But are not American. I have been trying to search on the web. I am especially trying to find football(soccer quotes) but I can only find quotes about Grid iron.
I meant the quotes being not about American sports. Anyone is free to help me.
Nothing that has ever had value for the living can ever completely lose its vitality. – Walter Pater
To know how to write well is to know how to think well. – Blaise Pascal
We learn from failure, not from sucess! – Abraham van Helsing (OK, Bram Stoker).
Ultimately we learn best by placing our confidence in men and women whose examples invite us to love what they love. – Robert Louis Wilken
You can also write math jokes, which we’ve done several times here. SDMB search or just google “math jokes” and you’ll find plenty. Also, let your students submit quotes of their own if they want to.
Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is
not original, and the part that is original is not good.
- Samuel Johnson
*First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out–because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the communists
and I did not speak out–because I was not a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out–because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me–
and there was no one left to speak out for me.*
- Martin Niemöller, 1939
Heh, finally a reason to bust out my sig lines. I almost never use the sig anymore when posting, but…
You can find some good Richard Fenyman quotes here. He was a pretty funny guy and has some great quotes.
Niels Bohr also has some great quotes. I personally like:
Just a thought, maybe you could make a game out of it. Use quotes from one person until a student names the person quoted. Though that might be a little easy these days with google.
Slee
Robert Heinlein writing as Lazarus Long is a rich source. Here’s one that should be carved in stone or bronze above the entrance to every school in the world:
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
More school-appropriate Lazarus Longisms:
“A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity.”
“A generation which ignores history has no past — and no future.”
"Certainly the game is rigged. Don’t let that stop you; if you don’t bet, you can’t win.
“Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house.”
“Expertise in one field does not carry over into other fields. But experts often think so. The narrower their field of knowledge the more likely they are to think so.”
“Courage is the complement of fear. A man who is fearless cannot be courageous. (He is also a fool.)”
“If it can’t be expressed in figures, it is not fact; it is opinion.”
“If you don’t like yourself, you can’t like other people.”
“If you happen to be one of the fretful minority who can do creative work, never force an idea; you’ll abort it if you do. Be patient and you’ll give birth to it when the time is ripe. Learn to wait.”
“Most “scientists” are bottle washers and button sorters.”
“Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness provide lubrication where people rub together. Often the very young, the untraveled, the naïve, the unsophisticated deplore these formalities as “empty,” “meaningless,” or “dishonest,” and scorn to use them. No matter how “pure” their motives, they thereby throw sand into machinery that does not work too well at best.”
“Stupidity cannot be cured with money, or through education, or by legislation. Stupidity is not a sin, the victim can’t help being stupid. But stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death, there is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity.”
“The truth of a proposition has nothing to do with its credibility. And vice versa.”
“What are the facts? Again and again and again — what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what “the stars foretell,” avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable “verdict of history” — what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!”
“Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.” Napoleon Bonaparte
(I have also seen this quote as "Fame is fleeting, etc).
“… but even the Emperor himself cannot buy another day.” Chinese proverb
This has been a favourite for a while now:
Do more than exist, LIVE
Do more than touch, FEEL
Do more than look, OBSERVE
Do more than read, ABSORB
Do more than hear, LISTEN
Do more than listen, UNDERSTAND
Do more than think, PONDER
Do more than talk, SAY SOMETHING
- John H Rhoades
If you don’t like it, change it. If you don’t want to change it, it can’t be that bad. Anonymous
Plan for the future because that’s where you are going to spend the rest of your life. Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Finish whatever you begin, and experience the triumph of completion. Anon
Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance. Samuel Johnson
Consider the postage stamp; its usefulness consists in the ability to stick to one thing till it gets there. Josh Billings (1818 - 1883)
Lottery: a tax on people who are bad at maths
Generally speaking, you aren’t learning much when your mouth is moving
There is no danger of developing eyestrain from looking on the bright side of things.
Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries. James A. Michener
If you are not getting as much from life as you want to, then examine the state of your enthusiasm. Norman Vincent Peale
Six essential qualities that are the key to success: Sincerity, personal integrity, humility, courtesy, wisdom, charity. William Menninger
Live so that your friends can defend you but never have to. Arnold Glasow
To accomplish great things we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe. Anatole France (1844 - 1924)
Never look down on anybody unless you’re helping them up. Jesse Jackson
from my sig. Calvin Collidge. Though not really amusing
Nothing in the World can take the place of persistence.
Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.
Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.
Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.
Persistence and determination are omnipotent.
If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.
- Isaac Asimov
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
Base words are uttered only by the base
And can for such at once be understood,
But noble platitudes:–ah, there’s a case
Where the most careful scrutiny is needed
To tell a voice that’s genuinely good
From one that’s base but merely has succeeded.
- W.H. Auden, “Base Words are Uttered”
It is great good health to believe, as the Hindus do, that there are 33 million gods and goddesses in the world. It is great good health to want to understand one’s dreams. It is great good health to desire the ambiguous and paradoxical. It is sickness of the profoundest kind to believe that there is one reality. There is sickness in any piece of work or any piece of art seriously attempting to suggest that the idea that there is more than one reality is somehow redundant.
- Clive Barker
I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.
- Oliver Cromwell
Smart is not a four-letter word. That would be smar.
- from *Daria *
Well, allow me to introduce myself to you as an advocate of Ornamental Knowledge. You like the mind to be a neat machine, equipped to work efficiently, if narrowly, and with no extra bits or useless parts. I like the mind to be a dustbin of scraps of brilliant fabric, odd gems, worthless but fascinating curiosities, tinsel, quaint bits of carving, and a reasonable amount of healthy dirt. Shake the machine and it goes out of order; shake the dustbin and it adjusts itself beautifully to its new position.
- Robertson Davies, Tempest-Tost
Learning is not compulsory. Neither is survival.
- W. Edwards Deming
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, does not go away.
- Philip K. Dick
There’s a simple solution to every complex problem, and it’s wrong.
- Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum
Curiosity is the very basis of education and if you tell me that curiosity killed the cat, I say only the cat died nobly.
- Arnold Edinborough
Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.
- André Gide
The most damaging phrase in the language is, “We’ve always done it this way.”
- Admiral Grace Hopper
Whoever ceases to be a student has never been a student.
- George Iles
Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think.
- John Stuart Mill, *On Liberty *
I don’t mind hidden depths but I insist that there be a surface.
- James D. Nicoll
If there were a single truth, it would be impossible to paint a hundred canvases on the same theme.
- Pablo Picasso
A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today that he was yesterday.
- Alexander Pope
I would remind you…that Socrates was executed not for saying what things were or should be, but for seeking practical indications of where some reasonable approximation of truth might be. He was executed not for his megalomania or grandiose propositions or certitudes, but for stubbornly doubting the absolute truths of others.
- John Ralston Saul, The Unconscious Civilization
The reward for conformity was that everyone liked you except yourself.
- Rita Mae Brown, Venus Envy
Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it.
- Tallulah Bankhead
Mad, adj. Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence; not conforming to standards of thought, speech, and action derived by the conformants from study of themselves; at odds with the majority; in short, unusual. It is noteworthy that persons are pronounced mad by officials destitute of evidence that they themselves are sane.
- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary
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
If you’re one in a million, there are ten of you in New York.
- julie@drycas.club.cc.cmu.edu, posted on the Internet
That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.
- John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
Be yourself. If you try to be someone else, it makes life so difficult for the post office and deliverymen.
- Miss Piggy
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
unbeingdead isn’t beingalive.
- E. E. Cummings
If you’re already walking on thin ice, you might as well dance.
- Gil Atkinson
A sympathetic Scot summed it all up very neatly in the remark, “You should make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and folk dancing.”
- Sir Arnold Bax
Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the Titanic who waved off the dessert cart.
- Erma Bombeck
Life is better than death, I believe, if only because it is less boring, and because it has fresh peaches in it.
- Alice Walker
People who are easily shocked should be shocked more often.
- Mae West
You can’t have everything. Where would you put it?
- Steven Wright
You know, I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, wouldn’t it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them? So, now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe.
- Marcus Cole, “A Late Delivery from Avalon,” Babylon 5
What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?
- George Eliot, Middlemarch
Man’s capacity for decent behavior seems to vary directly with his perception of others as individual humans, with human motives and feelings, whereas his capacity for barbarism seems related to his perception of an adversary in abstract terms, as the embodiment, that is, of some evil design or ideology.
- Senator William Fullbright
Somebody here has a sig quoting someone who said something like, “Data will confess to anything if you torture it sufficiently”.
Another quote I like is “Not all who wander are lost”, which seems particularly relevant for college undergrads. Forget who said it, though.
Here’s one your indie contingent will like: “Nobody goes there, it’s too crowded.” – Yogi Berra
The classic American sports quote, of course, is Michael Jordan’s “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”
Also, try my sig. 
“Soccer players do it in 11 positions for 90 minutes.”
Seriously, I’m sure there’s lots. Just typing this into Google:
football quotes -NFL
will probably get you some good ones. And of course you can search for individual names of non-American sports, or Google this:
sport quotes -NFL -basketball -baseball -hockey
Look into a copy of George Seldes’ The Great Thoughts. It’s the single best book on the subject of ideas in brief. Then there’s Bartlett’s book of quotes.
And if you want good fake quotes, check the chapter headers in the original Dune series (by Frank Herbert). Do avoid the trash written by his son and the other guy.