Quotes F-M


"Faith, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel."
- Ambrose Bierce, American author (1842-1914)
"Fanaticism consists of redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim."
- George Santayana
"Farming looks easy when your plow is a pencil and you're a thousand miles from a cornfield."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
"Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months."
- Oscar Wilde, British playwright, poet, and novelist (1854-1900)
"Few things are more satisfying than seeing your own children have teenagers of their own."
- Doug Larson
"Figure it out. Work a lifetime to pay off a house. You finally own it and there's no one to live in it."
- Arthur Miller, "Death of a Salesman"
"For my part, the lonber I live the less I feel the need of any sort of theological belief, and the more I am content to let unseen powers go on their way with me and mine without question or distrust."
- John Burroughs, American essayist (1837-1921)
"Frequent punishments are always a sign of weakness or laziness on the part of a government."
- Jean Jacques Rousseau
"Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains."
- Jane Hopkins
"Genius is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration."
- Thomas Alva Edison
"Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please."
- Mark Twain
"Girls are like pianos. When they're not upright, they're grand."
- Benny Hill
"Give a small boy a hammer and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding."
- Abraham Kaplan
"Give me a lever long enought, and a prop strong enough. I can singlehandedly move the world."
- Archimedes, Greek mathematician (287?-212 B.C)
"Give me the luxuries of life and I will willingly do without the necessities."
- Frank Lloyd Wright
"God wisely designed the human body so that we can neither pat our own backs nor kick ourselves too easily."
- unknown
"Good judgement comes from experience; and experience, well, that comes from bad judgement."
- Anonymous
"Goodness is the only investment that never fails."
- Henry David Thoreau
"Great Spirit, help me never to judge another until I have walked in his moccasins for two weeks."
- Sioux Indian Prayer
"Half a man's life is devoted to what he calls improvements, yet the original had some quality which is lost in the process."
- E. B. White, American author (1899-1985)
"Harmony seldom makes a headline."
- Silas Bent, American writer (1882-1945)
"He is happiest who hath power to gather wisdom from a flower."
- Mary Howitt
"He is not an honest man who has burned his tongue and does not tell the company that the soup is hot."
- Yugoslav proverb
"He is winding the watch of his wit; by and by it will strike."
- William Shakespeare
"He that is proud eats up himself; pride is his own glass, his own trumpet, his own chronicle."
- William Shakespeare
"He that would perfect his work must first sharpen his tools."
- Confucius
"He who hurries cannot walk with dignity."
- fortune cookie
"He who is sorry for having sinned is almost innocent."
- Seneca
"He who wonders discovers that this in itself is wonder."
- M. C. Escher
"He whose face gives no light shall never become a star."
- William Blake, English poet and artist (1757-1827)
"Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads."
- Henry David Thoreau
"Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history."
- George Bernard Shaw
"Here's to your love, health, and wealth--and time to enjoy each."
- Spanish Proverb
"Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people."
- W.C. Fields
"How can you expect to govern a country that has two hundred and forty-six kinds of cheese?
- Charles de Gaulle
"Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe."
- H. G. Wells
"I always say that, next to a battle lost, the greatest misery is a battle gained."
- the Duke of Wellington
"I am not afraid of tomorrow, for I have seen yesterday and I love today."
- William Allen White, American journalist (1868-1944)
"I am not sincere, even when I say I am not."
- Jules Renard
"I avoid looking forward or backward, and try to keep going forward."
- Charlotte Bronte, English author (1816-1855)
"I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty."
- John D. Rockefeller
"I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them."
- Isaac Asamov.
"I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way."
- Mark Twain
"I don't have any solution, but I certainly admire the problem"
- Ashleigh Brilliant
"I don't necessarily agree with everything I say."
- Marshall McLuhan
"I don't think anyone should write their autobiography until after they're dead."
- Samuel Goldwyn
"I got a simple rule about everybody. If you don't treat me right, shame on you."
- Louis Armstrong, American jazz musician (1900-1971)
"I have long considered it one of God's greatest mercies that the future is hidden from us. If it were not, life would surely be unbearable."
- Eugene Forsey
"I have made mistakes, but have never made the mistake of claiming I never made one."
- James G. Bennet
"I have taken more good from alcohol than alcohol has taken from me."
- Winston Churchill
"I know that there are people who do not love their fellow man, and I hate people like that!"
- Tom Lehrer, Satirist and Professor
"I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty."
- John F. Kennedy
"I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it."
- Voltaire, French writer and philospher (1694-1778)
"I never forget a face, but in your case I'll make an exception."
- Groucho Marx
"I never put on a pair of shoes until I've worn them at least five years."
- Samuel Goldwyn
"I once played a sheriff who thought he could do the job without a gun. I was dead in twenty-seven minutes of a thirty minute show."
- Ronald Reagan
"I predict that exact reproduction through cloning will not become popular. Too many people already find it difficult to live with themselves."
- Jeanne Dixon
"I prefer the errors of enthusiasm to the indifference of wisdom."
- Anatole France
"I think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability."
- Oscar Wilde
"I use not only all the brains I have, but all I can borrow."
- Woodrow Wilson
"I will answer anything I can with honor, but not about others."
- John Brown, American abolitionist (1800-1859)
"I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works."
- Samuel Johnson
"I wouldn't join any club that would have me as a member."
- Groucho Marx
"I'm always fascinated by the way memory diffuses fact."
- Diane Sawyer
"I'm an idealist. I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way."
- Carl Sandburg
"I'm opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position."
- Mark Twain
"I'm very critical of the U.S., but get me outside the country and all of a sudden I can't bring myself to say one nasty thing about the U.S."
- Saul Alinsky, American political activist (1902-1972)
"I've been trying for some time to develop a life style that doesn't require my presence."
- Gary Trudeau
"I've gone into hundreds of (fortune-tellers' parlors), and have been told thousands of things, but nobody ever told me I was a policewoman getting ready to arrest her."
- N. Y. C. detective
"I've never met a healthy person who worried much about his health or a good person who worried much about his soul."
- Haldane
"I've often said that my rats have taught me much more than I've taught them."
- B. F. Skinner
"If, while you are in school, there is a shortage of qualified personnel in a particular field, then by the time you graduate with the necessary qualifications, that field's employment is glutted."
- Marguerite Emmons
"If a child lives with approval, he learns to like himself."
- Dorothy Law Nolte.
"If all the cars in the United States were placed end to end, it would probably be Labor Day weekend."
- Doug Larson
"If death did not exist today it would be necessary to invent it."
- Count Jean Baptiste Milhoud
"If God had really intended men to fly, he'd make it easier to get to the airport."
- George Winters
"If God lived on earth, people would knock out all his windows"
- Yiddish saying
"If I could drop dead right now, I'd be the happiest man alive."
- Samuel Goldwyn
"If I have seen farther than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants."
- Sir Isaac Newton
"If I were a medical man, I should prescribe a holiday to any patient who considered his work important."
- Bertrand Russell
"If poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree, it better not come at all."
- John Keats
"If the aborigine drafted an I.Q. test, all of Western civilization would presumably flunk it."
- Stanley Garn
"If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail."
- Abraham Maslow
"If there is a gun hanging on the wall in the first act, it must fire in the last."
- Anton Chehkov, advice to a novice playwright.
"If there is no God, who pops up the next Kleenex?"
- Art Hoppe
"If time be of all things most precious, wasting time must be the greatest prodigality, since lost time is never found again; and what we call time enough always proves little enough."
- Benjamin Franklin
"If we make peaceful revolution impossible, we make violent revolution inevitable."
- John F. Kennedy
"If we take science as our sole guide, if we accept and hold fast that alone which is verifiable, the old theology must go."
- John Burroughs, American essayist (1837-1921)
"If you cannot convince them, confuse them"
- Harry S. Truman, U.S. President (1884-1972)
"If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well dance with it."
- George Bernard Shaw
"If you give me six lines written by the most honest man, I will find something in them to hang him."
- Cardinal Richelieu
"If you hear a wise sentence or an apt phrase, commit it to your memory."
- Sir Henry Sidney
"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principle difference between a dog and a man."
- Mark Twain
"If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car payments."
- Earl Wilson
"If you think there are no new frontiers, watch a boy ring the front doorbell on his first date."
- Olin Miller
"If you want a place in the sun, you've got to expect a few blisters."
- Dear Abby
"If you want to make enemies, try to change something."
- President Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924)
"If you're strong enough, there are no precedents."
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life."
- Joseph Conrad, Polish-born author (1857-1924)
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
- Albert Einstein
"In a painting I want to say something comforting."
- Vincent van Gogh
"In America there are two classes of travel - first class, and with children."
- Robert Benchley
"In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary, 'patriotism' is defined as the last resort of the scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer, I beg to submit that it is the first."
- Ambrose Bierce, American writer
"In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French; I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their language."
- Mark Twain
"In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart."
- Anne Frank
"In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true either is true or becomes true."
- John Lilly
"In these matters the only certainty is that nothing is certain."
- Pliny the Elder
"In this world, nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes."
- Benjamin Franklin
"Inflation is when the buck doesn't stop anywhere."
- Orben's Current Commedy
"Inform all the troops that communications have completely broken down."
- Ashleigh Brilliant
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Iron rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity, and in cold weather becomes frozen, even so does inaction sap the vigors of the mind."
- Leonardo Da Vinci
"Is there life before death?"
- Belfast Graffito
"Isn't it strange? The same people who laugh at gypsy fortune-tellers take economists seriously."
- anonymous
"It has been observed that one's nose is never so happy as when it is thrust into the affairs of another, from which some physiologists have drawn the inference that the nose is devoid of the sense of smell"
- Ambrose Bierce, American writer
"It is always brave to say what everyone thinks."
- Georges Duhamel, French author (1884-1966)
"It is always easier to believe than to deny. Our minds are naturally affirmative."
- John Burroughs, American essayist (1837-1921)
"It is bad luck to be superstitious"
- Andrew W. Mathis
"It is better to remain silent and thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."
- Anonymous
"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God."
- Matthew 19:24
"It is easier to fight for principles than to live up to them."
- Alfred Adler, Father of individual psychology (1870-1937)
"It is impossible to experience one's death objectively and still carry a tune."
- Woody Allen
"It is impossible to make anything foolproof, because fools are so ingenious"
- anonymous
"It is impossible to travel faster than the speed of light, and certainly not desirable, as one's hat keeps blowing off."
- Woody Allen
"It is neither wealth nor splendor, but tranquility and occupation, that gives happiness."
- Thomas Jefferson
"It is not necessary for the public to know whether I am joking or whether I am serious, just as it is not necessary for me to know it myself."
- Salvador Dali
"It is not necessary to understand things in order to argue about them."
- Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, French author-dramatist (1732-1799)
"It is not what we do, but also what we do not do, for which we are accountable."
- Moliere
"It is now proved beyond doubt that smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics."
- Fletcher Knebel
"It is odd, is it not, that a person's worth to society is measured by their wealth, when instead their wealth should be measured by their worth to society."
- A. Cygni
"It is people who live by the rules that are always hoping to get them changed."
- Robert Harbison
"It is perfectly true that the government is best which govern least. It is equally true that the government is best which provides most."
- Walter Lippmann
"It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others."
- John Andrew Holmes
"It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship god but to create him."
- Arthur C. Clarke
"It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech."
- Mark Twain, American Writer (1835-1910)
"It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window."
- Raymond Chandler, "Farewell, my lovely."
"It was always thus; and even if 'twere not, 'twould inevitably have been always thus."
- Dean Lattimer
"It would be as useless to perceive how things 'actually look' as it would be to watch the random dots on untuned television screens."
- Marvin Minsky
"It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to paint it."
- Steven Wright
"It's not easy taking my problems one at a time when they refuse to get in line."
- Ashleigh Brilliant
"It's not the things we don't know that get us into trouble; it's the things we do know that aint so."
- Will Rogers
"It's not true that nice guys finish last. Nice guys are winners before the game even starts."
- Addison Walker
"It's said that pigeons are the smartest people around; they're always getting the drop on the rest of us."
- Anonymous
"Journalists are like whores; as high as their ideals may be, they still have to resort to tricks to make money."
- A. Cygni
"Just the omission of Jane Austen's books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn't a book in it."
- Mark Twain
"Justice is incidental to law and order."
- J. Edgar Hoover
"Keep a stiff upper chin."
- Samuel Goldwyn
"Laughter is a tranquilizer with no side effects."
- Anonymous
"Learning music by reading about it is like making love by mail."
- Luciano Pavarotti
"Less than fifteen per cent of the people do any original thinking on any subject... The greatest torture in the world for most people is to think."
- Luther Burbank, American horticulturist (1849-1926)
"Let everyone sweep in front of his own door, and the whole world will be clean."
- Göthe
"Let us so endeavor to live, that when we come to die, even the undertaker will be sorry."
- Mark Twain.
"Let's have some new cliches."
- Samuel Goldwyn
"Life is an unbroken succession of false situations."
- Thornton Wilder, American playwright (1897-1975)
"Logic is a system whereby one may go wrong with confidence."
- Charles Kettering
"Love cures people; both the ones who give it, and the ones who receive it."
- Dr. Karl Menninger
"Love your neighbors, but don't pull down the fence."
- Chinese proverb.
"Luck can't last a lifetime unless you die young."
- Russell Banks
"Make things as simple as possible, but no simpler."
- Albert Einstein
"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 Russel, British philosopher (1872-1970)
"Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason."
- Oscar Wilde, British playwright, poet, and novelist (1854-1900)
"Man is an infant, with the toys of a child, and delusions of adulthood."
- A. Cygni, Philosopher
"Man is only happy as he finds a work worth doing, and does it well."
- E. Merrill Root
"Man is the only animal that blushes... or needs to."
- Mark Twain, American Writer (1835-1910)
"Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on."
- Winston Churchill, British statesman and writer (1874-1965)
"Marriage is a great institution, but I'm not ready for an institution yet."
- Mae West.
"Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly."
- Voltaire, French writer and philospher (1694-1778)
"Maybe this world is another planet's hell."
- Aldous Huxley
"Men don't change. The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know."
- President Harry S. Truman (1884-1972)
"Men like to pursue an elusive woman like a cake of wet soap - even men who hate baths."
- Gelett Burgess
"Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms."
- Groucho Marx
"Miracles happen to those who believe in them. Otherwise why does not the Virgin Mary appear to Lamaists, Mohammedans, or Hindus who have never heard of her."
- Bernard Berenson, American art authority (1865-1959)
"Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess."
- Oscar Wilde
"Money is like an arm or leg: use it or lose it."
- Henry Ford
"Money may be the husk of many things, but not the kernel. It buys you food, but not appetite; medicine, but not health; acquaintances, but not friends; servants, but not loyalty; days of joy, but not peace or happiness."
- Henrik Ibsen
"Most of the evils of life arise from man's being unable to sit still in a room."
- Blaise Pascal
"My husband gave me a permanent wave, and now he's gone."
- Dawn Messer
"My life has a superb cast but I can't figure out the plot."
- Ashleigh Brilliant
"My notion of a wife at forty is that a man should be able to change her, like a bank note, for two twenties."
- Douglas Jerrold
"My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind."
- Albert Einstein

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