Quotes To Live By

In My Humble Opinion
1

Call them clichés, axioms, addages or saws if you will, however trite but true they may be, many of them are words to live by. What are your favorites and did you ever make up any yourself? From memory, here are some of my personal selections and a few of my own invention.
“I do not love by half measures”
[sup][ul][list]Jane Austen[/sup]
[/ul][/list]
“The spoken word flies, the written word stays.”
[ul][list][sup]Ancient Greek Saying[/sup]
[/ul][/list]
“You get what you pay for.”
[ul][list][sup]Unknown[/sup]
[/ul][/list]
“Living well is the best revenge.”
[ul][list][sup]Unknown[/sup]
[/ul][/list]
“Do good, it will amaze your friends and confound your enemies.”
[ul][list][sup]Mark Twain[/sup]
[/ul][/list]
“Only newspaper editors and people with tapeworms should ever refer to themselves as, ‘we’.”
[ul][list][sup]Mark Twain[/sup]
[/ul][/list]
“It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.”
[ul][list][sup]Mark Twain[/sup]
[/ul][/list]
“Never preceed anything more complex than a Frisbee throw with, ‘Hey boss, watch this!’”
[ul][list][sup]Unknown[/sup]
[/ul][/list]
“A man who does not mind what goes into his stomach, will hardly mind anything else.”
[ul][list][sup]Dr. Samuel Johnston[/sup]
[/ul][/list]
“Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to explain the curious attractiveness of others.”
[ul][list][sup]Oscar Wilde[/sup]
[/ul][/list]
“It is best to mince one’s words very finely, it makes them much easier to eat afterwards.”
[ul][list][sup]Oscar Wilde[/sup]
[/ul][/list]
“Never give up, never give up, never, never, never give up!”
[ul][list][sup]Winston Churchill[/sup]
[/ul][/list]
“Democracy is the worst possible form of government, except for all the others.”
[ul][list][sup]Winston Churchill[/sup]
[/ul][/list]
“Anything not prohibited is mandatory”
[ul][list][sup]Unknown[/sup]
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“Only when the last tree is cut, the last fish caught, the last buffalo shot and the last river run dry will the white man learn that you cannot eat money.”
[ul][list][sup]Chief Seattle[/sup]
[/ul][/list]
“Never trust a skinny chef!”
[ul][list][sup]Unknown[/sup]
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“Underneath the skin, all humanity are brothers and I would gladly skin humanity alive to prove it.”
[ul][list][sup]Ellsworth Toohey (from The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand)[/sup][/ul][/list]
“To call a man a thief gives him the right to be one.”
[ul][list][sup]Old Arabic Saying[/sup]
[/ul][/list]
“Winter teaches a naked woman how to knit.”
[ul][list][sup]Old Danish Saying[/sup]
[/ul][/list]
“Measure it with a micrometer, mark it with a grease pencil and cut it with a meat axe.”
[ul][list][sup]Old U.S. Army Saying[/sup]
[/ul][/list]

And a few of my own:
“If you say ‘I can’t…’, you won’t.”
“Never eat oysters when you’re lonely.”
“Sex is like a sports car, the faster you go the more often you wreck it.”
“Beware the woman whose tongue is as sharp as her wits.”
And, of course the ones in my sig line…

[sup]I’M SURE THAT I’LL THINK OF SEVERAL MORE RIGHT AFTER I CLICK ON ‘SUBMIT NEW THREAD’.[/SUP]

2

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” – Shakespeare

“You can’t step into the same river twice.” – Heraclitus

“I don’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member.” – Groucho Marx

“The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopts them.” – Mark Twain

and one from me…

Truth is not democratic.

3

Let him who takes the Plunge remember to return it by Tuesday.

“Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others,
are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.” – Douglas Adams.

I guess when you turn off the main road, you have to be prepared to see some funny houses. - Stephen King

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a broken fan belt and a leaky tire.

Dreaming frees the soul, energizes the spirit and allows you to do things
that would get your ass thrown in jail if you really tried them.

Confucius say: Man who walk through metal detectors sideways is going to Bangkok.

It takes a big man to cry, but it takes a bigger man to laugh at that man – Jack Handy

I call it “No-Pants Wonderday,” but it turns out the police just call it “Thursday.” Go figure.

Give a monkey a brain and he’ll swear he’s the center of the universe.

Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.

When I was a kid my favorite relative was Uncle Caveman. After school we’d all go play in his cave, and every once in a while he would eat one of us. It wasn’t until later that I found out that Uncle Caveman was a bear.

I’m really proud of my cousin. After decades of being illiterate, he’s now Hooked On
Phonics, except substitute “Phonics” with “Crystal Meth.”

“I tried sniffing Coke once, but the ice cubes got stuck in my nose.”

Take my advice: If the recipe calls for “3 handfuls of lava,” it’s really not worth the effort.

“Those are my principles. If you don’t like them I have others.” - Groucho Marx.

“Perilous to us all are the devices of an art deeper than we possess ourselves.” – J.R.R. Tolkien

4

“We apologize for the inconvenience.”
Douglas Adams

“I am not sorry for the things I have done, but those I did not do.”
Ummm … that cool kid from Empire Records

“Rumors of my death were greatly exaggerated.”
Mark Twain

“What is it, oh disruptor of continuity?”
Rowlf the Dog to Gonzo the Great

“Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.”
Janice Joplan

“BWA HA HA!”
Bowser, the King Koopa

5

Well, a few from my mom. She isn’t big on philosophical discussions or cliches, but the few pearls of wisdom she handed down have been good ones:

Perfect is the Enemy of Good

You’ll never regret money you spend on travel

Life is too short to keep on doing something that doesn’t make you happy

6

“But this goes to Eleven”

“War is Peace, Freedom is slavery, Ignorence is Knowledge”

“You want proof it didn’t happen, you say? Well we all know you can not proove a negative, so the best we can do is to show that this is suspiciously unsupported by any hard evidence”

“At this distance They couldn’t even hit an eleph…”

“If I could have gone back in time to fix this situation I would have gone further back and found the first hominid to walk upright. Then I’d kill him.”

7

Love may fail, but courtesy will prevail.

– A Kut Vonnegut fan summing up KV’s work.

8

Complacency is far more dangerous than outrage.
Anonymous

Comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.
Cesar A. Cruz

He who sows wind, reaps storms.
French proverb

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

A good man would prefer to be defeated than to defeat injustice by evil means.
Sallust, Jugurthine War

Every society that claims to give people liberty must start by guaranteeing their existence.
Léon Blum

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt

The single purpose of power is to serve the public weal.
John Ralston Saul

For a moment her brain reeled with confusion. Then came a moment of blazing truth. “No!” she cried triumphantly. “Like and equal are not the same thing at all!”
Madeleine l’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time

I’ve never heard of anything so dangerous we can’t even talk about it!
Sherman Edwards

A free society is a place where it’s safe to be unpopular.
Adlai Stevenson

Those who can’t hear the music think the dancer is mad.
Anonymous

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

If you’re what “cool” is, I’d rather be a geek.
Esprix

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

Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.
André Gide

Reason is a whore.
Søren Kierkegaard

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

unbeingdead isn’t beingalive.
e.e. cummings

Down with a world in which the guarantee that we will not die of starvation has been purchased with the guarantee that we will die of boredom.
Graffito, Paris, 1968

Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?
Friedrich Nietzsche

Just what God needs - one more victim.
Why do we crucify ourselves?
Tori Amos, “Crucify”

Faith: The opposite of dogmatism.
John Ralston Saul, “Doubt”, The Doubter’s Companion

We are not interested in a world in which to be human is a weakness.
René-Daniel Dubois

[T]he ideal of the rugged individual opening up the American West is still applied as an essential truth to ten million citizens living in the small area of New York City, as if ten million bulls should and could be squeezed into a china shop.
John Ralston Saul, Voltaire’s Bastards

We believe in a market economy. We do not believe in a market society.
Ed Broadbent

We can have a democratic society, or we can have the concentration of great wealth in the hands of a few. We cannot have both.
Louis Brandeis

The message [of neoliberalism] is simple. You have a free choice: the labour market, the workhouse prison, death, or go somewhere else.
Noam Chomsky, Perspectives on Power

The law in its majestic equality forbids both the rich and the poor to beg for money, sleep under bridges, and steal bread.
Anatole France

O God of dust and rainbows, help us see
That without dust the rainbow would not be.
Langston Hughes

The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath.
Mark, 2:27

Écartons ces romans qu’on appelle systèmes,
Et pour nous élever descendons dans nous-mêmes.
Voltaire

Review everything you’ve been taught. Discard any thing that’s an insult to your soul. And begin again.
Walt Whitman

9

“Sometimes we bring heartache upon ourselves”

  • Dave Foley
10

The unexamined life isn’t worth living - Some famous Greek guy

It ain’t braggin’ if you can do it - my dad

Like Cranky’s mom, my dad told me that life is too short to be unhappy in what you do.
Shoot, there’s lots more but I always forget to write them down. Guess I’ll have to start doing that. People have listed some good ones. I especially like Mark Twain.

11

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

And when I run into those all-too-frequent others who must have never heard of The Golden Rule, I take comfort in knowing that “what goes around comes around.”

12

Actually, this is an UL. Or, at least, there is no record of Chief Seattle ever saying it. Sorry for the nitpick, since the sentiment still stands, I suppose. (check Snopes for more details on it)

When discussing my difficulty with interviews with a friend he said (roughly) “We’re all whores. You need to learn to sell yourself.” (In case there’s any confusion, I’m an engineer, not a prostitute ;-))

But the words I really try to live by are “Don’t live according to simplistic sayings.” :wink:

13

Funny you should mention this Zenster, I tend to jot down things that occur to me and keep them in a Word document. They aren’t all that profound or original, but I find them useful. (edited for content)

[ul]*
Everybody thinks all of their opinions are correct.
I think all of my opinions are correct.
I consider that highly unlikely.

Belief in God is not the same thing as belief in religion.

If you believe it is all right to punish someone because they hold unpopular opinions, remember: almost everybody has some opinion(s) that others would consider unpopular.
It may be your turn next.

Everyone has a right to their opinions, no matter how loathsome, so long as they don’t act on them.

Women do not understand men. I prefer that opinion to the idea that they make the choices they do on purpose.

All generalizations are relative.

You do not have the right to go through life without ever being offended. You do not have the right to expect the government to punish those who offend you.

Realize that you are not perfect. You are going to make mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes.

Take responsibility for your own actions.

Be true to yourself. Do what you think is right.

It’s ok to be selfish sometimes.

Trust yourself.

You always have choices. A lot of the time they aren’t good choices. That’s why you’re supposed to think ahead.

Accept that you are a dirty, horny little monkey, evolution made you that way, and your body will always want to do things you know you shouldn’t.
This doesn’t make you evil.

Do not grant anyone else the power to judge you.*[/ul]

And a few juicy quotes from other people:

[ul]*People who are eager to discuss their religion with you almost never want you to discuss your religion with them. -Dave Barry

Adorable in her not-very-bright submissiveness, charming in her childlike delight in shiny floors, even forgivable in her spiteful competition for the whitest, brightest wash, Madison Avenue’s girl-next-door is all the American male could wish for–unless, by some miscarriage, he should fancy human companionship. -Vivian Gornick and Barbara K. Moran

No poor bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making other bastards die for their country. -George Smith Patton

No man’s life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session. -Judge Gideon J. Tucker*[/ul]

14

“You can have it all, but how much do you want it?” -Noel Gallagher, Oasis

15

I use one similar to this:

The stupidest thing you will ever do will be immediately preceded by the words, “Watch this!”

“Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, many do.”
(Bertrand Russell)

“If you take a starving dog from the street and help it to prosper, it will not bite you. That is the main difference between men and dogs.” (Mark Twain)

“If it were based on merit, your dog would go to heaven instead of you.” (another one from Twain)

16

Hanging on my wall since Nymysys graced me with it:
[/quote]

You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.
[sub][ul]- Desiderata [/ul][/sub]
[/quote]
You know, there’s a million fine looking women in the world, dude. But they don’t all bring you lasagna at work. Most of 'em just cheat on you.
[sub][ul]- Silent Bob[/ul][/sub]

17

“It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.”

I don’t know who first said it, but I first read it from the lips of Cutter John in Bloom County. :smiley:

It’s working so far…

18

“Don’t lose your medication.”

—My father

19

I posted this earlier today as one of the reasons I like the movie “With Honors”

“Winners don’t know they’re in a race, they just love to run” -Joe Pesci’s character in With Honors

20

“If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t hesitate!” me

“No f$#%in S#$t lady do I sound like I’m ordering a pizza?” Bruce Willis / Diehard

“If you ask me, progress peaked at frozen pizza.” Bruce Willis / Diehard2

“Why don’t you come out from under that rock you’re hiding under, and I’ll drive this truck up your A$$” Bruce Willis / Diehard3

“There’s enough plutonium in there to make chernoble look like picnic!” Russian Minister of Defence / Tommorow Never Dies

“If you kill 1, it is a tragedy. If you kill a million, it is a statistic!” Joseph Stalin

“Those who smile in adversity usually have a scape goat” unknown

“See you in hell Trebek!” My cousin