Quotations
Used in the 'WMail' Newsletter
and the Dateline Chamesa blog

Page One

Alphabetical by Author
on this page: A • B • C • Quotation Links

D thru F • G thru J • K thru N • O thru R • S thru Z

Proverbs & Anonymous • Laws of Life

Books of Quotations Page

Working Minds Homepage
free monthly 'WMail' Philosophy Newsletter [2000-2007]
Index of All Issues

After WMail Issue #72 in October 2007, essays & quotations & news are being posted to the
Dateline Chamesa weblog

Authors A thru C

Edward 'Cactus Ed' Abbey [1927-89]
Edward Abbey Quotations Page at Working Minds
Edward Abbey Page at 'Readers of The Purple Sage' Western Bookstore

Lord Acton [1834-1902]
• • “And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that. Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.”  – full text of the famous 'Dictum of Lord Acton'  [blog 10/2007}
• • “The most certain test by which we can judge whether a country is really free is
the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.”  {blog 3/2008}
• • “Liberty is not the means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.”  {blog 8/2009}

Franklin P. Adams [1881-1960]
“The best you get is an even break.”  {blog 2/2011}

Joey Adams [1911-99]
“A genius is one who can do anything except make a living.”  {blog 1/2008}

John Adams [1735-1826]
second President of the United States, 1797-1801
• • “The preservation of the means of knowledge among the lowest ranks is of more importance
to the public than all the property of the rich men in the country.”  {Issue #36}
• • “This is a revolution, dammit, we're going to have to offend somebody.”
(during debates on the Declaration of Independence, 1776)  {Issues #48 & #58}
• • “Power always thinks [that] it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak,
and that it is doing God’s will when it is violating all His laws.”  {Issue #69}
• • “Liberty can not be preserved without a general knowledge among the people.
Let us dare to read, think, speak and write.”  {blog 8/2009}
• • “All the perplexities, confusion, and distress in America arise, not from defects in the
Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from downright
ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation.”  {blog 11/2009}

Samuel Adams [1722-1803]
• • “It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless
minority keen to set brushfires in people's minds.”  {Issue #39}
• • “It does not take a majority to prevail ... but rather an irate, tireless minority,
who keep on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.”  {Issue #71}

cartoonist Scott Adams
“Experience is just another word for losing hope.” (in "Dilbert" Sunday strip, 2009)  {blog 11/2009}

activist Jane Addams [1860-1935]
“Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good [that] we often might win,
by fearing to attempt.”  {blog 10/2011}

Alfred Adler [1870-1937]
“It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.”  {blog 2/2011}

Aeschylus [c. 525-c. 456 B.C.E.]
“It is in the character of very few men to honor without envy a friend who has prospered.”  {blog 12/2008}

Aesop [600 B.C.E.]
“We hang the petty thieves, but appoint the great ones to public office.”  {Issue #36}

James Agee [1909-55]
“The elementary beginning of true reason . . . resides in the ability to recognize oneself, and others, primarily
as human beings, and to recognize the ultimate absoluteness of responsibility of each human being.”  {Issue #62}

Howard Aiken [1900-73]
“Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats.”   {blog 5/2010}

playwright Edward Albee
“Sometimes it's necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back
a short distance correctly.” (in "Zoo Story", 1958)  {blog 9/2011}

Muhammad Ali
“He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.”  {blog 5/2010}

Fred Allen [1894-1956]
• • “A conference is a gathering of important people who singly can do nothing,
but together can decide that nothing can be done.”  {blog 10/2007}
• • “An associate producer is the only guy in Hollywood who will associate with a producer.”  {blog 2/2011}
• • “Man has made his bedlam; let him lie in it.”  {blog 3/2011}

entertainer Steve Allen [1921-2000]
“In a rational society we would want our presidents to be teachers. In our actual society
we insist [that] they be cheerleaders.”  {blog 8/2011}

Woody Allen
• • “If my films don't show a profit, I know I'm doing something right.”  {blog 5/2008}
• • “Life doesn't imitate art, it imitates bad television.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.”  {blog 6/2009}
• • “If my films make one more person miserable, I'll feel I have done my job.”  {blog 6/2009}
• • “Confidence is what you have until you understand the problem.”  {blog 9/2011}

Eric Alterman
• • “With [George W.] Bush, we're left with the perennial unanswerable question:
dishonest, moronic, or both?”  {Issue #47}
• • “The real opposition to this administration is normative reality and the U.S. Constitution.”  {Issue #61}
• • “The problem with Fox [News] is not that it's conservative. It's that it lies.”  {blog 7/2011}

Italian journalist Corrado Alvaro [1895-1956]
“The blackest despair that can take hold of any society is the fear that
living honestly is futile.”  {blog 10/2011}

Stephen E. Ambrose [1936-2002]
“God created man with a penis and a brain, but only gave him enough blood to run
one at a time.”   {blog 7/2011}

Baba Amte of India
“Victory is his who even in defeat never surrenders, and so victory will be the people's.”  {Issue #62}

New Mexico author Rudolfo Anaya
• • “The battle of good and evil is always for the soul.”  {Issue #21}
• • “Man does not live on enchiladas alone.” (in "Zia Summer")  {blog 11/2007}

baseball manager George 'Sparky' Anderson [1934-2010]
• • “I've got my faults, but living in the past isn't one of them. There's no future in it.”  {blog 11/2010}
• • “Losing hurts twice as bad as winning feels good.”  {blog 12/2010}

Glenn Anderson
“The actor first feels, then thinks, then responds.”  {Issue #70}

minimalist sculptor Carl Andre
• • “Art is what we do. Culture is what is done to us.”  {blog 12/2011}
• • “Capitalism must be holy because religion is a business.”  {blog 12/2011}

Dale Andreatti
“The optimist thinks [that] the glass is half full. The pessimist thinks [that] the glass is half empty.
The engineer knows the real truth: that the glass is twice as large as it should be for optimum
utilization of resources.”  {blog 1/2010}

racecar driver Mario Andretti
“If everything's under control, you're going too slow.”  {blog 5/2010}

Maya Angelou
• • “A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because
it has a song.”  {Issue #43}
• • “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”  {blog 4/2010}
• • “History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage
doesn't need to be lived again.”  {blog 6/2011}
• • “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did,
but people will never forget how you made them feel.”  {blog 7/2011}
• • “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”  {blog 10/2011}

Jean Anouilh [1910-87]
“One cannot weep for the entire world. It is beyond human strength. One must choose.”
in the stageplay "Cecile" (1954)  {blog 9/2009}

Thomas Aquinas [circa 1225-1274]
“There can be no joy of life without joy of work.”  {Issue #19}

Joni Arends, anti-nuclear activist
“The devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was catastrophic. But we have to realize that
the United States bombed New Mexico first.”  {blog 1/2010}

Hannah Arendt [1906-75]
“Few girls are as well-shaped as a good horse.”  {blog 11/2008}

Pietro Aretino [1492-1556]
“I am, indeed, a king, because I know how to rule myself.”  {blog 3/2008}

Aristedes [circa 140 A.D.]
“Temples are to be dedicated to the gods, and books to good men.”  {Issue #55}

Aristotle [384-322 B.C.E.]
• • “The poet should prefer probable impossibilities to
improbable possibilities.”  {Issue #42}
• • “All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind are convinced
that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth.”  {Issue #48}
• • “The energy of the mind is the essence of life.”  {blog 6/2008}
• • “All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.”  {blog 11/2008}
• • “The gods too are fond of a joke.”  {blog 3/2010}
• • “Youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope.”  {blog 4/2010}
• • “Prudens quaestio dimidium scientiae (To know what to ask is already to know half)”  {blog 5/2010}
• • “Melancholy men are of all others most witty.”  {blog 7/2010}
• • “We are what we repeatedly do; excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”  {blog 10/2010}
• • “The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.”  {blog 8/2011}
• • “Virtue is necessary for the good life but not sufficient for the good life.”  {blog 12/2011}
• • “Money is necessary for the good life but not sufficient for the good life.”
{mis-attributed to Aristotle}  {blog 12/2011}

Raymond Aron
“[Politics] is never a struggle between good & evil, but between the preferable
and the detestable.”  {Issue #56}

Robert G. Arthur of Kings Park, NY
“As a high school English teacher, I can testify that ,,, [television] is so poisonous and hypnotic
that the disease of illiteracy is rampant.” (circa 1984)  {blog 9/2008}

Mary Kay Wagner Ash [1918-2001], founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics
“Stop spending dollar time on penny jobs.”  {Issue #51}

Isaac Asimov [1920-92]
• • “Ignorance must be battled.”  {Issue #33}
• • “The creationists' ... case is so weak that the only way [that] they can feel sure of maintaining it
is to make sure their victims never hear of anything else.”  {Issue #53}
• • “Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed
and working smoothly, it is completely honest.”  {Issue #62}
• • “The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not
'Eureka!' (I found it) - but 'That's funny . . .'.”  {Issue #66}
• • “Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.”  {blog 7/2008}
• • “Every stick points in two directions, one opposed to the other.” {attributed}  {blog 9/2008}
• • “Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.”  {blog 12/2009}
• • “There is an art to science, and science in art; the two are not enemies,
but different aspects of the whole.”  {blog 5/2010}

Gordon Atkinson
“Love is something you do, not something you feel.”  {blog 5/2010}

Margaret Atwood
“Wanting to meet an author because you like his books is like wanting to meet a duck
because you like pâté.”   {blog 12/2011}

W.H. Auden [1907-1973]
“Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.”  {blog 12/2007}

Augustine of Hippo [354-430 C.E.]
“Ninety percent of the time things turn out worse than you thought they would.
The other ten percent of the time you had no right to expect that much.”  {Issue #46}

Marcus Aurelius [121-180 C.E.]
• • “The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself
in the ranks of the insane.”  {Issue #65}
• • “The opinion of 10,000 men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject.”  {blog 11/2007}

Jane Austen [1775-1817]
“A large income is the best recipe for happiness.”  {blog 11/2008}

A.J. Ayer [1910-89]
“All utterances about the nature of God are nonsensical.”  {blog 9/2008}

Lauren Bacall
“Time flies even when you're not having fun.”  {Issue #59}

Sir Francis Bacon [1561-1626]
“Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not, a sense of humor
to console him for what he is.”   {blog 7/2010}

Walter Bagehot [1826-77]
“The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.” (in 1853)  {blog 2/2008}

attorney  F. Lee Bailey
“Can any of you seriously say the Bill of Rights could get through Congress today?
It wouldn't even get out of committee.”  {blog 4/2010}

Peter C. Baker
“Corrupt political thought creates and is furthered by sloppy language.”  {blog 12/2007}

David Baldacci
• • “Without risk there is no possibility for glory.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “Every soldier who ever died was innocent.”  {blog 9/2008}

James Baldwin [1924-87]
“Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”  {Issue #62}

Natylie Baldwin
• • “The word 'capitalism' does not appear at all in Adam Smith's 1776 ground-breaking
900-page Wealth of Nations.”  {Issue #62}
• • “Marketing – the process by which capitalists constantly work to convince people of the need or desire for [the glut of pointless items made available and sold to the public every day] – accounts for the majority of waste in terms of labor, materials and money.”  {Issue #62}

Lucille Ball [1911-89]
“The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age.”   {blog 4/2009}

Bill Balsamico
“At the current rate of legal and illegal aliens entering this country, August 2013 will be
designated White History Month.”  {Issue #60}

David Baltimore, Nobel Prize winner & president of Cal Tech
“We need a revolution in this country when it comes to parenting around education.”  {Issue #53}

Tallulah Bankhead [1902-68]
• • “Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it.”  {Issue #59}
• • “It is the good girls who keep the diaries; the bad girls never have the time.”  {blog 9/2008}

Dr. Judith M. Bardwick
“Even when people are more successful than they had imagined, nothing is ever achieved
without giving something up.”   {blog 5/2010}

Deanne Barkley
“Writing is the only job [that] you don't have to be hired to do.”  {Issue #70}

Julian Barnes
“History isn't what happened. History is just what historians tell us.”  {blog 12/2009}

Richard Barnet and John Cavanagh
“The balance of power has shifted in recent years from territorially-bound governments to
companies that can roam the world.” in the book "Global Dreams" (1994)  {blog 11/2009}

P.T. Barnum [1810-91]
“Nobody ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the American people.”
{see also H.L. Mencken [1880-1956]}  {blog 1/2010}

comedian Roseanne Barr
“It's okay to be fat. So you're fat. Just be fat and shut up about it.”  {blog 4/2009}

J.M. Barrie [1860-1937]
“God gave us memories that we might have roses in December.”  {blog 11/2011}

Dave Barry
• • “Congress, after years of stalling, finally got around to clearing the way for informal discussions
that might lead to possible formal talks that could potentially produce some kind of
tentative agreements . . .”  {blog 12/2007}
• • “People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them.”
{blog 3/2008}

John Barrymore [1882-1942]
“A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams.”  {Issue #45}

C. Barsotti
“I have everything tied up in making ends meet.”
(cartoon in The New Yorker Magazine)  {Issue #37}

financier Bernard Baruch [1870-1965]
• • “Vote for the man who promises least; he'll be the least disappointing.”  {blog 4/2011}
• • “The main purpose of the stock market is to make fools of as many men as possible.”  {blog 10/2011}

poet Matsuo Basho [1644-94]
“Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old;
seek what they sought.”  {Issue #42}

Frédéric Bastiat [1801-50]
• • “Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors
to live at the expense of everybody else.”  {Issue #43}
• • “The worst thing that can happen to a good cause is, not to be skillfully attacked,
but to be ineptly defended.”  {blog 12/2007}
• • “The solution to the problems of human relationships is to be found in liberty.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society,
they create for themselves in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a
moral code that glorifies it.”  {blog 11/2009}
• • “Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense
of everybody else.”  {blog 11/2009}

economist Dr. Ravi Batra
• • “Supply-side economics is a bogus system.”  {blog 5/2008}
• • “Courage is the main quality of the Warrior Mind.”  {blog 5/2008}
• • “The bigger the goal, the bigger the obstacle. The bigger the obstacle, the bigger the achievement.
So blame the failure not on obstacles but on the absence of relentless effort.”  {blog 5/2010}

Orlando A. Battista [1917-95]
“An error doesn’t become a mistake until you refuse to correct it.”  {blog 4/2011}

Charles-Pierre Baudelaire [1821-67]
• • “Always be a poet, even in prose.”  {Issue #52}
• • “Genius is no more than childhood recaptured at will.”  {Issue #66}

Ron Bauer of Northridge, California
“Whether it's the war in Iraq, the environment, or the economy, the Bush
administration never lets truth get in its way.” (2004)  {Issue #47}

L. Frank Baum [1856-1919]
“It's no fun being a century ahead of the times.”  {blog 6/2009}

Emily Bazelon
“The world is too big for effective governance.”  {Issue #50}

historian Charles Austin Beard [1874-1948]
“One of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating
the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence.”  {Issue #67}

Warren Beatty
“I was friends with President Ronald Reagan and he once said to me, 'I don't know how
anybody can serve in public office without being an actor'.”   {blog 1/2012}

Samuel Beckett [1906-89]
“All writing is a sin against speechlesssness.”  {blog 8/2011}

Henry Ward Beecher [1813-87]
• • “Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anyone
expects of you. Never excuse yourself.”  {Issue #37}
• • “The power of hiding ourselves from one another is mercifully given, for men are wild beasts,
and would devour one another but for this protection.”  {blog 1/2010}

Max Beerbohm [1872-1956]
“Most women are not so young as they are painted.”  {blog 9/2008}

Peter Beinart
“We live in the world as it is and dream of the world that might one day be and consider ourselves
fortunate to have reduced, even modestly, the distance between the two.”  {blog 8/2009}

Saul Bellow [1915-2005]
• • “To be a writer one learns to live like one.”  {blog 5/2010}
• • “For writers the most important question is simply, What is interesting?”  {blog 6/2010}
• • “The name of the game is not Social Security. What an error! Social Security is an entirely different
game. The name of the game is Give All.”  {blog 1/2011}

David Ben-Gurion [1886-1973]
“In Israel, in order to be a realist you must believe in miracles.”  {blog 2/2008}

Robert Benchley [1889-1945]
“It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing.
But I couldn’t give it up because by then I was too famous.”  {blog 9/2008}

Texas Bix Bender
author of the book "Don't Squat With Yer Spurs On"
• • “Lettin' the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier 'n puttin' it back.”  {blog 1/2010}
• • “Don't let so much reality into your life that there's no room left for dreamin'.”  {blog 4/2010}

Walter Benjamin [1892-1940]
“The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the ‘state of emergency’ in which we live is not the exception
but the rule. We must attain to a conception of history that is in keeping with this insight. Then we shall clearly
realize that it is our task to bring about a real state of emergency, and this will improve our position in the
struggle against Fascism. One reason why Fascism has a chance is that in the name of progress its opponents
treat it as a historical norm.”  (in 'On The Context of History' 1939)  {blog 10/2007}

William J. Bennett
“America's support for human rights and democracy
is our noblest export to the world.”  {Issue #27}

Sally Berger, Museum of Modern Art, New York City
“The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”  {Issue #61}

Henri Bergson [1859-1941]
“Laughter is the corrective force which prevents us from becoming cranks.”  {blog 4/2011}

South African activist Hilda Bernstein [1915-2006]
“The meaning of life is a choice you make about the way [that] you live.”  {Issue #63}

William Bernstein
“The stock broker services his clients in the same way that Bonnie & Clyde serviced banks.”  {blog 11/2009}

Yogi Berra [b. 1925]
• • “If you don't go to somebody's funeral, they won't come to yours.”  {Issue #55}
• • “The future ain't what it used to be.”  {blog 8/2009}
• • “Baseball is 90 percent mental; the other half is physical.”  {blog 8/2009}
• • “If you don't know where you're going, you'll probably end up someplace else.”  {blog 5/2010}

Wendell Berry
• • “The gullibility of the public [has become] an economic resource.”  {blog 9/2009}
• • “The human species ... has outlived the name homo sapiens.”  {blog 10/2009}
• • “This strange economy produces, in the ordinary course of business, products that are
destructive or fraudulent or unnecessary or useless, or all four at once.”  {blog 10/2009}

Yogi Bhajan [1929-2004]
“If you can't see God in all, you can't see God at all.”  {Issue #48}

Ambrose Bierce [1842-1914]
• • “War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography.”  {blog 4/2008}
• • “Finance is the art or science of managing revenues or resources for the best
advantage of the manager.”  {blog 11/2009}
• • “Patience is a minor form of despair disguised as a virtue.”  {blog 3/2011}
• • “Politics is a strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.”  {blog 4/2011}
• • “All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusions is called a philosopher.”  {blog 11/2011}

Earl Derr Biggers [1884-1933], creator of detective Charlie Chan
• • “In California, the subdivider, like the poor, is always with us.”  {blog 12/2007}
• • “Persistence. That's the secret of a good detective.”  {blog 7/2008}

Josh Billings [1818-85]
• • “Do not put off until tomorrow what can be enjoyed today.”  {Issue #51}
• • “As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of demand.”  {blog 2/2011}
• • “Do not put off till tomorrow what can be enjoyed today.”  {blog 3/2011}
• • “Self-made men are most always apt to be a little too proud of the job.”  {blog 4/2011}
• • “Be like a postage stamp. Stick to one thing until you get there.”  {blog 10/2011}
• • “Advice is like castor oil, easy enough to give but dreadfully uneasy to take.”  {blog 12/2011}

Norman Birnbaum
“[Sociologist C. Wright] Mills is half forgotten – perhaps because much of what he said
is now taken for granted.”  {blog 5/2009}

Chris Bittler
“It's not enough to be right.”  {Issue #39}

cowboy poet & columnist Baxter Black
“When the chips are down and life hangs in the balance, someone has to be responsible.”  {Issue #52}

Hugo Black [1886-1971]
U.S. Supreme Court Justice, 1937-71
• • “Paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part
of the government from deceiving the people.”  {Issue #69}
• • “Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.”  {blog 11/2007}

Terry Black
“Idiots are everywhere. Many have degrees.”  {blog 12/2008}

John Stuart Blackie [1809-95]
“Wine is the drink of the gods, milk the drink of babies, tea the drink of women, and water
the drink of beasts.”   {blog 2/2011}

William Blackstone [1809–81]
“The community should guard the rights of each individual member, and (in return for this protection)
each individual should submit to the laws of the community, without which submission of all it is impossible
that protection can be extended to any.”  {blog 10/2010}

U.K. politician Tony Blair
“A simple way to take measure of a country is to look at how many people want in ...
and how many people want out.”   {blog 1/2012}

jazz musician Eubie Blake [1883-1983]
“If I'd known I was going to live this long,
I'd have taken better care of myself.”  {Issue #37}

Wm. Blake [1757–1827]
• • “What is now proved was once only imagined.”  {Issue #37}
• • “Execution is the chariot of genius.”  {Issue #46}
• • “Improvement makes straight roads; but the crooked roads without improvement
are roads of genius.”  {blog 1/2008}
• • “Think in the morning, act in the noon, read in the evening, and sleep at night.”  {blog 5/2010}

author Robert Bloch [1917-94]
“The man who can smile when things go wrong has thought of someone else [that] he can blame it on.”   {blog 7/2011}

Adele Block-Bauer [1881-1925]
“You have to learn to see. If you can appreciate what has quality
and what is worthless in art, you will appreciate it in people.”  {Issue #19}

Allan Bloom [1930-92]
• • “True liberal education requires that the student's whole life is
radically changed by it.”  {Issue #48}
• • “Indignation is the soul's defense against the wound of doubt."

Ivan Boesky, Wall Street arbitrageur
“Greed is all right, by the way. I want you to know that. I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and
still feel good about yourself.” (in a speech given at the commencement ceremony at University of California
Berkeley in 1986; he later spent two years in federal prison for insider trading crimes)  {blog 1/2010}

physicist David Bohm [1917-92]
“Intelligence requires that you don't defend an assumption.”  {blog 12/2011}

physicist Niels Bohr [1885-1962]
• • “Nothing exists until it is measured.”  {blog 10/2007}
• • “Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “A physicist is just an atom's way of looking at itself.”  {blog 3/2011}
• • “An expert is [someone] who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a narrow field.”  {blog 11/2011}

Derek Bok, former president of Harvard University
“If you think education is costly, try ignorance.”  {Issue #65}

Roberto Bolaño [1953-2003]
“We . . . tell ourselves that art runs on one track and life, our lives, on another,
and we don't realize [that] that's a lie.”  {Issue #60}

Simón Bolívar [1783-1830]
“The United States seems destined to plague us with all manner of evil in the name of liberty.”
{blog 12/2007}

Erma Bombeck [1927-96]
“Laughter rises out of tragedy, when you need it the most, and rewards you
for your courage.”  {Issue #42}

Napoleon Bonaparte [1769-1821]
• • “He who fears being conquered is sure of defeat.”  {Issue #46}
• • “Reality has limits, stupidity has not.”  {Issue #47}
• • “Men are moved by two levers only: fear and self-interest.”  {Issue #68}
• • “In politics, stupidity is not a handicap.”  {blog 6/2011}

Dietrich Bonhoeffer [1906-45]
“We have at times to be willing to be guilty.”  {blog 9/2008}

Daniel Boone [1734-1820]
• • “I can't say I was ever lost, but I was bewildered once for three days.”  {Issue #36}
• • “It is never too late to do good.”  {Issue #36}

comedian Elayne Boosler
“When women are depressed they either eat or go shopping. Men invade another country.”   {Issue #64}

Jorge Luis Borges [1899-1986]
“My father showed me his library, which was very large, and told me to read whatever I wanted,
but that if something bored me, I should immediately put it down.”  {blog 11/2008}

Paul Bowles [1910-99]
• • “Life, of course, is without meaning, and if you find something that gives it meaning,
you're very fortunate.”  {blog 4/2009}
• • “Not all the ravages caused by our merciless age are tangible ones. The subtler forms of destruction,
those involving only the human spirit, are the most to be dreaded.”  {blog 4/2009}

U.S.A.F. LtCol. Robert Bowman
“If the government has nothing to hide, why is it hiding everything?”  {blog 10/2007}

columnist L.M. Boyd [1927-2007]
• • “The old Greeks coined a noun for the man who took no part in
public matters, and from it we got our word 'idiot'.”  {Issue #35}
• • “Less money is spent annually on medical research than on hairdos.”  {Issue #36}
Reader & cartoonist Carol Lay made use of this quotation in her syndicated cartoon panel #504,
published in early November 2003; to view the cartoon click here.
• • “Sea species are disappearing even faster than land dwellers.”  {Issue #41}

movie director Danny Boyle
“The texture of a film is affected very much by the honor with which you make it.”  {blog 11/2010}

sci-fi author Ray Bradbury
• • “Go to the edge of the cliff and jump off and build your wings on the way down.”  {Issue #35}
• • “If you're not in love with what you're doing, don't do it; find what you love.”  {Issue #51}
• • “I can't name a writer who's had a more perfect life. My books are all in print, I'm in all the school
libraries, and when I go places I get the applause at the start of my speech.”  {blog 11/2007}
• • “The thing is to be madly, madly in love all the time.”  {blog 12/2007}
• • “People on a jet have only been on a trip; people on a train have been on a journey.”  {blog 1/2008}
• • “We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is knowing how to tip
ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.”  {blog 2/2009}
• • “Those who don't build must burn.” (in "Fahrenheit 451", 1953)   {blog 2/2009}
• • “A book is a loaded gun.” (in "Fahrenheit 451", 1953)   {blog 1/2010}

British folksinger-activist Billy Bragg
“Our real enemy is cynicism.”  {blog 12/2010}

John Bramhall [1594-1663]
“Where there is no consideration nor use of reason, the is no Liberty at all.”  {blog 10/2009}

David Brancaccio of P.B.S. News
“The country has moved so far to the right [that] you can invoke
Barry Goldwater as sort of a centrist figure.”  {Issue #48}

Western author Max Brand [1892-1944]
• • “All the crookedness ain't outside the law ... the real fine work
begins on the inside and stays there.”  {Issue #34}
• • “Cowboys are all right, but they need a good laundering, most of the time.”  {Issue #65}

Stewart Brand
“Information wants to be free.” (in 1984)  {blog 1/2011}

Louis Brandeis [1856-1941]
U.S. Supreme Court Justice, 1916-39
• • “We can have a democratic society or we can have a concentration of great wealth
in the hands of a few. We cannot have both.” (as quoted by Ralph Nader)  {Issue #26}
• • “The only title in our democracy that is superior to that of President is that of citizen.”  {blog 11/2007}

Joseph M. Branom of Oro Valley, Arizona
“George W. Bush is not a Texan. [He] was born in Connecticut, so I suppose
that makes him a Conn man. Second, Bush does not wear 'cowboy boots'.
Cowboy boots have the manure on the outside.”  {Issue #38}

Cubist painter Georges Braque [1882-1963]
“Truth exists, only falsehood has to be invented.”  {Issue #43 & blog 12/2010}

Robert Brault
“There is a purpose to our lives that each day tugs at our sleeve as an annoying distraction.”   {blog 5/2009}

poet Richard Brautigan [1935-84]
“A long time ago this was our future.”  {Issue #31}

Bertolt Brecht [1898-1956]
• • “Art is not a mirror to reflect reality [but] a hammer with which to shape it.”   {Issue #64}
• • “Unhappy the land that is in need of heroes.”  {blog 4/2008}
• • “What is robbing a bank compared to the founding of a bank?”  {blog 11/2009}
• • “He who laughs has not yet heard the terrible news.”  {blog 12/2011}

activist Barbara A. Brenner
“If people actually knew what was happening, they would be really p*ssed off. They should be.”   {blog 12/2011}

French filmmaker Robert Bresson [1901-99]
“Painting taught me to make not beautiful images but necessary ones.”  {blog 10/2010}

Ashleigh Brilliant
• • “I want either less corruption or more opportunity to participate in it.”  {Issue #46}
• • “Life is the only game in which the object of the game is to learn the rules.” {Issue #48}

chef Sean Brock of Charleston, South Carolina
“Make cornbread, not war.”  {blog 12/2011}

Jacob Bronowski [1908-74]
“Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty.”  {blog 4/2011}

Charlotte Bronté [1816-55]
“Silence is of different kinds, and breathes different meanings.”  {blog 7/2011}

David Brooks, New York Times columnist
“When conservatism was a movement of ideas, it attracted oddballs; now that it is a movement
with power, it attracts sleazeballs.”  {Issue #56}

James L. Brooks
“Screenwriting is no more complicated than old French torture chambers, I think. It’s about
as simple as that.”   {blog 6/2011}

Heywood Broun [1888-1939]
“God is always on the side which has the best football coach.”  {blog 2/2011}

Edmund G. 'Pat' Brown [1905-96]
California Governor, 1959-67
“I have nothing but contempt for those who say that no new taxes are necessary.”  {Issue #50}

Eryn Brown
“Today, more than 80% of married households have two wages coming in.”
(Los Angeles Times Magazine)  {Issue #37}

English poet Robert Browning [1812-89]
“What comes to perfection perishes.”  {blog 9/2008}

Lenny Bruce [1925-66]
• • “Life is a four-letter word.”  {blog 12/2011}
• • “The role of a comedian is to make the audience laugh, at a minimum
of once every fifteen seconds.”  {blog 12/2011}

William Jennings Bryan [1860-1925]
“Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is
not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.”  {Issue #10}

John Bryant [1943-2009]
“If you are afraid to speak against tyranny, then you are already a slave.”  {Issue #36}

Martin Buber [1878-1965]
• • “The world is not comprehensible, but it is embraceable.”  {blog 2/2009}
• • “All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.”  {blog 8/2011}

Jerry Buck of Sherman Oaks, California
“Politics seems to be the only place where a draft dodger from Wyoming and an AWOL guardsman from Texas
can question the loyalty of an authentic war hero from Massachusetts.” [L.A. Times Letter 3/2004]  {Issue #42}

capitalist Warren E. Buffett
• • “Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”  {Issue #67}
• • “He who knows [that] he has enough is rich.”  {Issue #67}
• • “By any common-sense definition, we are in a recession.” (in March 2008)  {blog 4/2008}
• • “There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war,
and we're winning.”  {blog 7/2011}
• • “I find the argument that we need lower taxes to create jobs mystifying, because we've had
the lowest taxes in this decade and about the worst job creation ever.”  {blog 1/2012}

Vincent Bugliosi
“Plain incompetence ... from the highest levels on down, is endemic in our society.” (2007)  {Issue #71}

writer Charles Bukowski [1920-94]
• • “The only thing that matters is how you walk thru the fire.”  {Issue #49}
• • “My advice to young writers is to stop looking for advice from old writers.”  {Issue #52}
• • “Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.”  {Issue #60}
• • “If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be
alone with the gods. And the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to
perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is.”  {Issue #63}

actress Sandra Bullock
“Whoever established the high road, and how high it should be, should be fired.”  {blog 12/2010}

Edward Bulwer-Lytton [1803-73]
“The pen is mightier than the sword.” in the stageplay "Richelieu", 1839  {blog 12/2008}

Warren Burger
U.S. Supreme Court Justice, 1969-86
“[The NRA's interpretation of the Second Amendment] is one of the greatest pieces of fraud – I repeat
the word 'fraud' – on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”
(in 1991)  {blog 2/2011}

Anthony Burgess [1917-93]
“Art and morality have little to say to each other.”  {blog 9/2008}

actress Billie Burke [1884-1970]
“To survive [in Hollywood] you need the ambition of a Latin American revolutionary,
the ego of a grand opera tenor, and the physical stamina of a cow pony.”  {blog 4/2009}

Edmund Burke [1729-97]
• • “Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little.”  {blog 4/2008}
• • “[Mankind is] a herd of beings that must be governed by fraud, effigy, and show.”  {blog 11/2008}
• • “A nation without the means of reform is without means of survival.”  {blog 3/2010}
• • “Bad laws are the worst form of tyranny.”  {blog 3/2011}

mystery author James Lee Burke
• • “Man is more a clown than a satan.”  {Issue #36}
• • “No matter what the war advocates of our time tell us, no violent excursion ends well.”  {Issue #64}
• • “If everybody agrees on it, it's wrong.”  {Issue #64}
• • “Capitalists are hanged by the rope [that] they sell their enemies.” (after V. Lenin)  {Issue #68}
• • “No vice flourishes without sanction.”  {Issue #68}
• • “New Orleans isn't a city, it's an outdoor mental asylum located on top of a giant sponge.”  {blog 9/2009}

Frances Hodgson Burnett [1829-1924]
“At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done.
Then they begin to hope [that] it can be done.
Then they see [that] it can be done.
Then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago.”
{blog 10/2007}

Chicago architect Daniel H. Burnham [1846-1912]
“Make no little plans, they have no magic to stir men’s blood; think big.”  {Issue #17 & blog 11/2007}

George Burns [1896-1996]
• • “The most important thing in acting is sincerity. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”  {blog 12/2008}
• • “I honestly think that it is better to be a failure at something [that] you love than to be a success
at something [that] you hate.”  {blog 1/2012}

William S. Burroughs [1914-97]
• • “A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what is going on.”  {Issue #32}
• • “The only real thing about a writer is what he's written, and not his life.”  {Issue #46}
• • “In the U.S., you have to be a deviant or exist in extreme boredom. Make no mistake,
all intellectuals are deviants in the U.S.”  {blog 2/2008}

George H.W. Bush
41st President of the United States, 1898-93
“Trying to eliminate Saddam would have incurred incalculable human and political costs.
We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. There was no viable
'exit strategy' we could see, violating another of our principles.
¶ “Furthermore, we had been consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land.”  {explaining why he didn't go after Saddam Hussein at the end of the Gulf War, in his memoirs "A World Transformed" 1999)  {Issue #47}

movie director Michael Curtiz [1886-1962]
“The next time I want some dumb son of a bitch to do something, I'll do it myself.”  {blog 2/2010}

jump to Page Two of WM Quotes [D thru F]

Quotation Links

Thomas Jefferson [1743-1826] Quotations Page
Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-82] Quotations Page
Abraham Lincoln [1809-65] Quotations Page
Mark Twain [1835-1910] Quotations Page
Friedrich Nietzsche [1844-1900] Quotations Page
George Bernard Shaw [1856-1950] Quotations Page
Bertrand Russell [1872-1970] Quotations Page
Winston Churchill [1874-1965] Quotations Page
Albert Einstein [1879-1955] Quotations Page
H.L. Mencken [1880-1956] Quotations Page
Wm. Faulkner [1897-1962] Quotations Page
John Steinbeck [1902-68] Quotations Page
Ayn Rand [1905-82] Quotations Page
Edward R. Murrow [1908-65] Quotations Page
Edward Abbey [1927-89] Quotations Page
Martin Luther King, Jr. [1929-68] Quotations Page
G.E. Nordell Quotations Page

Magic Lantern's Great Movie Quotes Page

Samuel Johnson [1709-84] Quotations website
Official Yogi Berra Quotes Page
Elbert Hubbard / Roycrofters Epigrams
Said What? quotation website
quotations page at antiwar.com
Heart Quotes website
Brainy Quote website
House of Quotes
Quotesland / Quotation Playground
Independent Institute: Quotes on Power
Famous Quotes Interactive Database
American Film Institute Top 100 Movie Quotes
Dan's Inspirational Quotes website

Books of Quotations Page

here on Page One of WM Quotes: A thru C • Quotation Links

jump to Page Two of WM Quotes [D thru F]
jump to Page Three of WM Quotes [G thru J]
jump to Page Four of WM Quotes [K thru N]
jump to Page Five of WM Quotes [O thru R]
jump to Page Six of WM Quotes [S thru Z]

Proverbs & Anonymous • Laws of Life

Index of All 'WMail' ezine Issues
back to 'WMail' Newsletter main page
back to Working Minds Philosophy homepage

Dateline Chamesa weblog