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One Liners and Quotes
Throughout the 1800s, news stories were typically interpretative, and 85 percent of eligible adults voted in elections. The two are connected. Heightened public awareness is connected to the quality of the press. When the average person had much less education and before corporate media, people understood their own collective self-interests. Political discourse and social conversations were full of political slogans, satirical aphorisms and insightful epigrams.
Here's an open page for popular graffiti to sharpen social thought and cultivate a more robust debate. Please submit your own one-liner and give credit to whoever wrote or said it. We're looking for terse, true and, if possible, funny one-liners from any point of view.
Table Of Contents
WAR
MONEY
POLITICS
QUALITY OF LIFE
MASS TRANSIT
SOCIAL ISSUES
SEXUAL, GENDER AND FAMILY ISSUES
INDIVIDUALISM
MENTAL/MEDICAL/HEALTH ISSUES
POLITICALLY INCORRECT or IMPOLITE
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
ENVIRONMENT
HUMAN/CIVIL/ANIMAL RIGHTS
DRUGS
CONSUMERISM
WAR
America has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings as to the last vital drop that visits the heart. She goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She well knows that by once enlisting under other than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy and ambition. The fundamental maxims of her policy would change from liberty to force. -John Quincy Adams, from a speech given in 1821 while serving as U.S. Secretary of State.
"Of course the people don't want war... That is understood. But... it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." – Hermann Goering at the Nuremberg trials, 1946 from "Nuremberg Diary," by G. M. Gilbert.
Iraq is Arabic for Vietnam. – bumper sticker, Kerrville Folk Festival
Bush Bin-Lying – bumper sticker, Dodge Ram 250 pickup, Houston
One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one. – Agatha Christie
What a strange game. The only winning move is not to play. – WOPR, War Games
I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. – Albert Einstein
War is not nice. – Barbara Bush
How is it possible to have a civil war? – George Carlin
The outcome of the war is in our hands; the outcome of words is in the council. – Homer from The Illiad
You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake. – Jeannette Rankin
War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children. – Jimmy Carter
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. – John Stuart Mill
What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy? – Mahatma Gandhi
It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it. – Robert E. Lee
Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.
– Sir Winston Churchill
Give me the money that has been spent in war and I will clothe every man, woman, and child in an attire of which kings and queens will be proud. I will build a schoolhouse in every valley over the whole earth. I will crown every hillside with a place of worship consecrated to peace. – Charles Sumner
War does not determine who is right – only who is left. – Bertrand Russell
It'll be a great day when education gets all the money it wants and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy bombers. – Author unknown, quoted in You Said a Mouthful edited by Ronald D. Fuchs
Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind. – John F. Kennedy, 1961
I dream of giving birth to a child who will ask, "Mother, what was war?" – Eve Merriam
The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking... the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker. – Albert Einstein
The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations. – David Friedman
"There are no atheists in foxholes" isn't an argument against atheism, it's an argument against foxholes. – James Morrow
Sometimes I think it should be a rule of war that you have to see somebody up close and get to know him before you can shoot him. – M*A*S*H, Colonel Potter
All the arms we need are for hugging. – Author Unknown
A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon. – Napoleon
A great war leaves the country with three armies – an army of cripples, an army of mourners, and an army of thieves. – German Proverb
The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war that we know about peace, more about killing that we know about living. – Omar Bradley
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron. – Dwight D. Eisenhower, speech, American Society of Newspaper Editors, 16 April 1953
The most persistent sound which reverberates through men's history is the beating of war drums. – Arthur Koestler, Janus: A Summing Up
What a cruel thing is war: to separate and destroy families and friends, and mar the purest joys and happiness God has granted us in this world; to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors, and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world. – Robert E. Lee, letter to his wife, 1864
Everyone's a pacifist between wars. It's like being a vegetarian between meals. – Colman McCarthy
Nations have recently been led to borrow billions for war; no nation has ever borrowed largely for education. Probably, no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both. – Abraham Flexner
Draft beer; not people. – Author Unknown
The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without. – Dwight D. Eisenhower
War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today. – John F. Kennedy
In Flanders fields the poppies grow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place, and in the sky,
The larks, still bravely singing, fly,
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
– John McCrae
What this planet needs is more mistletoe and less missile-talk. – Author Unknown
Join the Army, see the world, meet interesting people – and kill them. – Pacifist Badge, 1978
Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime. – Ernest Hemingway
War makes thieves and peace hangs them. – George Herbert
You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake. – Jeanette Rankin
You are not going to get peace with millions of armed men. The chariot of peace cannot advance over a road littered with cannon. – David Lloyd George
Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come. – Carl Sandburg
In war, there are no unwounded soldiers. – José Narosky
We kind o' thought Christ went agin war an' pillage. – James Russell Lowell
If we let people see that kind of thing, there would never again be any war. – Pentagon official explaining why the U.S. military censored graphic footage from the Gulf War.
I have no doubt that we will be successful in harnessing the sun's energy.... If sunbeams were weapons of war, we would have had solar energy centuries ago. – Sir George Porter, quoted in The Observer, 26 August 1973
War would end if the dead could return. – Stanley Baldwin
War! that mad game the world so loves to play. – Jonathan Swift
It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets. – Voltaire, War
If it's natural to kill, why do men have to go into training to learn how? – Joan Baez, "What Would You Do If....?"
I couldn't help but say to [Mr. Gorbachev], just think how easy his task and mine might be in these meetings that we held if suddenly there was a threat to this world from another planet. [We'd] find out once and for all that we really are all human beings here on this earth together. – Ronald Reagan, 1985
[John] Dalton's records, carefully preserved for a century, were destroyed during the World War II bombing of Manchester. It is not only the living who are killed in war. – Isaac Asimov
The tragedy of war is that it uses man's best to do man's worst. – Henry Fosdick
All wars are follies, very expensive and very mischievous ones. In my opinion, there never was a good war or a bad peace. When will mankind be convinced and agree to settle their difficulties by arbitration? – Benjamin Franklin
In war, truth is the first casualty. – Aeschylus
Men are at war with each other because each man is at war with himself. – Francis Meehan
No country is so wild and difficult but men will make it a theater of war. – Ambrose Bierce
War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow man. – Napoleon Hill
We have war when at least one of the parties to a conflict wants something more than it wants peace. – Jeane J. Kirkpatrick
Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out... and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel.... And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for "the universal brotherhood of man" – with his mouth. – Mark Twain
Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their country. – Bertrand Russell
It doesn't require any particular bravery to stand on the floor of the Senate and urge our boys in Vietnam to fight harder, and if this war mushrooms into a major conflict and a hundred thousand young Americans are killed, it won't be U.S. Senators who die. It will be American soldiers who are too young to qualify for the Senate. – George McGovern
I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in. – George McGovern
When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die. – Jean-Paul Sartre
The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one. – Albert Einstein, "Atomic War or Peace," Atlantic Monthly, November 1945
You cannot prevent and prepare for war at the same time. – Albert Einstein
We kill because we are afraid of our own shadow, afraid that if we used a little common sense we'd have to admit that our glorious principles were wrong. – Henry Miller, The Wisdom of the Heart, 1941
The refuge of the morally, intellectually, artistically and economically bankrupt is war. – Martin H. Fischer
They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason. – Ernest Hemingway
The ability and inclination to use physical strength is no indication of bravery or tenacity to life. The greatest cowards are often the greatest bullies. Nothing is cheaper and more common than physical bravery. – Clarence Darrow, Resist Not Evil
Where is the indignation about the fact that the United States and Soviet Union have accumulated thirty thousand pounds of destructive force for every human being in the world? – Norman Cousins
I think war might be God's way of teaching us geography. – Paul Rodriguez
The era of true peace on earth will not come as long as a tremendous percentage of your taxes goes to educate men in the trades of slaughter. – Reginald Wright Kauffman
Are bombs the only way of setting fire to the spirit of a people? Is the human will as inert as the past two world-wide wars would indicate? – Gregory Clark
The way to win an atomic war is to make certain it never starts. – Omar Bradley
War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace. – Thomas Mann
We have failed to grasp the fact that mankind is becoming a single unit, and that for a unit to fight against itself is suicide. – Havelock Ellis
Have not I myself known five hundred living soldiers sabred into crows' meat for a piece of glazed cotton, which they call their flag; which had you sold it at any market-cross, would not have brought above three groschen? – Thomas Carlyle, "Sartor Resartus"
The basic problems facing the world today are not susceptible to a military solution. – John F. Kennedy
War is the only game in which it doesn't pay to have the home-court advantage. – Dick Motta
If it were proved to me that in making war, my ideal had a chance of being realized, I would still say "no" to war. For one does not create a human society on mounds of corpses. – Louis Lecoin
War is fear cloaked in courage. – William Westmoreland
War has a deeper and more ineffable relation to hidden grandeurs in man than has yet been deciphered. – Thomas de Quincey
No country can act wisely simultaneously in every part of the globe at every moment of time. – Henry Kissinger
Liberty and democracy become unholy when their hands are dyed red with innocent blood. – Gandhi, Non-violence in Peace and War, 1948
I would like it if men had to partake in the same hormonal cycles to which we're subjected monthly. Maybe that's why men declare war – because they have a need to bleed on a regular basis. – Brett Butler
We saw the lightning and that was the guns and then we heard the thunder and that was the big guns; and then we heard the rain falling and that was the blood falling; and when we came to get in the crops, it was dead men that we reaped. – Harriet Tubman
It is easier to lead men to combat, stirring up their passions, than to restrain them and direct them toward the patient labors of peace. – André Gide, Journals, 13 September 1938
Battles, in these ages, are transacted by mechanism; with the slightest possible development of human individuality or spontaneity; men now even die, and kill one another, in an artificial manner. – Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution, vol 1, book VII, chapter 4
The military don't start wars. Politicians start wars. – William Westmoreland
I have never advocated war except as a means of peace. – Ulysses S. Grant
We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it. – Dwight D. Eisenhower
In the name of peace
They waged the wars
Ain't they got no shame
– Nikki Giovanni
Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity. – Author Unknown
What is absurd and monstrous about war is that men who have no personal quarrel should be trained to murder one another in cold blood. – Aldous Huxley
Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder. – Percy Bysshe Shelley, "A Declaration of Rights"
Frankly, I'd like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the whole field to private individuals. – Joseph Heller, Catch-22, 1955
To kill a man is not to defend a doctrine, but to kill a man. – Michael Servetus
A day will come when a cannon will be exhibited in museums, just as instruments of torture are now, and the people will be astonished that such a thing could have been. – Victor Hugo
Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war. – Otto Von Bismark
The draft is white people sending black people to fight yellow people to protect the country they stole from red people. – Gerome Gragni and James Rado, 1967
War hath no fury like a noncombatant. – Charles Edward Montague, Disenchantment
What a country calls its vital... interests are not things that help its people live, but things that help it make war. Petroleum is a more likely cause of international conflict than wheat. – Simone Weil, Ecrits historiques et politiques, 1960
War is never a solution; it is an aggravation. – Benjamin Disraeli
The stench of the trail of Ego in our History. It is ego – ego, the fountain cry, origin, sole source of war. – George Meredith, Beauchamp's Career
Dress it as we may, feather it, daub it with gold, huzza it, and sing swaggering songs about it, what is war, nine times out of ten, but murder in uniform? – Douglas Jerrold
If you wish to be brothers, drop your weapons. – Pope John Paul II
Law never made men a whit more just; and by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice. A common and natural result of an undue respect for law is that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys, and all marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart. They have no doubt that it is a damnable business in which they are concerned; they are all peaceably inclined. Now, what are they? Men at all? or small movable forts and magazines, at the service of some unscrupulous man in power? The mass of men serve the State thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies.... In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. – Henry David Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience
Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die. – Herbert Hoover
A day of battle is a day of harvest for the devil. – William Hooke
There is nothing that war has ever achieved that we could not better achieve without it. – Havelock Ellis
All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers. – François Fénelon
War should belong to the tragic past, to history: it should find no place on humanity's agenda for the future. – Pope John Paul II
Men were made for war. Without it they wandered greyly about, getting under the feet of the women, who were trying to organize the really important things of life. – Alice Thomas Ellis
Will... the threat of common extermination continue?... Must children receive the arms race from us as a necessary inheritance? – Pope John Paul II, speech at the UN, 1979
War is nothing less than a temporary repeal of the principles of virtue. It is a system out of which almost all the virtues are excluded, and in which nearly all the vices are included. – Robert Hall
Traditional nationalism cannot survive the fissioning of the atom. One world or none. – Stuart Chase
Wars usually have the effect of speeding up the process of history. – Pieter Geyl, Debates With Historians
Why do we kill people who are killing people to show that killing people is wrong? – Holly Near
The pioneers of a warless world are the [youth] who refuse military service. – Albert Einstein
O Lord our God, help us tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it. – Mark Twain, "The War Prayer"
The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic. – Joe Stalin, comment to Churchill at Potsdam, 1945
Men like war: they do not hold much sway over birth, so they make up for it with death. Unlike women, men menstruate by shedding other people's blood. – Lucy Ellman
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. – John Stewart Mill
The aim of military training is not just to prepare men for battle, but to make them long for it. – Louis Simpson
The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his. – George Patton
The expendability factor has increased by being transferred from the specialised, scarce and expensively trained military personnel to the amorphous civilian population. American strategists have calculated the proportion of civilians killed in this century's major wars. In the First World War 5 per cent of those killed were civilians, in the Second World War 48 per cent, while in a Third World War 90-95 per cent would be civilians. – Colin Ward, Anarchy in Action
You can't say civilization don't advance, however, for in every war they kill you in a new way. – Will Rogers, New York Times, 23 December 1929
Organized slaughter, we realize, does not settle a dispute; it merely silences an argument. – James Frederick Green
I recoil with horror at the ferociousness of man. Will nations never devise a more rational umpire of differences than force? Are there no means of coercing injustice more gratifying to our nature than a waste of the blood of thousands and of the labor of millions of our fellow creatures? – Thomas Jefferson
War should be made a crime, and those who instigate it should be punished as criminals. – Charles Evans Hughes
War is a game which were their subjects wise, kings would not play at. – William Cowper
Borders are scratched across the hearts of men
By strangers with a calm, judicial pen,
And when the borders bleed we watch with dread
The lines of ink across the map turn red.
– Marya Mannes, Subverse: Rhymes for Our Times, 1959
If we don't end war, war will end us. – H.G. Wells, Things to Come, 1935
War is not an adventure. It is a disease. It is like typhus. – Antoine de Saint-Exupery
I don't know whether war is an interlude during peace, or peace an interlude during war. – Georges Clemenceau
As long as mankind shall continue to bestow more liberal applause on their destroyers than on their benefactors, the thirst of military glory will ever be the vice of exalted characters. – Edward Gibbon
There's a graveyard in northern France where all the dead boys from D-Day are buried. The white crosses reach from one horizon to the other. I remember looking it over and thinking it was a forest of graves. But the rows were like this, dizzying, diagonal, perfectly straight, so after all it wasn't a forest but an orchard of graves. Nothing to do with nature, unless you count human nature. – Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams
War! When I but think of this word, I feel bewildered, as though they were speaking to me of sorcery, of the Inquisition, of a distant, finished, abominable, monstrous, unnatural thing. When they speak to us of cannibals, we smile proudly, as we proclaim our superiority to these savages. Who are the real savages? Those who struggle in order to eat those whom they vanquish, or those who struggle merely to kill? – Guy de Maupassant, Sur l'Eau
The bomb that fell on Hiroshima fell on America too. It fell on no city, no munition plants, no docks. It erased no church, vaporized no public buildings, reduced no man to his atomic elements. But it fell, it fell. – Hermann Hagedorn, "The Bomb That Fell on America"
I hate war for its consequences, for the lies it lives on and propagates, for the undying hatreds it arouses, for the dictatorships it puts in the place of democracies, and for the starvation that stalks after it. I hate war, and never again will I sanction or support another. – Harry Emerson Fosdick
It seems like such a terrible shame that innocent civilians have to get hurt in wars, otherwise combat would be such a wonderfully healthy way to rid the human race of unneeded trash. – Fred Woodworth
In an incredible perversion of justice, former soldiers who sprayed festeringly poisonous chemicals on Vietnam, and now find today that they themselves have been damaged by them, appeal to the people for sympathy and charity. The effects of the defoliant "Agent Orange" are discussed at length, but not one single newspaper article or hearing that we are aware of has even mentioned the effects of the people who still live in those regions of Vietnam. It's as outlandish as if Nazis who gassed Jews were now to come forward and whine that the poisons they utilized had finally made them sick. The staggering monstrousness goes unlaughed at and even unnoticed, as in a Kafka novel. – Fred Woodworth, The Match, No. 79
A visitor from Mars could easily pick out the civilized nations. They have the best implements of war. – Herbert V. Prochnow
Studies by Medical Corps psychiatrists of combat fatigue cases... found that fear of killing, rather than fear of being killed, was the most common cause of battle failure, and that fear of failure ran a strong second. – S.L.A. Marshall
You're an old-timer if you can remember when setting the world on fire was a figure of speech. – Franklin P. Jones, referring to the atomic bomb
MONEY
The safe way to double your money is to fold it over once and put it in your pocket. – Frank Hubbard
We can tell our values by looking at our checkbook stubs. – Gloria Steinem
There is a very easy way to return from a casino with a small fortune: go there with a large one. – Jack Yelton
My problem lies in reconciling my gross habits with my net income. – Errol Flynn
Car sickness is the feeling you get when the monthly payment is due. – Author Unknown
Inflation hasn't ruined everything. A dime can still be used as a screwdriver. – Quoted in P.S. I Love You, compiled by H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position. – Mark Twain
They who are of the opinion that Money will do everything, may very well be suspected to do everything for Money. – George Savile, Complete Works, 1912
I cannot afford to waste my time making money. – Louis Agassiz
There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money, either. – Robert Graves
When I have money, I get rid of it quickly, lest it find a way into my heart. – John Wesley
It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach. – Franklin Delano Roosevelt
After a visit to the beach, it's hard to believe that we live in a material world. – Pam Shaw
The real measure of your wealth is how much you'd be worth if you lost all your money. – Author Unknown
Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realise we cannot eat money. – Cree Indian Proverb
The only reason a great many American families don't own an elephant is that they have never been offered an elephant for a dollar down and easy weekly payments. – Mad Magazine
I'd like to live as a poor man with lots of money. – Pablo Picasso
No matter how hard you hug your money, it never hugs back. – Quoted in P.S. I Love You, compiled by H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
There are no pockets in a shroud. – Author Unknown
Waste your money and you're only out of money, but waste your time and you've lost a part of your life. – Michael Leboeuf
There are people who have money and people who are rich. – Coco Chanel
This planet has – or rather had – a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy. – Douglas Adams
Life shouldn't be printed on dollar bills. – Clifford Odets
Economists are economical, among other things, of ideas; most make those of their graduate days last a lifetime. – John Kenneth Galbraith
There are few sorrows, however poignant, in which a good income is of no avail. – Logan Pearsall Smith, "Life and Human Nature," Afterthoughts, 1931
Mammon, n.: The god of the world's leading religion. – Ambrose Bierce
Wallets are the fabricated items into which we put our fabricated money, which most people believe to be their possession of the realest value. – Terri Guillemets
It's good to have money and the things that money can buy, but it's good, too, to check up once in a while and make sure that you haven't lost the things that money can't buy. – George Horace Lorimer
"Your money, or your life." We know what to do when a burglar makes this demand of us, but not when God does. – Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966
Inflation is when you pay fifteen dollars for the ten-dollar haircut you used to get for five dollars when you had hair. – Sam Ewing
A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don't need it. – Bob Hope
Business is the art of extracting money from another man's pocket without resorting to violence. – Max Amsterdam
O Gold! I still prefer thee unto paper,
Which makes bank credit like a bark of vapour.
– Lord Byron
Always borrow money from a pessimist, he doesn't expect to be paid back. – Author Unknown
If you lend someone $20, and never see that person again, it was probably worth it. – Author Unknown
Every day I get up and look through the Forbes list of the richest people in America. If I'm not there, I go to work. – Robert Orben
If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car payments. – Earl Wilson
Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons. – Woody Allen
I don't like money, actually, but it quiets my nerves. – Joe Louis
Budget: a mathematical confirmation of your suspicions. – A.A. Latimer
Money is like manure. You have to spread it around or it smells. – J. Paul Getty
We may see the small value God has for riches, by the people he gives them to. – Alexander Pope, Thoughts on Various Subjects, 1727
Too much money is as demoralizing as too little, and there's no such thing as exactly enough. – Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966
It's a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money. – Albert Camus
When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion. – Voltaire
A bank book makes good reading – better than some novels. – Harry Lauder
Women prefer men who have something tender about them – especially the legal kind. – Kay Ingram
There are a handful of people whom money won't spoil, and we count ourselves among them. – Mignon McLaughlin
Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy you the kind of misery you prefer. – Author Unknown
When a fellow says it hain't the money but the principle o' the thing, it's th' money. – Frank McKinney "Kin" Hubbard, Hoss Sense and Nonsense, 1926
The waste of money cures itself, for soon there is no more to waste. – M.W. Harrison
They deem me mad because I will not sell my days for gold; and I deem them mad because they think my days have a price. – Kahlil Gibran
I'm so poor I can't even pay attention. – Ron Kittle, 1987
If you make money your god, it will plague you like the devil. – Henry Fielding
It frees you from doing things you dislike. Since I dislike doing nearly everything, money is handy. – Groucho Marx
We have profoundly forgotten everywhere that Cash-payment is not the sole relation of human beings. – Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present
We live by the Golden Rule. Those who have the gold make the rules. – Buzzie Bavasi
A man's soul may be buried and perish under a dungheap or in a furrow of the field, just as well as under a pile of money. – Nathaniel Hawthorne
There are several ways in which to apportion the family income, all of them unsatisfactory. – Robert Benchley
Wealth – any income that is at least one hundred dollars more a year than the income of one's wife's sister's husband. – H.L. Mencken
...existence has become an unreasoning, wild dance around the golden calf, a mad worship of God Mammon. In that dance and in that worship man has sacrificed all his finer qualities of the heart and soul – kindness and justice, honor and manhood, compassion and sympathy with his fellowman. – Alexander Berkman, What Is Communist Anarchism?
When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is. – Oscar Wilde
The economy depends about as much on economists as the weather does on weather forecasters. – Jean-Paul Kauffmann
Money is power, freedom, a cushion, the root of all evil, the sum of blessings. – Carl Sandburg
I am having an out of money experience. – Author Unknown
If women didn't exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning. – Aristotle Onassis
Money is much more exciting than anything it buys. – Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966
The only thing that can console one for being poor is extravagance. – Oscar Wilde
Earth gets its price for what Earth gives us,
The beggar is taxed for a corner to die in,
The priest hath his fee who comes and shrives us,
We bargain for the graves we lie in;
At the devil's booth are all things sold,
Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold;
For a cap and bells our lives we pay.
Bubbles we buy with a whole soul's tasking,
'Tis heaven alone that is given away,
'Tis only God may be had for the asking,
No price is set on the lavish summer;
June may be had by the poorest comer.
– James Russell Lowell, The Vision of Sir Launfal, 1848
Money is human happiness in the abstract; and so the man who is no longer capable of enjoying such happiness in the concrete, sets his whole heart on money. – Arthur Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena, 1851
Money is the last enemy that shall never be subdued. While there is flesh there is money – or the want of money; but money is always on the brain so long as there is a brain in reasonable order. – Samuel Butler, Notebooks, 1912
Money will buy you a pretty good dog, but it won't buy the wag of his tail. – Henry Wheeler Shaw
When you let money speak for you, it drowns out anything else you meant to say. – Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966
People are living longer than ever before, a phenomenon undoubtedly made necessary by the 30-year mortgage. – Doug Larson
October: This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks in. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August and February. – Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar for 1894
I wish I'd said it first, and I don't even know who did: The only problems that money can solve are money problems. – Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966
He that wants money, means, and content is without three good friends. – William Shakespeare
Every one, even the richest and most munificent of men, pays much by cheque more light-heartedly than he pays little in specie. – Max Beerbohm, "Hosts and Guests," 1918
If inflation continues to soar, you're going to have to work like a dog just to live like one. – George Gobel
Money does not pay for anything, never has, never will. It is an economic axiom as old as the hills that goods and services can be paid for only with goods and services. – Albert Jay Nock, Memoirs of a Superfluous Man, 1943
I'm tired of Love: I'm still more tired of Rhyme.
But Money gives me pleasure all the time.
– Hilaire Belloc, "Fatigued," Sonnets and Verse, 1923
In the old days a man who saved money was a miser; nowadays he's a wonder. – Author Unknown
How quickly nature falls into revolt
When gold becomes her object!
For this the foolish over-careful fathers
Have broke their sleep with thoughts, their brains with care,
Their bones with industry.
– William Shakespeare
[T]hose who live by numbers can also perish by them and it is a terrifying thing to have an adding machine write an epitaph, either way. – George J.W. Goodman, The Money Game
A man is usually more careful of his money than of his principles. – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., speech, Boston, 8 January 1897
Inflation is taxation without legislation. – Milton Friedman
Those who believe money can do everything are frequently prepared to do everything for money. – Author Unknown
I hire tea by the tea bag. – Martin Amis, on renting the essentials of life after breaking up with a lover, Money: A Suicide Note (Thanks to bartleby.com for verifying the details of the source.)
Foul cankering rust the hidden treasure frets,
But gold that's put to use more gold begets.
– William Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis, 1593
Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust. – Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, 1857
We all know how the size of sums of money appears to vary in a remarkable way according as they are being paid in or paid out. – Julian Huxley, Essays of a Biologist, 1923
A dollar picked up in the road is more satisfaction to us than the 99 which we had to work for, and the money won at Faro or in the stock market snuggles into our hearts in the same way. – Mark Twain
A woman's mink coat represents the sacrifice of a lot of little animals, including her husband. – Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966
Money doesn't talk, it swears. – Bob Dylan, "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)"
The best way for a person to have happy thoughts is to count his blessings and not his cash. – Author Unknown
A nickel ain't worth a dime anymore. – Yogi Berra
Do not value money for any more nor any less than its worth; it is a good servant but a bad master. – Alexandre Dumas fils, Camille, 1852
To suppose as we all suppose, that we could be rich and not behave as the rich behave, is like supposing that we could drink all day and stay sober. – Logan Pearsall Smith
If all the economists were laid end to end, they'd never reach a conclusion. – George Bernard Shaw
If the nation's economists were laid end to end, they would point in all directions. – Arthur H. Motley
Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a refund from the IRS, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with. – From a Washington Post word contest
Empty pockets never held anyone back. Only empty heads and empty hearts can do that. – Norman Vincent Peale
A rich man is nothing but a poor man with money. – W.C. Fields
He is rich or poor according to what he is, not according to what he has. – Henry Ward Beecher
By the time I have money to burn, my fire will have burnt out. – Author Unknown
That money talks
I'll not deny,
I heard it once:
It said, "Goodbye."
– Richard Armour
Money and women. They're two of the strongest things in the world. The things you do for a woman you wouldn't do for anything else. Same with money. – Satchel Paige
Those who set out to serve both God and Mammon soon discover that there is no God. – Logan Pearsall Smith
But tell me: how did gold get to be the highest value? Because it is uncommon and useless and gleaming and gentle in its brilliance; it always gives itself. Only as an image of the highest virtue did gold get to be the highest value. The giver's glance gleams like gold. A golden brilliance concludes peace between the moon and the sun. Uncommon is the highest virtue and useless, it is gleaming and gentle in its brilliance: a gift-giving virtue is the highest virtue. – Friedrich Nietzsche
We ought to change the legend on our money from "In God We Trust" to "In Money We Trust." Because, as a nation, we've got far more faith in money these days than we do in God. – Arthur Hoppe, 1963
Ordinary riches can be stolen; real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you. – Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism, 1891
The people who brought you the weekend – the unions.
"At this point, why don't we just hand Halliburton the keys to the US Treasury and tell them to turn off the lights when they are done – Sen. Frank Lautenberg
Isn't it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction listen to weather forecasts and economists? – Kelvin Throop III
There are 1011 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers. – Richard Feynman
Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it. – Ronald Reagan
POLITICS
Politics, it seems to me, for years, or all too long, has been concerned with right or left instead of right or wrong. – Richard Armour
Politicians are like diapers. They both need changing regularly and for the same reason. – Author Unknown
Hell, I never vote for anybody, I always vote against. – W.C. Fields
We live in a world in which politics has replaced philosophy. – Martin L. Gross, A Call for Revolution, 1993
There are many men of principle in both parties in America, but there is no party of principle. – Alexis de Tocqueville
We'd all like to vote for the best man, but he's never a candidate. – Frank McKinney "Kin" Hubbard
All of us who are concerned for peace and triumph of reason and justice must be keenly aware how small an influence reason and honest good will exert upon events in the political field. – Albert Einstein
What is conservatism? Is it not the adherence to the old and tried against the new and untried? – Abraham Lincoln
I think it's about time we voted for senators with breasts. After all, we've been voting for boobs long enough. – Clarie Sargent, Arizona senatorial candidate
A liberal is a man or a woman or a child who looks forward to a better day, a more tranquil night, and a bright, infinite future. – Leonard Bernstein, The New York Times, 30 October 1988
Take our politicians: they're a bunch of yo-yos. The presidency is now a cross between a popularity contest and a high school debate, with an encyclopedia of cliches the first prize. – Saul Bellow
In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant. – Charles de Gaulle
Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber. – Plato
Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule – and both commonly succeed, and are right. – H.L. Mencken, 1956
Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where they is no river. – Nikita Khrushchev
Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence. Conservatism is distrust of the people tempered by fear. – William E. Gladstone, 1866
When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President; I'm beginning to believe it. – Clarence Darrow
George Washington is the only president who didn't blame the previous administration for his troubles. – Author Unknown
Truth is not determined by majority vote. – Doug Gwyn
An election is coming. Universal peace is declared and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry. – T.S. Eliot
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy. – Ernest Benn
We have, I fear, confused power with greatness. – Stewart Udall
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. – John Kenneth Galbraith
A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward. – Franklin D. Roosevelt, radio speech, 26 October 1939
Politicians are people who, when they see light at the end of the tunnel, go out and buy some more tunnel. – John Quinton
A conservative is one who admires radicals centuries after they're dead. – Leo Rosten
"Progressives encourage dissent to improve society through constructive engagement. Conservatives encourage dissent to identify and silence the traitors." – Anonymous
"I may be a liberal, but I'm not a liar." – Rachael Walston, Houston
"It's Our Media, Not Theirs" – Robert McChesney
Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. – Ronald Reagan
The only difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is that the Democrats allow the poor to be corrupt, too. – Oscar Levant
We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office. – Aesop
The Christian Right is neither. – Moby
Conservatives define themselves in terms of what they oppose. – George Will
Right is right and wrong is wrong, no matter what the spin. – Author Unknown
How come we choose from just two people to run for president and 50 for Miss America? – Author Unknown
The idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal that you can gather votes like box tops is the ultimate indignity to the democratic process. – Adlai Stevenson, speech, Democratic National Convention, 18 August 1956
There are always too many Democratic congressmen, too many Republican congressmen, and never enough U.S. congressmen. – Author Unknown
Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich, by promising to protect each from the other. – Oscar Ameringer
Politicians say they're beefing up our economy. Most don't know beef from pork. – Harold Lowman
Some men change their party for the sake of their principles; others their principles for the sake of their party. – Winston Churchill
If God had been a Liberal there wouldn't have been Ten Commandments, there would have been Ten Suggestions. – Malcolm Bradbury, After Dinner Game, 1982
The Democrats seem to be basically nicer people, but they have demonstrated time and again that they have the management skills of celery. They're the kind of people who'd stop to help you change a flat, but would somehow manage to set your car on fire. I would be reluctant to entrust them with a Cuisinart, let alone the economy. The Republicans, on the other hand, would know how to fix your tire, but they wouldn't bother to stop because they'd want to be on time for Ugly Pants Night at the country club. – Dave Barry
A conservative is one who admires radicals centuries after they're dead. – Leo Rosten
The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it. – P.J. O'Rourke
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. – John Kenneth Galbraith
Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber. – Plato
Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where they is no river. – Nikita Khrushchev
There are many men of principle in both parties in America, but there is no party of principle. – Alexis de Tocqueville
What is conservatism? Is it not the adherence to the old and tried against the new and untried? – Abraham Lincoln
We'd all like to vote for the best man, but he's never a candidate. – Frank McKinney "Kin" Hubbard
Politics, it seems to me, for years, or all too long, has been concerned with right or left instead of right or wrong. – Richard Armour
Politicians are like diapers. They both need changing regularly and for the same reason. – Author Unknown
The test of courage comes when we are in the minority. The test of tolerance comes when we are in the majority. – Ralph W. Sockman
Born on third, thinks he got a triple. – Ed Vedder
You know what's interesting about Washington? It's the kind of place where second—guessing has become second nature. – George W. Bush
After two years in Washington, I often long for the realism and sincerity of Hollywood. – Fred Thompson
Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship. – Harry S. Truman
The last time someone listened to a Bush, folks wandered around the desert for 40 years. – Author Unknown
GOP = Greed Over Patriotism. – Bumper Sticker, Houston
An elective despotism is not the government we fought for. – Thomas Jefferson
Those who are willing to sacrifice their basic liberties to assure their security deserve neither. – Benjamin Franklin
Isn't it a violation of the Georgia sodomy law for the Supreme Court to have its head up its ass? – 1987 letter to Playboy
When we say the Pledge of Allegiance, we say, “...with liberty and justice for all.†Well what part of “all†don’t people understand? – Rep. Patricia Schroeder (D – Colo.), at the Gay and Lesbian March on Washington, 25 April, 1993
Don't blame me. I voted with the majority. – Bumper Sticker, Houston 2002
QUALITY OF LIFE
Just living is not enough. One must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower. – Hans Christian Anderson
When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, "I used everything you gave me." – Erma Bombeck
The purpose of life is a life of purpose. – Robert Byrne
The miracle is not to fly in the air, or to walk on the water, but to walk on the earth. – Chinese Proverb
I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day. – Elwyn Brooks White
Life is simple, its just not easy. – Author Unknown
A life without cause is a life without effect. – Barbarella
Jack Palance: "Do you know what the secret of life is? One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and everything else don't mean shit."
Billy Crystal: "Yeah, but what's that one thing?"
Jack Palance: "That's what you've got to figure out."
– From the movie City Slickers
Here is the test to find whether your mission on earth is finished. If you're alive, it isn't. – Richard Bach
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. – Henry David Thoreau, Walden
I hope life isn't a big joke, because I don't get it. – Jack Handey
Life is a foreign language: all men mispronounce it. – Christopher Morley, Thunder on the Left
Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee,
And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me.
– Robert Frost, "Cluster of Faith," 1962
In spite of the cost of living, it's still popular. – Kathy Norris
To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else. – Emily Dickinson
Yes, I will try to be. Because I believe that not being is arrogant. – Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin
My life has a superb cast but I can't figure out the plot. – Ashleigh Brilliant
I say, if your knees aren't green by the end of the day, you ought to seriously re-examine your life. – Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes
You fall out of your mother's womb, you crawl across open country under fire, and drop into your grave. – Quentin Crisp
As we struggle to make sense of things, life looks on in repose. – Author Unknown
I think I've discovered the secret of life – you just hang around until you get used to it. – Charles Schulz
Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets. – Arthur Miller
Life is like a blanket too short. You pull it up and your toes rebel, you yank it down and shivers meander about your shoulder; but cheerful folks manage to draw their knees up and pass a very comfortable night. – Marion Howard
Life is a whim of several billion cells to be you for a while. – Author Unknown
You can't escape history, or the needs and neuroses you've picked up like layers and layers of tartar on your teeth. – Charles Johnson
Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint on it you can. – Danny Kaye
I have a simple philosophy: Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. Scratch where it itches. – Alice Roosevelt Longworth
Life is like a coin. You can spend it any way you wish, but you only spend it once. – Lillian Dickson
We are born wet, naked, and hungry. Then things get worse. – Author Unknown
Life is like a beautiful melody, only the lyrics are messed up. – Author Unknown
Life is a cement trampoline. – Howard Nordberg
To preserve a man alive in the midst of so many chances and hostilities, is as great a miracle as to create him. – Jeremy Taylor
Life... is like a box of chocolates – a cheap, thoughtless, perfunctory gift that no one ever asks for, unreturnable because all you get back is another box of chocolates. So, you're stuck with mostly undefinable whipped mint crap, mindlessly wolfed down when there's nothing else to eat while you're watching the game. Sure, once is a while you get a peanut butter cup or an English toffee but it's gone too fast and the taste is fleeting. In the end, you are left with nothing but broken bits filled with hardened jelly and teeth-shattering nuts, which, if you are desperate enough to eat, leaves nothing but an empty box of useless brown paper. – The X-Files
He who has a why to live can bear almost any how. – Friedrich Nietzsche
God pours life into death and death into life without a drop being spilled. – Author Unknown
Life is what we make it, always has been, always will be. – Grandma Moses
The great business of life is to be, to do, to do without, and to depart. – John, Viscount Morley, Address on Aphorisms
Who will tell whether one happy moment of love or the joy of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air, is not worth all the suffering and effort which life implies. – Erich Fromm
My formula for living is quite simple. I get up in the morning and I go to bed at night. In between, I occupy myself as best I can. – Cary Grant
To live remains an art which everyone must learn, and which no one can teach. – Havelock Ellis
Living involves tearing up one rough draft after another. – Author Unknown
My grandfather always said that living is like licking honey off a thorn. – Louis Adamic
No man lives without jostling and being jostled; in all ways he has to elbow himself through the world, giving and receiving offence. – Thomas Carlyle, Sir Walter Scott, in London and Westminster Review, 12 November 1838
Don't think of retiring from the world until the world will be sorry that you retire. I hate a fellow whom pride or cowardice or laziness drive into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark. – Samuel Johnson
Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: "I am with you kid. Let's go." – Maya Angelou
Life has meaning only if one barters it day by day for something other than itself. – Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Why torture yourself when life'll do it for you? – Author Unknown
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 Doctor's Dilemma, 1906
Puritans will never believe it, but life is full of disagreeable things that aren't even good for you. – Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966
'Tis all a chequer board of nights and days,
Where destiny with men for pieces plays;
Hither and thither, and mates, and slays.
– Edward Fitzgerald, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyám, 1859
You cannot discover the purpose of life by asking someone else – the only way you'll ever get the right answer is by asking yourself. – Terri Guillemets
...the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse. – Walt Whitman, "O Me! O Life!", Leaves of Grass
Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first. – Mark Twain
Life is the game that must be played. – Edwin Arlington Robinson
You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life. – Albert Camus
There is no wealth but life. – John Ruskin
I know what things are good: friendship and work and conversation. These I shall have. – Rupert Brooke
Life will always remain a gamble, with prizes sometimes for the imprudent, and blanks so often to the wise. – Jerome K. Jerome
The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it. – Henry David Thoreau
Eating, loving, singing and digesting are, in truth, the four acts of the comic opera known as life, and they pass like bubbles of a bottle of champagne. Whoever lets them break without having enjoyed them is a complete fool. – Gioacchino Rossini
We mourn the transitory things and fret under the yoke of the immutable ones. – Paul Eldridge
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons. – T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Life was a damned muddle – a football game with everyone offside and the referee gotten rid of – everyone claiming the referee would have been on his side. – F. Scott Fitzgerald
Any idiot can face a crisis – it's day to day living that wears you out. – Anton Chekhov
Following straight lines shortens distances, and also life. – Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin
Life is so largely controlled by chance that its conduct can be but a perpetual improvisation. – W. Somerset Maugham
I count life just a stuff
To try the soul's strength on.
– Robert Browning
Life may have no meaning. Or even worse, it may have a meaning of which I disapprove. – Ashleigh Brilliant
Life is an incurable Disease. – Abraham Cowley
Human life is purely a matter of deciding what's important to you. – Anonymous
For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life. – Albert Camus
Life is not so bad if you have plenty of luck, a good physique, and not too much imagination. – Christopher Isherwood
The only way to have a life is to commit to it like crazy. – Angelina Jolie
Life is a compromise of what your ego wants to do, what experience tells you to do, and what your nerves let you do. – Bruce Crampton
Life is a mixed blessing, which we vainly try to unmix. – Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966
In masks outrageous and austere
The years go by in single file;
But none has merited my fear,
And none has quite escaped my smile.
– Elinor Hoyt Wylie, Let No Charitable Hope
The tragedy of life is not so much what men suffer, but rather what they miss. – Thomas Carlyle
All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on. – Havelock Ellis
Sunday clears away the rust of the whole week. – Joseph Addison
We tear life out of life to use it for looking at itself. – Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin
[Psychoanalysis] is not the only way to resolve inner conflicts. Life itself still remains a very effective therapist. – Karen Horney, Our Inner Conflicts, 1945
Give us Lord, a bit o' sun,
A bit o' work and a bit o' fun;
Give us all in the struggle and sputter
Our daily bread and a bit o' butter.
– From an inn in Lancaster, England
The tragedy of life is not that man loses, but that he almost wins. – Heywood Broun
He who has nothing to die for has nothing to live for. – Moroccan Proverb
But now I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth. – Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum
God asks no man whether he will accept life. That is not the choice. You must take it. The only question is how. – Henry Ward Beecher
Perhaps I'm old and tired, but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied. – Douglas Adams
Suppose the world were only one of God's jokes, would you work any the less to make it a good joke instead of a bad one? – George Bernard Shaw
In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life. It goes on. – Robert Frost
Life is like a ten-speed bicycle. Most of us have gears we never use. – Charles Schulz
There is no finish line. – Nike advertisement
It may be life is only worthwhile at moments. Perhaps that is all we ought to expect. – Sherwood Anderson
I sit astride life like a bad rider on a horse. I only owe it to the horse's good nature that I am not thrown off at this very moment. – Ludwig Wittgenstein
The art of life is the art of avoiding pain. – Thomas Jefferson
Serenity of spirit and turbulence of action should make up the sum of a man's life. – Vita Sackville-West
Life is one big judgment call. – Terri Guillemets
The fear of life is the favorite disease of the 20th century. – William Lyon Phelps
In the book of life, the answers aren't in the back. – Charlie Brown
The world is a grindstone and life is your nose. – Fred Allen
Not unfortunately the universe is wild – game-flavoured as a hawk's wing. – B.P. Blood
You live and learn. At any rate, you live. – Douglas Adams
Everything which is properly business we must keep carefully separate from life. Business requires earnestness and method; life must have a freed handling. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Life is made up of constant calls to action, and we seldom have time for more than hastily contrived answers. – Learned Hand
The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched. – Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Life is the sum of all your choices. – Albert Camus
Out of a hundred years a few minutes were made that stayed with me, not a hundred years. – Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin
If A equals success, then the formula is: A = X + Y + Z, where X is work, Y is play, and Z is keep your mouth shut. – Albert Einstein
I gave my life to learning how to live.
Now that I have organized it all...
It is just about over.
– Sandra Hochman
There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic. – Anaïs Nin
[P]erhaps nothing 'ud be a lesson to us if it didn't come too late. It's well we should feel as life's a reckoning we can't make twice over; there's no real making amends in this world, any more nor you can mend a wrong subtraction by doing your addition right. – George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), Adam Bede
Only a few things are really important. – Marie Dressler
We are like people with short-term leases on summer cottages; we can never seem to make our provisions come out even with our stay. – Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960
The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware. – Henry Miller
Life is like eating artichokes; you have got to go through so much to get so little. – Thomas Aloysius Dorgan
Life is a ticket to the greatest show on earth. – Martin H. Fischer
Summing up, it is clear the future holds great opportunities. It also holds pitfalls. The trick will be to avoid the pitfalls, seize the opportunities, and get back home by six o'clock. – Woody Allen, "My Speech to the Graduates," Side Effects, 1980
Situated in some nebulous distance I do what I do so that the universal balance of which I am a part may remain a balance. – Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin
Few of us write great novels; all of us live them. – Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960
If you stop struggling, then you stop life. – Huey Newton
Sometimes questions are more important than answers. – Nancy Willard, quoted in The Meaning of Life, compiled by Hugh S. Moorhead
It is while you are patiently toiling at the little tasks of life that the meaning and shape of the great whole of life dawn on you. – Phillips Brooks
How beautiful and ugly is this world,
producer of patchwork hearts -
torn by civilized days,
mended in nature and solitude -
some weaker at the seams than others.
– Terri Guillemets
There is a strange reluctance on the part of most people to admit that they enjoy life. – William Lyon Phelps
Literature is mostly about having sex and not much about having children; life is the other way around. – David Lodge, The British Museum Is Falling Down, 1965
If a man in the morning hear the right way, he may die in the evening without regret. – Confucius
Life is a sexually transmitted disease and there is a 100% mortality rate. – R.D. Laing
Life always bursts the boundaries of formulas. – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Flight to Arras, 1942, translated from French by Lewis Galantière
We should give meaning to life, not wait for life to give us meaning. – Unknown
Many of us are equal to life's emergencies who cannot bear its day-after-dayness. – Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960
Life is like an onion; you peel off layer after layer and then you find there is nothing in it. – James Gibbons Huneker
Life is not having been told that the man has just waxed the floor. – Ogden Nash
I do like a little bit of butter to my bread. – A.A. Milne, When We Were Very Young
Be glad of life because it gives you the chance to love and to work and to play and to look up at the stars. – Henry Van Dyke
People find it hard to be both comic and serious, though life manages it easily enough. – Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966
Life is a long lesson in humility. – James M. Barrie
In life, as in restaurants, we swallow a lot of indigestible stuff just because it comes with the dinner. – Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960
Life seems nothing more than a quick succession of busy nothings." – From the movie Mansfield Park
Reason and justice tell me there's more love for humanity in electricity and steam than in chastity and vegetarianism. – Anton Chekhov
To live is like to love – all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it. – Samuel Butler
Life is easier than you'd think; all that is necessary is to accept the impossible, do without the indispensable, and bear the intolerable. – Kathleen Norris
When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained. – Mark Twain
There are people who so arrange their lives that they feed themselves only on side dishes. – José Ortega y Gasset
The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination. But the combination is locked up in the safe. – Peter De Vries, Let Me Count the Ways, 1965
It's just life. Just live it. – Terri Guillemets
Every creatures stalks some other, and catches it, and is caught. – Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960
A great part of life consists in contemplating what we cannot cure. – Robert Louis Stevenson
I have come one step away from everything. And here I stay, far from everything, one step away. – Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin
Anxiety and distress, interrupted occasionally by pleasure, is the normal course of man's existence. – Joseph Wood Krutch
I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything, and many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here, and what the question might mean. I might think about it a little bit, but if I can't figure it out, then I go on to something else. But I don't have to know an answer.... I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn't frighten me. – Richard Phillips Feynman
Life is just a series of trying to make up your mind. – Timothy Fuller
The history of man for the nine months preceding his birth would, probably, be far more interesting and contain events of greater moment than all the three score and ten years that follow it. – Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Perhaps we are looking at this from a wrong perspective; this search for the truth, the meaning of life, the reason of God. We all have this mindset that the answers are so complex and so vast that it is almost impossible to comprehend. I think, on the contrary, that the answers are so simple; so simple that it is staring us straight in the face, screaming its lungs out, and yet we fail to notice it. We're looking through a telescope, searching the stars for the answer, when the answer is actually a speck of dirt on the telescope lens. – Jason Q., from Generation Terrorists
Life is little more than a loan shark: It exacts a very high rate of interest for the few pleasures it concedes. – Luigi Pirandello
Life is a shit sandwich. But if you've got enough bread, you don't taste the shit. – Jonathan Winters
There is only one difference between a long life and a good dinner: that, in the dinner, the sweets come last. – Robert Louis Stevenson
The meaning of life is not an unquestionable answer; it is an unanswerable question. – Terri Guillemets
The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line. – H.L. Mencken
Almost everything in life is easier to get into than out of. – Agnes' Law
Wars and elections are both too big and too small to matter in the long run. The daily work – that goes on, it adds up. – Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams
Life is a series of collisions with the future. – José Ortega y Gasset
The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing. – Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Life is half spent before we know what it is. – George Herbert, Jacula Prudentum, 1651
Why does a person even get up in the morning? You have breakfast, you floss your teeth so you'll have healthy gums in your old age, and then you get in your car and drive down I-10 and die. Life is so stupid I can't stand it. – Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams
Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are good is like expecting the bull not to charge because you are a vegetarian. – Dennis Wholey
Life is an endless struggle full of frustrations and challenges, but eventually you find a hair stylist you like. – Author Unknown
What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset. – Crowfoot, 1890, as quoted in Catch the Whisper of the Wind compiled by Cheewa James
Have you noticed that life, real honest-to-goodness life, with murders and catastrophes and fabulous inheritances, happens almost exclusively in the newspapers? – Jean Anouilh, The Rehearsal, 1950
God writes a lot of comedy... the trouble is, he's stuck with so many bad actors who don't know how to play funny. – Garrison Keillor
Look, I don't want to wax philosophic, but I will say that if you're alive you've got to flap your arms and legs, you've got to jump around a lot, for life is the very opposite of death, and therefore you must at very least think noisy and colorfully, or you're not alive. – Mel Brooks
Unbeing dead isn't being alive. – e.e. cummings
Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious. – Brendan Gill
When we are alone on a starlit night, when by chance we see the migrating birds in autumn descending on a grove of junipers to rest and eat; when we see children in a moment when they are really children, when we know love in our own hearts; or when, like the Japanese poet, Basho, we hear an old frog land in a quiet pond with a solitary splash – at such times the awakening, the turning inside out of all values, the "newness," the emptiness and the purity of vision that make themselves evident, all these provide a glimpse of the cosmic dance. – Thomas Merton
Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans. – John Lennon
Is life not a hundred times too short for us to stifle ourselves. – Friedrich Nietzsche
God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players, to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch—dark room, with blank cards for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time. – Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, "Good Omens"
Ginsberg's Restatement of the Three Laws of Thermodynamics:
You can't win.
You can't break even.
You can't quit.
Where are we going? And what's with this hand basket? – George Carlin
Why do they lock gas station bathrooms? Are they afraid someone will clean them? – George Carlin
One nice thing about egotists: they don't talk about other people. – George Carlin
If you try to fail, and succeed, which have you done? – George Carlin
Could it be that all those trick or treaters wearing sheets aren't going as ghosts but as mattresses? – George Carlin
The first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: Decide what you want. – Ben Stein
Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious. – Brendan Gill
It's not true that life is one damn thing after another; it is one damn thing over and over. – Edna St. Vincent Millay
Life is something that happens when you can't get to sleep. – Fran Lebowitz
Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome. – Isaac Asimov
Life is a long lesson in humility. – James M. Barrie
The life which is unexamined is not worth living. – Plato
Life is just a bowl of pits. – Rodney Dangerfield
We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give. – Sir Winston Churchill
Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act. – Truman Capote
MASS TRANSIT
If the black box flight recorder is never damaged during a plane crash, why isn't the whole damn airplane made out of that stuff? – George Carlin
Experts keep telling us the weather affects the price of gas. When it's cold and wet, we use more heat. When it's warm and sunny, people travel more. So really the only time when the price of gas will go down due to weather is when it snows in hell. – Jay Leno
If you can read this..I can slam on my brakes and sue you. – Bumper Sticker
Gas prices are so high, Robert Blake and O.J. are forced to carpool on the search for the real killers. – Jay Leno
Some people just don't know how to drive. I call these people "Everybody But Me." – Bumper Sticker
Don't like my driving? Then quit watching me. – Bumper Sticker
At the gas station near my house, they have a slot for your credit card and one right next to it for your 401(K) – Jay Leno
Hang up and drive!!!!!!!!!!! – Bumper Sticker
A woman in Kettering, Ohio, gave birth to a baby at a gas station. So apparently now, when you fill your tank, they take your firstborn. – Jay Leno
SOCIAL ISSUES
They keep talking about drafting a Constitution for Iraq. Why don't we just give them ours? It was written by a lot of really smart guys, it's worked for over 200 years and we're not using it anymore. – George Carlin
Racism isn't born, folks, it's taught. I have a two—year—old son. You know what he hates? Naps! End of list. – Dennis Leary
Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike. – Oscar Wilde
I have no color prejudices nor caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. All I care to know is that a man is a human being, and that is enough for me; he can't be any worse. – Mark Twain
We are each burdened with prejudice against the poor or the rich, the smart or the slow, the gaunt or the obese. It is natural to develop prejudices. It is noble to rise above them. – Author Unknown
If man evolved from monkeys and apes, why do we still have monkeys and apes? – George Carlin
Atheism is a non – prophet organization. – Author Unknown
The Bible makes us bigoted. – Iowa anti—gay activist Bill Horn, as quoted in the Des Moines Register, March 12.
SEXUAL, GENDER AND FAMILY ISSUES
Do infants enjoy infancy as much as adults enjoy adultery? – George Carlin
WANTED: Meaningful overnight relationship. – Bumper Sticker
The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live. – George Carlin
The Bible contains 6 admonishments to homosexuals and 362 admonishments to heterosexuals. That doesn't mean that God doesn't love heterosexuals. It's just that they need more supervision. – Attributed to Lynn Lavner
Jesus preached and talked against a whole gamut of sins. He never mentioned homosexuality at all. – Former President Jimmy Carter
It may be an academically interesting puzzle as to why we are gay...but it is much more interesting and important to find out why people are homophobic. – Prof. Peter Nardi, GLAAD/LA
War. Rape. Murder. Poverty. Equal rights for gays. Guess which one the Southern Baptist Convention is protesting? – The Value of Families
Jesse Helms and Newt Gingrich were shaking hands congratulating themselves on the introduction of an antigay bill in Congress. If it passes, they won't be able to shake hands, because it will then be illegal for a prick to touch an asshole. – Judy Carter
My mother made me a homosexual.
If I gave her the wool, would she make me one too? – Graffiti, London, 1978
I like my beer cold... and my homosexuals flaming! – Homer Simpson, from the television show, The Simpsons
INDIVIDUALISM
I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, "Where's the self—help section?" She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose. – George Carlin
Jesus loves you...but everyone else thinks you are an ass. – Bumper Sticker
When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty. – George Bernard Shaw
It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation. -Herman Melville
Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is manís original virtue. -Oscar Wilde
Anyone taken as an individual, is tolerably sensible and reasonable as a member of a crowd, he is at once a blockhead. -Friedrich von Schiller
You laugh at me because I am different. I laugh at you because you're all the same. -Vick Imbornoni
To be nobody but yourself in a word which is working night and day to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle any human being can fight and never stop fighting. -E.E. Cummings
He alone is great and happy who requires neither to command nor to obey in order to secure his being of some importance in the world. -Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
All persons ought to endeavor to follow what is right, and not what is established. -Aristotle
I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul. -William Ernest Henly
The ultimate pain is a life that is not authentically one's own. -Daniel N. Robinson
Thinking men cannot be ruled. -Ayn Rand
Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. ...Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. -Ralph Waldo Emerson
The strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone. -Henrik Ibsen
I am a man who does not exist for others. -Howard Roark
Stop going with the flow in your life. Start your own river instead. -Phillip C. McGraw
The free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his country. -Milton Friedman
All of the darkness of the world cannot put out the light of one small candle. -Anonymous
Our culture overlooks the wonder in the day to day yet makes television spectacles out of the tiniest bits of novelty. -Greg Bell
The unexamined life is not worth living. -Socrates
Thought does not bow to authority. -Ayn Rand
Conformity is the death of individualism. -Ralph Waldo Emerson
There isn't any society to disapprove, to disallow, to denounce or to ostracize you. It's a myth. I wonder how many millions of lives have been tossed on the junkpile to appease an entity that never existed. -Harry Browne
The liberty of the individual is no gift of civilization. It was greatest before there was any civilization.-Sigmund Freud
Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul. -Mark Twain
I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others. -Thomas Jefferson
There is nothing on earth intended for innocent people so horrible as a school. -George Bernard Shaw
He that is master of himself, and his own life, has a right to the means of preserving it. -John Locke
A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority. -Henry David Thoreau
An individualist is a man who says: I will not run anyone's life--nor let anyone run mine. I will not rule nor be ruled. I will not be a master nor a slave. I will not sacrifice myself to anyone--nor anyone to myself. -Ayn Rand
Whenever one looks in the world of human organization, collective responsibility brings a lowering of moral standards. -Freeman Dyson
I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction. -Ayn Rand
The companion I have found most companionable is solitude. -Henry David Thoreau
[People] do things together which nobody in his right mind would do alone. -Freeman Dyson
Trust yourself, then you will know how to live. -Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live. -Ayn Rand
Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. -Noah Webster
Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law. -Ayn Rand
The less satisfaction we derive from being ourselves, the greater is our desire to be like others. -Eric Hoffer
The rational individualist is not the enemy of benevolence or civility, but their truest exemplar. -David Kelley
No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him. -Thomas Jefferson
A great deal may be learned about society by studying man ... nothing can be learned about man by studying society. -Ayn Rand
What lay before you is nothing compared to what lay within you. -Unknown
You can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him. -Robert Heinlein
A sure sign of a genius is that all of the dunces are in a confederacy against him. -Frank Lloyd Wright
It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty. -Albert Einstein
I alone control the energy that animates my being. -juggle-drop (paraphrasing Rose Wilder Lane)
All good things in life are the fruits of originality. -John Stuart Mill
Civilization is the process of setting man free from men. -Ayn Rand
All freedom is essentially self-liberation. -Max Stirner
Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is the highest political end. -Lord Acton
The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. -H. L. Mencken
Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves. -Henry David Thoreau
They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. -Benjamin Franklin
I can have only so much freedom as I procure for myself by my oneness. -Max Stirner
For Americans, an intimate acquaintance with Islam will be enriching not only for national security but for intellectual reasons. Perhaps they will realize that "jihad" (struggle by an individual or community to transcend the limitations of the self through spiritual discipline) does not translate as "holy war," that "Allahu Akbar" (a call by a Muslim in a moment of crisis or wonderment at the objective world, to assert that God is greater than the challenges at hand) does not mean "God is great," and that a "shahid" (a patriot who dies defending his holy cause) is not a martyr, a term unique to Christian iconography. -Fawaz Turki of ArabView.com
Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.-Barry Goldwater
If devotion to truth is the hallmark of morality, then there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking. -Ayn Rand
Solitary trees grow strong. -Winston Churchill
If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. -John Stuart Mill
In the temple of his spirit, each man is alone. -Ayn Rand
He who dares not offend cannot be honest. -Thomas Paine
Man once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind. -Thomas Jefferson
MENTAL/MEDICAL/HEALTH ISSUES
In Cleveland, doctors are planning for the first-ever face transplant. I hate to break it to the doctors, but I was at the Emmys. It's been done. – Jay Leno
In nothing do men more nearly approach the gods than in giving health to men. – Cicero
My doctor is nice; every time I see him, I'm ashamed of what I think of doctors in general. – Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966
The greatest mistake in the treatment of diseases is that there are physicians for the body and physicians for the soul, although the two cannot be separated. – Plato
Body and soul cannot be separated for purposes of treatment, for they are one and indivisible. Sick minds must be healed as well as sick bodies. – C. Jeff Miller
In the sick room, ten cents' worth of human understanding equals ten dollars' worth of medical science. – Martin H. Fischer
It is a mathematical fact that fifty percent of all doctors graduate in the bottom half of their class. – Author Unknown
Restore a man to his health, his purse lies open to thee. – Robert Burton
I got the bill for my surgery. Now I know what those doctors were wearing masks for. – James H. Boren
A hospital should also have a recovery room adjoining the cashier's office. – Francis O'Walsh
Did God who gave us flowers and trees,
Also provide the allergies?
– E.Y. Harburg, "A Nose Is a Nose Is a Nose," 1965
I learned a long time ago that minor surgery is when they do the operation on someone else, not you. – Bill Walton
It is a wise mans part, rather to avoid sickness, than to wishe for medicines. – Thomas More, Utopia [sic]
I wondher why ye can always read a doctor's bill an' ye niver can read his purscription. – Finley Peter Dunne
You have a cough? Go home tonight, eat a whole box of Ex-Lax – tomorrow you'll be afraid to cough. – Pearl Williams
To array a man's will against his sickness is the supreme art of medicine. – Henry Ward Beecher
A doctor whose breath smells has no right to medical opinion. – Martin H. Fischer
Surgeons must be very careful
When they take the knife!
Underneath their fine incisions
Stirs the Culprit – Life!
– Emily Dickinson
It is a good thing for a physician to have prematurely grey hair and itching piles. The first makes him appear to know more than he does, and the second gives him an expression of concern which the patient interprets as being on his behalf. – A. Benson Cannon
A doctor who cannot take a good history and a patient who cannot give one are in danger of giving and receiving bad treatment. – Author Unknown
One thousand Americans stop smoking every day – by dying. – Author Unknown
A hypochondriac is one who has a pill for everything except what ails him. – Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966
The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease. – Voltaire (François Marie Arouet)
A doctor must work eighteen hours a day and seven days a week. If you cannot console yourself to this, get out of the profession. – Martin H. Fischer
It is sometimes as dangerous to be run into by a microbe as by a trolley car. – J.J. Walsh
Every disease is a physician. – Irish Proverb
God heals, and the Physitian hath the thankes. – George Herbert, Outlandish Proverbs
Drugs are not always necessary. Belief in recovery always is. – Norman Cousins
I firmly believe that if the whole materia medica could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would be all the better for mankind and all the worse for the fishes. – Oliver Wendell Holmes
There is no curing a sick man who believes himself to be in health. – Henri Amiel
Doctors think a lot of patients are cured who have simply quit in disgust. – Don Herold
The only equipment lack in the modern hospital? Somebody to meet you at the entrance with a handshake! – Martin H. Fischer
The worst thing about medicine is that one kind makes another necessary. – Elbert Hubbard
When you are called to a sick man, be sure you know what the matter is – if you do not know, nature can do a great deal better than you can guess. – Nicholas de Belleville
Throw physic to the dogs; I'll none of it. – William Shakespeare
I recently became a Christian Scientist. It was the only health plan I could afford. – Betsy Salkind
Poisons and medicine are oftentimes the same substance given with different intents. – Peter Mere Latham
In the nineteenth century men lost their fear of God and acquired a fear of microbes. – Author Unknown
Symptoms, then are in reality nothing but the cry from suffering organs. – Jean Martin Charcot, translated from French
I never read a patent medicine advertisement without being impelled to the conclusion that I am suffering from the particular disease therein dealt with in its most virulent form. – Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat
Diagnosis is not the end, but the beginning of practice. – Martin H. Fischer
The physician should look upon the patient as a besieged city and try to rescue him with every means that art and science place at his command. – Alexander of Tralles
Physicians and politicians resemble one another in this respect, that some defend the constitution and others destroy it. – Author Unknown
A smart mother makes often a better diagnosis than a poor doctor. – August Bier
When fate arrives the physician becomes a fool. – Arabic Proverb
Medicines are not meat to live by. – German Proverb
Treat the patient, not the Xray. – James M. Hunter
God and the Doctor we alike adore
But only when in danger, not before;
The danger o'er, both are alike requited,
God is forgotten, and the Doctor slighted.
– Robert Owen
Financial ruin from medical bills is almost exclusively an American disease. – Roul Turley
The hospital is the only proper College in which to rear a true disciple of Aesculapius. – John Abernethy
A man who cannot work without his hypodermic needle is a poor doctor. The amount of narcotic you use is inversely proportional to your skill. – Martin H. Fischer
Better to hunt in fields, for health unbought,
Than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught,
The wise, for cure, on exercise depend;
God never made his work for man to mend.
– John Dryden
Medicine is the only profession that labours incessantly to destroy the reason for its own existence. – James Bryce, 1914
It is not a case we are treating; it is a living, palpitating, alas, too often suffering fellow creature. – John Brown
The patient does not care about your science; what he wants to know is, can you cure him? – Martin H. Fischer
Medicines heals doubts as well as diseases. – Karl Marx
A physician is obligated to consider more than a diseased organ, more even than the whole man – he must view the man in his world. – Harvey Cushing
Medicine sometimes snatches away health, sometimes gives it. – Ovid, Tristia
As it takes two to make a quarrel, so it takes two to make a disease, the microbe and its host. – Charles V. Chapin
Disease is war with the laws of our being, and all war, as a great general has said, is hell. – Lewis G. Janes
No physician is really good before he has killed one or two patients. – Hindu Proverb
No man is a good physician who has never been sick. – Arabic Proverb
Only one rule in medical ethics need concern you – that action on your part which best conserves the interests of your patient. – Martin H. Fischer
Pharmaceutical companies will soon rule the world if we keep letting them believe we are a happy, functional society so long as all the women are on Prozac, all children on Ritalin, and all men on Viagra. – Terri Guillemets
To me the ideal doctor would be a man endowed with profound knowledge of life and of the soul, intuitively divining any suffering or disorder of whatever kind, and restoring peace by his mere presence. – Henri Amiel
Medicinal discovery,
It moves in mighty leaps,
It leapt straight past the common cold
And give it us for keeps.
– Pam Ayres
When you no longer know what headache, heartache, or stomachache means without cistern punctures, electrocardiograms and six x-ray plates, you are slipping. – Martin H. Fischer
It is easy to get a thousand prescriptions but hard to get one single remedy. – Chinese Proverb
Never forget that it is not a pneumonia, but a pneumonic man who is your patient. – William Withey Gull
It is said to be the manner of hypochondriacs to change often their physician. – William Cullen
The road to medical knowledge is through the pathological museum and not through an apothecary's shop. – William Withey Gull
A Short History of Medicine
2000 B.C. – "Here, eat this root."
1000 B.C. – "That root is heathen, say this prayer."
1850 A.D. – "That prayer is superstition, drink this potion."
1940 A.D. – "That potion is snake oil, swallow this pill."
1985 A.D. – "That pill is ineffective, take this antibiotic."
2000 A.D. – "That antibiotic is artificial. Here, eat this root."
– Author Unknown
When a lot of remedies are suggested for a disease, that means it cannot be cured. – Anton Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard
A half doctor near is better than a whole one far away. – German Proverb
No doctor is better than three. – German Proverb
I will lift mine eyes unto the pills. Almost everyone takes them, from the humble aspirin to the multi-coloured, king-sized three deckers, which put you to sleep, wake you up, stimulate and soothe you all in one. It is an age of pills. – Malcolm Muggeridge, 1962
Man may be the captain of his fate, but is also the victim of his blood sugar. – Wilfrid G. Oakley
Faith and knowledge lean largely upon each other in the practice of medicine. – Peter Mere Latham
Each patient ought to feel somewhat the better after the physician's visit, irrespective of the nature of the illness. – Warfield Theobald Longcope
Who ever thought up the word "Mammogram?" Every time I hear it, I think I'm supposed to put my breast in an envelope and send it to someone. – Jan King
Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died. – Erma Bombeck
You may know the intractability of a disease by its long list of remedies. – Alonzo Clark
Here's good advice for practice: go into partnership with nature; she does more than half the work and asks none of the fee. – Martin H. Fischer
Varicose veins are the result of an improper selection of grandparents. – William Osler
If you are too smart to pay the doctor, you had better be too smart to get ill. – African Proverb
When you treat a disease, first treat the mind. – Chen Jen
Symptoms are the body's mother tongue; signs are in a foreign language. – John Brown
The doctor of the future will give no medicine but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, in diet and in the cause and prevention of disease. – Thomas Edison
Oh the powers of nature. She knows what we need, and the doctors know nothing. – Benvenuto Cellini
So many come to the sickroom thinking of themselves as men of science fighting disease and not as healers with a little knowledge helping nature to get a sick man well. – Auckland Geddes, The Practitioner
Where a man feels pain he lays his hand. – Dutch Proverb
The doctor is often more to be feared than the disease. – French Proverb
Despite all our toil and progress, the art of medicine still falls somewhere between trout casting and spook writing. – Ben Hecht, Miracle of the Fifteen Murderers
The Lord hath created medicines out of the earth; and he that is wise will not abhor them. – Ecclesiasticus 38:4
A drug is that substance which, when injected into a rat, will produce a scientific report. – Author Unknown
Cancer is a word, not a sentence. – John Diamond
The medicalization of early diagnosis not only hampers and discourages preventative health-care but it also trains the patient-to-be to function in the meantime as an acolyte to his doctor. He learns to depend on the physician in sickness and in health. He turns into a life-long patient. – Ivan Illich
Patients may recover in spite of drugs or because of them. – J.H. Gaddum
He's the best physician that knows the worthlessness of the most medicines. – Benjamin Franklin
Physiology is the stepchild of medicine. That is why Cinderella often turns out the queen. – Martin H. Fischer
The fact that your patient gets well does not prove that your diagnosis was correct. – Samuel J. Meltzer
Man is a creature composed of countless millions of cells: a microbe is composed of only one, yet throughout the ages the two have been in ceaseless conflict. – A.B. Christie
Our profession is the only one which works unceasingly to annihilate itself. – Martin H. Fischer
On J-Day our profession will have a lot to answer for! We might at least have withheld our hands instead of making them work against God. – Martin H. Fischer
The doctor may also learn more about the illness from the way the patient tells the story than from the story itself. – James B. Herrick
No man is a good doctor who has never been sick himself. – Chinese Proverb
Don't think of organ donations as giving up part of yourself to keep a total stranger alive. It's really a total stranger giving up almost all of themselves to keep part of you alive. – Author Unknown
Most of those evils we poor mortals know
From doctors and imagination flow.
– Charles Churchill
Men are not going to embrace eugenics. They are going to embrace the first likely, trim-figured girl with limpid eyes and flashing teeth who comes along, in spite of the fact that her germ plasm is probably reeking with hypertension, cancer, haemophilia, colour blindness, hay fever, epilepsy, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. – Logan Clendening
Don't take your organs to heaven with you. Heaven knows we need them here. – Author Unknown
'Tis not always in a physician's power to cure the sick; at times the disease is stronger than trained art. – Ovid
And lo, The Hospital, grey, quiet, old, Where Life and Death like friendly chafferers meet. – William Ernest Henley
The only weapon with which the unconscious patient can immediately retaliate upon the incompetent surgeon is hemorrhage. – William Stewart Halsted
The public blabbers about preventative medicine, but will neither appreciate nor pay for it. You get paid for what you cure. – Martin H. Fischer
To save a man's life against his will is the same as killing him. – Horace
Nowadays the clinical history too often weighs more than the man. – Martin H. Fischer
Hypochondriacs squander large sums of time in search of nostrums by which they vainly hope they may get more time to squander. – Mortimer Collins
One doctor makes work for another. – English Proverb
Doctors are just the same as lawyers; the only difference is that lawyers merely rob you, whereas doctors rob you and kill you, too. – Anton Chekhov, Ivanov
Let the young know they will never find a more interesting, more instructive book than the patient himself. – Giorgio Baglivi
Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic. – Thomas Szasz, The Second Sin, 1973
Isn't it a bit unnerving that doctors call what they do “practice? – George Carlin"
Impotence..Nature's way of saying "No hard feelings." – Bumper Sticker
The proctologist called. They found your head. – Bumper Sticker
If someone with multiple personalities threatens to kill himself, is it considered a hostage situation? – George Carlin
Why do they put Braille on the drive – through bank machines? – George Carlin
POLITICALLY INCORRECT or IMPOLITE
I think it's about time we voted for senators with breasts. After all, we've been voting for boobs long enough. – Clarie Sargent, Arizona Senatorial candidate
Jim Bakker spells his name with 2 k’s because 3 would be too obvious. – Bill Maher
I think you should defend to the death their right to march, and then go down and meet them with baseball bats. – Woody Allen, on the Ku Klux Klan
Public relations people are whores. – Anonymous
I have the feeling about 60 percent of what you say is crap. – David Letterman, speaking to Fox News Channel commentator Bill O'Reilly.
If a mute swears, does his mother wash his hands with soap? – George Carlin
If a man is standing in the middle of the forest speaking and there is no woman around to hear him, is he still wrong? – George Carlin
I understand that Kim Jong II enjoys western entertainment, so on the off chance that he may be watching this program, I would like to take a moment to address the Dear Leader: Listen fuckhead, you got the Bush Administration to promise not to attack you. Don't blow that. Mexico can't even get that. Every day, Canadians check the map to make sure we didn't move the border on them overnight. We're badass baby. – Jon Stewart
If you spin an oriental man in a circle three times, does he become disoriented? – George Carlin
Whose cruel idea was it for the word "Lisp" to have a "S" In it? – George Carlin
Everyone has a photographic memory. Some just don't have any film. – Bumper Sticker
Save your breath. You'll need it to blow up your date. – Bumper Sticker
Your ridiculous little opinion has been noted. – Bumper Sticker
I used to have a handle on life but, it broke off. – Bumper Sticker
Guys...just because you have one, doesn't mean you have to be one. – Bumper Sticker
Some people are only alive because it is illegal to shoot them. – Bumper Sticker
Try not to let your mind wander. It is too small and fragile to be out by itself. – Bumper Sticker
THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
What was the best thing before sliced bread? – George Carlin
Is there another word for synonym? – George Carlin
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. – George Bernard Shaw
Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song? – George Carlin
If a parsley farmer is sued, can they garnish his wages? – George Carlin
Where do forest rangers go to "get away from it all? – George Carlin
If you ate pasta and antipasto, would you still be hungry? – George Carlin
ENVIRONMENT
Save the environment. Plant a Bush back in Texas. – Bumper Sticker, Chicago
What do you do when you see an endangered animal eating an endangered plant? – George Carlin
Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth. – Henry David Thoreau
The sun, the moon and the stars would have disappeared long ago... had they happened to be within the reach of predatory human hands. – Havelock Ellis, The Dance of Life, 1923
There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed. – Mohandas K. Gandhi
There's so much pollution in the air now that if it weren't for our lungs there'd be no place to put it all. – Robert Orben
It wasn't the Exxon Valdez captain's driving that caused the Alaskan oil spill. It was yours. – Greenpeace advertisement, New York Times, 25 February 1990
Modern technology
Owes ecology
An apology.
– Alan M. Eddison
In America today you can murder land for private profit. You can leave the corpse for all to see, and nobody calls the cops. – Paul Brooks, The Pursuit of Wilderness, 1971
Don't blow it – good planets are hard to find. – Quoted in Time
Nature provides a free lunch, but only if we control our appetites. – William Ruckelshaus,
Business Week, 18 June 1990
When a man throws an empty cigarette package from an automobile, he is liable to a fine of $50. When a man throws a billboard across a view, he is richly rewarded. – Pat Brown, quoted in David Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising, 1985
Because we don't think about future generations, they will never forget us. – Henrik Tikkanen
I'm not an environmentalist. I'm an Earth warrior. – Darryl Cherney, quoted in Smithsonian, April 1990
I think the environment should be put in the category of our national security. Defense of our resources is just as important as defense abroad. Otherwise what is there to defend? – Robert Redford, Yosemite National Park dedication, 1985
Let us a little permit Nature to take her own way; she better understands her own affairs than we. – Michel de Montaigne, translated
We never know the worth of water till the well is dry. – Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia, 1732
Your grandchildren will likely find it incredible – or even sinful – that you burned up a gallon of gasoline to fetch a pack of cigarettes! – Dr. Paul MacCready, Jr.
We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children. – Native American Proverb
There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew. – Marshall McLuhan, 1964
Newspapers: Dead trees with information smeared on them. – Horizon, "Electronic Frontier"
They kill good trees to put out bad newspapers. – James G. Watt, quoted in Newsweek, 8 March 1982
I have no doubt that we will be successful in harnessing the sun's energy.... If sunbeams were weapons of war, we would have had solar energy centuries ago. – Sir George Porter, quoted in The Observer, 26 August 1973
The use of solar energy has not been opened up because the oil industry does not own the sun. – Ralph Nader, quoted in Linda Botts, ed., Loose Talk, 1980
We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect. – Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac
The earth we abuse and the living things we kill will, in the end, take their revenge; for in exploiting their presence we are diminishing our future. – Marya Mannes, More in Anger, 1958
I am the earth. You are the earth. The Earth is dying. You and I are murderers. – Ymber Delecto
The packaging for a microwavable "microwave" dinner is programmed for a shelf life of maybe six months, a cook time of two minutes and a landfill dead-time of centuries. – David Wann, Buzzworm, November 1990
So bleak is the picture... that the bulldozer and not the atomic bomb may turn out to be the most destructive invention of the 20th century. – Philip Shabecoff, New York Times Magazine, 4 June 1978
Economic advance is not the same thing as human progress. – John Clapham, A Concise Economic History of Britain, 1957
And Man created the plastic bag and the tin and aluminum can and the cellophane wrapper and the paper plate, and this was good because Man could then take his automobile and buy all his food in one place and He could save that which was good to eat in the refrigerator and throw away that which had no further use. And soon the earth was covered with plastic bags and aluminum cans and paper plates and disposable bottles and there was nowhere to sit down or walk, and Man shook his head and cried: "Look at this Godawful mess." – Art Buchwald, 1970
The problem is no longer that with every pair of hands that comes into the world there comes a hungry stomach. Rather it is that, attached to those hands are sharp elbows. – Paul A. Samuelson, Newsweek, 12 June 1967
Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them. – Bill Vaughn
For 200 years we've been conquering Nature. Now we're beating it to death. – Tom McMillan, quoted in Francesca Lyman, The Greenhouse Trap, 1990
If civilization has risen from the Stone Age, it can rise again from the Wastepaper Age. – Jacques Barzun, The House of Intellect, 1959
I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority. – Elwyn Brooks White, Essays of E.B. White, 1977
The insufferable arrogance of human beings to think that Nature was made solely for their benefit, as if it was conceivable that the sun had been set afire merely to ripen men's apples and head their cabbages. – Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac, États et empires de la lune, 1656
Such is the audacity of man, that he hath learned to counterfeit Nature, yea, and is so bold as to challenge her in her work. – Pliny the Elder, The Natural History, translated by Philemon Holland
Oh Beautiful for smoggy skies, insecticided grain,
For strip-mined mountain's majesty above the asphalt plain.
America, America, man sheds his waste on thee,
And hides the pines with billboard signs, from sea to oily sea.
– George Carlin
A living planet is a much more complex metaphor for deity than just a bigger father with a bigger fist. If an omniscient, all-powerful Dad ignores your prayers, it's taken personally. Hear only silence long enough, and you start wondering about his power. His fairness. His very existence. But if a world mother doesn't reply, Her excuse is simple. She never claimed conceited omnipotence. She has countless others clinging to her apron strings, including myriad species unable to speak for themselves. To Her elder offspring She says – go raid the fridge. Go play outside. Go get a job. Or, better yet, lend me a hand. I have no time for idle whining. – David Brin
Why do people give each other flowers? To celebrate various important occasions, they're killing living creatures? Why restrict it to plants? "Sweetheart, let's make up. Have this deceased squirrel." – The Washington Post
Till now man has been up against Nature; from now on he will be up against his own nature. – Dennis Gabor, Inventing the Future, 1964
When you defile the pleasant streams
And the wild bird's abiding place,
You massacre a million dreams
And cast your spittle in God's face.
– John Drinkwater
A virgin forest is where the hand of man has never set foot. – Author Unknown
When a man says to me, "I have the intensest love of nature," at once I know that he has none. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals, 1857
I conceive that the land belongs to a vast family of which many are dead, few are living, and countless numbers are still unborn. – Author Unknown
When we heal the earth, we heal ourselves. – David Orr
We cannot command Nature except by obeying her. – Francis Bacon
There is nothing in which the birds differ more from man than the way in which they can build and yet leave a landscape as it was before. – Robert Lynd, The Blue Lion and Other Essays
Will urban sprawl spread so far that most people lose all touch with nature? Will the day come when the only bird a typical American child ever sees is a canary in a pet shop window? When the only wild animal he knows is a rat – glimpsed on a night drive through some city slum? When the only tree he touches is the cleverly fabricated plastic evergreen that shades his gifts on Christmas morning? – Frank N. Ikard, North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference, Houston, March 1968
How long can men thrive between walls of brick, walking on asphalt pavements, breathing the fumes of coal and of oil, growing, working, dying, with hardly a thought of wind, and sky, and fields of grain, seeing only machine-made beauty, the mineral-like quality of life? – Charles A. Lindbergh, Reader's Digest, November 1939
It is imperative to maintain portions of the wilderness untouched so that a tree will rot where it falls, a waterfall will pour its curve without generating electricity, a trumpeter swan may float on uncontaminated water – and moderns may at least see what their ancestors knew in their nerves and blood. – Bernand De Voto, Fortune, June 1947
Take care of the Earth and she will take care of you. – Author Unknown
We could have saved the Earth but we were too damned cheap. – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed; if we permit the last virgin forests to be turned into comic books and plastic cigarette cases; if we drive the few remaining members of the wild species into zoos or to extinction; if we pollute the last clear air and dirty the last clean streams and push our paved roads through the last of the silence, so that never again will Americans be free in their own country from the noise, the exhausts, the stinks of human and automotive waste. – Wallace Stegner, letter to David E. Pesonen of the Wildland Research Center, 3 December 1960
Waste not the smallest thing created, for grains of sand make mountains, and atomies infinity. – E. Knight
Opie, you haven't finished your milk. We can't put it back in the cow, you know. – Aunt Bee Taylor, The Andy Griffith Show
The activist is not the man who says the river is dirty. The activist is the man who cleans up the river. – Ross Perot
Civilization... wrecks the planet from seafloor to stratosphere. – Richard Bach
It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment. – Ansel Adams
We say we love flowers, yet we pluck them. We say we love trees, yet we cut them down. And people still wonder why some are afraid when told they are loved. – Author Unknown
Take nothing but pictures.
Leave nothing but footprints.
Kill nothing but time.
– Motto of the Baltimore Grotto, a caving society
Why should man expect his prayer for mercy to be heard by What is above him when he shows no mercy to what is under him? – Pierre Troubetzkoy
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled. – Richard P. Feynman
Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect. – Chief Seattle, 1855
When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world. – John Muir
You forget that the fruits belong to all and that the land belongs to no one. – Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inégalité parmi les hommes, 1755
Understanding the laws of nature does not mean that we are immune to their operations. – David Gerrold
Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the earth. – Albert Schweitzer, quoted in James Brabazon, Albert Schweitzer
The mother of the year should be a sterilized woman with two adopted children. – Paul R. Ehrlich
Man is a blind, witless, low brow, anthropocentric clod who inflicts lesions upon the earth. – Ian McHarg
Man must feel the earth to know himself and recognize his values.... God made life simple. It is man who complicates it. – Charles A. Lindbergh, Reader's Digest, July 1972
The control man has secured over nature has far outrun his control over himself. – Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, 1953
The old Lakota was wise. He knew that man's heart away from nature becomes hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans too. – Chief Luther Standing Bear
The magnificence of mountains, the serenity of nature – nothing is safe from the idiot marks of man's passing. – Loudon Wainwright
Every day is Earth Day. – Author Unknown
Remember when atmospheric contaminants were romantically called stardust? – Lane Olinghouse
Nature's laws affirm instead of prohibit. If you violate her laws you are your own prosecuting attorney, judge, jury, and hangman. – Luther Burbank
Dig a trench through a landfill and you will see layers of phone books like geographical strata or layers of cake.... During a recent landfill dig in Phoenix, I found newspapers dating from 1952 that looked so fresh you might read one over breakfast. – William Rathje, The Economist, 8 September 1990
Environmentalists have long been fond of saying that the sun is the only safe nuclear reactor, situated as it is some ninety-three million miles away. – Stephanie Mills, ed., In Praise of Nature, 1990
How can the spirit of the earth like the white man?... Everywhere the white man has touched it, it is sore. – Anonymous Wintu Woman
Our environmental problems originate in the hubris of imagining ourselves as the central nervous system or the brain of nature. We're not the brain, we are a cancer on nature. – Dave Foreman, Harper's, April 1990
The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition. – Carl Sagan
The gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual. – John Muir, letter to J.B. McChesney, 19 September 1871
Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it. – Henry David Thoreau, "Chesuncook," The Maine Woods, 1848
Man maketh a death which Nature never made. – Edward Young
It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose, should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. – Rachel Carson
God forbid that India should ever take to industrialism after the manner of the west... keeping the world in chains. If [our nation] took to similar economic exploitation, it would strip the world bare like locusts. – Mahatma Gandhi
It is the safest of times, it is the riskiest of times.... What the Dickens is going on here? – Denton Morrison, on chemicals, technology, and risk, quoted in National Academy of Sciences, Improving Risk Communication, 1989
Man is a complex being: he makes deserts bloom – and lakes die. – Gil Stern
Human consciousness arose but a minute before midnight on the geological clock. Yet we mayflies try to bend an ancient world to our purposes, ignorant perhaps of the messages buried in its long history. Let us hope that we are still in the early morning of our April day. – Stephen Jay Gould, "Our Allotted Lifetimes," The Panda's Thumb, 1980
Humanity is on the march, earth itself is left behind. – David Ehrenfeld, The Arrogance of Humanism, 1978
The American reading his Sunday paper in a state of lazy collapse is perhaps the most perfect symbol of the triumph of quantity over quality.... Whole forests are being ground into pulp daily to minister to our triviality. – Irving Babbitt
Drive Nature forth by force, she'll turn and rout
The false refinements that would keep her out.
– Horace, Odes
Nature always strikes back. It takes all the running we can do to remain in the same place. – Rene Dubos, Medical Utopias, 1961
In its broadest ecological context, economic development is the development of more intensive ways of exploiting the natural environment. – Richard Wilkinson
Ironically, rural America has become viewed by a growing number of Americans as having a higher [quality of life] not because of what it has, but rather because of what it does not have! – Don A. Dillman, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, January 1977
We have been god-like in the planned breeding of our domesticated plants, but rabbit-like in the unplanned breeding of ourselves. – Arnold Toynbee
Human destiny is bound to remain a gamble, because at some unpredictable time and in some unforeseeable manner nature will strike back. – Rene Dubos, Mirage of Health, 1959
Time and space – time to be alone, space to move about – these may well become the great scarcities of tomorrow. – Edwin Way Teale, Autumn Across America, 1956
Waste is a tax on the whole people. – Albert W. Atwood
It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature. – Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854
The rose has thorns only for those who would gather it. – Chinese Proverb
Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation... tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling bolster his ego. His anxiety subsides. His inhuman void spreads monstrously like a gray vegetation. – Jean Arp
We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive. – Albert Einstein
Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he's been given. But up to now he hasn't been a creator, only a destroyer. Forests keep disappearing, rivers dry up, wild life's become extinct, the climate's ruined and the land grows poorer and uglier every day. – Anton Chekhov, Uncle Vanya, 1897
A human being is part of the whole, called by us "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole [of] nature in its beauty. – Albert Einstein, 1950
A margin of life is developed by Nature for all living things – including man. All life forms obey Nature's demands – except man, who has found ways of ignoring them. – Eugene M. Poirot, Our Margin of Life, 1978
After a visit to the beach, it's hard to believe that we live in a material world. – Pam Shaw
As we watch the sun go down, evening after evening, through the smog across the poisoned waters of our native earth, we must ask ourselves seriously whether we really wish some future universal historian on another planet to say about us: "With all their genius and with all their skill, they ran out of foresight and air and food and water and ideas," or, "They went on playing politics until their world collapsed around them." – U Thant, speech, 1970
The command "Be fruitful and multiply" was promulgated, according to our authorities, when the population of the world consisted of two people. – William Ralph Inge, More Lay Thoughts of a Dean, 1931
Christianity, with its roots in Judaism, was a major factor in the development of the Western worldview.... A basic Christian belief was that God gave humans dominion over creation, with the freedom to use the environment as they saw fit. Another important Judeo-Christian belief predicted that God would bring a cataclysmic end to the Earth sometime in the future. One interpretation of this belief is that the Earth is only a temporary way station on the soul's journey to the afterlife. Because these beliefs tended to devalue the natural world, they fostered attitudes and behaviors that had a negative effect on the environment. – Donald G. Kaufman and Cecilia M. Franz, Biosphere 2000: Protecting Our Global Environment, 1996
For the first time in the history of the world, every human being is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals, from the moment of conception until death. – Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, 1962
I realized that Eastern thought had somewhat more compassion for all living things. Man was a form of life that in another reincarnation might possibly be a horsefly or a bird of paradise or a deer. So a man of such a faith, looking at animals, might be looking at old friends or ancestors. In the East the wilderness has no evil connotation; it is thought of as an expression of the unity and harmony of the universe. – William O. Douglas, Go East, Young Man, 1974
If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos. – Edward O. Wilson
Malthus has been buried many times, and Malthusian scarcity with him. But as Garrett Hardin remarked, anyone who has to be reburied so often cannot be entirely dead. – Herman E. Daly, Steady-State Economics, 1977
The human race will be the cancer of the planet. – Julian Huxley
Man will survive as a species for one reason: He can adapt to the destructive effects of our power-intoxicated technology and of our ungoverned population growth, to the dirt, pollution and noise of a New York or Tokyo. And that is the tragedy. It is not man the ecological crisis threatens to destroy but the quality of human life. – René Dubos, quoted in Life, 28 July 1970
One of the first laws against air pollution came in 1300 when King Edward I decreed the death penalty for burning of coal. At least one execution for that offense is recorded. But economics triumphed over health considerations, and air pollution became an appalling problem in England. – Glenn T. Seaborg, Atomic Energy Commission chairman, speech, Argonne National Laboratory, 1969
Our children may save us if they are taught to care properly for the planet; but if not, it may be back to the Ice Age or the caves from where we first emerged. Then we'll have to view the universe above from a cold, dark place. No more jet skis, nuclear weapons, plastic crap, broken pay phones, drugs, cars, waffle irons, or television. Come to think of it, that might not be a bad idea. – Jimmy Buffet, Mother Earth News, March-April 1990
Racial injustice, war, urban blight, and environmental rape have a common denominator in our exploitative economic system. – Channing E. Phillips, speech, Washington, D.C., 22 April 1970
The days a man spends fishing or spends hunting should not be deducted from the time that he's on earth. In other words, if I fish today, that should be added to the amount of time I get to live. That's the way I look at recreation. That's why I'll be a big conservation, environmental President, because I plan to fish and hunt as much as I possibly can. – George Bush, quoted in Los Angeles Times, 30 December 1988
The desire to build a risk-free society has always been a sign of decadence. It has meant that the nation has given up, that it no longer believes in its destiny, that it has ceased to aspire to greatness, and has retired from history to pet itself. – Henry Fairlie, quoted in Conservation Foundation Letter, November 1981
The exquisite sight, sound, and smell of wilderness is many times more powerful if it is earned through physical achievement, if it comes at the end of a long and fatiguing trip for which vigorous good health is necessary. Practically speaking, this means that no one should be able to enter a wilderness by mechanical means. – Garrett Hardin, The Ecologist, February 1974
The struggle to save the global environment is in one way much more difficult than the struggle to vanquish Hitler, for this time the war is with ourselves. We are the enemy, just as we have only ourselves as allies. – Al Gore
Give a man a fish, and he can eat for a day. But teach a man how to fish, and he'll be dead of mercury poisoning inside of three years. – Charles Haas
You must teach your children that the ground beneath their feet is the ashes of your grandfathers. So that they will respect the land, tell your children that the earth is rich with the lives of our kin. Teach your children what we have taught our children, that the earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. If men spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves. – Native American Wisdom
The system of nature, of which man is a part, tends to be self-balancing, self-adjusting, self-cleansing. Not so with technology. – E.F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful, 1973
The tourist business is a trap, it is a tained honey;
Man clearly should have stayed in bed, and not invented money.
– Kenneth E. Boulding, "The Ballad of Ecological Awareness," in M. Taghi Farvar and John P. Milton, eds., The Careless Technology, 1972
There is hope if people will begin to awaken that spiritual part of themselves, that heartfelt knowledge that we are caretakers of this planet. – Brooke Medicine Eagle
This is a beautiful planet and not at all fragile. Earth can withstand significant volcanic eruptions, tectonic cataclysms, and ice ages. But this canny, intelligent, prolific, and extremely self-centered human creature had proven himself capable of more destruction of life than Mother Nature herself.... We've got to be stopped. – Michael L. Fischer, Harper's, July 1990
Those who wish to pet and baby wild animals "love" them. But those who respect their natures and wish to let them live normal lives, love them more. – Edwin Way Teale, Circle of the Seasons, 1953
To live a pure unselfish life, one must count nothing as one's own in the midst of abundance. – Buddha
To waste, to destroy our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed. – Theodore Roosevelt, seventh annual message, 3 December 1907
Today's world is one in which the age-old risks of humankind – the drought, floods, communicable diseases – are less of a problem than ever before. They have been replaced by risks of humanity's own making – the unintended side-effects of beneficial technologies and the intended effects of the technologies of war. Society must hope that the world's ability to assess and manage risks will keep pace with its ability to create them. – J. Clarence Davies, quoted in Conservation Foundation, State of the Environment: An Assessment at Mid-Decade, 1984
U.S. consumers and industry dispose of enough aluminum to rebuild the commercial air fleet every three months; enough iron and steel to continuously supply all automakers; enough glass to fill New York's World Trade Center every two weeks. – Environmental Defense Fund advertisement, Christian Science Monitor, 1990
Water flows uphill towards money. – Anonymous, saying in the American West, quoted by Ivan Doig in Marc Reisner, Cadillac Desert, 1986
Living in the midst of abundance we have the greatest difficulty in seeing that the supply of natural wealth is limited and that the constant increase of population is destined to reduce the American standard of living unless we deal more sanely with our resources. – W.H. Carothers
We have always had reluctance to see a tract of land which is empty of men as anything but a void. The "waste howling wilderness" of Deuteronomy is typical. The Oxford Dictionary defines wilderness as wild or uncultivated land which is occupied "only" by wild animals. Places not used by us are "wastes." Areas not occupied by us are "desolate." Could the desolation be in the soul of man? – John A. Livingston, in Borden Spears, ed., Wilderness Canada, 1970
We must not be forced to explore the universe in search of a new home because we have made the Earth inhospitable, even uninhabitable. For if we do not solve the environmental and related social problems that beset us on Earth – pollution, toxic contamination, resource depletion, prejudice, poverty, hunger – those problems will surely accompany us to other worlds. – Donald G. Kaufman and Cecilia M. Franz, Biosphere 2000: Protecting Our Global Environment, 1996
Our modern industrial economy takes a mountain covered with trees, lakes, running streams and transforms it into a mountain of junk, garbage, slime pits, and debris. – Edward Abbey
We shall continue to have a worsening ecologic crisis until we reject the Christian axiom that nature has no reason for existence save to serve man. – Lynn White, Jr., "The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis," 1967
The victory of Christianity over paganism was the greatest psychic revolution in the history of our culture. By destroying pagan animism, Christianity made it possible to exploit nature in a mood of indifference to the feelings of natural objects. – Lynn I. White, Jr., Science, 10 March 1967
The word "wilderness" occurs approximately three hundred times in the Bible, and all its meanings are derogatory. – René Dubos, The Wooing of Earth, 1980
We're finally going to get the bill for the Industrial Age. If the projections are right, it's going to be a big one: the ecological collapse of the planet. – Jeremy Rifkin, World Press Review, 30 December 1989
Western society has accepted as unquestionable a technological imperative that is quite as arbitrary as the most primitive taboo: not merely the duty to foster invention and constantly to create technological novelties, but equally the duty to surrender to these novelties unconditionally, just because they are offered, without respect to their human consequences. – Lewis Mumford
When a man wantonly destroys one of the works of man we call him a vandal. When he destroys one of the works of god we call him a sportsman. – Joseph Wood Krutch
When some high-sounding institute states that a compound is harmless or a process free of risk, it is wise to know whence the institute or the scientists who work there obtain their financial support. – Lancet, editorial on the "medical-industrial complex," 1973
When we Indians kill meat, we eat it all up.... When we build houses, we make little holes. When we burn grass for grasshoppers, we don't ruin things. We shake down acorns and pinenuts. We don't chop down the trees. – Wintu Indian, quoted in Julian Burger, The Gaia Atlas of First Peoples, 1990
With laissez-faire and price atomic,
Ecology's Uneconomic,
But with another kind of logic
Economy's Unecologic.
– Kenneth E. Boulding, in Frank F. Darling and John P. Milton, eds., Future Environments of North America, 1966
You go into a community and they will vote 80 percent to 20 percent in favor of a tougher Clean Air Act, but if you ask them to devote 20 minutes a year to having their car emissions inspected, they will vote 80 to 20 against it. We are a long way in this country from taking individual responsibility for the environmental problem. – William D. Ruckelshaus, former EPA administrator, New York Times, 30 November 1988
Zoos are becoming facsimiles – or perhaps caricatures – of how animals once were in their natural habitat. If the right policies toward nature were pursued, we would need no zoos at all. – Michael Fox, Sierra, November-December 1990
Loyd: "It has to do with keeping things in balance. It's like the spirits have made a deal with us. We're on our own. The spirits have been good enough to let us live here and use the utilities, and we're saying: We know how nice you're being. We appreciate the rain, we appreciate the sun, we appreciate the deer we took. Sorry if we messed up anything. You've gone to a lot of trouble, and we'll try to be good guests."
Codi: "Like a note you'd send somebody after you'd stayed in their house?"
Loyd: "Exactly like that. 'Thanks for letting me sleep on your couch. I took some beer out of the refrigerator, and I broke a coffee cup. Sorry, I hope it wasn't your favorite one.'"
– Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams
To people who think of themselves as God's houseguests, American enterprise must seem arrogant beyond belief. Or stupid. A nation of amnesiacs, proceeding as if there were no other day but today. Assuming the land could also forget what had been done to it. – Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams
In an underdeveloped country, don't drink the water; in a developed country, don't breathe the air. – Changing Times magazine
Would a fly without wings be called a walk? – George Carlin
Why don't sheep shrink when it rains? – George Carlin
Can vegetarians eat animal crackers? – George Carlin
If a turtle doesn't have a shell, is he homeless or just naked? – George Carlin
HUMAN/CIVIL/ANIMAL RIGHTS
The Framers of the Bill of Rights did not purport to "create" rights. Rather, they designed the Bill of Rights to prohibit our Government from infringing rights and liberties presumed to be preexisting. – Justice William J. Brennan, 1982
You are a human being. You have rights inherent in that reality. You have dignity and worth that exists prior to law. – Lyn Beth Neylon
Be as beneficent as the sun or the sea, but if your rights as a rational being are trenched on, die on the first inch of your territory. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally. – Abraham Lincoln
I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. – Barry Goldwater
By a divine paradox, wherever there is one slave there are two. So in the wonderful reciprocities of being, we can never reach the higher levels until all our fellows ascend with us. – Edwin Markham
I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights. – Bishop Desmond Tutu, quoted in You Said a Mouthful edited by Ronald D. Fuchs
Give to every human being every right that you claim for yourself. – Robert Ingersoll
I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers. – Gandhi
And we who have toiled for freedom's law, have we sought for freedom's soul?
Have we learned at last that human right is not a part but the whole?
– John Boyle O'Reilly
It is often easier to become outraged by injustice half a world away than by oppression and discrimination half a block from home. – Carl T. Rowan
No man is above the law and no man below it. – Theodore Roosevelt
Of equality – As if it harm'd me, giving others the same chances and rights as myself – As if it were not indispensable to my own rights that others possess the same. – Walt Whitman
I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way. – Robert Frost
Silence never won rights. They are not handed down from above; they are forced by pressures from below. – Roger Baldwin
If the equality of individuals and the dignity of man be myths, they are myths to which the republic is committed. – Howard Mumford Jones
I have always claimed Americans didn't want a drink as bad as they wanted the right to take a drink if they did happen to want one. – Will Rogers
I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample underfoot. – Horace Greeley
If the police arrest a mime, do they tell him he has the right to remain silent? – George Carlin
Ask the experimenters why they experiment on animals, and the answer is: "Because the animals are like us." Ask the experimenters why it is morally okay to experiment on animals, and the answer is: "Because the animals are not like us." Animal experimentation rests on a logical contradiction. – Charles R. Magel
God loved the birds and invented trees. Man loved the birds and invented cages. – Jacques Deval, Afin de vivre bel et bien
We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form. – William Ralph Inge, Outspoken Essays, 1922
From beasts we scorn as soulless,
In forest, field and den,
The cry goes up to witness
The soullessness of men.
– M. Frida Hartley
The question is not, "Can they reason?" nor, "Can they talk?" but rather, "Can they suffer?" – Jeremy Bentham
I care not much for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it. – Abraham Lincoln
Personally, I would not give a fig for any man's religion whose horse, cat and dog do not feel its benefits. Life in any form is our perpetual responsibility. – S. Parkes Cadman
No one in the world needs a mink coat but a mink. – Murray Banks
Never wear anything that panics the cat. – P.J. O'Rourke
Cruelty is one fashion statement we can all do without. – Rue McClanahan
Ever occur to you why some of us can be this much concerned with animals suffering? Because government is not. Why not? Animals don't vote. – Paul Harvey
Support your right to arm bears. – Cleveland Amory
Why should man expect his prayer for mercy to be heard by What is above him when he shows no mercy to what is under him? – Pierre Troubetzkoy
Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight. – Albert Schweitzer
Hunting is not a sport. In a sport, both sides should know they're in the game. – Paul Rodriguez
Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals. – George Orwell, Animal Farm
Cockfighting was illegal in Oklahoma until 1963, when a judge ruled that chickens are not animals and therefore unprotected by anticruelty laws. – U.S. News & World Report, 6 December 1999
Animals give me more pleasure through the viewfinder of a camera than they ever did in the crosshairs of a gunsight. And after I've finished "shooting," my unharmed victims are still around for others to enjoy. I have developed a deep respect for animals. I consider them fellow living creatures with certain rights that should not be violated any more than those of humans. – Jimmy Stewart
If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons. – C.S. Lewis
Michael W. Fox, vice-president of the Humane Society, said that, "to call an animal with whom you share your life a 'pet,' is reminiscent of men's magazines where you (a figure of speech, don't take it personally) have the Pet of the Month." It is supposed that the continued use of the word "pet" to designate dogs or cats threatens to reduce their level of respect to the current status of twentieth century North American women. Now that's radical. – The McGill Red Herring
People are more violently opposed to fur than leather because it's safer to harass rich women than motorcycle gangs. – Author Unknown
Though boys throw stones at frogs in sport, the frogs do not die in sport, but in earnest. – Bion, "Water and Land Animals," Plutarch
The squirrel that you kill in jest, dies in earnest. – Henry David Thoreau
Drinking without being thirsty and making love at any time, Madame, are the only things that distinguish us from other animals. – Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, The Marriage of Figaro, 1784, translated
I ask people why they have deer heads on their walls. They always say because it's such a beautiful animal. There you go. I think my mother is attractive, but I have photographs of her. – Ellen DeGeneres
When a man wantonly destroys one of the works of man we call him a vandal. When he destroys one of the works of god we call him a sportsman. – Joseph Wood Krutch
The fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly on whether you are at the right or wrong end of a gun. – P.G. Wodehouse
If you love animals called pets, why do you eat animals called dinner? – As seen on a shirt
The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creatures that cannot. – Mark Twain, What Is Man, 1906
Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow-creatures is amusing in itself. – James Anthony Froude, Oceana, 1886
The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men. – Alice Walker
As often as Herman had witnessed the slaughter of animals and fish, he always had the same thought: in their behaviour toward creatures, all men were Nazis. The smugness with which man could do with other species as he pleased exemplified the most extreme racist theories, the principle that might is right. – Isaac Bashevis Singer
Life is life – whether in a cat, or dog or man. There is no difference there between a cat or a man. The idea of difference is a human conception for man's own advantage. – Sri Aurobindo
When I was twelve, I went hunting with my father and we shot a bird. He was laying there and something struck me. Why do we call this fun to kill this creature [who] was as happy as I was when I woke up this morning. – Marv Levy
Those who wish to pet and baby wild animals "love" them. But those who respect their natures and wish to let them live normal lives, love them more. – Edwin Way Teale, Circle of the Seasons, 1953
It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions. – Mark Twain
The woods were made for the hunters of dreams,
The brooks for the fishers of song;
To the hunters who hunt for the gunless game
The streams and the woods belong.
– Sam Walter Foss
Animals can communicate quite well. And they do. And generally speaking, they are ignored. – Alice Walker
Lisa: "Do we have any food that wasn't brutally slaughtered?"
Homer: "Well, I think the veal died of loneliness."
– Matt Groening, The Simpsons
In an earlier stage of our development most human groups held to a tribal ethic. Members of the tribe were protected, but people of other tribes could be robbed or killed as one pleased. Gradually the circle of protection expanded, but as recently as 150 years ago we did not include blacks. So African human beings could be captured, shipped to America and sold. In Australia white settlers regarded Aborigines as a pest and hunted them down, much as kangaroos are hunted down today. Just as we have progressed beyond the blatantly racist ethic of the era of slavery and colonialism, so we must now progress beyond the speciesist ethic of the era of factory farming, of the use of animals as mere research tools, of whaling, seal hunting, kangaroo slaughter and the destruction of wilderness. We must take the final step in expanding the circle of ethics. – Pete Singer
Get a feel for fur: Slam your fingers in a car door. – Anonymous, on the use of steel traps to capture fur-bearing animals, cited in Audubon, November 1990
Dogs are getting bigger, according to a leading dog manufacturer. – Leo Rosten
Whether hunting is right or wrong, a spiritual experience, or an outlet for the killer instinct, one thing it is not is a sport. Sport is when individuals or teams compete against each other under equal circumstances to determine who is better at a given game or endeavor. Hunting will be a sport when deer, elk, bears, and ducks are... given 12-gauge shotguns. Bet we'd see a lot fewer drunk yahoos (live ones, anyway) in the woods if that happened. – R. Lerner, letter, Sierra, March-April 1991
Heaven is by favor; if it were by merit your dog would go in and you would stay out. Of all the creatures ever made [man] is the most detestable. Of the entire brood, he is the only one... that possesses malice. He is the only creature that inflicts pain for sport, knowing it to be pain. – Mark Twain
Evolutionary biology is now uttering and seeking those forces that link us with all those that have being. If we can discover the meaning in the trilling of a frog, perhaps we may understand why it is for us not merely noise but a song of poetry and emotion. – Adrian Forsyth, A Natural History of Sex, 1986
Vivisection is a social evil because if it advances human knowledge, it does so at the expense of human character. – George Bernard Shaw
I am not interested to know whether vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn't.... The pain which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity toward it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further. – Mark Twain
The basis of all animal rights should be the Golden Rule: we should treat them as we would wish them to treat us, were any other species in our dominant position. – Christine Stevens
When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when the tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity. – George Bernard Shaw
The animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren; they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth. – Henry Beston, The Outermost House, 1928
I abhor vivisection with my whole soul. All the scientific discoveries stained with innocent blood I count as of no consequence. – Mahatma Gandhi
I had bought two male chimps from a primate colony in Holland. They lived next to each other in separate cages for several months before I used one as a [heart] donor. When we put him to sleep in his cage in preparation for the operation, he chattered and cried incessantly. We attached no significance to this, but it must have made a great impression on his companion, for when we removed the body to the operating room, the other chimp wept bitterly and was inconsolable for days. The incident made a deep impression on me. I vowed never again to experiment with such sensitive creatures. – Christian Barnard, surgeon
Terms like that, "Humane Society," are devised with people like me in mind, who don't care to dwell on what happens to the innocent. – Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams
I think animal testing is a terrible idea; they get all nervous and give the wrong answers. – Author Unknown
Teaching a child not to step on a caterpillar is as valuable to the child as it is to the caterpillar. – Bradley Millar
A Robin Redbreast in a cage
Puts all Heaven in a Rage.
– William Blake, Auguries of Innocence
If a ferret bites you it is nearly always your own fault. – Phil Drabble
The human spirit is not dead. It lives on in secret.... It has come to believe that compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind. – Albert Schweitzer, Novel Peace Prize address, "The Problem of Peace in the World Today"
People must have renounced, it seems to me, all natural intelligence to dare to advance that animals are but animated machines.... It appears to me, besides, that [such people] can never have observed with attention the character of animals, not to have distinguished among them the different voices of need, of suffering, of joy, of pain, of love, of anger, and of all their affections. It would be very strange that they should express so well what they could not feel. – Voltaire, Traité sur la tolerance
Zoos are becoming facsimiles – or perhaps caricatures – of how animals once were in their natural habitat. If the right policies toward nature were pursued, we would need no zoos at all. – Michael Fox, Sierra, November-December 1990
The assumption that animals are without rights and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality. – Schopenhauer
Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages. – Thomas A. Edison
To a man whose mind is free there is something even more intolerable in the sufferings of animals than in the sufferings of man. For with the latter it is at least admitted that suffering is evil and that the man who causes it is a criminal. But thousands of animals are uselessly butchered every day without a shadow of remorse. If any man were to refer to it, he would be thought ridiculous. And that is the unpardonable crime. – Romain Rolland, Nobel Prize 1915
When it comes to having a central nervous system, and the ability to feel pain, hunger, and thirst, a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. – Ingrid Newkirk
Very little of the great cruelty shown by men can really be attributed to cruel instinct. Most of it comes from thoughtlessness or inherited habit. The roots of cruelty, therefore, are not so much strong as widespread. But the time must come when inhumanity protected by custom and thoughtlessness will succumb before humanity championed by thought. Let us work that this time may come. – Albert Schweitzer
Deer hunting would be fine sport, if only the deer had guns. – William S. Gilbert
Because the heart beats under a covering of hair, of fur, feathers, or wings, it is, for that reason, to be of no account? – Jean Paul Richter
God made all the creatures and gave them our love and our fear,
To give sign, we and they are His children, one family here.
– Robert Browning
Deliberate cruelty to our defenseless and beautiful little cousins is surely one of the meanest and most detestable vices of which a human being can be guilty. – William Ralph Inge
The indifference, callousness and contempt that so many people exhibit toward animals is evil first because it results in great suffering in animals, and second because it results in an incalculably great impoverishment of the human spirit. All education should be directed toward the refinement of the individual's sensibilities in relation not only to one's fellow humans everywhere, but to all things whatsoever. – Ashley Montague
Wear your own skin. – As seen on a shirt
There will be no justice as long as man will stand with a knife or with a gun and destroy those who are weaker than he is. – Isaac Bashevis Singer
The life spark in my eyes is in no way different than the life spark in the eyes of any other sentient being. – Michael Stepaniak, quoted in Joanne Stepaniak, The Vegan Sourcebook, 1998
We must fight against the spirit of unconscious cruelty with which we treat the animals. Animals suffer as much as we do. True humanity does not allow us to impose such sufferings on them. It is our duty to make the whole world recognize it. Until we extend our circle of compassion to all living things, humanity will not find peace. – Albert Schweitzer, The Philosophy of Civilization
If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men. – St. Francis of Assisi
Heart Attacks...God's revenge for eating His animal friends. – Bumper Sticker
How do they get the deer to cross at that yellow road sign? – George Carlin
DRUGS
If God dropped acid, would he see people? – Steven Wright
If addiction is judged by how long a dumb animal will sit pressing a lever to get a 'fix' of something, to its own detriment, then I would conclude that netnews is far more addictive than cocaine. – Rob Stampfli
I don't do drugs. I am drugs. – Salvador Dali
All drugs of any interest to any moderately intelligent person in America are now illegal. – Thomas Szasz
Don't do drugs because if you do drugs you'll go to prison, and drugs are really expensive in prison. – John Hardwick
Drugs have taught an entire generation of American kids the metric system. – P.J. O'Rourke
Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power. – P.J. O'Rourke
I tried sniffing Coke once, but the ice cubes got stuck in my nose. – Author Unknown
Did you know America ranks the lowest in education but the highest in drug use? It's nice to be number one, but we can fix that. All we need to do is start the war on education. If it's anywhere near as successful as our war on drugs, in no time we'll all be hooked on phonics. – Leighann Lord
Avoid all needle drugs – the only dope worth shooting is Richard Nixon. – Abbie Hoffman
Reality is a crutch for people who can't cope with drugs. – Lily Tomlin
Drugs may be the road to nowhere, but at least they're the scenic route. – Author Unknown
Pharmaceutical companies will soon rule the world if we keep letting them believe we are a happy, functional society so long as all the women are on Prozac, all children on Ritalin, and all men on Viagra. – Terri Guillemets
Half the modern drugs could well be thrown out the window except that the birds might eat them. – Martin H. Fischer, Fischerisms
A miracle drug is any drug that will do what the label says it will do. – Eric Hodgins
I've never had a problem with drugs. I've had problems with the police. – Keith Richards
It is difficult to live without opium after having known it because it is difficult, after knowing opium, to take earth seriously. And unless one is a saint, it is difficult to live without taking earth seriously. – Jean Cocteau
I'm in favor of it as long as it's multiple choice. – Kurt Rambis, on drug testing
I don't know. I never smoked AstroTurf. – Tug McGraw, when asked if he preferred grass or artificial turf, 1974
It is easy to get a thousand prescriptions but hard to get one single remedy. – Chinese Proverb
God made pot. Man made beer. Who do you trust? – Graffiti
Thou hast the keys of Paradise, oh, just, subtle, and mighty opium! – Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, Part II
Cocaine is God's way of saying you're making too much money. – Robin Williams
I will lift up mine eyes unto the pills. Almost everyone takes them, from the humble aspirin to the multi-coloured, king-sized three deckers, which put you to sleep, wake you up, stimulate and soothe you all in one. It is an age of pills. – Malcolm Muggeridge
Drugs are very much a part of professional sports today, but when you think about it, golf is the only sport where the players aren't penalized for being on grass. – Bob Hope
He does not need opium. He has the gift of reverie. – Anais Nin
CONSUMERISM
It's been announced that the first Starbucks has reopened in New Orleans. Residents were thankful and said,"We may have lost our homes, but at least we can start paying $5 for a cup of coffee again. – Conan O'Brien, September, 2005
Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed. – Mohandas K. Gandhi, quoted in E.F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful
Nature provides a free lunch, but only if we control our appetites. – William Ruckelshaus, Business Week, 18 June 1990
God forbid that India should ever take to industrialism after the manner of the west... keeping the world in chains. If [our nation] took to similar economic exploitation, it would strip the world bare like locusts. – Mahatma Gandhi
U.S. consumers and industry dispose of enough aluminum to rebuild the commercial air fleet every three months; enough iron and steel to continuously supply all automakers; enough glass to fill New York's World Trade Center every two weeks. – Environmental Defense Fund advertisement, Christian Science Monitor, 1990
Oh, for the good old days when people would stop Christmas shopping when they ran out of money. – Author Unknown
Be glad that you're greedy; the national economy would collapse if you weren't. – Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966
You can never get enough of what you don't need to make you happy. – Eric Hoffer
After a visit to the beach, it's hard to believe that we live in a material world. – Pam Shaw
You have succeeded in life when all you really want is only what you really need. – Vernon Howard
The only reason a great many American families don't own an elephant is that they have never been offered an elephant for a dollar down and easy weekly payments. – Mad Magazine
Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends.... Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. – Henry David Thoreau
The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich. Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied... but written off as trash. The twentieth-century consumer economy has produced the first culture for which a beggar is a reminder of nothing. – John Berger
Racial injustice, war, urban blight, and environmental rape have a common denominator in our exploitative economic system. – Channing E. Phillips, speech, Washington, D.C., April 22, 1970
To perceive Christmas through its wrappings becomes more difficult with every year. – Elwyn Brooks White
I may be a pessimist, but the philosophy of anti-thrift just now coming into being seems to me the greatest danger to the peace of the world. – Adriano Tilgher
There must be more to life than having everything! – Maurice Sendak
Mammon, n.: The god of the world's leading religion. – Ambrose Bierce
Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. – From the movie Fight Club, based on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk
He who buys what he does not need steals from himself. – Author Unknown
Once again, we come to the Holiday Season, a deeply religious time that each of us observes, in his own way, by going to the mall of his choice. – Author Unknown
Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell. – Edward Abbey
The hardest thing is to take less when you can get more. – Kin Hubbard
In the United States Christmas has become the rape of an idea. – Richard Bach
The gap in our economy is between what we have and what we think we ought to have – and that is a moral problem, not an economic one. – Paul Heyne
Forethought and temperance are the virtues which produced thrift, and with thrift the economic progress of society. And those are the virtues which today are gravely compromised. – Adriano Tilgher
Who covets more, is evermore a slave. – Robert Herrick
Why is it called tourist season if we can't shoot at them? – George Carlin
Why is there an expiration date on sour cream? – George Carlin
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