This is a collection of quotes that is still growing. If you have any comments on these quotes, or others you'd like to share email me but PLEASE don't send me any anonymous or self quotes.
"In New York, fuck isn't even a word. It's a comma." - Lewis Black
"Intentions often melt in the face of unexpected opportunity." - Shirley Temple Black
"Baldrick, does it have to be this way? Our valued friendship ending with me cutting you into long strips and telling the Prince you walked over a very sharp cattle grid in an extremely heavy hat?" - Blackadder
"Long-term planning is not about making long-term decisions. It is about understanding the future consequences of today's decisions." - Gary Ryan Blair
"I want to say it gently, but I want to say it firmly: There is a tendency for the world to say to America, 'The big problems of the world are yours, you go and sort them out,' and then to worry when America wants to sort them out." - Tony Blair
"And because I am happy and dance and sing
They think they have done me no injury." - William Blake
"I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's." - William Blake
"Real communication happens when people feel safe." - Ken Blanchard
"A sense of curiosity is nature's original school of education." - Smiley Blanton
"To me, the real difficulty is that people don't recognize how much of their own need goes into their response to what they see. It's funny when people say things like, 'People can do what they want, I just don't think they should be out in the street looking that weird.' I think, 'Okay, when we ban men with toupees, then we can tell transsexuals to stay home. When we say, "No four-hundred-pound ladies in pleather miniskirts," then we can tell crossdressers to stay home.'" - Amy Bloom, Nerve.com
"I never liked anyone who didn't have a temper. If you don't have any temper, you don't have any passion." - Michael Bloomberg
"-- John 3:16 --
For god so loved the world that he sacrificed himself to himself to appease himself, and if any of his creations believe this story, he will not be forced to torture them, in his mercy, for all eternity." - _BLUE_, What Do You Believe?
"At the rate we're going, I can imagine next year's headline: '"Goodnight Moon" Banned for Encouraging Children to Communicate With Furniture.'" - Judy Blume (on censorship)
"I don't trust any bastard who doesn't drink. People who don't drink are afraid of revealing themselves." -Humphrey Bogart
"Dreams have only one owner at a time. That's why dreamers are lonely." - Erma Bombeck
"For years, my husband and I advocated separate vacations, but the kids kept finding us." - Erma Bombeck
"If I had my life to live over I would have burned the pink candle sculpted like a rose before it melted in storage." - Erma Bombeck
"There are people who put their dreams in a little box and say, 'Yes, I've got dreams, of course I've got dreams.' Then they put the box away and bring it out once in awhile to look in it, and yep, they're still there. These are great dreams, but they never even get out of the box. It takes an uncommon amount of guts to put your dreams on the line, to hold them up and say, 'How good or how bad am I?' That's where courage comes in." - Erma Louise Bombeck
"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
"A nation which is able to say everything becomes able to do everything." - Napoleon Bonaparte
"You must not fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all your art of war." - Napoleon Bonaparte
"What good are our hands, if we don't use them to touch?
What good are our ears, if we don't use them to listen?
What good are our minds, if we don't use them to think?
What good are our hearts, if we don't use them to love?
After all, what good does a tree do if it should decide to fall when no one is looking?" - ad for Bongos of Domini
"If you board the train, it is not use running along the corridor in the opposite direction." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"I definitely am going to take a course on time management... just as soon as I can work it into my schedule." - Louis Boone
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
"Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some hire public relations officers." - Daniel J. Boorstin
"I'm just a person trapped inside a woman's body." - Elaine Boosler
"If you wait to do everything until you're sure it's right, you'll probably never do much of anything." - Win Borden
"I have always imagined that paradise would be a kind of library." - Jorge Luis Borges
"Capitalism without bankruptcy is like Christianity without hell." - Frank Borman
"The belief that there is only one truth and that oneself is in possession of it seems to me the deepest root of all evil that is in the world." - Max Born
"The important thing is this: to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become." - Charles Du Bos
"In true love, there are no secret thoughts. We can, for once, ecstatically share everything. There is no need to utter a defensive 'Nothing' when asked what we are thinking about. Everything in our mind is potentially acceptable to out beloved; there is no inner monologue that need stay unsaid." - Alainde Botton, Joe Magazine
"He who mounts a wild elephant goes where the wild elephant goes." - Randolf Bourne
"Experience isn't interesting until it begins to repeat itself. In fact, till it does that, it hardly is experience." - Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of a Heart
"It is pure illusion to think that an opinion which passes down from century to century, from generation to generation, may not be entirely false." - Pierre Boyle
"I've never met a person, I don't care what his condition, in whom I could not see possibilities. I don't care how much a man may consider himself a failure, I believe in him, for he can change the thing that is wrong in his life any time he is ready and prepared to do it. Whenever he develops the desire, he can take away from his life the thing that is defeating it. The capacity for reformation and change lies within." - Preston Bradley
"Sure, it's going to kill a lot of people, but they may be dying of something else anyway." - Othal Brand, member of a Texas pesticide review board, on chlordane
"Men feared witches and burned women. It is the function of speech to unburden men from irrational fears." - Louis D. Brandeis
"Always behave like a duck - keep calm and unruffled on the surface but paddle like the devil underneath." - Jacob Braude
"Consider how hard it is to change yourself and you'll understand what little chance you have in trying to change others." - Jacob M. Braude
"You know what's wrong with you, Miss Whoever-You-Are? You're chicken. You got no guts. You're afraid to say, 'O.K., life's a fact.' People do fall in love. People do belong to each other, because that's the only chance anybody's got for real happiness. You call yourself a free spirit, a wild thing. You're terrified somebody's going to stick you in a cage. Well, baby, you're already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it's not bounded by Tulip, Texas or Somaliland. It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself." - Breakfast at Tiffany's
"Do not believe those persons who say they have never been jealous. What they mean is that they have never been in love." - Gerald Brenan
"I think a great marketing slogan would be 'Corn: The Other White Meat.' Sure, people would be confused, but they'd probably buy corn to find out what all the fuss is about." - Dave Brennan (stolen from Ruminations)
"The first sigh of love is the last of wisdom." - Antoine Bret
"Let the world know you as you are, not as you think you should be, because sooner or later, if you are posing, you will forget the pose, and then where are you?" - Fanny Brice
"I don't have any solution, but I certainly admire the problem." - Ashleigh Brilliant
"My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right." - Ashleigh Brilliant
"Nothing we can do can change the past, but everything we do changes the future." - Ashleigh Brilliant
"Should I abide by the rules until they're changed, or help speed the change by breaking them?" - Ashleigh Brilliant
"The time for action is past! Now is the time for senseless bickering!" - Ashleigh Brilliant
"It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power." - David Brin
"There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them." - Joseph Brodsky
"little bird with yellow bill
perched upon my window sill
I lure him in with a crust of bread,
and then I crush his little head." - anonymous Bronx Science student
"If sleepy, take a nap." - Discharge Instructions Following Conscious Sedation, Brooklyn Hospital Center Department of Emergency Medicine
"It's not like she's forgot about him. She's just dealing with the pain... and the crazy thing about it is she'd take him back but the fool in him that walked out is the fool that just won't ask." - Garth Brooks
"Humor is just another defense against the universe." - Mel Brooks
"Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die." - Mel Brooks
"Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers; pray for powers equal to your tasks." - Phillips Brooks
"When you come right down to it, the secret of having it all is loving it all." - Dr. Joyce Brothers
"I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; I am a vegetarian because I hate plants." - A. Whitney Brown
"Learn to listen. Opportunity sometimes knocks very softly." - H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
"Success is getting what you want. Happiness is liking what you get." - H. Jackson Brown
"Don't burn bridges. You'd be surprised how many times you have to cross the same river." - H. Jackson Brown, Jr., Life's Little Instruction Book
"People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they're not on your road doesn't mean they've gotten lost." - H. Jackson Browne, P. S. I Love You
"Money, if it does not bring you happiness, will at least help you to miserable in comfort." - Helen Gurley Brown
"After a year in therapy, my psychiatrist said to me,`Maybe life isn't for everyone.'" - Larry Brown
"The reissued DVD of 'Lawrence of Arabia' is moving faster than a camel on amphetamines at my local Blockbuster. New Yorkers are not just looking for epic entertainment. They're looking for ways to blame the Brits and the French for creating the mess that became Iraq in the first place." - Tina Brown, Salon
"As you journey through life take a minute every now and then to give a thought for the other fellow. He could be plotting something." - Chris Browne, Hagar the Horrible
"I think the reward for conformity is everyone likes you but yourself." - Rita Mae Brown
"The only queer people are those who don't love anybody." - Rita Mae Brown
"The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they're okay, then it's you." - Rita Mae Brown
"I think the secret of life is there is no secret." - Rita Mae Brown, In Her Day
"We carry within us the wonders we seek without us." - Sir Thomas Browne
"It is one of the paradoxes of American literature that our writers are forever looking back with love and nostalgia at lives they couldn't wait to leave." - Anatole Broyard
"Every day, people are straying away from the church and going back to God." - Lenny Bruce
"I won't say ours was a tough school, but we had our own coroner. We used to write essays like 'What I'm Going to be If I Grow Up.'" - Lenny Bruce
"At the beginning and at the end of love, the two lovers are embarrassed to find themselves alone." - La Bruyere
"Generosity lies less in giving much than in giving at the right moment." - Jean de La Bruyere
"Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think." - La Bruyere
"I worship the quicksand he walks in." -Art Buchwald
"This is not an easy time for humorists because the government is far funnier than we are." - Art Buchwald
"We seem to be going through a period of nostalgia, and everyone seems to think yesterday was better than today. I don't think it was, and I would advise you not to wait ten years before admitting today was great. If you're hung up on nostalgia, pretend today is yesterday and just go out and have one heck of a time." - Art Buchwald
"Somewhere there is someone who dreams of your smile, and finds in your presence that life is worth while, so when you are lonely, remember it's true, somebody, somewhere, is thinking of you." - D'Anne Bucy
"All that we are is the result of what we have thought." - Buddha
"Attachment is the source of all suffering." - Buddha
"Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it." - Buddha
"Peace come from within. Do not seek it without." -Buddha
"The words of the great spiritual teachers are like fingers pointed at the moon; if you watch the finger, you can't see the moon." - Buddhist saying
"Indecision may or may not be my problem." - Jimmy Buffett
"If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians." - Warren Buffett
"Student: Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior?
Buffy: You know I meant to, and then I just got really busy..." - Buffy the Vampire Slayer
"I laugh in the face of danger, and then I hide until it goes away." - Buffy the Vampire Slayer
"Buffy: You read my diary?... You don't even know what I was writing about! Hunk can mean a lot of things, bad things. And when I said your eyes were penetrating, I meant bulging. And 'A' doesn't even stand for Angel for that matter, it stands for Achmed, a charming foreign exchange student, so that whole fantasy part has nothing to do with you! At all!
Angel: Your mother moved your diary when she came in and straightened up. I watched her from the closet. I didn't read it.
Buffy: Oh." - Buffy the Vampire Slayer
"You're not friends. You'll never be friends. You'll be in love till it kills you both. You'll fight, and you'll shag, and you'll hate each other till it makes you quiver, but you'll NEVER be friends. Love isn't brains children, it's blood... screaming inside you to work its will." - Buffy the Vampire Slayer
"His mother had often said, When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action. She had emphasized the corollary of this axiom even more vehemently: when you desired a consequence you had damned well better take the action that would create it." - Lois McMaster Bujold
"The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don't have to waste your time voting." - Charles Bukowski
"I don't hate people... I just feel better when they're not around." - Charles Bukowski
"I don't think I'll travel anymore. Travel is nothing but an inconvenience. There is always enough trouble where you are." - Charles Bukowski
"I met a genius on the train
today
about 6 years old, he sat beside me
and as the train
ran down along the coast
we came to the ocean
and then he looked at me
and said,
it's not pretty.
It was the first time I'd
realized
that." - Charles Bukowski
"It's not the large things that send a man to the madhouse... no, it's the continuing series of small tragedies... not the death of his love but the shoelace that snaps with no time left." - Charles Bukowski
"some people never go crazy.
what truly horrible lives
they must lead." - Charles Bukowski
"there are worse things than
being alone
but it often takes decades
to realize this
and most often
when you do
it's too late
and there's nothing worse
than
too late." - Charles Bukowski
"there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders and the grocery clerks
never know that
he's
in there.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there, so don't be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you?" - Charles Bukowski
"we are always asked
to understand the other person's
viewpoint
no matter how
out-dated
foolish or
obnoxious.
one is asked
to view
their total error
their life-waste
with
kindliness,
especially if they are
aged.
but age is the total of
our doing.
they have aged
badly
because they have
lived
out of focus,
they have refused to
see.
not their fault?
whose fault?
mine?
I am asked to hide
my viewpoint
from them
for fear of their
fear.
age is no crime
but the shame
of a deliberately
wasted
life
among so many
deliberately
wasted
lives
is." - Charles Bukowski
"what matters most is
how well you
walk through the
fire." - Charles Bukowski
"You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics." - Charles Bukowski
"Atheism requires too much faith." - Andrew C. Bulhak
"If you stop searching, you stop living, because then you're dwelling in the past. If you're not reaching forward to any growth or future, you might as well be dead." - Wynn Bullock
"Video games, not parents, are to blame for many of these teenage crimes. I'm certain it was Frogger that taught my son to jaywalk." - John Bumbry
"Die trying" - Bumper Sticker
"Forget about World Peace... Visualize using your turn signal!" - Bumper Sticker
"Hell - It's not the heat... It's the Humidity" - Bumper Sticker
"If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will accidentally shoot their children." - Bumper Sticker
"If you can't trust me with a choice, how can you trust me with a child?" - Bumper Sticker
"If you love Jesus, work for justice. Anybody can honk." - Bumper Sticker
"You are no bigger than the things that annoy you." - Jerry Bundsen
"If someone were to prove to me right this minute that God, in all his luminousness, exists, it wouldn't change a single aspect of my behavior." - Luis Buñuel
"It was really worth the pain just to have known him."- Bruce Burch
"A good part - and definitely the most fun part - of feminism is about frightening men." - Julie Burchill
"People who fight fire with fire usually end up with ashes." - Abigail Van Buren
"It is easier to get a job right than to explain why you didn't." - Martin Van Buren
"Exposure plus 95 cents might buy you a decent cup of coffee. The key is to 'position' yourself in your market as the expert, the resource, the only person your prospect would ever even THINK of doing business with, or referring to others." - Bob Burg
P>"In the last few years, if you haven't discarded a major opinion or acquired a new one, check your pulse. You may be dead." - Gelett Burgess"Never despair, but if you do, work on in despair." - Edmund Burke
"Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little." - Edmund Burke
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke
"Comedy is tragedy... plus time." - Carol Burnett
"Anyone can be such a fool if he lets himself. And he can always stop it if he makes up his mind." - Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Lost Prince
"You either build up or you tear down. You either keep in the light where you can see, or you stand in the dark and fight everything that comes near you, because you can't see and you think it's an enemy." - Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Lost Prince
"To swear off mistakes is very easy. All you have to do is swear off having ideas." - Leo Burnett
"Too bad all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxicabs and cutting hair." - George Burns
"Do not fear truth, only fear those who keep the truth from you." - Malcolm Burns
"Never do today what you can put off till tomorrow. Delay may give clearer light as to what is best to be done." - Aaron Burr
"I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see." - John Burroughs
"A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame somebody else." - John Burroughs
"Never idealize others. They will never live up to your expectations. Don't over-analyze your relationships. Stop playing games. A growing relationship can only be nurtured by genuineness." -Leo F. Buscaglia
"To hope is to risk pain. To try is to risk failure. But risk must be taken, because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing. The person who risks nothing does nothing, has nothing, and is nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he simply cannot learn, feel, change, grow, live, or love. Chained by his addictions, he's a slave. He has forfeited his greatest trait, an that is his individual freedom. Only the person who risks is free." - Leo F. Buscaglia
"Value yourself. The only people who appreciate a doormat are people with dirty shoes." - Leo F. Buscaglia
"Some people give time, some money, some their skills and connections, some literally give their life's blood. But everyone has something to give." - Barbara Bush
"Somewhere out in this audience may even be someone who will one day follow my footsteps, and preside over the White House as the president's spouse. I wish him well!" - Barbara Bush
"I have opinions of my own - strong opinions - but I don't always agree with them." - George Herbert Walker Bush
"No, I don't know that Atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered as patriots. This is one nation under God." - George Herbert Walker Bush
"Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream." - George W. Bush
"I think if you know what you believe, it makes it a lot easier to answer questions. I can't answer your question." - George W. Bush
"It is clear that our nation is reliant upon big foreign oil. More and more of our imports come from overseas." - George W. Bush
"It’s amazing I won. I was running against peace, prosperity, and incumbency.” - George W. Bush, June 14, 2001, speaking to Swedish Prime Minister Goran Perrson, unaware that a live television camera was still rolling
"One of the great things about books is sometimes there are some fantastic pictures." - George W. Bush
"There's a lot of people in the Middle East who are desirous to get into the Mitchell process. And -- but first things first. The -- these terrorist acts and, you know, the responses have got to end in order for us to get the framework -- the groundwork -- not framework, the groundwork to discuss a framework for peace, to lay the -- all right." - George W. Bush
"To those of you who received honors, awards and distinctions, I say, well done. And to the C students, I say, you too can be president of the United States." - George W. Bush at Yale's graduation
"We need an energy bill that encourages consumption." - George W. Bush on 9/23/02
"You will not be discouraged if the world does not rush to you, demanding what you have... Neither will you quietly sit down to let the world wonder and then seek you; but you will be aggressive, you will carry your truths to people and cause them to see them so clearly that they must accept them." - Edith Kincaid Butler
"A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg." - Samuel Butler
"Life is like playing a violin solo in public, and learning the instrument as one goes along." - Samuel Butler
"Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them." - Samuel Butler
"Silence is not always tact and it is tact that is golden, not silence." - Samuel Butler
"If you think you have someone eating out of your hand, it's a good idea to count your fingers." - Martin Buxbaume
"Donnie: It's a very awkward age for girls.
Dave: Really, what age is that?
Donnie: 13 to 35, very awkward." - Bye, Bye Love
"Sometimes it's a form of love just to talk to somebody that you have nothing in common with and still be fascinated by their presence." - David Byrne
"There are two kinds of people, those who finish what they start and so on." - Robert Byrne
"Adversity is the first path to truth." - George Gordon Byron
"Life's too short for chess." - Henry James Byron
"And if I laugh at any mortal thing,
Tis that I may not weep." - Lord Byron
To get quotes from me and others in the mail:
Quotes of Bj through Bz
Quotes I've heard from people I've known