Q Quotes

¤ "The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation's history. I mean in this century's history. But we all lived in this century. I didn't live in this century."
--Dan Quayle

¤ "I love California. I practically grew up in Phoenix."
--Dan Quayle

R Quotes

¤ "Iraq's WMDs were probably destroyed at least 13 years ago. Fortunately for Bush, they exist only in the one place he cares about: the deluded minds of a frighteningly ignorant American electorate."
-- Ted Rall, pre Iraq Attack II

James "the Amazing" Randi:
¤ "I'm amused to see the terror expressed by some Christian zealots over the Harry Potter books and the Dungeons & Dragons game. They tremble at the possibility that children might actually begin to believe in the miracles and powers outlined in those popular items, or be led to criminal behavior. Strange indeed. Consider what Christians accept: burning bushes, angels, virgin birth, prophecy, healing touch, water turning into wine, parting the Red Sea, walking on water, levitation, raising the dead — to say nothing of incest, rape, mass murder, seduction, public fornication, and other nasty stuff found in the Bible....  What makes these miracles any more believable, or crimes more acceptable, may I ask?"
-- James "The Amazing" Randi

¤ "I find it incredible, that a man [Ashcroft] appointed to represent the people of America by defending the Constitution, should invoke his religious prejudices in this way. The attorney general also holds daily prayer meetings in his office at Justice Department headquarters in Washington, another outrage that blatantly offends the concept of separation of church and state. He has no prerogative to dictate to us, nor to declare before the world, what our religious or philosophical beliefs are."
-- James "The Amazing" Randi

¤ "If a Washington official should choose to hold daily Transcendental Meditation meetings, Spiritualist séances, Amway rallies, or voodoo magic ceremonies, in his office with his staff, can you imagine what Ashcroft would say? Yet his own personal version of hocus-pocus is acceptable, and is imposed on his employees?"
-- James "The Amazing" Randi

¤ "I'm reminded of a quote I heard long ago: 'If you don't preach religion in my school, I won't think in your church.'"
-- James Randi

¤ "If God had intended man to engage in strenuous sports, He would have given us better knees."
-- Dr. Robert Ray

¤ "He's probably the least-qualified person ever to be nominated by a major party. What is his accomplishment? That he's no longer an obnoxious drunk?"
-- Ron Reagan Jr., speaking about Dubya

Keanu Reeves
¤ "I'm a meathead, I can't help it, man.  You've got smart people and you've got dumb people."
-- Keanu Reeves

¤ "No thanks, I'm thinking."
-- Keanu Reeves in 1999, declining a couple's invitation to join their table in a NY restaurant

¤ "All politics are based on the indifference of the majority."
-- James Reston

¤ "He was born with a silver foot in his mouth."
-- Ann Richards, speaking about George Bush Sr.

¤ "I called Nixon some pretty choice things and never had something like this happen."
-- Margaret Richards, who got hassled by the Secret Service after sending some angry emails to Gov. Jeb Bush and his big brother

¤ "Washington is... a city of Cocker Spaniels.  It's a city of people who are more interested in being petted and admired, loved, than rendering the exercise of power."
-- Elliot Richardson

¤ "Look at the children. They haven't seen television or anything their whole lives."
-- Geraldo Rivera, standing in front of a crowd of shoeless, starving children in Afghanistan

¤ "He started off playing a chauffeur in Driving Miss Daisy, and then they elevated him to head of the CIA, and then they elevated him to president and in his last role they made him God. I just wonder, isn't Rush Limbaugh right to question the fact, is he that good an actor or not?"
-- Pat Robertson, incomprehensibly attempting to use the example of black actor Morgan Freeman to defend Limbaugh's jab at Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb

¤ "Intermarriage between whites and blacks is repulsive and averse to every sentiment of pure American spirit. It is abhorrent and repugnant. It is subversive to social peace. It is destructive of moral supremacy, and ultimately this slavery to black beasts will bring this nation to a fatal conflict."
-- Rep. Seaborn Roddenberry of Georgia, on introducing an anti-miscegenation amendment to the Constitution in 1911, as well as paraphrasing every anti-gay marriage argument of 2004.

¤ "We had greater freedom of coverage of Soviet military operations in Afghanistan than we had at Camp Rhino."
-- Walk Rodgers, CNN correspondent on press restrictions in Afghanistan

¤ "Some things you have to do every day. Eating seven apples on Saturday night instead of one a day just isn't going to get the job done."
--Jim Rohn

¤ "Don't take a butcher's advice on how to cook meat. If he knew, he'd be a chef."
--Andy Rooney

¤ "You meet a lot of dumb people who went to college."
-- Andy Rooney

Eleanor Roosevelt
¤ "Nobody can make you feel inferior without your permission."
--Eleanor Roosevelt

¤ "Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you'll be criticized anyway."
--Eleanor Roosevelt

¤ "In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms The first is freedom of speech and expression--everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way--everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want--which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants--everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear--which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor--anywhere in the world."
--Franklin D. Roosevelt, proving he was no psychic

¤ "Never feel remorse for what you have thought of your wife.  She has thought much worse things about you."
-- Jean Rostand

¤ "I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be honorable, to be compassionate. It is, after all, to matter: to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you lived at all."
--Leo Rosten

¤ "If you're going to do something wrong, at least enjoy it."
-- Leo Rosten

¤ "It's unnatural for people to run around city streets unless they are thieves or victims.  It makes people nervous to see someone running.  I know that when I see someone running on my street, my instincts tell me to let the dog out after him."
--Mike Royko

¤ "The good news is that the rich people and the business people still like us."
-- John Rowland, Connecticut Governor, speaking about his Republican Party in 1999

Rita Rudner
¤ "When I was a girl, I only had two friends, and they were both imaginary.  And they would only play with each other."
-- Rita Rudner

¤ "My husband and I are either going to buy a dog or a child.  We can't decide whether to ruin out carpet or our lives."
-- Rita Rudner

¤ "Someday I want to be rich.  Some people get so rich they lose all respect for humanity.  That's how rich I want to be."
-- Rita Rudner

¤ "There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns - that is to say, there are things that we now know we don't know but there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don't know. So when we do the best we can and we pull all this information together, and we then say well that's basically what we see as the situation, that is really only the known knowns and the known unknowns. And each year we discover a few more of those unknown unknowns."
--Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, clarifying things

¤ "It may be that the race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong -- but that's the way to bet."
-- Damon Runyon

Bertrand Russel
¤ "So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence."
--Bertrand Russell

¤ "Is there not something a trifle absurd in the spectacle of human beings holding a mirror before themselves, and thinking what they behold so excellent as to prove that a Cosmic Purpose must have been aiming at it all along?"
-- Bertrand Russell

¤ "The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt."
--Bertrand Russell

¤ "Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons."
-- Bertrand Russell

S Quotes

¤ "To know virtue, we must first acquaint ourselves with vice."
--The Marquis de Sade

¤ "A woman who takes her husband about with her everywhere is like a cat that goes on playing with a mouse long after she's killed it."
 -- Saki

¤ "If you want to build a ship, don't herd people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea."
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery

¤ "In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away."
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery

George Santayana
¤ "There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval."
--George Santayana

¤ "The need of exercise is a modern superstition, invented by people who ate too much and had nothing to think about. Athletics don't make anybody either long-lived or useful."
-- George Santayana

¤ "When men and women agree, it is only in their conclusions; their reasons are always different."
-- Santayana

¤ "This wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value.  Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?"
-- David Sarnoff's Associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920's

Sartre
¤ "When the rich wage war it's the poor who die."
-- Jean-Paul Sartre

¤ "Hell is other people at breakfast."
-- Sartre

¤ "To shoot down a European is to kill two birds with one stone, to destroy an oppressor and the man he oppresses at the same time: there remains a dead man and a free man."
-- Jean-Paul Sartre, in defense of FLN terrorism

¤ "One thing most people don't understand about sadomasochism is often all that happens is domination and submission, sort of cops and robbers for grownups with your pants off, and it usually ends in masturbation and not intercourse."
-- Dan Savage on CNN

¤ "We like to think the peasant revolt currently underway at the UN is simply a matter of formerly-significant states trying to stack up on top of each other, Transformer-like, to create a single powerful-but-evanescent entity to thwart the US for fun and future Iraqi oil revenues. But it has just as much to do with an absolute distaste for Dubya and his administration's methods."
-- John Scalzi

¤ "I never take you for granted, especially in these times when folks who don't share our beliefs about what's right for children and the family are trying to disrupt our relationship."
-- Dr. Laura Schlessinger, before her show was cancelled

¤ "I just use my muscles as a conversation piece, like someone walking a cheetah down 42nd street."
-- Arnold Schwarzenegger

¤ "I'm too shy to express my sexual needs except over the phone to people I don't know."
--Garry Shandling

George Bernard Shaw
¤ "Lack of money is the root of all evil."
--George Bernard Shaw"

¤ "A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing."
--George Bernard Shaw

¤ "When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions. They are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part."
--George Bernard Shaw

¤ "Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh."
--George Bernard Shaw

¤ "The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not."
--George Bernard Shaw

¤ "Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not."
--George Bernard Shaw

¤ "The power of accurate observation is called cynicism by those who do not possess it."
-- George Bernard Shaw

¤ "Few people think more than two or three times a year.  I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week."
-- George Bernard Shaw

¤ "Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it."
-- George Bernard Shaw

¤ "We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience."
-- George Bernard Shaw

¤ "It isn't because they're homosexuals that there's a problem. The problem is with the homosexual agenda to overturn the heterosexual ethic of one man, one woman."
-- Rev. Lou Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition, March 2004

¤ "Smoking kills. If you're killed, you've lost a very important part of your life."
--Brooke Shields, during an interview to become Spokesperson for federal anti-smoking campaign.

¤ "Democracy encourages the the majority to decide things about which the majority is blissfully ignorant."
--John Simon

O. J. Simpson
¤ "Fame is a vapor, popularity is an accident, and money has wings. The only thing that endures is character."
-- O. J. Simpson, 1982

¤ "We didn't get along because Nicole was afraid you were going to have sex with me."
-- O. J. Simpson, to Denise Brown, his sister in law, after Nicole's murder

¤ "I've heard 'em on those talk shows actually say it: 'A Jewish life has to be avenged.'"
-- O. J. Simpson on Hard Copy, explaining why he thinks there was so much media coverage when he murdered his ex-wife and Ronald Goldman

¤ "The decline of the Roman Empire roughly coincides with Christianity becoming the state religion. The middle ages, when Christianity ruled absolute, are rightfully considered the dark ages of humanity. The age of enlightenment started when Christianity lost its grip on society. History teaches us an undeniable lesson: if anything, then rampant Christianity is a sure sign of cultural decadence and moral decline."
-- D. Sinclair

¤ "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
-- Upton Sinclair

¤ "A great many people now reading and writing would be better employed keeping rabbits."
-- Edith Sitwell

¤ "Education is what survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten."
--B. F. Skinner

¤ "All reformers, however strict their social conscience, live in houses just as big as they can pay for."
-- Logan Pearsall Smith

¤ "A male gynecologist is like an auto mechanic who never owned a car."
--Carrie Snow

¤ "They'll talk about me showing cleavage and my belly, but they don't say anything about the artists who accept an award and can't even talk because they're so drugged out. After the awards show, I go home, drink my tea and go to bed."
--Britney Spears on the media

¤ "The advice that means the most to me right now as not delivered directly to me. It's something I read that Fred Astaire said about his dance routines, 'Get it 'til it's perfect, then cut two minutes.'"
-- Susan Stamberg

John Steinbeck
¤ " The ancient commission of the writer has not changed. He is charged with exposing our many grievous faults and failures, with dredging up to the light our dark and dangerous dreams for the purpose of improvement."
-- John Steinbeck

¤ "Like most passionate nations, Texas has its own private history based on, but not limited by, facts."
-- John Steinbeck

Adlai Stevenson
¤ "To escort a cat on a leash is against the nature of the cat."
--Adlai Stevenson

¤ "There was a time when a fool and his money were soon parted, but now it happens to everybody."
--Adlai Stevenson

¤ "It is often easier to fight for principles than to live up to them."
-- Adlai Stevenson

¤ "Man does not live by words alone, despite the fact that sometimes he has to eat them."
-- Adlai Stevenson

¤ "Every government is run by liars, and nothing they say should be believed."
-- L. F. Stone

¤ "To fall in love is easy, even to remain in it is not difficult; our human loneliness is cause enough. But it is a hard quest worth making to find a comrade through whose steady presence one becomes steadily the person one desires to be."
-- Anna Louise Strong

¤ "It's better to be quotable than honest."
-- Tom Stoppard

¤ "If you talk about yourself, he'll think you're boring.  If you talk about others, he'll think you're a gossip.  If you talk about him, he'll think you're a brilliant conversationalist."
-- Linda Sunshine

¤ "At this point, dear reader, let me concede one shocking truth.  Some young women actually anticipate the wedding night ordeal with curiosity and pleasure!  Beware such an attitude! One cardinal rule of marriage should be never be forgotten: given little, give seldom, and above all give grudgingly."
--Ruth Symthers, Instruction and Advice for the Yong Bride (1894)

¤ "Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly attributed by the living to the dead, and now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults."
-- Thomas Szasz

¤ "Don't lie if you don't have to."
-- Leo Szilard

T Quotes

¤ "I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six.  Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked me for my autograph."
-- Shirley Temple

¤ "In politics, if you want anything said, ask a man -- if you want anything done, ask a woman."
--Margaret Thatcher

¤ "Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't."
-- Margaret Thatcher

¤ "The word "genius" isn't applicable in football. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein."
--Joe Theisman, ex-NFL quarterback, current sports analyst

¤ "You define a good flight by negatives. You didn't get hijacked, you didn't crash, you didn't throw up, you weren't late, you weren't nauseated by the food.  So you are grateful." -- Paul Theroux

¤ "If one can not invent a really convincing lie, it is often better to stick to the truth."
-- Angela Thirkell

¤ "Washington D.C. is the only place where sound travels faster than light."
-- C. V. R. Thompson

¤ "The real scandal here may not be what's illegal, but what's permissible."
-- Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson, about Enron

¤ "How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live."
--Henry David Thoreau

James Thurber
¤ "Early to rise and early to bed; makes a male healthy and wealthy and dead."
-- James Thurber

¤ "All men should strive to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why."
-- James Thurber

¤ "You can fool too many of the people too much of the time."
-- James Thurber

¤ "I hate the stupid purple dinosaur, but it gives kids rules and it's mesmerizing to them, God knows why."
-- Dr. Shannon Thyne

¤ "Pat isn't with God. He's fucking dead. He wasn't religious. So thank you for your thoughts, but he's fucking dead."
-- Rich Tilllman, Pat Tillman's younger brother, at his memorial service

¤ "Things are going to get a lot worse before they get worse."
--Lily Tomlin

¤ "Thank you, and may the deity you so primitively worship be perceived as treating your nation-state with favoritism!"
--Tom Tomorrow

¤ "Here's the bottom line; the little guy in American gets the shaft and the people at the top seem to get the elevator and a big ride... They [Enron Executives] should be handcuffed to a chain-link fence, flogged and jailed."
-- Ohio Rep. James Traficant, on Enron

¤ "The national sport of England is obstacle racing.  People fill their rooms with useless and cumbersome furniture, and spend the rest of their lives trying to dodge it."
-- Herbet Beerbohm Tree

¤ "God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, and he is going to destroy you and a lot of others."
-- Florida State Rep. Allen Trovillion, to a group of gay Orlando high school students

¤ "My choice early in life was either to be a piano player in a whorehouse or a politician. And to tell the truth, there's hardly any difference."
--Harry S. Truman

¤ "Appalled when the president attributed their health to the good manure they were getting, a visitor to the White House asked the first lady, 'Couldn't he say 'fertilizer' instead?' Bess replied, 'You don't know how long it took to get him to say 'manure'.'"
-- Bess Truman

Harry S. Truman
¤ "Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear."
--Harry S. Truman

¤ "I fired MacArthur because he wouldn't respect the authority of the president.  I didn't fire him because he was a dumb son-of-a-bitch, although he was."
-- Harry S. Truman

¤ "Why, this fellow don't know any more about politics than a pig knows about Sunday."
-- Harry S Truman (about Dwight D. Eisenhower)

¤ "I know there are nights when I have power, when I could put on something and walk in somewhere, and if there is a man who doesn't look at me, it's because he's gay."
-- Kathleen Turner

Ted Turner
¤ "If I only had a little humility I'd be perfect."
-- Ted Turner

¤ "If you're going to have 10 rules, I don't know if adultery should be one of them."
-- Ted Turner, on the Ten Commandments

Mark Twain
¤ "Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense."
--Mark Twain

¤ "Life does not consist mainly, or even largely, of facts and happenings. It consists mainly of the storm of thought that is forever flowing through one's head"
--Mark Twain

¤ "Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great ones make you feel that you too, can become great."
--Mark Twain

¤ "Grief can take care if itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with."
--Mark Twain

¤ "I could never learn to like her, except on a raft at sea with no other provisions in sight."
-- Mark Twain

¤ "There has never been a just one, never an honorable one--on the part of the instigator of the war. I can see a million years ahead, and this rule will never change in so many as half a dozen instances. The loud little handful--as usual--will shout for the war. The pulpit will--warily and cautiously--object--at first; the great, big, dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should be a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, "It is unjust and dishonorable, and there is no necessity for it." Then the handful will shout louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have a hearing and be applauded; but it will not last long; those others will outshout them, and presently the anti-war audiences will thin out and lose popularity. Before long you will see this curious thing: the speakers stoned from the platform, and free speech strangled by hordes of furious men who in their secret hearts are still at one with those stoned speakers--as earlier--but do not dare to say so. And now the whole nation--pulpit and all--will take up the war-cry, and shout itself hoarse, and mob any honest man who ventures to open his mouth; and presently such mouths will cease to open. Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception."
-- Mark Twain

¤ "There are two times in a man's life when he should not speculate: when he can't afford it, and when he can."
-- Mark Twain

¤ "I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead."
-- Mark Twain

¤ "Heaven goes by favour. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in."
--Mark Twain

¤ "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."
--Mark Twain

¤ "Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it."
-- Mark Twain

¤ "We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it - and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again - and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore."
-- Mark Twain

¤ "Man will do many things to get himself loved; he will do all things to get himself envied."
-- Mark Twain

¤ "Never run after your own hat.  Others will be delighted to do it; why spoil their fun?"
-- Mark Twain

¤ "Don't part with your illusions.  When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live."
-- Mark Twain

¤ "Whatever you like best, strike it out!"
-- Mark Twain to young writers

¤ "If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you.  This is the principle difference between a dog and a man."
-- Mark Twain

¤ "I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it."
-- Mark Twain

¤ "Wagner's music is better than it sounds."
-- Mark Twain

¤ "In Paris they simply stared when I spoke in French; I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language."
-- Mark Twain

¤ "The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole life time, if not asked to lend money."
-- Mark Twain

¤ "It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt."
-- Mark Twain

¤ "Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person."
-- Mark Twain

¤ "France has neither winter nor summer nor morals.  Aside from that it's a fine country."
-- Mark Twain

¤ "The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd rather not."
-- Mark Twain

¤ "There's no use in walking five miles to fish when you can depend on being just as unsuccessful near home."
--Mark Twain

¤ "A medium whose impact is so profound and so resolutely banal that is has almost single-handedly removed vulgarity from modern culture by making it the norm."
-- James Twitchell, on TV

U Quotes

¤ "If you see one, it's probably mine."
-- Miss Iowa Teresa Uchtil, speaking to other Miss America contestants about her prosthetic hand she tends to leave lying around.

¤ "I picked up all the lingerie on the streets by pure chance."
-- Sadao Ushimura, Japanese Finance Minister, on the over 400 pieces of womens' underwear police found in his home

V Quotes

¤ "We're supposed to be perfect our first day on the job and then show constant improvement."
--Ed Vargo, major league baseball umpire

¤ "Suffering is overrated. It doesn't teach you anything."
-- Bill Veeck

¤ "Organized religion is a sham and a crutch for the weak-minded."
-- Gov Jesse Ventura

¤ "The only thing America will be remembered for is Hollywood."
-- Gore Vidal

Leonardo da Vinci
¤ "You will observe in your painting that shadows among shadows are imperceptible in density and outline... Things seen between light and shadow will display much more relief than those seen in light or in shadow."
-- Leonardo da Vinci

¤ "If you scrutinize the stars without rays (as is done through a little hole in the end of a small lens, placed so as to almost touch the eye) you will perceive these stars are so tiny that nothing could be smaller.  And indeed, the great distance confers upon them a certain diminution, though many of them are several times larger than that star which is our earth and it's waters.  Now consider what our star would seem at such a distance, and how many stars could be longitudinally and latitudinally interposed between those which are scattered through dark space."
-- Leonardo da Vinci

¤ "Since I am not a man of letters, I know that certain presumptuous persons will feel justified in censoring me, alleging that I am ignorant of writing -- fools!  They do not now that I could reply, as did Marius to the Roman nobles, "They who adorn themselves with the labors of others will not concede me my own." They will hold that because of my lack of literary training.  I cannot properly set forth the subject I wish to treat.  They do not known that my subjects require for their expression not the words of others, but experience, the mistress of all who write well.  I have taken her as my mistress, and I will not cease to state it."
-- Leonardo da Vinci

¤ "And an old man, only a few hours before he died, told me that he had lived for one hundred years without experience any physical failure other than weakness; and sitting on the bed in the hospital of Santa Maria Nova in Florence, he passed from this life, giving no sign of any accident.  And I dissected his body, in order to understand the cause of so easy a death.  I discovered that it came to him through a lack of blood in the arteries that fed the heart and the lower parts, which were used up and dried out.  I performed this dissection minutely and easily, as there were neither fat nor humors to impede recognition of anatomical parts."
-- Leonardo da Vinci

Voltaire:
¤ "I have just been informed that he is dead.  He was a hardy patriot, a gifted writer, a faithful friend and an affectionate husband and father -- provided he is really dead."
-- Voltaire, when called upon to eulogize a man he detested.

¤ "If God did not exist, it would have been necessary to invent him."
-- Voltaire

¤ "England has forty-two religions and only two sauces."
-- Voltaire

¤ "The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair."
-- Mary Vorse

¤ "The murals in restaurants are on a par with the food in museums."
-- Peter De Vries

W Quotes

¤ "Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he isn't. A sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is."
--Horace Walpole

¤ "I have given two cousins to war and I stand ready to sacrifice my wife's brother."
-- Artemus Ward

¤ "Storytelling and copulation are the two chief forms of amusement in the (American) South.  They're inexpensive and easy to procure."
-- Robert Penn Warren

George Washington
¤ "Government is not reason. Government is not eloquence. It is force. And, like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."
--George Washington

¤ "The United States is in no sense founded upon the Christian Doctrine."
-- George Washington

¤ "I don't feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves."
--John Wayne

¤ "His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork."
-- Mae West

¤ "The only way for a rich man to be healthy is by exercise and abstinence, to live as if he were poor."
--Paul Dudley White

¤ "A food is not necessarily essential just because your child hates it."
-- Katherine Whitehorn

¤ "Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good.  Luckily this is not difficult."
-- Charlotte Whitton

¤ "He wanted to talk about the Colorado-Texas football game.  Unfortunately, I guess, I wasn't really that interested."
-- Professor Carl Wieman, Noble Prize winner for helping to discover a new form of matter, on meeting President Bush

Oscar Wilde
¤ "He hasn't a single redeeming vice."
-- Oscar Wilde

¤ "Anybody can sympathize with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathize with a friend's success."
--Oscar Wilde

¤ "Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go."
-- Oscar Wilde

¤ "Journalism is unreadable, and literature is unread."
-- Oscar Wilde

¤ "There is much to be said in favor of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community."
--Oscar Wilde

¤ "Murder is always a mistake... one should never do anything that one can not discuss after dinner."
-- Oscar Wilde

¤ "Don't give a woman advice; one should never give a woman anything she can't wear in the evening."
-- Oscar Wilde

¤ "When one is in love one always begins by deceiving oneself, and one always ends by deceiving others.  This is what he world calls a romance."
-- Oscar Wilde

¤ "A woman will flirt with anyone in the world as long as other people are looking on."
-- Oscar Wilde

¤ "Bad artists always admire each others' work."
- Oscar Wilde

¤ "A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a lot of it is probably fatal."
-- Oscar Wilde

¤ "Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months."
-- Oscar Wilde

Billy Wilder
¤ "Don't be too clever for an audience.  Make it obvious.  Make the subtleties obvious too."
-- Billy Wilder

¤ "A 21-inch prison.  I'm delighted with it because it used to be that films were the lowest form of art.  Now we have something to look down on."
-- Billy Wilder

¤ "Football combines two of the worst things in American life. It is violence punctuated by committee meetings."
--George Will

¤ "If people are allowed to wear bracelets that say, 'What would Jesus do" they should be allowed to say, "What would Satan do.'"
-- Ashley Williams of Kaimuki High, Honolulu, on the school's ban of clothing promoting Satanism

¤ "Hollywood: A place that has to be seen to be disbelieved."
-- Walter Winchell

¤ "I'm not a stick.  It's not about being a stick insect."
-- Kate Winslet, pudgy, briefly-famous actress

¤ "I think nudity on stage is disgusting, shameful and unpatriotic.  But if I were 22 with a great body, it would be artistic, tasteful, patriotic and a progressive religious experience."
-- Shelly Winters

¤ "She looked as if she had been poured into her clothes and forgotten to say 'when'."
-- P. G. Wodehouse

The Army takes all of that away from you.  It feeds you.  It guarantees you a roof over your head does your laundry every week.  You can't get fired unless you do something ridiculous.  It gets you up in the morning and puts you to bed at night and tells you what you're going to be doing all day long.  It's a completely infantile existence.  So I came out of these four years barely advanced in maturity from the time I'd gone in in many ways.  I just knew that it was time to grow up.  Part of that had to do with working and getting myself educated, because I was an ignoramus."
-- Tobias Wolff

X Quotes

¤ "People don't fall in love with what's right in front of them. People want the dream -- what they can't have. The more unattainable, the more attractive."
--Xander

Y Quotes

Henny Youngman
¤ "What good is happiness? It can't buy money."
-- Henny Youngman

¤ "I went to the airport.  I had three pieces of luggage.  I said that I want this piece to go to Cleveland, this piece to Toronto, and this piece to Florida.  The airline agent said, 'We can't do that.' I replied, 'Well you did it last week.;"
-- Henny Youngman

Z Quotes

None yet, oddly enough.