Sayings & Quotes

[Lilith7]

"Women over 30 are at their best but men over 30 are too old to recognise it."
French actor Jean-Paul Belmondo


'Half the world is composed of people who have something to say & can’t, & the other half who have nothing to say & keep on saying it.'
Robert Frost

'Some are about 4 minutes, some are about 5 & some, believe it or not, are about 11 or 12.'
Bob Dylan in 1966 when asked what his songs were about.


'Boots are art works. They do not have to be worn to have deep spiritual meaning.'
Oh hunni-hunni

'One doesn’t have to operate with great malice to do great harm. The absence of empathy & understanding are sufficient.'
Charles M. Blow

'It is not our job to toughen our children up to face a cruel & heartless world. It’s our job to raise children who will make the world a little less cruel & heartless.'
L.R. Knost

' There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.'
Oscar Wilde

'All mushrooms are eatable, but some only once.'
Anon

"Learn from the mistakes of others. Yoeu can never live long enough to make them all yourself."
Groucho Marx

[Magoo]

my grandad
that bloody ewe was fast aye boy
she had more toe than a roman sandal

[Lilith7]

'Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.'
Oscar Wilde


'The world’s most deadly disease is hardening of the attitudes.'
Zig Ziglar

'At 70 years old, if I could give my younger self one piece of advice, it would be to use the words ‘f*ck off’ much more frequently.'
Helen Mirren


'The more one judges, the less one loves.'
Honore de Balzac



“Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it.”
Salvador Dalí


“I'm a success today because I had a friend who believed in me and I didn't have the heart to let him down.”
Abraham Lincoln

[Lilith7]

'Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but has not solved one yet.'
Maya Angelou


“Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.”
Gautama Buddha


“I think that hate is a feeling that can only exist where there is no understanding.”
Tennessee Williams



'The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world.'
Paul Farmer


'The real measure of your wealth is How much you would be worth if you lost all your money.'
Anon


“Arguing that you don’t care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say”.
Anon

"The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft aglae'"
Robbie Burns

'As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands, one for helping yourself, the other for helping others.'
Audrey Hepburn

'Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.'
Martin Luther King


'Passion causes a lot of inflections. A dose of penicillin usually clears it up.'
Anon

[Lilith7]

'Oh God, That bread should be so dear And Flesh and blood so cheap.'
Thomas Hood.


'Lets be honest here. Every generation has had its own ugly reaction to refugees, whether they are the Irish, the Vietnamese, the Cubans or the Haitans, & those fears have been broadly unfounded.
In fact there was only one time in American history when the fear of refugees wiping everyone out did actually come true & we’ll all be sitting at a table celebrating it on Thursday.'
John Oliver

"In America the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience."

"America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilisation in between."

"In America the President reigns for four years, and journalism governs for ever and ever."
Oscar Wilde


"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful and committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
Margaret Mead


'I refuse to believe the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism & war that the bright daybreak of peace & brotherhood can never become a reality...I believe that unarmed truth & unconditional love will have the final word.'
Martin Luther King


'The Seven deadly sins…….
Food, Clothing, firing, rent, taxes, respectability, and children
Nothing can lift those seven millstones from mans neck but money and the spirit cannot soar until the millstones are lifted. ”
George Bernard Shaw



"I was forced, through seeing the error of their foundation, to abandon all belief in every religion which had been taught to man. But my religious feelings were immediately replaced by the spirit of universal charity — not for a sect, or a party, or for a country or a colour — but for the human race, and with a real and ardent desire to do good.

Is it not the interest of the human race, that everyone should be so taught and placed, that he would find his highest enjoyment to arise from the continued practice of doing all in his power to promote the well-being, and happiness, of every man, woman, and child, without regard to their class, sect, party, country or colour?

My life was not useless; I gave important truths to the world, and it was only for want of understanding that they were disregarded. I have been ahead of my time."

Deathbed statement (November 1858), in response to a church minister who asked if he regretted wasting his life on fruitless projects; as quoted in Harold Hill : A People's History



"Train any population rationally, and they will be rational. Furnish honest and useful employments to those so trained, and such employments they will greatly prefer to dishonest or injurious occupations. It is beyond all calculation the interest of every government to provide that training and that employment; and to provide both is easily practicable.

It is confidently expected that the period is at hand, when man, through ignorance, shall not much longer inflict unnecessary misery on man; because the mass of mankind will become enlightened, and will clearly discern that by so acting they will inevitably create misery to themselves."
Robert Owen

[Lilith7]

‘"Because of his compassion Owen was always in trouble with his partners. They would have much preferred a tough, down-to-earth manager who would get a days work out of the little bastards."
J K Galbraith, on Robert Owen

"Beginnings are usually scary and endings are usually sad, but its everything in between that makes it all worth living".
Bob Marley.

'People are inexterminable- like flies and bed bugs. There will always be some that survive in cracks and crevices- that’s us.'
Robert Frost


'No character, however upright ,is a match for constantly re-iterated attacks, however false.'
Alexander Hamilton

"Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains."
Rousseau


" Life is like arriving late for a movie, having to figure out what was going on without bothering everybody with a lot of questions, and then being unexpectedly called away before you find out how it ends."

"Follow your bliss, and doors will open where there were no doors before."
Joseph Campbell

Why is English so much fun?
“All the faith he had had had had no
effect on the outcome of his life”
Because that sentence makes perfect sense.


"One is rich in proportion to the things one doesn't need"
Emerson.

[Lilith7]

'Any lawmaker, while making a six figure salary, receiving Cadillac benefits package, & becoming a millionaire from being in office, who tells the poor, the disabled & the disadvantaged that they must make sacrifices, has no business as a legislator or being called a decent human being.'
Anon


'Humans are ‘just a chemical scum on the surface of a typical planet that’s in orbit round a typical star on the outskirts of a typical galaxy’
Stephen Hawking

'Those who do not see money as a tool, but as an objective, will soon find themselves as its tool.'
L E Modesitt

'The great mystery is not that we should have been thrown down here at random between the profusion of matter & that of the stars; it is that from our very prison we should draw, from our own selves, images powerful enough to deny our nothingness.'
Andre Malraux, La condition humaine (man's fate.)

'Knowledge is power. Information is power. The secreting or hoarding of knowledge or information may be an act of tyranny camouflaged as humility.'
Robin Morgan

'The control of information is something the elite always does, particularly in a despotic form of government. Information, knowledge, is power. If you can control information, you can control people.'

Tom Clancy


"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power”
Benito Mussolini

'Feminism is a socialist, anti-family, political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.'
Pat Robertson (Conservative Baptist minister)



The first part of ‘The Dictator’s Speech’ in what might have been Charlie Chaplin’s greatest role.

Charlie Chaplin: “I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be an emperor. That’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone, if possible, Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness — not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another.
In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone.
The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.
The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood, for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world — millions of despairing men, women and little children — victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people.
To those who can hear me, I say — do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed — the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people and so long as men die, liberty will never perish….”

[Lilith7]

'No amount of cajolery, & no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory party. So far as I am concerned, they are lower than vermin.'
Aneurin Bevan

'In view of the terrifying possibilities of the atomic bomb, the common bonds of culture will be the greatest insurance against future wars.'
Lord Latham

'When you have nobody you can make a cup of tea for,
when nobody needs you, that’s when I think life is over.'
Audrey Hepburn


'It is the heart that makes a man rich. He is rich according to what he is, not according to what he has.'
Henry Ward Beecher



'Everyone is entitled to be stupid, but some abuse the privilege. '

'War doesn't determine who's right. War determines who's left.'

'It's your god. They're your rules. You go to hell.'

'The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources'

'To succeed in the world, it is much more necessary to possess the penetration to discern who is a fool, than to discover who is a clever man.'

Charles Maurice de Talleyrand



'To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves. Nothing is often a good thing to say, and always a clever thing to say.'
Will Durant


'I write my own quotes. Except this one. I obviously stole this from somebody really clever.'
Brian Celio

[Lilith7]

'To be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to want it.'
Gilbert K. Chesterton


"I don't think we are going to become extinct. We're very clever and extremely resourceful - and we will find ways of preserving ourselves, of that I'm sure. But whether our lives will be as rich as they are now is another question."
David Attenborough


'There is no such thing as too much swearing. Swearing is just a piece of linguistic mechanics. The words in-between are the clever ones.'
Peter Capaldi


'Clever tyrants are never punished.'
Voltaire


'You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.'
Naguib Mahfouz


'Obviously people want social calm, but if you do not let clever and ingenious people to participate, obviously there must be some dormant volcano that will erupt, sooner or later.'
Lech Walesa


'Some people are old at 18 & some are young at 90...time is a concept that humans created.'
Yoko Ono

"Laughter would be bereaved if snobbery died."
Peter Ustinov

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself.”
George Bernard Shaw.

[Lilith7]

'Earth has waited for them.
All the time of their growth.
Fretting for their decay:
Now she has them at last.'
Isaac Rosenberg



“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”
W.B. Yeats


“Every great dream begins with a dreamer.
Always remember, you have within you the
strength, the patience, and the passion
to reach for the stars to change the world”.
Harriet Tubman


'Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous there shall be no more cakes and ale?'
William Shakespeare” Twelfth Night.


'You don't fight racism with racism, the best way to fight racism is with solidarity.'
Bobby Seale



'The Holocaust illustrates the consequences of prejudice, racism and stereotyping on a society. It forces us to examine the responsibilities of citizenship and confront the powerful ramifications of indifference and inaction.'
Tim Holden

"Racism is the greatest threat to man - the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason."
Abraham Joshua Heschel


'Racism springs from the lie that certain human beings are less than fully human. It's a self-centered falsehood that corrupts our minds into believing we are right to treat others as we would not want to be treated.'
Alveda King

[Lilith7]

"Racism isn’t born folks, its taught. I have a two year old son. You know what he hates?
Naps! End of list."
Denis Leary


“If most of us are ashamed of shabby clothes and shoddy furniture let us be more ashamed of shabby ideas and shoddy philosophies.... It would be a sad situation if the wrapper were better than the meat wrapped inside it.”

Albert Einstein


“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
Albert Einstein

“It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.”
Voltaire

“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or in the holy name of liberty or democracy?”
Mahatma Gandhi


“Older men declare war. But it is youth that must fight and die.”
Herbert Hoover


'I have no time for privileged people who take advantage of their privileged positions to attack the weakest people in our society.'
Ranginui Walker


'The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.'
Charles Bukowski


'Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art.
It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that gives value to survival.'
C.S.Lewis


'Behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes.'
Jim Carrey

[Lilith7]

"The more one gardens the more one learns and the more one learns the more one realises how little one knows. I suppose the whole of life is like that: the endless complications, the endless difficulties, the endless fight against one thing or another, whether it be green-fly on the roses or the complexity of personal relationships."
Vita Sackville-West

'You never appreciate all the things your mother did for you until you find yourself doing the same things for your kids.'
Linda Poindexter


"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up."
Arthur Koestler

“If women took up arms to defend their reproductive rights, the GOP would ban assault rifles yesterday.”
Steve Marmel


“Yes, Dr. King is pro-gun just as surely as Jesus would be pro-nails.”
Stephen Colbert, after the organizer of Gun Appreciation Day said the day honours the legacy of Martin Luther King


"I have come to the conclusion that executions solve nothing, and are only an antiquated relic of a primitive desire for revenge which takes the easy way and hands over the responsibility for revenge to other people ."
Albert Pierrepoint



“The single simplest reason why human space flight is necessary is this, stated as plainly as possible: keeping all your breeding pairs in one place is a retarded way to run a species.”
Warren Ellis


“NASA spent millions of dollars inventing the ball-point pen so they could write in space. The Russians took a pencil.”
Will Chabot


“A blade of grass is a commonplace on Earth; it would be a miracle on Mars. Our descendants on Mars will know the value of a patch of green. And if a blade of grass is priceless, what is the value of a human being?”
Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

“Across the sea of space, the stars are other suns.”
Carl Sagan

[Lilith7]

'You may never know what results come of your actions, but if you do nothing, there will be no results.'
Gandhi


'Time passes. Nobody gets anything for keeps. And that’s how we’ve got to live.'
Haruki Murakami


'For nimble thought can jump both sea & land.'
Shakespeare



' In youth we learn; in age we understand.'
Von Ebner-Eschenbach


“Give a man a gun and he can rob a bank,
Give a man a bank and he can rob the world”
Anon

**

"We all know that Prime Ministers are wedded to the truth but like other wedded couples they sometimes live apart.”

“He is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death.”


“The young have aspirations that never come to pass, the old have reminiscences of what never happened.”

“A little inaccuracy sometimes saves a ton of explanation.”

“I'm living so far beyond my means that we may almost be said to be living apart.”

Saki

[Lilith7]

'He spends his life explaining from his pulpit that the glory of Christianity consists in the fact that though it is not true it has been found necessary to invent it.'

'You needn't tell me that a man who doesn't love oysters and asparagus and good wines has got a soul, or a stomach either. He's simply got the instinct for being unhappy highly developed.'


“Never,” wrote Reginald to his most darling friend, “be a pioneer. It's the Early Christian that gets the fattest lion.”

“Do one thing for me, Sredni Vashtar.”

“The people of Crete unfortunately make more history than they can consume locally.”

“...when once you have taken the Impossible into your calculations its possibilities become practically limitless...” “I hate posterity - it's so fond of having the last word.”

“Think how many blameless lives are brightened by the blazing indiscretions of other people.”


Saki ( Hector Hugh Munro)

[Lilith7]

"When under the pretext of fraternity, the legal code imposes mutual sacrifices on the citizens, human nature is not thereby abrogated. Everyone will then direct his efforts toward contributing little to, and taking much from, the common fund of sacrifices. Now, is it the most unfortunate who gains from this struggle? Certainly not, but rather the most influential and calculating."

'When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.'

'It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder.'

'When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law.'
If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?"
Frederic Bastiat


"Laugh and the world laughs with you ,snore and you sleep alone."
Anthony Burgess

[Lilith7]

"Hurt people hurt people. That’s how pain patterns get passed on generation after generation, after generation. Break the chain today. Meet anger with sympathy, contempt with compassion, cruelty with kindness. Greet grimaces with smiles. Forgive & forget about finding fault. Love is the weapon of the future."
Yehuda Berg

'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. '
Shakespeare

'To dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business & corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day'.
Theodore Roosevelt

'If you cannot be grateful for what you’ve received, then be thankful for what you have been spared.'
Anon


"I think a curse should rest on me — because I love this war. I know it's smashing and shattering the lives of thousands every moment — and yet — I can't help it — I enjoy every second of it."
Winston Churchill, A letter to a friend (1916)


"Certainly the war is hurting the economy, and the people don’t like that. But at a deeper level, I think our people revel in war and blood, particularly if the victims belong to 'inferior' races."
Gore Vidal on the Vietnam War, 1969

[Lilith7]

“Think of the press as a great keyboard
on which the government can play.”
Joseph Goebbels


“You must be the change you wish to see in the world”
Mahatma Gandhi


'Man is the most insane species. He worships an invisible god & destroys a visible nature.
Unaware that the nature he is destroying is this god he is worshipping.'
Hubert Reeves


“The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing at the right place but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.”
Dorothy Nevill

"For nearly 50 years, as our country got richer, our families got richer -- and as our families got richer, our country got richer.
And then about 30 years ago, our country moved in a different direction. New leadership attacked wages. They attacked pensions. They attacked health care. They attacked unions. And now we find ourselves in a very different world from the one our parents and grandparents built. We are now in a world in which the rich skim more off the top in taxes and special deals, and they leave less and less for our schools, for roads and bridges, for medical and scientific research -- less to build a future."
Elizabeth Warren, American politician & academic



'He who can no longer pause to wonder & stand rapt in awe is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.'
Albert Einstein


'No drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we’re looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn’t test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.'
P. J. O’Rourke


Never eat prunes when you are famished, you will get a good run for your money.
Anon

'Attacking the rich is not envy; it is self defense, The hoarding of wealth is the cause of poverty. The rich aren’t just indifferent to poverty; they create it & maintain it.'
Jodie Foster

“In a few seconds, we judge another person and think we know them. When, the person we’ve lived with the longest, we still don’t know very well—ourselves.”
Charles F. Glassman

[Lilith7]

'As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. '
Abraham Lincoln


'People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.'
Isaac Asimov


'The Prime Minister has an absolute genius for putting flamboyant labels on empty luggage.'
Aneurin Bevan


'The Tories, every election, must have a bogy man. If you haven't got a programme, a bogy man will do.'
Aneurin Bevan

'Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.'
W. Somerset Maugham

“Poverty is not a character failing or a lack of motivation. Poverty is a shortage of money.”
Barbara Ehrenreich

'People who read the tabloids deserve to be lied to.'
Jerry Seinfeld

'A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don’t need it.'
Bob Hope

'We might make mistakes but we’ll make other things too.'
Michael Joseph Savage

[Lilith7]

"You know you're getting old when the candles cost more than the cake."

"I grew up with six brothers. That's how I learned to dance - waiting for the bathroom."

"If you haven't got any charity in your heart, you have the worst kind of heart trouble."
Bob Hope


"Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair. "

"Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must - at that moment - become the centre of the universe. "

"I would like to see real peace and a state of Israel living peacefully alongside a state of Palestine."

"In any society, fanatics who hate don't hate only me - they hate you, too. They hate everybody."
Elie Wiesel



'It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.'
Chinese proverb

“If you think education is expensive – try ignorance.”
Derek Bok

[Lilith7]

“If the environment was a bank,
it would have been saved by now”
Bernie Sanders


"If men could get pregnant, then abortion would be a sacrament."

Irish woman taxi driver, to Flo Kennedy & Gloria Steinem.


“I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept.”
Angela Davis.

'I don’t need anger management. I need people to stop pissing me off! My people skills are just fine. It’s my tolerance of idiots that needs work.'
Anon



'Your value does not decrease based on someone’s inability to see your worth.'
Anon


"If you hear a voice within you say, 'You cannot paint',
then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced."
Vincent Van Gogh


“In a nuclear war the collateral damage would be the life of humankind. Let us  have the courage to proclaim that all nuclear or conventional weapons, everything  that is used to make war must disappear”.
Fidel Castro.

"We should be on our guard not to overestimate science and scientific methods when it is a question of human problems, and we should not assume that experts are the only ones who have the right to express themselves on questions affecting the organisation of society."
Einstein