Not sure of who:
Sometimes Nonsense Just Makes SenseAnother of my favourites:
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.
By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.
One should always play fairly when one holds the winning cards.
The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.
In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.
To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.
Whenever too many people agree with me, I always feel I must be wrong.
It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art.
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
– Oscar Wilde
“For every complex problem, there is a simple solution–and it is wrong.” John Lord Acton
(Alternatively: “For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.” H. L Mencken)
“People! They’re no damned good.” My Dad
“In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.”
– Carl Sagan
Not paticularly apropos of anything, but an oscar Wilde quote also, said after leaving prison:
If this is how Her majesty treats her guests, she doesn’t deserve any.
Einstein: “Only two things are endless: the universe and human stupidity. And I’m not too sure about that first one.”
Nothing draws a crowd like a crowd.
-Soul Asylum
I think it’s “Nothing ATTRACTS a crowd like a crowd.” Same idea.
I started a thread years ago about truisms in pop songs and that line is the ultimate truism.
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. "
T. Roosevelt
“Today, not possible. Tomorrow, possible.”
H. U. Lee, founder and first Grand Master of the American Taekwondo Association.
“Give a hungry man a fish and he eats today. Give a hungry man religion and he’ll starve to death praying for a fish.”
Anonymous
Bill Veeck
**We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy. ** Joseph Campbell
Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and it annoys the pig. Paul Dickson
And to quote a movie…
“Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.” The Princess Bride
“Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish and he drinks all day.” --anonymous
“If you’re looking for sympathy, you can find it in the dictionary between shit and syphilis.” --My grandmother
“It’s called Show Business, not Show Art.” - Bill Schenk, University of Vermont Theatre Department
My goal is to be accused of being strident.
—Susan Faludi
What is hateful… is not rebellion, but the despotism which induces that rebellion; not rebels but the men who, having the enjoyment of power, do not discharge the duties of power; the men who, when they are asked for a loaf, give a stone.
Sir Wilfrid Laurier
The single purpose of power is to serve the public weal.
—John Ralston Saul
If you are a woman, if you are a person of colour, if you are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, if you are a person of size, if you are a person of intelligence, if you are a person of integrity, then you are considered a minority in this world. And it’s going to be really hard for us to find messages of self-love and support anywhere… If you don’t have self-esteem, you will hesitate to do anything in your life… You will hesitate to report a rape. You will hesitate to defend yourself when you are discriminated against because of your race, your sexuality, your size, your gender. You will hesitate to vote; you will hesitate to dream. For us to have self-esteem is truly an act of revolution, and our revolution is long overdue.
Margaret Cho, The Notorious C.H.O.
Men are from Earth. Women are from Earth. Deal with it.
George Carlin
Take away the right to say “fuck” and you take away the right to say “fuck the government.”
Lenny Bruce
The time comes for everyone to do deliberately what he used to do by mistake . . . If you are effeminate by nature, you have to find some way of telling the world that you know you are, otherwise they keep telling you.
Quentin Crisp
I had rather be hated than be beloved for what I am not.
André Gide
All the lessons of psychiatry, psychology, social work, indeed culture, have taught us over the last hundred years that it is the acceptance of differences, not the search for similarities which enables people to relate to each other in their personal or family lives.
John Ralston Saul, Reflections of a Siamese Twin
You want the truth, of course. You want me to put two and two together. But two and two doesn’t necessarily get you the truth… The living bird is not its labelled bones.
Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the Titanic who waved off the dessert cart.
Erma Bombeck
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
So we are proud to reclaim the word “slut” as a term of approval, even endearment. To us, a slut is a person of any gender who has the courage to lead life according to the radical proposition that sex is nice and pleasure is good for you.
Dossie Easton and Catherine Liszt, The Ethical Slut
We are not interested in a world in which to be human is a weakness.
—René-Daniel Dubois
In all recorded history there has not been one economist who had to worry about where the next meal would come from.
Peter F. Drucker
And the day came when the risk it took to remain closed in a bud became more painful then the risk it took to blossom.
Anaïs Nin
…The official five stages - oh, what are they? Anger, depression, denial, bargaining, and acceptance. Well, back up, because here comes my acceptance speech. I am now, and have always been a flaming faggot! Responsible for style in its every manifestation, and I’ve got my own five stages: flippancy, sentimentality, sarcasm, camp, and smut!
Harvey Fierstein
Là où il y a du gris, je mets du rose…
Zazie, “Ma vie en rose”
You can’t have everything. Where would you put it?
—Steven Wright
From my son…
“Life would be better if you could hack it.”
“No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public”.
H. L. Mencken
My personal favorite for years:
“When the doctrine of allegiance to party can utterly up-end a man’s moral constitution and make a temporary fool of him besides, what excuse are you going to offer for preaching it, teaching it, extending it, perpetuating it? Shall you say, the best good of the country demands allegiance to party? Shall you also say it demands that a man kick his truth and his conscience into the gutter, and become a mouthing lunatic, besides?” Mark Twain
A recent favorite (thanks to George Clooney for bringing it to my attention):
“We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine; and remember that we are not descended from fearful men. Not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular.” Edward R. Murrow