Quotes

My whimsy on quotes changes daily, so if what you are reading isn’t resonating with you scroll down the page. Maybe yesterday or the day before I was on your current wavelength.

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

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

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

A great war leaves the country with three armies – an army of cripples, an army of mourners, and an army of thieves.
German Proverb

“There are no atheists in foxholes” isn’t an argument against atheism, it’s an argument against foxholes.
James Morrow

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

War does not determine who is right – only who is left.
Bertrand Russell

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

A warless world will come as men develop warless hearts.
Charles Wesley Burns

We shall never be able to effect physical disarmament until we have succeeded in effecting moral disarmament.
J. Ramsay MacDonald

I think that people want peace so much that one of these days government had better get out of their way and let them have it.
Dwight Eisenhower

An eye for eye only ends up making the whole world blind.
Mahatma Gandhi

Five great enemies to peace inhabit with us: avarice, ambition, envy, anger, and pride. If those enemies were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace. Francesco Petrarch

Let there be peace on earth
And let it begin with me.
Seymour Miller & Jill Jackson, “Let There Be Peace on Earth,” 1955

Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity.
Bumper Sticker circa 1972

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.

Mother Teresa

I like a bit of mongrel myself, whether it’s a man or a dog; they’re the best for everyday. George Bernard Shaw

I wonder what goes through his mind when he sees us peeing in his water bowl.
Penny Ward Moser

A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than you love yourself.
Josh Billings

You think dogs will not be in heaven? I tell you, they will be there long before any of us. Robert Louis Stevenson

The reason a dog has so many friends is that he wags his tail instead of his tongue. Author Unknown

A man may smile and bid you hail
Yet wish you to the devil;
But when a good dog wags his tail,
You know he’s on the level.
Author Unknown

The greatest love is a mother’s; then a dog’s; then a sweetheart’s.
Polish Proverb

The most affectionate creature in the world is a wet dog.
Ambrose Bierce

The dog is a gentleman; I hope to go to his heaven, not man’s.
Mark Twain

The more I see of man, the more I like dogs.
Mme. de Staël

If you get to thinking you’re a person of some influence, try ordering somebody else’s dog around.
Will Rogers

A dog is not “almost human” and I know of no greater insult to the canine race than to describe it as such.
John Holmes

My goal in life is to be as good of a person my dog already thinks I am.
Author Unknown

Dogs laugh, but they laugh with their tails.
Max Eastman

When a dog barks at the moon, then it is religion; but when he barks at strangers, it is patriotism!
David Starr Jordan

I talk to him when I’m lonesome like; and I’m sure he understands.
When he looks at me so attentively, and gently licks my hands;
then he rubs his nose on my tailored clothes, but I never say naught thereat.
For the good Lord knows I can buy more clothes, but never a friend like that.
W. Dayton Wedgefarth

I think dogs are the most amazing creatures; they give unconditional love. For me they are the role model for being alive.
Gilda Radner

Dogs’ lives are too short. Their only fault, really.
Agnes Sligh Turnbull

Dogs are miracles with paws.
Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy

The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too.
Samuel Butler

Few novels or plays could exist without at least one troublemaker in the group, and perhaps life couldn’t either.
Mignon McLaughlin

The best and most efficient pharmacy is within your own system.
Robert C. Peale

Some patients I see are actually draining into their bodies the diseased thoughts of their minds.
Zacharty Bercovitz

If your inner energy is misdirected, so will your whole life be.
C. Astrid Weber

In vain we shall penetrate more and more deeply the secrets of the structure of the human body, we shall not dupe nature; we shall die as usual.
Bernard Le Bovier de Fontanelle

Good for the body is the work of the body, good for the soul the work of the soul, and good for either the work of the other.
Henry David Thoreau

Flesh goes on pleasuring us, and humiliating us, right to the end.
Mignon McLaughlin

If the body be feeble, the mind will not be strong.
Thomas Jefferson

Man is an intelligence in servitude to his organs.
Aldous Huxley

Man is the sole animal whose nudity offends his own companions, and the only one who, in his natural actions, withdraws and hides himself from his own kind.
Montaigne

Emotion always has its roots in the unconscious and manifests itself in the body.
Irene Claremont de Castillejo

Why should a man’s mind have been thrown into such close, sad, sensational, inexplicable relations with such a precarious object as his body?
Thomas Hardy

The word arse is as much god as the word face. It must be so, otherwise you cut off your god at the waist.
D.H. Lawrence

My best birth control now is just to leave the lights on.
Joan Rivers

It is not economical to go to bed early to save the candles if the result is twins.
Chinese Proverb

It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry.
H.L. Mencken

Familiarity breeds contempt – and children.
Mark Twain

Condoms aren’t completely safe. A friend of mine was wearing one and got hit by a bus. Bob Rubin

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
Arthur Schopenhauer

There is so much good in the worst of us
And so much bad in the best of us
That it hardly becomes any of us
To talk about the rest of us
Edward Wallis Hoch

To carry a grudge is like being stung to death by one bee.
William H. Walton

I don’t have to attend every argument I’m invited to.
Author Unknown

Anger is short-lived madness.
Horace

No man can think clearly when his fists are clenched.
George Jean Nathan

People who fly into a rage always make a bad landing.
Will Rogers

There is nothing more galling to angry people than the coolness of those on whom they wish to vent their spleen.
Alexandre Dumas

I don’t do alcohol anymore – I get the same effect just standing up fast.
Author Unknown

What this country needs is radicals who will stay that way regardless of the creeping years.
John Fischer

First you forget names, then you forget faces, then you forget to pull your zipper up, then you forget to pull your zipper down.
Leo Rosenberg

None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.
Henry David Thoreau

Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing. Oliver Wendell Holmes

Youth is a disease from which we all recover.
Dorothy Fulheim

How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were?
Satchel Paige

Age does not diminish the extreme disappointment of having a scoop of ice cream fall from the cone.
Jim Fiebig

Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional.
Chili Davis

Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.
Samuel Ullman

The aging process has you firmly in its grasp if you never get the urge to throw a snowball.
Doug Larson

Sometimes I give myself admirable advice, but I am incapable of taking it.
Mary Wortley Montagu

When we ask advice we are usually looking for an accomplice.
Charles Varlet de La Grange

Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t.
Erica Jong

It is foolish to tear one’s hair in grief, as though sorrow would be made less by baldness. Cicero

Men grow tired of sleep, love, singing and dancing sooner than of war.
Homer, Iliad

If all misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.
Socrates

If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.
Henry David Thoreau

May you get what you wish for.
Old Chinese Curse

People don’t ever seem to relate that doing what’s right is no guarantee against misfortune.
William McFee, Casuals of the Sea, 1916

Everybody ought to do at least two things each day that he hates to do, just for practice.
William James

Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive.
Josephine Hart

I owe much to my friends; but, all things considered, it strikes me that I owe even more to my enemies. The real person springs life under a sting even better than under a caress.
André Gide

The difficulties of life are intended to make us better, not bitter.
Author Unknown

Much of your pain is self-chosen.
Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, 1923

We do survive every moment, after all, except the last one.
John Updike

If you know someone who tries to drown their sorrows, you might tell them sorrows know how to swim.
Quoted in P.S. I Love You, compiled by H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Adversity introduces a man to himself.
Author Unknown

There is no education like adversity.
Disraeli

We turn to God for help when our foundations are shaking, only to learn that it is God who is shaking them.
Charles C. West

As long as you keep getting born, it’s alright to die some times.
Orson Scott Card

If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere.
Frank A. Clark

Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have, which once you have got it you may be smart enough to see is what you would have wanted had you known.
Garrison Keillor

Some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers.
Garth Brooks

I know God will not give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish that He didn’t trust me so much.
Mother Teresa

A bend in the road is not the end of the road… unless you fail to make the turn.
Author Unknown

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.
M. Kathleen Casey

Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, when you have only one idea.
Emile-Auguste Chartier

Unanswered questions are far less dangerous than unquestioned answers.
Author Unknown

It requires a great deal of faith for a man to be cured by his own placebos.
John L. McClenahan

Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after. Henry David Thoreau

When the student is ready, the master appears.
Buddhist Proverb

The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer.
Edward R. Murrow

Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.
Andre Gide

God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling.
Izaak Walton

Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.
Publilius Syrus

Inner peace can be reached only when we practice forgiveness. Forgiveness is letting go of the past, and is therefore the means for correcting our misperceptions.”
Gerald Jampolsky

Possession of material riches, without inner peace, is like dying of thirst while bathing in a lake.
Paramahansa Yogananda

As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world – that is the myth of the ‘atomic age’ – as in being able to remake ourselves.
Gandhi

For peace of mind, we need to resign as general manager of the universe.
Larry Eisenberg

Your life is what your thoughts make it.
Marcus Aurelius

You fall out of your mother’s womb, you crawl across open country under fire, and drop into your grave.
Quentin Crisp

When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
Mark Twain

This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it.
William James

People living deeply have no fear of death.
Anais Nin

Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself.
Harvey Fierstein

Literature is mostly about having sex and not much about having children. Life is the other way round.
David Lodge

Life is never easy for those who dream.
Robert James Waller

Life is but thought.
Sara Teasdale

Life is a long lesson in humility.
James M. Barrie

I have a simple philosophy: Fill what’s empty. Empty what’s full. Scratch where it itches.
Alice Roosevelt Longworth

I’m gonna itch me where it scratches.
Dr. Hook

Here is the test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished: if you’re alive, it isn’t.
Richard Bach

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.
Friedrich Nietzsche

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

Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.
Mark Twain

Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.
Buddha

Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.
William James

All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.
Henry Ellis

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.
Socrates

Character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion.
Aristotle

The greatest happiness is to scatter your enemy, to drive him before you, to see his cities reduced to ashes, to see those who love him shrouded in tears, and to gather into your bosom his wives and daughters.”
Genghis Khan

Life is only a dream and we are the imagination of ourselves.
Bill Hicks

Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity.
George Carlin

He reminds me of the man who murdered both his parents, and then when the sentence was about to be pronounced, pleaded for mercy on the grounds that he was orphan.
Abraham Lincoln

Every rascal is not a thief, but every thief is a rascal.
Aristotle

All murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
Voltaire

Children are educated by what the grown-up is and not by his talk.
Carl Jung

I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.
Susan B. Anthony

I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature.
Thomas Jefferson

Nothing is more humiliating than to see idiots succeed in enterprises we have failed in.
Gustave Flaubert

You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think.
Dorothy Parker

Smoking cigarettes and watching Captain Kangaroo
Now don’t tell me I’ve nothing to do
Statler Brothers

What we have here is…failure to communicate.
Cool Hand Luke

Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.
Albert Camus

Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try.
Homer Simpson

It serves me right for putting all my eggs in one bastard.
Dorothy Parker

I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is to try to please everyone.
Bill Cosby

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

You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Fred.
Superchicken

The secret compartment of my ring I fill, with an Underdog super energy pill.
Underdog

Oh, no, not Sluggo! He hurts me!
Mr. Bill

It’s always something
Rosanne Rosanna Danna

Adopted kids are such a pain – you have to teach them how to look like you.
Gilda Radner

Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell, no!
John Belushi

We must come to the point where we realize the concept of race is a false one. There is only one race, the human race.
Dan Aykroyd

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
Arthur Schopenhauer

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

You must be the change you wish to see in the world.
Mahatma Ghandi

If everyone howled at every injustice, every act of barbarism, every act of unkindness, then we would be taking the first step towards a real humanity. Nelson DeMille

The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man.
Henry David Thoreau

You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you.
James Allen

For true success ask yourself these four questions: Why? Why not? Why not me? Why not now?
James Allen

Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.
Albert Einstein

Of all the “attitudes” we can acquire, surely the attitude of gratitude is the most important and by far the most life-changing.
Zig Ziglar

A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
Herm Albright

A man without a smiling face must not open a shop.
Chinese Proverb

The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.
William James

Always look at what you have left.Never look at what you have lost.
Robert H. Schuller

To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

To be a great champion you must believe you are the best. If you’re not, pretend you are.
Muhammad Ali

It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect It’s successful outcome.
William James

Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.
Benito Mussolini.

There is nothing so easy but that it becomes difficult when you do it reluctantly.
Publius Terentius Afer

So often time it happens, we all live our life in chains, and we never even know we have the key.
The Eagles, “Already Gone”

It’s so hard when I have to, and so easy when I want to.
Annie Gottlier

Life is a shipwreck but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.
Voltaire

Words are also seeds, and when dropped into the invisible spiritual substance, they grow and bring forth after their kind.
Charles Fillmore

Change your thoughts and you change your world.
Norman Vincent Peale

Half measures availed us nothing.
Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, pg. 59

Everything undesirable passes away if we refuse to give it recognition by word, deed, or thought as a Reality. This we can do more easily when we remember that nothing is Real except the eternal.
Emilie Cady

The art of life is to live in the present moment, and to make that moment as perfect as we can by the realization that we are the instruments and expression of God Himself.
Emmet Fox

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.
Carl Jung

All we are is the result of what we have thought.
Buddha

We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.
Albert Einstein

Those who are free of resentful thoughts surely find peace.
Buddha

If you hug to yourself any resentment against anybody else, you destroy the bridge by which God would come to you.
Peter Marshall

I do not want the peace which passeth understanding, I want the understanding which bringeth peace.
Helen Keller

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.
Jimi Hendrix

The towels were so thick there I could hardly close my suitcase.
Yogi Berra

The future ain’t what it used to be.
Yogi Berra

It’s like deja-vu, all over again.
Yogi Berra

It gets late early out there.
Yogi Berra

If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.
Yogi Berra

You wouldn’t have won if we’d beaten you.
Yogi Berra

How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.
Marcus Aurelius

Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.
Author Unknown

Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die. Malachy McCourt

If a small thing has the power to make you angry, does that not indicate something about your size?
Sydney J. Harris

He who seeks revenge should dig two graves.
Chinese Proverb

Revenge is a confession of pain
Latin Proverb

An eye for an eye would make the whole world blind.
Mahatma Gandhi

The civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretence, infringed.’ James Madison (Original wording of the First Amendment; Annals of Congress 434 (June 8, 1789))

Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth.
Thomas Jefferson (Notes on Virginia, 1782)

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of… Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all.
Thomas Paine (The Age of Reason, 1794-1795.)

Every man “ought to be protected in worshiping the Deity according to the dictates of his own conscience.”
George Washington (Letter to the United Baptist Churches in Virginia in May, 1789)

Question with boldness even the existence of a god.
Thomas Jefferson

Capitalism has destroyed our belief in any effective power but that of self interest backed by force.
George Bernard Shaw

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.
Winston Churchill

Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.
Bertrand Russell

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

What is conservatism? Is it not the adherence to the old and tried against the new and untried?
Abraham Lincoln

Politicians are like diapers. They both need changing regularly and for the same reason.
Author Unknown

It’s not bragging if you can back it up.
Muhammad Ali

I’m for truth, no matter who tells it. I’m for justice, no matter who it’s for or against.
Malcolm X

Men with principles are the corporatists’ nightmares.
Larry Wohlgemuth

Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.
Albert Einstein

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.
Mother Teresa

Those who are free of resentful thoughts surely find peace.
Buddha

Those must find it difficult…those who have taken authority as the truth, rather than truth as the authority.
Gerald Massey, Egyptologist

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

Martin Luther King Jr

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents.
George Orwell

How is it possible to have a civil war?

George Carlin

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter, and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.

Abraham Lincoln

Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.
Adolph Hitler

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

Force always attracts men of low morality.
Albert Einstein

Anyone who has proclaimed violence his method inexorably must choose lying as his principle.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I spent 33 years in the Marines. Most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism
Major General Smedley Butler, USMC

I’ll meet you ’round the bend my friend, where hearts can heal and souls can mend.
Riverbend, blogger from Baghdad Burning

Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
Mark Twain

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.
Mahatma Gandhi

If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, “thank you,” that would suffice.
Meister Eckhart

I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.
G.K. Chesterton

The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.
Eric Hoffer, Reflections On The Human Condition

In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.
H.L. Mencken

Sometimes the answer to prayer is not that it changes life, but that it changes you.
James Dillet Freeman