# Your Favorite Quote Author
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-quote-author/244995
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [May 13, 2004, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-quote-author/244995 "2004-05-13T18:52:12Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Jackknifed\_Juggernaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackknifed_Juggernaut)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2004, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-quote-author/244995/1 "2004-05-13T18:52:12Z")
I recently discovered the quotes of H.L. Mencken. He’s absolutely brilliant. I can’t believe that in my 34 years, I hadn’t seen a list of his quotes. It makes me wonder who else’s quotes have eluded me thus far. So, do you have a favorite quote-originator? Who?, and give an example or two.
Tx.
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### Author:  [@Eve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eve)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2004, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-quote-author/244995/2 "2004-05-13T19:08:33Z")
Oh, my heroine and role model is the bitter, self-destructive [Mrs. Parker](http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/d/dorothy_parker.html).
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### Author:  [@Nightwatch\_Trailer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nightwatch_Trailer)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2004, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-quote-author/244995/3 "2004-05-13T19:16:42Z")
Bill Watterson of _Calvin and Hobbes_ fame:
“From now on, I’ll connect the dots my own way.” (My high school grad quote)
“Know what I pray for? The strength to change what I can, the inability to accept what I can’t and the incapacity to tell the difference.”
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### Author:  [@CandidGamera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CandidGamera)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2004, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-quote-author/244995/4 "2004-05-13T19:17:31Z")
I love a good quote. Dorothy Parker could write some real gems… many of which are in a Barbed Quotes book I recently purchased.
My favorite quote that immediately leaps to mind is from Red Skelton. Large crowds at the funeral of a despised studio head prompted him to say “It just goes to show you if you give the people want they want, they’ll come out.”
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### Author:  [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2004, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-quote-author/244995/5 "2004-05-13T19:24:28Z")
Try [George Bernard Shaw.](http://www.elise.com/quotes/quotes/shawquotes.htm)
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### Author:  [@kelly5078](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kelly5078)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2004, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-quote-author/244995/6 "2004-05-13T19:43:06Z")
Kurt Vonnegut:
"With every passing hour our solar system comes forty-three thousand miles closer to globular cluster M13 in the constellation Hercules, and still there are some misfits who continue to insist that there is no such thing as progress.”
Charles Dickens:
“Still, looking forward through this intermediate stage, to the time when there should be a perfect sympathy between Dora and me, and when I should have ‘formed her mind’ to my entire satisfaction, I persevered, even for months. Finding at last, however, that, although I had been all this time a very porcupine or hedgehog, bristling all over with determination, I had effected nothing, it began to occur to me that perhaps Dora’s mind was already formed.”
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### Author:  [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2004, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-quote-author/244995/7 "2004-05-13T19:55:24Z")
**Terry Pratchett!!!**
Try [here](http://www.co.uk.lspace.org/books/pqf/index.html) for the best, or see my sig line. 😃
What our ancestors would really be thinking, if they were alive today, is: “Why is it so dark in here?”
– (Terry Pratchett, Pyramids)
All dwarfs have beards and wear up to twelve layers of clothing. Gender is more or less optional.
– (Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!)
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### Author:  [@Rhiannon8404](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rhiannon8404)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2004, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-quote-author/244995/8 "2004-05-13T20:02:47Z")
Oscar Wilde has some really good ones…
A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.
A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
A true friend stabs you in the front.
Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much.
Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.
Just a few of my favorites…
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### Author:  [@The\_Llama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Llama)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2004, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-quote-author/244995/9 "2004-05-13T20:25:50Z")
Winston Churchill
Mark Twain
W.C. Fields
Groucho Marx
[This site](http://www.therightside.demon.co.uk/quotes/groucho/index.htm) Has all of those people(minus Churchill) and a few others.
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### Author:  [@Sister\_Vigilante](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sister_Vigilante)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2004, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-quote-author/244995/10 "2004-05-13T20:53:14Z")
[Katharine Hepburn](http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/k/katharine_hepburn.html).
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### Author:  [@Syntropy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Syntropy)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2004, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-quote-author/244995/11 "2004-05-13T21:11:00Z")
> [@silenus](#):
>
> **Terry Pratchett!!!**
Gotta be.
“Diplomacy is just lying for a better class of people.”
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### Author:  [@Eve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eve)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2004, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-quote-author/244995/12 "2004-05-13T22:39:44Z")
> [@Thera](#):
>
> Katharine Hepburn.
See, these two pompous, faux-modest quotes of hers always annoyed the hell out of me:
“Acting is the most minor of gifts. After all, Shirley Temple could do it when she was four.”
“Acting is the perfect idiot’s profession.”
It was an easy profession for _her_: she breezed into New York with perfect bone structure and her family’s money, and didn’t have to wait tables or work at Woolworth’s like other young actresses. And frankly, Katharine Hepburn wasn’t even a good actress till the 1940s.
There was much that was admirable about her, but bad-mouthing her profession wasn’t one of them.
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### Author:  [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)
#### Post date: [May 13, 2004, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-quote-author/244995/13 "2004-05-13T23:48:16Z")
[Wilson Mizner](http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/w/wilson_mizner.html)
You may not recognize the name, but you’ll recognize many of the quotes. (Best known: “If you steal from one author, it’s plagiarism; if you steal from many, it’s research.”)
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### Author:  [@Edwardina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Edwardina)
#### Post date: [May 14, 2004, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-quote-author/244995/14 "2004-05-14T00:18:20Z")
Mark Twain.
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### Author:  [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)
#### Post date: [May 14, 2004, 6:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-quote-author/244995/15 "2004-05-14T06:42:49Z")
Another vote for [Terry Pratchett.](http://www.digiserve.com/eescape/closet/Closet.html#Pratchett)
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### Author:  [@Sinshine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sinshine)
#### Post date: [May 14, 2004, 7:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-quote-author/244995/16 "2004-05-14T07:07:16Z")
Robertson Davies
Charles Dickens
Winston Churchill
Reiner Maria Rilke
William Shakespeare
Robert Frost
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### Author:  [@Gotterfunken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gotterfunken)
#### Post date: [May 14, 2004, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-quote-author/244995/17 "2004-05-14T16:42:49Z")
I would second **Rhiannon8404** ’s nomination of Oscar Wilde.
I would also nominate [Nietzsche](http://www.pitt.edu/~wbcurry/nietzsche.html), though some of his aphorisms are better than other ones (and some, especially his comments about women, make me cringe).
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### Author:  [@jacksen9](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jacksen9)
#### Post date: [May 14, 2004, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-quote-author/244995/18 "2004-05-14T19:48:24Z")
Learn to say no. It will be of more use to you than to speak Latin.
Unknown… at least to me. If anyone knows who said this, I would be interested.
And don’t say no. 🙂
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### Author:  [@stargazer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stargazer)
#### Post date: [May 14, 2004, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-quote-author/244995/19 "2004-05-14T23:27:07Z")
My two current favorite quotes are:
“So I prayed; I did not pray to get my own way, because I am smart enough to know that that is not always in my best interests.” -Anne Lamott
and
“Cats aren’t clean; they’re just covered with cat spit” -John S. Nichols
(I have no idea who he is, I just love the quote.)
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### Author:  [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)
#### Post date: [May 14, 2004, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-favorite-quote-author/244995/20 "2004-05-14T23:56:55Z")
Terry Pratchett, Lois McMaster Bujold, Janet Evanovich, and a few more here and there
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