/2000: |
“One of the greatest joys known to man is to take a flight into ignorance in search of knowledge.” -- Robert Lynd |
| Week of 02/20/2000: |
“We've become a race of Peeping Toms. What people ought to do is get outside their own house and look in for a change.” -- Stella (played by Thelma Ritter), to L.B. Jeffreys (James Stewart) in Alfred Hitchcock's “Rear Window” (1954) |
| Week of 02/13/2000: |
“Dad says, The good Catholic woman must perform her wifely duties and submit to her husband or face eternal damnation. Mam says, As long as there are no more children eternal damnation sounds attractive enough to me.” -- Frank McCort, Angela's Ashes |
| Week of 02/06/2000: |
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that 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 |
| Week of 01/30/2000: |
“Atheism is a non-prophet organization.” -- George Carlin |
| Week of 01/23/2000: |
“Delay is preferable to error.” -- Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826), letter to George Washington (5/16/1792) |
| Week of 01/16/2000: |
“A freeloader is a confirmed guest. He is the man who is always willing to come to dinner.” -- Damon Runyon (1884 - 1946) |
| Week of 01/09/2000: |
“Ah, my friends, rejoice. These are frabjous days.” -- Molly Ivins, “Wanted: one strong stomach,” The Progressive (3/1/1995) |
| Week of 01/02/2000: |
“Lewis Carroll liked little girls. I don't.” -- Vladimir Nabakov, who translated Alice in Wonderland into Russian in 1923 |
| Week of 12/26/1999: |
“Don't talk about me being unmusical because I can beat you up on that one.” -- Barry Manilow |
| Week of 12/19/1999: |
“It would have been both ironic and glamorous to be finished off by a four-foot glitter ball.” -- Boy George, after an on-stage accident in which he was bruised by a falling stage prop |
| Week of 12/12/1999: |
“It's raining bad poetry.” -- Rick Rickards |