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

Alphabetical by Author

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Authors: Last Names Beginning With 'B'

Brandon B.
“The only thing standing between me and total happiness is reality.”  {blog 3/2015}

Leo Babauta
“At the end of the day, the questions [that] we ask of ourselves determine the type of people that we will become.”  {blog 4/2024}

Natalie Babbitt [1932-2016]
“Don't be afraid of death; be afraid of an unlived life. You don't have to live forever, you just have to live.”  {blog 3/2018}

actress Lauren Bacall [1924-2014]
• • “Time flies even when you're not having fun.”  {Issue #59}
• • “Imagination is the highest kite [that] one can fly.”  {blog 9/2013}

author-aviator Richard Bach
• • “The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.”  {blog 11/2015}
• • “Your conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness. Listen to it carefully.”  {blog 2/2017}

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}
• • “Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes, adversity not without many comforts and hopes.”  {blog 6/2012}
• • “The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.”  {blog 7/2012 & 1/2022}
• • “Anger makes dull men witty, but it keeps them poor.”  {blog 12/2012}
• • “The general root of superstition is that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss,
and commit to memory the one, and pass over the other.”  {blog 9/2013}
• • “Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.”  {blog 2/2014}
• • “The contemplation of things as they are, without error or confusion, without substitution or imposture, is in itself a nobler thing than
a whole harvest of invention.” (tacked to the darkroom door of American photographer Dorothea Lange [1895-1965])  {blog 8/2014}
• • “All rising to great place is by a winding stair.”  {blog 7/2016}
• • “Only by going too far can you go far enough.”  {blog 9/2016}
• • “Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly.”  {blog 1/2017}
• • “Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted . . . but to weigh and consider.”  {blog 3/2023}

Hollywood columnist James Bacon [1914-2010]
“I don't believe in the tooth fairy, although I once had a dentist [that] I wasn't too sure of.”  {blog 9/2012}

French philosopher Alain Badiou
“The system cannot propose a place for novelty, so we must create something outside the system as it is.”  {blog 12/2019}

singer-songwriter Joan Baez
• • “Noise is an imposition on sanity, and we live in very noisy times.”  {blog 6/2012}
• • “Action is the antidote to despair.”  {blog 7/2013}

journalist Ben H. Bagdikian [b. 1920]
“Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American newspaper is like trying to play Bach's
'St. Matthew Passion' on a ukulele.”  {blog 11/2015}

journalist Walter Bagehot [1826-77]
• • “The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.” (in 1853)  {blog 2/2008}
• • “One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.”  {blog 5/2013}

attorney  F. Lee Bailey [1933-2021]
“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}

Danish politician Fredrik Bajer [1837-1922]
“Always we must bear in mind that law has to be substituted for power, that care must be taken to serve the interests of law.”  {blog 11/2017}

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

dancer George Balanchine [1904-83]
“There is only now.”  {blog 11/2016}

Rocky Balboa character, created by Sylvester Stallone
“It ain't about how hard you hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.”  {blog 11/2017}

author David Baldacci
• • “Without risk there is no possibility for glory.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “Every soldier who ever died was innocent.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “Most people associate reading with laying on the beach. They don't see that [reading is] crucial for democracy.”  {blog 7/2018}

Baldo comic strip [est. 2000] by Cantú & Castellanos
“There is no elevator to cool . . . you have to take the stairs!”  {blog 1/2022}

decorator Billy Baldwin [1903-83]
“The best decoration in the world is a roomful of books.”  {blog 12/2015}

author James A. Baldwin [1924-87]
• • “Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”  {Issue #62}
• • “Ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy [that] justice can have.”  {blog 4/2013}
• • “The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions hidden by the answers.”  {blog 5/2016}
• • “All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last,
to tell the whole story, to vomit the anguish up.”  {blog 10/2016}
• • “Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.” - in "Giovanni's Room" (1956 novel)  {blog 1/2017}
• • “Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be.”  {blog 3/2017}
• • “You think [that] your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, and then you read.”  {blog 12/2017}
• • “America's sense of reality is dictated by what it is trying to avoid.”  {blog 3/2018}
• • “You need someone who believes in this country, again, to begin to change it.”  {blog 4/2018}
• • “A civilization is not destroyed by wicked people; it is not necessary that people be wicked but only that they be spineless.”  {blog 8/2018}
• • “Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.”  {blog 8/2018}
• • “It demands great spiritual resilience not to hate the hater whose foot is on your neck, and an even greater miracle
of perception and charity not to teach your child to hate.”  {blog 8/2019}
• • “The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.”  {blog 3/2023}
• • “Only those who would fail to see the relationship between the fight for civil rights and the struggle for world peace
would be surprised to see me. Both fights are the same.”  {blog 3/2023}

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}

Roger Nash Baldwin [1884-1981], co-founder of A.C.L.U.
“So long as we have enough people in this country willing to fight for their rights, we'll be called a democracy.”  {blog 7/2021}

Lucille Ball [1911-89]
• • “The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age.”   {blog 4/2009 & 7/2022}
• • “Love yourself first and everything else falls into line.”  {blog 8/2013}

Monica Ballard
“Flip the White House [in] 2020. The planet depends upon it.” - on Facebook  {blog 8/2019}

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}

music critic Lester Bangs [1948-82]
“The first mistake of art is to assume that it is serious.”  {blog 9/2017}

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}

baseball great Ernie Banks [1931-2015]
“The only way to prove [that] you are a good sport is to lose.”  {blog 10/2021}

Russell Banks
“One climbs a mountain, not to conquer it, but to be lifted away from the earth up to the sky.”  {blog 8/2016}

physicist Albert-László Barabási
“With persistence, success can come at any time.”  {blog 10/2022}

Amiri Baraka [1934-2014]
“Accept no racist activity, neither word nor deed. Speak Out & Fight (at whatever level called for) until it is eliminated.”
- in "An Activist Commitment Against Racism" [1991]  {blog 11/2020}

Spanish actor Javier Bardem
“My truth – what I believe – is that there are no answers here and, if you are looking for answers,
you'd better choose the question carefully.”  {blog 7/2017}

French actress Brigitte Bardot
“What could be more beautiful than a dear old lady growing wise with age? Every age can be enchanting,
provided you live within it.”  {blog 10/2015}

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}

Emelie Rose Barg
“One child kidnapped is an Amber Alert. 2,000 children kidnapped is Republican policy.” - on Facebook  {blog 6/2018}

Maurice Baring [1874-1945]
“Whoever one is, and wherever one is, one is always in the wrong if one is rude.”  {blog 2/2019}

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

British author Julian Barnes
• • “History isn't what happened. History is just what historians tell us.”  {blog 12/2009}
• • “The more [that] you learn, the less [that] you fear.”  {blog 6/2012}
• • “Perhaps the world progresses not by maturing, but by being in a permanent state of adolescence, of thrilled discovery.”  {blog 2/2014}
• • “The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably.”  {blog 4/2016}
• • “Books say: She did this because. Life says: She did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where
things aren't. I'm not surprised some people prefer books.”  {blog 1/2018}

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}

American showman Phineas Taylor '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}
• • “The noblest art is that of making others happy.”  {blog 5/2016}
• • “Money is in some respects life's fire: it is a very excellent servant, but a terrible master.”  {blog 4/2017}
• • “Witchcraft is one of the most baseless, absurd, disgusting, and silly of all the humbugs.”  {blog 5/2017}
• • “Every crowd has a silver lining.”  {blog 5/2017}
• • “No one ever made a difference by being like everyone else.”  {blog 7/2017}
~~ line from "The Greatest Showman On Earth" P.T. Barnum musical film [December 2017]

comedian Roseanne Barr
• • “It's okay to be fat. So you're fat. Just be fat and shut up about it.”  {blog 4/2009}
• • [re: parenthood] “You get a lot of tension, you get a lot of headaches. I do what it says
on the aspirin bottle: Take two and keep away from children.”  {blog 9/2013}

French actor Jean-Louis Barrault [1910-94]
“When I wake up in the morning I want to feel hungry for life. Desire is what drives me. When I go to sleep, I feel I have experienced a small death, so that I can wake up in the morning renewed and reborn.”  {blog 1/2023}

Judge Amy Coney Barrett
“A legal career is but a means to an end. And that end is building the kingdom of God.”  {blog 11/2020}

British playwright J.M. Barrie [1860-1937], creator of "Peter Pan"
• • “God gave us memories that we might have roses in December.”  {blog 11/2011}
• • “Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else.”  {blog 8/2013}
• • “The best of our fiction is by novelists who allow that it is as good as they can give, and the worst by novelists
who maintain that they could do much better if only the public would let them.”  {blog 3/2015}
• • “All the world is made of faith, and trust, and pixie dust.”  {blog 6/2015}
• • “He was a poet, and they are never exactly grown up.”  {blog 8/2015}
• • “I think one remains the same person throughout, merely passing, as it were, in these lapses of time
from one room to another, but all in the same house.”  {blog 12/2015}
• • “Always be a little kinder than necessary.”  {blog 2/2016}
• • “To be born is to be wrecked on an island.”  {blog 7/2018}

T.A. Barron
“We need heroes today more than ever.”  {blog 2/2019}

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}
• • “Hobbies of any kind are boring, except to people who have the same hobby.”  {blog 9/2012}
• • “Camping is nature's way of promoting the motel business.”  {blog 7/2013}
• • “Meetings are an addictive, highly self-indulgent activity that corporations and other large organizations
habitually engage in only because they cannot actually masturbate.”  {blog 2/2014}

cartoonist Lynda Barry
“We don't create a fantasy world to escape reality, we create it to be able to stay.”  {blog 7/2013}

actor John Barrymore [1882-1942]
• • “A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams.”  {Issue #45}
• • “Happiness often sneaks in through a door [that] you did not know was open.”  {blog 5/2022}

cartoonist C. Barsotti [1933-2014]
“I have everything tied up in making ends meet.”
(cartoon in The New Yorker Magazine)  {Issue #37}

theologian Karl Barth [1886-1968]
“Joy is the simplest form of gratitude.”  {blog 6/2012}

American financier & statesman Bernard Baruch [1870-1965]
• • “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter
and those who matter don't mind.”  {blog 9/2008}
{ probably said first by Baruch, usually credited to Dr. Seuss {Theodor Geisel 1904-91} }
• • “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}

Jacques Barzun [1907-2012]
• • “Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.”  {blog 7/2013}
• • “Only a great mind that is overthrown yields tragedy.”  {blog 3/2015}
• • “Whoever wants to know about the heart and mind of America must learn about baseball.”  {blog 4/2015}
• • “If civilization has risen from the Stone Age, it can rise again from the Wastepaper Age.”  {blog 5/2015}
• • “Music is intended for sentient beings that have hopes and purposes and emotions.”  {blog 6/2015}
• • “Great cultural changes begin in affectation and end in routine.”  {blog 8/2015}
• • “The finest achievement of human society and its rarest pleasure is Conversation.” - in 1959  {blog 9/2015}

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

Gershon Baskin of Israel
“The people who sheltered Anne Frank were breaking the law. The people who killed her were obeying the law.” - on Facebook  {blog 6/2018}

artist Jean-Michel Basquiat [1960-88]
“Some days I can't get an idea, and I think, 'Man, I'm just washed up,' but it's just a mood.”  {blog 4/2024}

poet Ellen Bass
“Thinking for yourself and making your own decisions can be frightening. Letting go of other people’s expectations can leave you
feeling empty for a time. And yet seeing yourself as an independent adult who can stand up for your own choices frees you
to accept yourself as you are.”  {blog 10/2022}

Frédéric Bastiat [1801-50]
• • “Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors
to live at the expense of everybody else.”  {Issue #43 & blog 11/2009}
• • “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}

cultural anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson
“We are not what we know but what we are willing to learn.”  {blog 9/2018}

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}

media entrepreneur John Battelle
“What if the purpose of business is creativity, not wealth extraction?”  {blog 11/2016}

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}
• • “What's irritating about love is [that] it's a crime that requires an accomplice.”  {blog 3/2013}

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}

author L. Frank Baum [1856-1919]
• • “It's no fun being a century ahead of the times.”  {blog 6/2009}
• • “If I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own back yard because if it isn't there,
I never lost it to begin with.”  {blog 6/2017}

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

French film critic André Bazin [1918-58]
“The cinema substitutes for our gaze a world more in harmony with our desires.”  {blog 7/2015}

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}

Melody Beattie
“Gratitude turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity . . .
it makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.”  {blog 8/2017}

poet & novelist Paul Beatty
“Silence can be either protest or consent, but most times it's fear.”  {blog 11/2016}

cinema auteur 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}
• • “You've achieved success in your field when you don't know whether what you're doing is work or play.”  {blog 2/2021}

Irish playwright Samuel Beckett [1906-89]
• • “All writing is a sin against speechlesssness.”  {blog 8/2011}
• • “What is that unforgettable line?”  {blog 9/2012}
• • “The creation of the world did not take place once and for all time, but takes place every day.”  {blog 12/2012}
• • “We are all born mad. Some remain so.”  {blog 7/2013}
• • “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” – in 'Worstward Ho' [1984]  {blog 2/2014 & 3/2015}
• • “To find a form that accomodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now.”  {blog 8/2015}
• • “If by Godot I had meant God I would have said God, and not Godot.”  {blog 3/2016}
• • “Words are all we have.”  {blog 3/2018}

Michael Bernard Beckwith
“Hold fast to your vision and do something every day to bring it into manifestation.”  {blog 9/2017}

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}
• • “The difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one comes from a strong will and the other
from a strong won't.”  {blog 10/2012}
• • “A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs. It's jolted by every pebble in the road.”  {blog 11/2012}
• • “The philosophy of one century becomes the common sense of the next.”  {blog 4/2014}
• • “A cup of coffee – real coffee – home-browned, home ground, homemade, that comes to you dark as a hazel-eye, but changes to a
golden bronze as you temper it with cream that never cheated, but was real cream from its birth, thick, tenderly yellow, perfectly sweet,
neither lumpy nor frothing on the Java: such a cup of coffee is a match for twenty blue devils and will exorcise them all.”  {blog 11/2015}
• • “A library is not a luxury but one of the necessities of life.”  {blog 12/2017}
• • “The art of being happy lies in the power to extract happiness from common things.”  {blog 8/2023}

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}

singer-activist Harry Belafonte
• • “Anger that has no purpose, that isn't guided toward a positive end, is dangerous and counter-productive.”  {blog 7/2016}
• • “[The victory at Standing Rock] is a call to remind us that the engine can be stopped.”  {blog 3/2017}

Bill Belichick, coach of the New England Patriots football team
“Positive leadership, in my mind, comes from two things ... No. 1 [is] do your job. No. 2 [is] put the team first.”  {blog 5/2020}

Alexander Graham Bell [1847-1922]
“Concentrate all your thoughts on the task at hand. The sun's rays do not burn until brought to a focus.”  {blog 2/2016}

Eric Temple Bell [1883-1960]
“Common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices.”  {blog 9/2014}

Ted Bell
“The only difference between science and science fiction is timing.”  {blog 5/2012}

Benny Bellamacina
• • “In life there are squares and there are circles, sometimes it's best to be an oblong.”  {blog 4/2024}
• • “The deeper you hate the longer you hurt.”  {blog 4/2024}

Hilaire Belloc [1870-1953]
• • “When I am dead I hope it may be said: 'His sins were scarlet but his books were read.'”  {blog 6/2012}
• • “If we do not restore the Institution of Property we cannot escape restoring the Institution of
Slavery; there is no third course.”  {blog 8/2012}

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}
• • “Public virtue is a kind of ghost town into which anyone can move and declare himself sheriff.”  {blog 4/2013}

Scott Belsky
co-founder of the Bëhance creativity social website [est. 2005]
“[We're] not about ideas. [We're] about making ideas happen.”  {blog 3/2017}

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}
• • “Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing.”  {blog 4/2017}

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}

anthropologist Ruth Benedict [1887-1948]
“The trouble with life isn't that there is no answer, it's that there are so many answers.”  {blog 9/2017}

internet marketer Rick Beneteau
“It's how you deal with failure that determines your success.”  {blog 3/2023}

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}

British playwright Alan Bennett
“A book is a device to ignite the imagination.”  {blog 3/2014}

Clay Bennett, editorial cartoonist for Chattanooga Times Free Press
CARTOON: [drawing of Hillary Clinton with oral thermometer in mouth] Pneumonia is curable. [drawing of Donald Trump] Stupidity is not.  {blog 9/2016}

Jerry Bennett of Georgia USA
“You can’t argue with saw dust.” - on Facebook  {blog 12/2019}

Roy T. Bennett
• • “If you want to be happy, do not dwell in the past, do not worry about the future, focus on living fully in the present.”  {blog 4/2017}
• • “Instead of worrying about what you cannot control, shift your energy to what you can create.”  {blog 6/2017}
• • “Courage is feeling fear, not getting rid of fear, and taking action in the face of fear.”  {blog 7/2017}
• • “The past is a place of reference, not a place of residence; the past is a place of learning, not a place of living.”  {blog 3/2018}
• • “Live the Life of Your Dreams: Be brave enough to live the life of your dreams according to your vision and purpose
instead of the expectations and opinions of others.”  {blog 4/2018}
• • “Let the improvement of yourself keep you so busy that you have no time to criticize others.”  {blog 6/2019}
• • “Take responsibility of your own happiness, never put it in other people’s hands.”  {blog 5/2022}
• • “It’s only after you’ve stepped outside your comfort zone that you begin to change, grow, and transform.”  {blog 11/2022}

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

Noah benShea
“The fist starves the hand.”  {blog 6/2012}

E.F. Benson [1867-1940]
“It is easier to do nothing by the sea than anywhere else.”  {blog 8/2018}

Jocelyn Benson, Michigan Secretary of State
“The only thing that can stop a bad politician with a vote is a good citizen with a vote.”  {blog 7/2022}

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

novelist Thomas Berger [1924-2014]
• • “Why do writers write? Because it isn't there.”  {blog 6/2012}
• • “The art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge.”  {blog 9/2018}

cinema master Ingmar Bergman [1918-2007]
• • “No form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does, straight to our emotions, deep into the twilight
room of the soul.”  {blog 11/2016}
• • “Only someone who is well prepared has the opportunity to improvise.”  {blog 5/2022}

Henri Bergson [1859-1941]
• • “Laughter is the corrective force which prevents us from becoming cranks.”  {blog 4/2011 & 7/2022}
• • “There is no perception that is not full of memories.”  {blog 4/2012}

Shelley Berkley, candidate for U.S. Senate from Nevada in 2012
“We have something to fight for in this [election]: the future of the American middle class.”   {blog 8/2012}

Milton Berle [1908-2002]
• • “If evolution really works, how come mothers have only two hands?”  {blog 5/2012}
• • “If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.”  {blog 4/2014}

composer  Irving Berlin  [1888-1989]
“Life is 10 percent what you make it and 90 percent how you take it.”  {blog 6/2012}

Claude Bernard [1813-78]
“Art is 'I'; science is 'we'.”  {blog 2/2018}

advertising pioneer William Bernbach [1911-82]
“It's not a principle until it costs you money.”  {blog 9/2018}

Dr. Eric Berne [1910-1970]
• • “We are born princes and the civilizing process makes us frogs.”  {blog 9/2014}
• • “The destiny of every human being is decided by what goes on inside his skull when confronted by what goes on
outside his skull.”  {blog 9/2014}
• • “Each person designs his own life, freedom gives him the power to carry out his own designs, and power gives
the freedom to interfere with the designs of others.”  {blog 9/2014}

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

composer Leonard Bernstein [1918-90]
“This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.”  {blog 6/2016}

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

baseball great Yogi Berra [1925-2015]
• • “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}
• • “Some things are just too coincidental to be a coincidence.”  {blog 5/2013}
• • “Nostalgia ain't what it used to be.”  {blog 6/2017}
NOT said by Yogi Berra, but by Peter De Vries [1910-93], in his 1959 novel "The Tent of Wickedness"
• • “You better cut the pizza into four pieces, because I'm not hungry enough to eat six.”  {blog 12/2018}

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}
• • “The most political act you can do is raise a child well.”  {blog 12/2012}
• • “Don't own so much clutter that you will be relieved to see your house catch fire.”  {blog 2/2014}

Peter Berryman
“The main quality that sets humans apart from other animals is the human desire to set itself apart
from other animals.”   {blog 6/2012}

Toba Beta
“Scientists may have sophisticated laboratories, but never forget 'eureka' was inspired in a bathtub.”  {blog 11/2014}

Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune [1875-1955]
“'Love thy neighbor' is a precept which could transform the world if it were universally practiced.”  {blog 5/2012}

Jeff Bezos, creator of Amazon, Inc.
“Invention is by its very nature disruptive. If you want to be understood at all times, then don't do anything new.”
{blog 11/2014}

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

poet Elizabeth Bibesco [1897-1945]
“Blessed are those that can give without remembering and receive without forgetting.”  {blog 9/2014}

President Joe Biden
• • “You can't love your country only when you win.”, in a speech 11/2/2022  {blog 11/2022}
• • “We are bound together by the loss and the pain of the days that have gone by. We are also bound together by the hope and the possibilities in the days in front of us.”, in 2023  {blog 3/2023}

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}
• • “If one cannot do great work, it is worthwhile to do good work and think it great.”  {blog 9/2012}
• • “A person who doubts himself is like a man who would enlist in the ranks of his enemies and bear arms against
himself. He makes his failure certain by himself being the first person to be convinced of it.”  {blog 4/2015}
• • “Corporation: an ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.”  {blog 7/2016}
• • “The most affectionate creature in the world is a wet dog.”  {blog 6/2017}

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}

South African martyr Stephen Biko [1946-77]
“The oppressor's most powerful weapon is the mind of the oppressed.”  {blog 8/2015}

'Bill and Ted', comic movie characters
“Be excellent to each other.”  {blog 8/2018}

Josh Billings [1818-85]
• • “Do not put off until tomorrow what can be enjoyed today.”  {Issue #51 & blog 3/2011}
• • “As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of demand.”  {blog 2/2011}
• • “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}

journalist Jim Bishop [1907-87]
“A good writer is not per se a good book critic, no more than a good drunk is automatically a good bartender.”
in the New York Journal, 1957  {blog 8/2012}

Stephen Bishop
“I feel so miserable without you; it's almost like having you here.”  {blog 10/2022}

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 & blog 6/2018}
• • “Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.”  {blog 11/2007}

comedian Lewis Black
“From fake news to Stormygate, [this country's] spinning out of control like a clown car without a designated driver.”
- in an email for the American Civil Liberties Union (A.C.L.U.)  {blog 5/2018}

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 [1887-1983]
“If I'd known I was going to live this long, I'd have taken better care of muself.”  {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}
• • “If the sun and moon should doubt / they'd immediately go out.”  {blog 3/2014}
• • “The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.”  {blog 4/2014}
• • “A truth that's told with bad intent / beats all the lies you could invent.”  {blog 4/2015}
• • “Climb the mountain so [that] you can see the world, not so [that] the world can see you”  {blog 10/2022}

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}

mystery author Lawrence Block
• • “Dangerous thing, giving humanity the knowledge of good and evil. And the capacity to make the wrong choice more often than not.”   {blog 6/2015}
• • “People don't get to change things. Things change people once in a while, but people don't change things.”  {blog 8/2015}
• • “I don't plan an awful lot in life, just as I don't plan an awful lot in my fiction.”  {blog 9/2015}

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."  {blog 12/2008}

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg
“The cemeteries are full of irreplaceable people.”  {blog 10/2012}

Charles Blow, New York Times columnist
“A 2012 poll found that people who listened to no news were better informed than those who listened to Fox News.”  {blog 3/2014}

Judy Blume
• • “Fear is often disguised as moral outrage.”  {blog 3/2013}
• • “Something will be offensive to someone in every book, so you've got to fight it.”  {blog 6/2017}
• • “Whatever gets [kids] excited about reading is good! If you want them to read my books don't tell them so. Maybe just leave around
a paperback with a new cover and say, 'I'm not sure you're ready for that'.”  {blog 2/2018}

British children's author Enid Blyton [1897-1968]
• • “Writing for children is an art in itself, and a most interesting one.”  {blog 10/2021}
• • “I have written, probably, more books for children than any other writer, from story-books to plays, and can claim
to know more about interesting children than most.”  {blog 10/2021}

David Boddiger, managing editor at The Progressive Magazine
“It is undeniable that the culture wars [that] we are facing today in the United States have a body count.”  {blog 10/2022}

   disgraced Cong. Lauren Boebert [GOP CO 2021-2022]
“I’m tired of this separation of church and state junk.”  {blog 7/2022 & 11/2022}

John Boehner
“[Ted Cruz is] Lucifer in the flesh. I have Democrat friends and Republican friends. I get along with almost everyone,
but I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life.” - at Stanford University in April 2016  {blog 5/2016}

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}

Ian Bogost, contributor at The Atlantic Magazine
“Everyone pretends. And everything is more than we can ever see of it.”  {blog 3/2023}

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}
• • “Your theory is crazy, but it's not crazy enough to be true.”  {blog 2/2018}
• • “There are trivial truths and there are great truths. The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false.
The opposite of a great truth is also true.”  {blog 5/2020}

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}

columnist Erma Bombeck [1927-96]
• • “Laughter rises out of tragedy, when you need it the most, and rewards you for your courage.”  {Issue #42}
• • “Worry is like a rocking chair: It gives you something to do but never gets you anywhere.”  {blog 3/2012}
• • “Never go to a doctor whose office plants are dead.”  {blog 3/2016}
• • “On Mother's Day I can think of no mother more deserving than a mother who had to give one back.”  {blog 5/2018}
• • “The only reason I would take up jogging is so I could hear the sound of heavy breathing again.”  {blog 7/2018}
• • “The term 'working mother' is redundant.”  {blog 8/2018}

rock musician Jon Bon Jovi
“Nothing is as important as passion. No matter what you want to do with your life, be passionate.”  {blog 11/2017}

Napoléon 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}
• • “The best way to keep your word is not to give it.”  {blog 11/2012}
• • “When the enemy is making a false movement, we must take good care not to interrupt him.”  {blog 9/2016}
• • “On victory, you deserve beer. On defeat, you need it.”  {blog 5/2022}

Frederick G. Bonfils [1861-1933], founder of the Denver Post newspaper
“There is no hope for the satisfied man.”  {blog 11/2013}

Dietrich Bonhoeffer [1906-45]
• • “We have at times to be willing to be guilty.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed
and, if need be, prevented by use of force.”  {blog 5/2020}
• • “Against stupidity we are defenseless; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed, and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. For that reason, greater caution is called for when dealing with a stupid person than with a malicious one.”  {blog 2/2021}

American explorer Daniel Boone [1734-1820]
• • “I can't say [that] 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}

James H. Boren [1925-2010]
“When in charge, ponder. When in trouble, delegate. When in doubt, mumble.”   {blog 4/2012}

entertainer Victor Borge [1909-2000]
• • “A smile is the shortest distance between two people.”  {blog 3/2012}
• • “Santa Claus has the right idea: Visit people only once a year.”  {blog 12/2015}

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}
• • “I cannot sleep unless I am surrounded by books.”  {blog 1/2014}
• • “Don't talk unless you can improve the silence.”  {blog 4/2017}
• • “It is known that personal identity resides in memory, and the annulment of that faculty is known to result in idiocy.”
- in "History of Eternity" [1936]  {blog 12/2017}
• • “I have committed the worst sin of all that a man can commit. I have not been Happy.”  {blog 3/2018}
• • “I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of a library.”  {blog 10/2022}

Robert L. Borosage
“[Bernie Sanders's] message has such power that Hillary Clinton has chosen to recycle parts of it.”  {blog 2/2016}

'Boston Pete', blogger on DailyKos
“How about we treat every man who wants to buy a gun like [we treat] every woman who wants to get an abortion?”  {blog 10/2015}

Brian Wade Bough
“We have spent the last 35-plus years deregulating so many parts of our economy that one would swear [that] Republicans
take Jesus’ statement that 'The poor will always be with you' as a commandment.”  {blog 8/2018}

food show host Anthony Bourdain [1956-2018]
“Your body is not a temple, it's an amusement park. Enjoy the ride.”  {blog 7/2013}

E.S. Bouton
“True wisdom lies in gathering the precious things out of each day as it goes by.”  {blog 11/2013}

Carleton Bowekaty, Tribal Councilman at Zuni Pueblo
“If we don’t have a healthy land we won’t have a healthy people.”  {blog 6/2017}

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}
• • “In the [XXth] Century, more Americans died in murders than in wars.”  {blog 2/2017}
• • “Most business meetings are staged to supply people who would rather talk than work with people
who would rather listen than work.”  {blog 8/2017}

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 & poet Ray Bradbury [1920-2012]
• • “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}
• • “I'm not trying to predict the future. I'm just trying to prevent it.”  {blog 6/2012}
• • “Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in a cage.”  {blog 7/2012}
• • “I do not like what is going on in our society. Our education system . . . is a total disaster.”
— interview in Salon 8/2001  {blog 9/2012}
• • “Quantity produces quality. If you only write a few things, you're doomed.”  {blog 4/2014}
• • “You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”  {blog 12/2015}
• • “Without libraries, what do we have? We have no past and no future.”  {blog 8/2016}
• • “Oh God, the terrible tyranny of the majority. We all have our harps to play. And it’s up to you
to know with which ear you’ll listen.” - in his 1953 novel "Fahrenheit 451"  {blog 11/2016}
• • “Write a short story every week. It's not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row.”  {blog 1/2017}
• • “We're all fools, all the time. It's just [that] we're a different kind each day.” - in "The Illustrated Man" [1951]  {blog 8/2018}
• • “In science fiction, we dream.”  {blog 2/2021}

William Bradford [1599-1657]
“All great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and both must be enterprised
and overcome with answerable courage.”   {blog 5/2015}

Marion Zimmer Bradley [1930-99]
“Science fiction encourages us to explore . . . all the futures, good and bad, that the human mind can envision.”  {blog 8/2016}

Gen. Omar Bradley [1893-1981]
“We have many men of science, too few men of God. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon On The Mount.
Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.”  {blog 12/2017}

football player & announcer Terry Bradshaw
“I may be dumb but I'm not stupid.” ~~ wrongly attributed to Bradshaw, since it predates him by fifty-odd years  {blog 4/2013}

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, there 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}
• • “When you're down, every rat is big enough to try to eat you.”  {blog 12/2013}

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

Louis D. Brandeis [1856-1941]
U.S. Supreme Court Justice, 1916-39
Louis D. Brandeis Quotations Page at Working Minds

Nathaniel Branden [1930-2014]
“Of all the judgments we pass in life, none is more important than the judgment we pass on ourselves.”  {blog 3/2015}

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}

serial entrepreneur Richard Branson
• • “When you lavish praise on people, they flourish; criticize and they shrivel up.”  {blog 8/2013}
• • “It's easy to become a millionaire – start out as a billionaire, and then buy an airline.”  {blog 11/2013}
• • “Storytelling is the best way [that] we have of coming up with new ideas.”  {blog 4/2016}
• • “Put your staff first, your customers second, and your shareholders third.”  {blog 11/2017}

French artist Georges Braque [1882-1963]
• • “Truth exists, only falsehood has to be invented.”  {Issue #43 & blog 12/2010}
• • “Art is made to disturb. Science reassures. There is only one valuable thing in art: the thing [that] you cannot explain.”  {blog 9/2014 & 3/2015}
• • “Art is meant to disturb, science reassures.”  {blog 7/2016 & 8/2017}

Judge Jacob Braude of Illinois
“Always behave like a duck: Keep calm and unruffled on the surface but paddle
like the devil underneath.”   {blog 6/2012}

blogger Robert Brault
• • “There is a purpose to our lives that each day tugs at our sleeve as an annoying distraction.”   {blog 5/2009}
• • “Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize [that] they were the big things.”  {blog 10/2016}
• • “Worse than telling a lie is spending the rest of your life staying true to a lie.”  {blog 11/2016}
• • “Charisma is not so much getting people to like you as getting people to like themselves when you're around.”  {blog 9/2018}

Lilian Jackson Braun [1913-2011]
“A library card is the start of a lifelong adventure.”  {blog 8/2014}

poet Richard Brautigan [1935-84]
• • “A long time ago this was our future.”  {Issue #31}
• • “My teachers could easily have ridden with Jesse James for all the time [that] they stole from me.”  {blog 12/2017}

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}
• • “People cannot remain good unless good is expected of them.”  {blog 7/2012}
• • “Intelligence is not to make no mistakes, but to see quickly how to make them good.”  {blog 4/2013}
• • “Hungry man, reach for a book, it is a weapon.”  {blog 5/2017}

John O. Brennan, former head of the C.I.A.
• • “Clean up your act . . . Try to act Presidential” ~~ tweet response to 10/2018 tweet by {hashtag} realDonaldTrump  {blog 10/2018}
• • “[Donald Trump's] dishonesty has no limits.”  {blog 5/2020}

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

columnist Jimmy Breslin
“The poor can never be made to suffer enough.”  {blog 9/2015}

French filmmaker Robert Bresson [1901-99]
• • “Painting taught me to make not beautiful images but necessary ones.”  {blog 10/2010}
• • “[There are] two types of films: those that employ the resources of the theater (actors, direction, etc.) and use the camera
in order to reproduce; [and] those that employ the resources of cinematography and use the camera to create.”
—in "Notes On The Cinematographer" [1975]  {blog 7/2015}

Episcopal Bishop Benjamin Brewster [1860-1941]
“In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice; in practice, there is.”  {blog 12/2007}
often wrongly-attributed to others, including Yogi Berra, Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, Charles F. Kettering,
Walter J. Savitch, Jan L. A. van de Snepscheut, Dave Jeske & Chuck Reid

N.A.S.A. Administrator Jim Bridenstine
“Make no mistake: Every flight is a test flight when it comes to space travel.”  {blog 2/2021}

John Bright
“He is a self-made man and worships his creator.”  {blog 10/2022}

Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin [1755-1826]
“Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are.”  {blog 2/2016}

author 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}
• • “My sources are unreliable, but their information is fascinating.”  {blog 6/2012}
• • “Strange as it may seem, my life is based on a true story.”  {blog 5/2022}

sci-fi author David Brin
• • “A mind that's afraid to toy with the ridiculous will never come up with the brilliantly original.”  {blog 7/2018}
• • “I've long maintained that the health of an enlightened and progressive society is measured by how vibrant is its science fiction,
since that is where true self-critique and appraisal and hope lie.”  {blog 2/2021}

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

Joseph Brodsky [1940-96]
“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.”  {blog 7/2015}

Richard Brody, blogger/critic at The New Yorker Magazine
“The movies that aren't made are as revealing of the times as those that are.”  {blog 3/2017}

Tom Brokaw
“It's easy to make a buck. It's a lot harder to make a difference.”  {blog 8/2012}

author & naturalist Louis Bromfield [1896-1956] of Ohio
• • “As soils are depleted, human health, vitality, and intelligence go with them.”  {blog 9/2015}
• • “This other war, the war upon destruction of natural assets is one that will never be finished. Our weakness in this vast war
is largely ignorance, that most of our citizens do not realize what is going on under their very feet.”  {blog 10/2015}

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

British author Charlotte Brontë [1816-55]
• • “Silence is of different kinds, and breathes different meanings.”  {blog 7/2011}
• • “Happiness quite unshared can scarcely be called happiness; it has no taste.”  {blog 1/2013}
• • “Life appears too short to be spent nursing animosity or registering wrongs.”  {blog 3/2014}
• • “I try to avoid looking forward or backward and try to keep looking upward.”  {blog 5/2020}
• • “I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”  {blog 4/2024}

British author Emily Brontë [1818-48]
“Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”  {blog 12/2018}

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}

Mel Brooks
“Tragedy is when I get a paper cut on my finger. Comedy is when you fall into a sewer and die.”  {blog 4/2013}

historian Van Wyck Brooks [1886-1963]
“Nothing is so soothing to our self-esteem as to find our bad traits in our forebears. It seems to absolve us.”  {blog 4/2013}

Dr. Joyce Brothers [1927-2013], pioneer television psychologist
“Trust your hunches. They're usually based on facts filed away just below the conscious level.”  {blog 12/2015}

poet James Broughton [1913-99]
“The world is not a miserable prison, it is a playground for a nonstop tournament between stupidity and imagination.”  {blog 3/2017}

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

author Brené Brown
“Maybe stories are just data with a soul.”  {blog 4/2016}

Charlie Brown character of the Peanuts comic strip
as drawn by Charles M. Schulz [1922-2000]
• • “Never stay awake at night asking yourself questions you can't answer.”  {blog 4/2014}
• • “The inside of a mailbox should always be kept clean in case you get a love letter.”  {blog 6/2015}

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}

H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
“Remember that the most valuable antiques are dear old friends.”  {blog 10/2017}

Helen Gurley Brown [1922-2012]
• • “If you're not a sex object, you're in trouble.”  {blog 9/2012}
• • “What you have to do is work with the raw material [that] you have, namely you, and never let up.”  {blog 3/2013}
• • “Marriage is insurance for the worst years of your life. During your best years, you don't need a husband.”  {blog 4/2016}

rock legend James Brown [1933-2006]
“The one thing that can change most of our problems is dancing.”  {blog 8/2014}

motivational speaker Leslie C. 'Les' Brown
• • “Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears.”  {blog 8/2013 & 5/2015}
• • “Shoot for the moon and if you miss you will still be among the stars.”  {blog 4/2015}
• • “Don't let someone else's opinion of you become your reality.”  {blog 4/2018}

Paul Brown [1908-91]
coached the Cincinnati Bengals and Cleveland Browns football teams
“When you win, say nothing. When you lose, say less.”  {blog 1/2017}

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}
• • “Pain plus time equals humor.”  {blog 6/2012}
• • “Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God.”  {blog 4/2014}
• • “There are never enough I Love Yous.”  {blog 5/2015}
• • “The liberals can understand everything but people who don't understand them.”  {blog 3/2016}
• • “Take away the right to say 'f***' and you take away the right to say 'f*** the government'.”  {blog 6/2018}

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 & blog 4/2012}

John Bryant [1943-2009]
“If you are afraid to speak against tyranny, then you are already a slave.”  {Issue #36 & blog 7/2018}

Paul William 'Bear' Bryant [1913-83], football coach at the University of Alabama
• • “I don't care how much talent a team has. If the boys don't think tough, practice tough, and live tough,
how can they play tough on Saturday?”  {blog 9/2018}
• • “Losing doesn’t make me want to quit. It makes me want to fight that much harder.”  {blog 5/2020}
• • “It’s not the will to win that matters — everyone has that. It’s the will to prepare to win that matters.”  {blog 10/2021}

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}

author E.A. Bucchianeri lives in Portugal
“So it’s true, when all is said and done, grief is the price [that] we pay for love.”  {blog 3/2017 & 6/2017}

John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir [1875-1940] of Scotland
“The charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of what is elusive but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope.”  {blog 6/2018}

mystery author Edna Buchanan
“Books are like your children. They take nine months to write; the manuscript weighs six pounds and . . .
you send them out into the world and hope that some day they'll send back money.”  {blog 6/2012}

Art Buchwald [1925-2007]
“If you attack the establishment long enough, they will make you a member of it.”  {blog 8/2013}

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}

entertainer Lord Buckley [1906-60]
“Fate takes its cut.”  {blog 6/2012}

William F. Buckley, Jr. [1925-2008]
• • “Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality, the costs become prohibitive.”  {blog 9/2015}
• • “I won't insult your intelligence by suggesting [that] you really believe what you just said.”  {blog 9/2016}

Gautama Buddha [5th Century BCE]
• • “Whatsoever, after due examination and analysis, you find to be conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings —
that doctrine believe and cling to, and take it as your guide.” (attributed)  {blog 1/2014}
• • “There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth: not going all the way, and not starting.”  {blog 9/2014}
• • “In this world, hate has never yet dispelled hate. Only love can dispel hate.”  {blog 3/2015}
• • “It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you,
not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell.”  {blog 4/2017}
• • “The trouble is, you think [that] you have time.”  {blog 6/2018}
• • “Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.”  {blog 12/2018}
• • “You will not be punished for your anger; you will be punished by your anger.”  {blog 4/2024}

Ferris Bueller character, in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" [1986]
“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”  {blog 1/2018}

American capitalist Warren E. Buffett, chairman & CEO of Berkshire Hathaway
• • “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}
• • “It takes twenty years to build a reputation, and five minutes to ruin it.”  {blog 9/2013}
• • “Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.”  {blog 12/2013}
• • “Honesty is a very expensive gift. Don't expect it from cheap people.”  {blog 9/2015}
• • “For 240 years it’s been a terrible mistake to bet against America, and now is no time to start.”  {blog 4/2017}
• • “I can say with almost certainty that [cryptocurrencies] will come to a bad ending.”
- in January 2018 as reported by C.N.B.C.  {blog 1/2018}
• • “The ballooning costs of health-care act as a hungry tapeworm on the American economy.”  {blog 2/2018}

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 & blog 8/2023}
• • “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}
• • “I don’t hate people. I just feel better when they are not around.”  {blog 5/2012}

Russian novelist Mikhail Bulgakhov [1891-1940]
“What would your good do if evil didn't exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows disappeared?”  {blog 12/2017}

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}

Archie Bunker character - on the "All In The Family" CBS-TV show
“Let's try to talk intelligent.”  {blog 4/2024}

Luis Buñuel [1900-83]
“Never do for money what you wouldn’t do for free . . . Work is for slaves.”  {blog 11/2015}

blogger David Burge
“The value of an industry is inversely proportional to the number of awards [that] it gives itself.”   {blog 6/2012}

Warren Burger [1907-95]
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.”
(on PBS-TV's "The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour" 16 December 1991)  {blog 2/2011}

Anthony Burgess [1917-93]
• • “Art and morality have little to say to each other.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “All art preserves mysteries which aesthetic philosophers tackle in vain.”  {blog 4/2013}

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}
• • “It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.”  {blog 1/2013}
• • “To make men love their country, their country ought to be lovable.”  {blog 12/2015}
• • “History is a pact between the dead, the living, and the yet unborn.”  {blog 10/2017}
• • “All [that] tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.”  {blog 9/2018}

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}

Mormon entertainer John Bytheway
“Inch by inch life's a cinch, yard by yard life is hard.”  {blog 4/2015}

Quotations Used in the 'WMail' Newsletter and the Dateline Chamesa blog - Alphabetical by Author

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