| 1 - The brighter you are, the more you have to learn. – Don Herald Personally, I am always willing to learn, although I do not always like being taught. – Winston Churchill All that I ever needed to know I learned in Kindergarten. – Robert Fulgrim All that I know I learned after I was thirty. – George Clemenceau The second half of a man's life is made up of nothing but the habits he has acquired during the first half. – Feodor Dostoevski A little learning is a dangerous thing, but a lot of ignorance is just as bad. – Bob Edwards |
| 2 - If the grass is greener in the other fellow’s yard, let him worry about cutting it. – Fred Allen Archie doesn’t know how to worry without getting upset. – Edith Bunker (All In The Family, TV show) A person must try to worry about things that aren’t important so he won’t worry about things that are. – Jack Smith If I knew what I was anxious about, I wouldn’t be so anxious. – Mignon McLanghlin When I look back on all these worries I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which never happened. – Winston Churchill |
| 3 - Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. – Theodore Roosevelt It may be that those who do most, dream most. – Stephen Leacock Native ability without education is like a tree without fruit. – Aristippus Men take only their needs into consideration, never their abilities. – Napoleon Bonaparte Since we cannot know all that is to be known of everything, we ought to know a little about everything. – Blaise Pascal A man may be so much of everything that he is nothing of anything. – Samuel Johnson |
| 4 - Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought. – Henri Bergson Action is the last resource of those who know not how to dream. – Oscar Wilde Action and faith enslave thought, both of them in order not to be troubled or inconvenienced by reflection, criticism, and doubt. – Henri Frederic Amiel Seeing ourselves as other see us would probably confirm our worst suspicions about them. – Franklin P. Jones How many people eat, drink, and get married; buy sell, and build; make contracts and attend to their fortune; have friends and enemies, pleasures and pains, are born, grow up, live and die – but are asleep! – Joseph Joubert |
| 5 - Advertising may be described as the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it. – Stephen Leacock I don’t care what is written about me, as long as it isn’t true. – Katherine Hepburn Few people at the beginning of the nineteenth century needed an adman to tell them what they wanted. – John Kenneth Galbraith Let advertisers spend the same amount of money improving their product that they do advertising it and they wouldn’t have to advertise it. – Will Rogers You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertisements. – Normal Douglas |
| 6 - If someone gives you so-called good advice, do the opposite; you can be sure it will be the right thing nine times out of ten. – Anselm Feuerbach I have found that the best way to give advise to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it. – Harry S. Truman When a man comes to me for advice, I find out the kind of advice he wants, and I give it to him. – Henry Wheeler Shaw He who can take advice is sometimes superior to him who can give it. – Karl von Knebel Old people love to give good advice; it compensates them for their inability to set a bad example. – Duc de La Rochefoucauld |
| 7 - The agnostic’s prayer: “O God, if there is a god, save my soul, if I have a soul. – Ernest Renan An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support. – John Buchan, Lord Tweedsmuir An atheist is a man who believes himself an accident. – Francis Thompson An atheist is a guy who watches a Notre Dame – SMU football game and doesn’t care who wins. – Dwight D. Eisenhower I don’t know if God exists, but it would be better for His reputation if He didn’t. – Jules Renard |
| 8 - America is a country where you buy a lifetime supply of aspirin for one dollar, and use it in two weeks. – John Barrymore Americans are like a rich father who wishes he knew how to give his sons the hardships that made him rich. – Robert Frost America is a land where a citizen will cross the ocean to fight for democracy – and won’t cross the street to vote in a national election. – Bill Vaughan This is still a wealthy country. The failure is of spirit and insight. – Governor Jerry Brown I don’t see much future for the Americans . . . Everything about the behavior of American society reveals that it’s half judaized and the other half negrified. How can one expect a state like that to hold together? – Adolf Hitler |
| 9 - What the country needs are a few labor-making inventions. – Arnold Glasow We don’t know what we want, but we are ready to bite somebody to get it. – Will Rogers This country will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a good place for all of us to live in. – Theodore Roosevelt I think we must save America from the missionary idea that you must get the whole world on to the American way of life. This is really a big world danger. – Gunnar Myrdal We must stop talking about the American dream and start listening to the dreams of Americans. – Ruebin Askew America is a mistake, a giant mistake! – Sigmund Freud |
| 10 - The only foes that threaten America are the enemies at home, and these are ignorance, superstition, and incompetence. – Elbert Hubbard We talk about the American Dream, and want to tell the world about the American Dream, but what is that Dream, in most cases, but a dream of material things? I sometimes think that the United States for this reason is the greatest failure the world has ever seen. – Eugene O’Neill We need some great statements about what America is about and what we can do about it. – Theodore M. Hesburgh The American Revolution was a beginning, not a consummation. – Woodrow Wilson [America is] still the best country for the common man – white or black . . . if he can’t make it here he won’t make it anywhere else. – Eric Hoffer Americanism is a question of principal, of idealism, of character; it is not a matter of birthplace or creed or line of decent. – Theodore Roosevelt |
| 11 - We pay for the mistakes of our ancestors, and it seems only fair that they should leave us the money to pay with. – Don Marquis I don’t have to look up my family tree, because I know that I’m the sap. – Fred Allen The family you come from isn’t as important as the family you’re going to have. – Ring Lardner My folks didn’t come over on the Mayflower, but they were there to meet the boat. – Will Rogers Genealogy: Tracing yourself back to people better than you are. – John Garland Pollard It’s kinder funny, but no matter how common our blood is, we hate to lose any of it. – Will Rogers |
| 12 - I have always thought of a dog lover as a dog that was in love with another dog. – James Thurber No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens. – President Abraham Lincoln We hope that when the insects take over the world, they will remember with gratitude how we took them along on all our picnics. – Bill Vaughan The hen is an egg’s way of producing another egg. – Samuel Butler Heaven goes by favour. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in. – Mark Twain The greatest pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool out of yourself with him, and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool out of himself too. – Samuel Butler |
| 13 - Money will buy a pretty good dog but it won’t buy the wag of his tail. – “Josh Billings” – Henry Wheeler Shaw All animals except man know that the ultimate of life is to enjoy it. – Samuel Butler Our worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that’s the essence of inhumanity. – George Bernard Shaw I tend to be suspicious of people whose love of animals is exaggerated; they are often frustrated in their relationships with humans. – Ylla (Camilla Koffler) Young gorillas are friendly but they soon learn. – Will Cuppy We Germans, who are the only people in the world who have a decent attitude towards animals, will also assume a decent attitude towards these human animals. – Heinrich Himmler |
| 17 - A dress that zips up in the back will bring a husband and wife together. – James H. Boren Zoo: An excellent place to study the habits of human beings. – Evan Esar Clearly then, the city is not a concrete jungle, it is a human zoo. – Desmond Morris When I was a kid I said to my father one afternoon, “Daddy, will you take me to the zoo?” He answered, “If the zoo wants you, let them come and get you. – Jerry Lewis All they [zoos] actually offer to the public in return for the taxes spent upon them is a form of idle and witless amusement, compared to which a visit to a penitentiary, or even to a State Legislature in session, is informing, stimulating, and ennobling. – H. L. Menken |
| 16 - Change means movement, movement means friction, friction means heat, and heat means controversy. The only place where there is no friction is in outer space or a seminar on political action. – Saul Alinsky Silence is one of the hardest things to refute. – Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw) The man who strikes first admits that his ideas have given out. – Chinese Proverb If you can’t answer a man’s argument, all is not lost; you can still call him vile names. – Elbert Hubbard No matter what side of an argument you’re on, you always find some people on your side that you wish were on the other side. – Jascha Heifetz |
| 20 - Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks. – Simonides A nation in which a congressman can seriously ask, “Do you think the artist is a special person?” is a nation living in cultural jeopardy. – James Thurber I shut my eyes in order to see. – Paul Gauguin [The object of painting is] not to reflect the visible but to make visible. – Paul Klee Less is more. – Mies van der Rohe All great art is by its very essence in conflict with the society with which it coexists. It expresses the truth about existence regardless of whether this truth serves or hinders the survival purpose of a given society. All great art is revolutionary because it touches upon the reality of man and questions the reality of the various transitory forms of human society. – Erich Fromm |
| 18 - Art is not a thing, it is a way. – Elbert Hubbard Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. – Pablo Picasso Life is short, art long, opportunity fleeting, experience treacherous, judgment difficult. – Hippocrates Art is like a border of flowers along the course of civilization. – Lincoln Steffens Buy Old Masters. They fetch a much better price than old mistresses. – Lord Beaverbrook Every time an artist dies, part of the vision of mankind passes with him. – Franklin Delano Roosevelt |
| 41 - A bore is a man who, when you ask him how he is, tells you. – Frank Moore Colby No one really listens to anyone else, and if you try it for a while you’ll see why. – Mignon McLaughlin The worst thing about a bore is not that he won’t stop talking, but that he won’t let you stop listening. – Dr. Laurence J. Peter 42 - It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one’s neighbor. – Eric Hoffer To correct the evils, great and small, which spring from want of sympathy and from positive enmity among strangers, as nations or as individuals, is one of the highest functions of civilization. – Abraham Lincoln The mystic bond of brotherhood makes all men one. – Thomas Carlyle 43 - Guidelines for Bureaucrats: (1) when in charge, ponder. (2) When in trouble, delegate. (3) When in doubt, mumble. – James H. Boren We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming. – Wernher von Braun A bureaucrat is a Democrat that holds some office that a Republican wants. – Alben W. Barkley 44 - I do not rule Russia; ten thousand clerks do. – Nicholas I There is very little to admire in bureaucracy, but you have got to hand it to the Internal Revenue Service. – James L. Rogers It is hard to feel individually responsible with respect to the invisible processes of a huge and distant government. – John Gardner 45 - The business of government is to keep government out of business – that is unless business needs government aid. – Will Rogers Statistics indicate that, as a result of overwork, modern executives are dropping like flies on the nation’s golf courses. – Ira Wallach There is more credit and satisfaction in being a first-rate truck driver than a tenth-rate executive. – B. C. Forbes |
| 19 - A painting in a museum hears more ridiculous opinions than anything else in the world. – Edmond de Goncourt A subject that is beautiful in itself gives no suggestion to the artist. It lacks imperfection. – Oscar Wilde An artist never really finishes his work; he merely abandons is. – Paul Valery A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his client to plant vines. – Frank Lloyd Wright Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that have a better idea. – John Ciardi There is nothing new in art except talent. – Anton Chekhov |
| 15 - The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way. – Bertrand Russell The surest sign that you haven’t any sense is to argue with one who hasn’t. – Dr. Laurence J. Peter An argument always leaves each party convinced that the other has a closed mind. – Dr. Laurence J. Peter I never make the mistake of arguing with people for whose opinions I have no respect. – Edward Gibbon Discussion is an exchange of knowledge; argument an exchange of ignorance. – Robert Quillen |
| 14 - The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing – Edmund Burke Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote. – George Jean Nathan The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of great moral crises maintain their neutrality. – Dante Alighieri In Germany they first came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up. – Martin Niemoeller |
| 51 - Heredity is what a man believes until his son begins to behave like a delinquent. – Presbyterian Life Magazine “Handle this child carefully,” the child specialist to the mother. “Remember, you’re dealing with a sensitive, high-string little stinker". – L. & N. Magazine We’ve had bad luck with our kids – they’ve all grown up. – Christopher Morley 52 - There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of those is roots; the other, wings. – Hodding Carter . . . everyone is in awe of the lion tamer in a cage with half a dozen lions – everyone but a school bus driver. – Dr. Lawrence J. Peter If a child lives with approval, he learns to live with himself. – Dorothy Law Nolte 53 - Parents are the last people on earth who ought to have children. – Samuel Butler The secret of dealing successfully with a child is not to be its parent. – Mell Lazarus All children are essentially criminal. – Denis Diderot 54 - In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play. – Friedrich Nietzsche Insanity is hereditary; you can get it from your children. – Sam Levenson Children are our most valuable natural resource. – Herbert Hoover 55 - Hollywood – a place where the inmates are in charge of the asylum. – Laurence Stallings Boston – a festering mud puddle. – Ellis Arnall Chicago – a pompous Milwaukee. – Leonard Louis Levinson Cleveland – two Hobokens back to back. – Joan Holman Beverly Hills – a pool’s paradise. – Leonard Louis Levinson 56 - Commandment Number One of any truly civilized society is this: Let people be different. – David Grayson What has destroyed every previous civilization has been the tendency to the unequal distribution of wealth and power. – Henry George The flush toilet is the basis of Western civilization. – Alan Coult 57 - With every civil right there has to be a corresponding civil obligation. – Edison Haines What men value in this world is not rights but privileges. – H. L. Mencken I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample underfoot. – Horace Greeley 58 - A man who has never gone top school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad. – Theodore Roosevelt In business school classrooms they construct wonderful models of a nonworld – Peter Drucker Freedom of inquiry, freedom of discussion, and freedom of teaching – without these a university cannot exist. – Robert Maynard Hutchins 59 - The university exists only to find and to communicate the truth. – Robert Maynard Hutchins A liberal education . . . frees a man from the prison-house of his class, race, time, place, background, family, and even his nation. – Robert Maynard Hutchins I don’t believe in education for most people. Teach them how to use a lathe and let it go at that. – Kevin P. Phillips 60 - Extremists think “communication” means agreeing with them. – Leo Rosten It is a luxury to be understood. – Ralph Waldo Emerson Be obscure clearly. – E. B. White |
| 46 - I think that maybe in every company today there is always at least one person who is going crazy slowly. – Joseph Heller A banker is a person who is willing to make a loan if you present sufficient evidence to show you don’t need it. – Herbert V. Prochnow Corporation: An ingenious devise for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. – Ambrose Bierce 47 - On CBS Radio the news of his [Edward R. Murrow’s] death, reportedly from lung cancer, was followed by a cigarette commercial. – Alexander Kendrick To be a success in business, be daring, be first, be different. – Marchant There are two times in a man’s life when he should not speculate: when he can’t afford it and when he can. – Mark Twain 48 - If in other lands the press and books and literature of all kinds are censored, we must redouble our efforts here to keep them free. – Franklin Delano Roosevelt There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. – Oscar Wilde Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but, unlike charity, it should end there. – Clare Boothe Luce 49 - There is nothing permanent except change. – Heraclitus It’s the most unhappy people that fear change. – Mignon McLaughlin Progress is a nice word. But change is its motivator and change has its enemies. – Robert F. Kennedy 50 - Every man has three characters – that which he exhibits, that which he has, and that which he thinks he has. – Alphonse Karr A man never discloses his own character so clearly as when he describes another’s. – Jean Paul Richter The measure of a man’s real character is what he would do if he knew he never would be found out. – Thomas Babington Macaulay |
| 36 -Some people have a wonderful way of looking at things. Like the ones who hire one of us to babysit – so they can go to a Ku Klux Klan meeting. – Dick Gregory You can’t hold a man down without staying down with him. – Booker T. Washington There are two ways of exerting one’s strength: one is pushing down, the other is pulling up. – Booker T. Washington 37 - Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men’s skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact. – Lyndon B. Johnson The Americans ought to be ashamed of themselves for letting their medals be won by Negros. – Adolph Hitler Those who deny freedom to others deserve is not for themselves. – Abraham Lincoln 38 - These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but MINDS alive on the shelves. From each of them goes out its own voice . . . and just as the touch of a button on our set will fill the room with music, so by taking down one of these volumes and opening it, one can call into range the voice of a man far distant in time and space, and hear him speaking to us, mind to mind, heart to heart. – Hilbert Highet There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates’ loot on Treasure Island . . . and best of all, you can enjoy these riches every day of your life. – Walt Disney I am a part of all that I have read. – John Kieran 39 - The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them. – Mark Twain The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who’ll get me a book I ain’t read. – Abraham Lincoln (according to his cousin, Dennis Hanks, Lincoln made books tell him more than they told other people.) To read without reflecting is to eat without digesting. – Edmond Burke 40 - In a very real sense, people who have read good literature have lived more than people who cannot or will not read . . . It is now true that we only have one life to live; if we can read, we can live as many more lives and as many kinds of lives as we wish. – S. I. Hayakawa Reading is to the mind what exercising is to the body. – Sir Richard Steele When you read a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in YOU than there was before. – Clifton Fadiman |
| 31 - Man is what he believes. – Anton Checkhov Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened. – Thomas Hardy We are inclined to believe those we do not know because they have deceived us. – Samuel Johnson For every credibility gap, there is a gullibility fill. – Richard Clopton 32 - I see no objection in principal to censorship of the mass entertainment of the young. – Walter Lippmann Literature should not be suppressed merely because it offends the moral code of the censor. – Justice William O. Douglas The ultimate censorship is the flick of the dial. – Tom Smuthers 33 - It ain’t those parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand. – Mark Twain The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people. – G. K. Chesterton Scriptures, n. The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based. – Ambrose Bierce On the other hand, the Bible contains much that is relevant today, like Noah taking forty days to find a place to park. – Dr. Laurence J. Peter 34 - Whenever I hear people discussing birth control, I always remember that I was the fifth. – Clarence Darrow No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother. – Margaret Sanger To my embarrassment I was born in bed with a lady. – William Mizner 35 - I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood . . . that one day even the State of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice . . . that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. We have allowed death to change its name from Southern rope to Northern dope. Too many black youths have been victimized by pushing dope into their veins instead of hope into their brains. –Reverend Jesse Jackson |