Some Good Quotes: Wisdom from geniuses other than me

Organized in semi-logical order.

“The heart has its reasons which reason does not know”
— Pascal, Pensees, 1670

“You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it.”
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936)

“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”
— Sherlock Holmes, A Scandal in Bohemia

“Art is science made clear.”
–Jean Cocteau (1889 – 1963)

“Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise.”
– Bertrand Russell

“I made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it short.”
–Blaise Pascal

“The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.”
– Nikola Tesla

“True enlightenment lies on the verge of insanity”
— Aristotle

“I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you different.”
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

“Dreaming is the singing of the mind.”
— Sean Lennon

“Last night I dreamed I ate a ten-pound marshmallow, and when I woke up the pillow was gone.”
— Tommy Cooper

“Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.”
— Edgar Allan Poe

“What kind of person does it take to invent a fictional world? Someone who is profoundly disappointed in the real one.”
— Clive Barker, Psychology Today, April 2009

“Hand-painted colour photography of super-fine images of concrete irrationality.”
— Salvador Dali, describing his work.

“Shyness has a strange element of narcissism, a belief that how we look, how we perform, is truly important to other people.”
— André Dubus, Broken Vessels, 1991

“I am a deeply superficial person.”
— Andy Warhol

“There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.”
— Sir Francis Bacon

“They always talk who never think.”
– Matthew Prior

“You must not think me necessarily foolish because I am facetious, nor will I consider you necessarily wise because you are grave.”
— Sydney Smith

“An intelligence test sometimes shows a man how smart he would have been not to have taken it.”
–Laurence J. Peter

“Originality is the fine art of remembering what you hear but forgetting where you heard it.”
–Laurence J. Peter

“Expert: a man who makes three correct guesses consecutively.”
–Laurence J. Peter

“Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for – in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.”
— Ellen Goodman

“I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.”
— Henry Miller

“Happiness isn’t something you experience; it’s something you remember.”
– Oscar Levant

“It’s not that I’m afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”
-Woody Allen

“Why should I fear death? If I am, death is not. If death is, I am not.
Why should I fear that which can only exist when I do not?”
— Epicurus

“I was dead for millions of years before I was born and it never inconvenienced me a bit.”
— Mark Twain

“Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it
ceases to be serious when people laugh.”
– George Bernard Shaw

“Don’t be content to be the chip off the old block – be the old block itself.”
– Winston Churchill

“If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you’re a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.”
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

“Know what I pray for? The strength to change what I can, the inability to
accept what I can’t and the incapacity to tell the difference.”
–Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes)

“It may be that the old astrologers had the truth exactly reversed, when they believed that the stars controlled the destinies of men. The time may come when men control the destinies of stars.”
–Arthur C. Clarke

“Statistics: The only science that enables different experts using the
same figures to draw different conclusions.”
– Evan Esar

“It’s not pre-marital sex if you’re not getting married.”

“The Pillsbury doughboy is way too happy considering he
has no genitals.”

“Most of the trouble in the world is caused by people wanting to be important.”
— T.S. Eliot

“If Atheism is a religion, then health is a disease!”
–Clark Adams

The scientist yearns to find and eventually know the truth;
The religious man wants the truth to fit his preconceived mold. So, as a result…
The scientist alters his perception to conform to the facts;
The religious man tries to change the facts to conform to his beliefs.
–(no source)

“Unanswered questions are far less dangerous than unquestioned answers.”
— The Roadside Pulpit

“Midgets have little in common.”

“If you meet your master today, kill him. Be your own master.”
— Marilyn Manson

“Without being self aggrandizing. I’ve seen the little tidal waves that
I’ve caused in the music industry, and how people are becoming more
evolved in their images. And there are a lot of new Marilyn
Mansonesque people, but I don’t get mad at those things.
It’s like there’s one real Santa Claus, but there’s a
lot of fake ones at the mall.”
— Marilyn Manson

“The only true wisdom consists in knowing that you know nothing.”
— (Unknown)

“A man doesn’t know what he knows until he knows what he doesn’t know.”
–Laurence J. Peter

“Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and
I’m not sure about the former.”
–Albert Einstein

“The glass is neither half empty nor half full. It is twice as large as it
needs to be.”

“Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.”

“The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working the moment you
wake up, and doesn’t stop until you get to school.”

“Life is like a shit sandwich; the more bread you have, the less shit you
have to eat.”

“Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that
is struck with the difference between what things are and what they
ought to be.”
–William Hazlitt

“I feel sorry for people who don’t drink. When they wake up in the morning,
that’s as good as they’re going to feel all day.”
— Frank Sinatra

“I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn’t it.”
– Groucho Marx

“All censorships exist to prevent any one from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently the first condition of progress is
the removal of censorships.”
–George Bernard Shaw

“A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to.”
— Laurence J. Peter

“The wages of sin are death, but by the time taxes are taken out, it’s just sort of a tired feeling.”
— Paula Poundstone

“History is a set of lies agreed upon.”
— Napoleon Bonaparte

“Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.”
— Jane Wagner

“Time weighs down on you like an old, ambiguous dream. You keep on moving, trying to sleep through it. But even if you go to the ends of the earth, you won’t be able to escape it. Still, you have to go there – to the edge of the world. There’s something you can’t do unless you get there.”
— Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)  

“I am Time: And I have destroyed countless beings, even the gods who
preside over this universe. I am the consumer and you are our food…This
relationship is not based on mutual likes or dislikes.”
— Yoga Vasishta

When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.
— George Bernard Shaw

“For many, faith is a suitable substitute for knowledge,
as death is for a difficult life.”

“To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous
as to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin.”
–Cardinal Bellarmine, 1615, during the trial of Galileo

“I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god
than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible
gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”
–Stephen Roberts

“Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them.”
–Laurence J. Peter