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.
"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." - Charles Babbage (inventor of the Analytic Machine)
"If you're falling off a cliff, you may as well try to fly." - Babylon 5
"Silence is the virtue of fools." - Francis Bacon
"We read that we ought to forgive our enemies; but we do not read that we ought to forgive our friends." - Sir Francis Bacon
"As long as women are prevented from attaining their highest possibilities, so long will men be unable to achieve the greatness that might be theirs." - Baha'i Scriptures
"Don't dare to be different, dare to be yourself - if that doesn't make you different then something is wrong." - Laura Baker
"The people who say: 'You are what you eat' have always seemed addled to me. In my opinion, you are what you think, and if you don't think, you can eat all the meat in Kansas City and still be nothing but a vegetable." - Russell Baker, The Rescue of Miss Yaskell
"I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually." - James Baldwin
"I think that the inability to love is the central problem, because that inability masks a certain terror, and that terror is the terror of being touched. And if you can't be touched, you can't be changed. And if you can't be changed, you can't be alive." - James Baldwin
"Love takes off masks we cannot live without and know we cannot live within." - James Baldwin
"The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side." - James Baldwin
"I thought he was a young man of promise, but it appears he is a young man of promises." - Arthur James Balfour (referring to Winston Churchill)
"No mistake, I shall regret the absence of your keen mind. Unfortunately, it is inseparable from an extremely disturbing body." - Ball of Fire
"It is as absurd to say that a man can't love one woman all the time as it is to say that a violinist needs several violins to play the same piece of music." - Honore de Balzac
"Take away the miseries and you take away some folks' reason for living." - Toni Cade Bambara
"If at first you do succeed, try to hide your astonishment." - Harry F. Banks
"Let's go to the mall!" - Barbie
"Math class is tough" - Barbie
"A year before I went to medical school, I worked as an assistant in a morgue. One day I had to prepare a cadaver for examination. This was a heart attack victim. I cut in and removed a section of ribs. Then the mortician opened the heart, and the arteries were clogged with fatty deposits. Later, I went upstairs for lunch and in the hospital cafeteria they were serving ribs. The sight of those ribs was so similar to the section of human ribs I had just handled that I just couldn't eat them. That set me on the path to vegetarianism." - Dr. Neal Barnard, Salon.com
"The badness of a movie is directly proportional to the number of helicopters in it." - Dave Barry
"During bomb drills, we students were told to crouch under our desks. Apparently the desks used in classrooms in the fifties were made of an exceptionally missile-resistant variety of wood. During the Cold War years I often wondered why it never occurred to our defense planners to protect the entire nation from nuclear attack by simply covering it, from sea to shining sea, with a huge Strategic Classroom Desk." - Dave Barry
"I argue very well. Ask any of my remaining friends. I can win an argument on any topic, against any opponent. People know this, and steer clear of me at parties. Often, as a sign of their great respect, they don't even invite me." - Dave Barry
"In Los Angeles, the jury in the Reginald Denny Beating trial, after much thinking, concludes, that Person A is not necessarily trying to kill Person B just because Person A happens to very deliberately bash Person B's skull in with a brick. The verdict is applauded by scientists at the Tobacco Institute." - Dave Barry
"Many people have trouble sticking to their resolutions, and there is a simple scientific explanation for this. In 1987, a team of psychologists conducted a study in which they monitored the New Year's resolutions of 275 people. After one week the psychologists found that 92 percent of the people were keeping their resolutions; after two weeks we have no idea what happened because the psychologists had quit monitoring." - Dave Barry
"Now, once again, we find ourselves facing rising gas prices, and the question is: This time, are we going to learn from the past? Are we finally going to get serious about energy conservation? Of course not! We have the brains of mealworms! So we need to get more oil somehow. As far as I can figure, there's only one practical way to do this. That's right: We need to clone more dinosaurs. We have the technology, as was shown in two blockbuster scientific movies, Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park Returns with Exactly the Same Plot. Once we have the dinosaurs, all we need is an asteroid." - Dave Barry
"A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person." - Dave Barry
"There comes a time when you should stop expecting other people to make a big deal about your birthday. That time is age 11." - Dave Barry
"There is a very fine line between 'hobby' and 'mental illness.'" - Dave Barry
"'I cannot overemphasize the importance of good grammar.' How ridiculous. I could easily overemphasize the importance of good grammar. For example, I could say: 'Bad grammar is the leading cause of slow, painful death in North America,' or 'Without good grammar, the United States would have lost World War II.'" - Dave Barry, An Utterly Absurd Look at Grammar
"You grow up the day you have your first real laugh - at yourself." - Ethel Barrymore
"I do not like the phrase: Never cross a bridge till you come to it. The world is owned by men who cross bridges on their imaginations miles and miles in advance of the procession." - Bruce Barton
"Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside them was superior to circumstances." - Bruce Barton
"Trade barriers constitute isolation; isolation gives rise to hatred, hatred to war, and war to invasion." - Frederic Bastiat
"The worst thing that can happen to a good cause is, not to be skillfully attacked, but to be ineptly defended." - Frederic Bastiat
"The man who never makes a mistake always takes orders from one who does." - Daisy Bates
"I've been dead once. It's very liberating if you think of it as therapy" - Joker, Batman
"Caution: Cape does not enable user to fly." - warning label on Batman costume
"The fellow who says he'll meet you halfway usually thinks he's standing on the dividing line." - Orlando A. Battista
"You're never quite sure how you feel about a neighbor until a 'For Sale' sign suddenly appears in front of his house." - O. A. Battista
"I don't kill flies but I like to mess with their minds. I hold them above globes. They freak out and yell, 'Whoa, I'm way too high!'" - Bruce Baum
"Look into a girl's eyes, and you see everything you ever believed about yourself. And you can never see her ugly because that would mean that you also are ugly and untrue." - Peter S. Beagle, A Fine and Private Place
"For all my air of mystery, I have a feeling heart." - Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn
"Forever falling, forever following, forever alone." - Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn
"I'm always dreaming. Even when I'm awake I'm dreaming." - Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn
"What is plucked will grow again,
What is slain lives on,
What is stolen will remain
What is gone is gone...
What is sea-born dies on land,
Soft is trod upon.
What is given burns the hand -
What is gone is gone...
Here is there, and high is low;
All may be undone.
What is true, no two men know -
What is gone is gone...
Who has choices need not choose.
We must, who have none.
We can love but what we lose -
What is gone is gone." - Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn
"One of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the great struggle for independence." - Charles A. Beard
"We should have no regrets. The past is finished. There is nothing to be gained by going over it. Whatever it gave us in the experiences it brought us was something we had to know." - Rebecca Beard
"Sometimes you've got to let someone trip on their own shoelace before you tell them to tie their shoe." - Beastie Boys
"Although I laugh and act like a clown, beneath this mask I am wearing a frown" - Beatles
"Now that you know who you are what do you want to be?" - Beatles
"What makes you think you're something special when you smile?" - Beatles
"You don't know what it's like to listen to your fears" - Beatles
"You tell me that you've got everything you want, and your bird can sing. But you don't get me... You say you've seen seven wonders, and your bird is green. But you can't see me... When your prized possessions start to wear you down look in my direction. I'll be round... When your bird is broken will it bring you down? You may be awoken. I'll be round... Tell me that you've heard every sound there is and your bird can swing. But you can't hear me." - Beatles
"I laugh about everything for fear of crying." - Beaumarchais
"It is not necessary to understand things in order to argue about them." - Pierre de Beaumarchais
"We don't like what we don't understand. In fact it scares us." - Beauty and the Beast
"Coming up, Butthead makes Beavis's brown eyes blue." - Announcer, Beavis and Butthead
"Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?" - Henry Ward Beecher
"You never know till you try to reach them how accessible men are; but you must approach each man by the right door." - Henry Ward Beecher
"North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms has signed a deal with Random House to write his memoirs. Scholars will no doubt benefit from the reflections of a man who was wrong on every major issue for 40 years. Helms' aides say the proceeds from the book will be donated to the non-profit Jesse Helms Center where they apparently have more experience burning than publishing them."- Paul Begala, Crossfire
"Sometimes it seems I've seen everything in this life, but then I'm glad to be wrong." - Beborn Beton
"We are all born mad. Some remain so." - Samuel Beckett, Godot
"A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs - jolted by every pebble in the road." - Henry Ward Beecher
"Some people are so dry that you might soak them in a joke for a month and it would not get through their skins." - Henry Ward Beecher
"The big difference between sex for money and sex for free is that sex for money usually costs a lot less." - Brendon Behan
"You know the shape my breath will take before I let it out" - Belly
"That was ethnic humor from the late 40s and early 50s. I'm just allergic to ethnic stereotyping in 2008." - Richard Belzer, Last Comic Standing
"Drinking makes such fools of people, and people are such fools to begin with, that it's compounding a felony." - Robert Benchley
"The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him." - Robert Benchley
"If one truly has lost hope, one would not be around to say so." - Eric Bentley
"Anything I have ever done that ultimately was worthwhile... initially scared me to death." - Betty Bender
"If you're ridin' ahead of the herd, take a look back every now and then to make sure it's still there." - Texas Bix Bender
"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
"The question is not, can they reason? Nor, can they talk? but, can they suffer?" - Jeremy Bentham
"I knew I'd been living in Berkeley too long when I saw a sign that said 'Free firewood' and my first thought was 'Who was Firewood and what did he do?'" - John Berger
"We could have world peace if all the dictators, presidents and representatives would put their sons and daughters on the front line first." - Louie Bergsagel
"I've been with the best and the worst in my life, and the secret is they're all people." - Helen Drazenovich Berklich
"You see, everything I know, I learned from my dad. He learned it all from his, and his dad just happened to be wrong about everything" - Dan Bern
"It's a fine thing to rise above pride, but you must have pride in order to do so." - Georges Bernanos
"Sometimes the fool who rushes in gets the job done." - Al Bernstein
"The voice of experience keeps its mouth shut." - Al Bernstein
"We have no right to ask when a sorrow comes, 'Why did this happen to me?' unless we ask the same question for every joy that comes our way." - Philip F. Bernstein
"We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over." - Aneurin Bevan
"If anyone says, 'I love God,' yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen." - 1 John 4:20
"You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men. You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men." - Matthew 5:13-16
"What is a man profited, if he should gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" - Matthew 16:26
"How wonderful it is to say the right thing at the right time... A good man thinks before he speaks; the evil man pour out his evil words without a thought." - Proverbs 15:23,28
"Be not overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good." - Romans 12:21
"There's only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun and a verb and 9/11." -- Sen. Joseph Biden, on Rudy Guiliani
"I'm a hopeless romantic trapped in a cynic's body." - Ariel Bierbaum
"All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher." - Ambrose Bierce
"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." - Ambrose Bierce
"Con-ser-va-tive, n. A statesman who is enamoured of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others." - Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
"Infidel, n. In New York, one who does not believe in the Christian religion; in Constantinople, one who does." - Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
"Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another." - Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
"If you want to say something radical, you should dress conservative." - Steve Biko
"It's a wise man who profits by his own experience, but it's a good deal wiser man who lets the rattlesnake bite the other fellow." - Josh Billings
"Life consists not in holding good cards, but in playing well those you do hold." - Josh Billings
"The saddest words of tongue or pen are those you didn't think of then." - Betsy Billipp
"Albert: I was adorable once. Young and full of hope. And now, look at me, I'm this short, fat, insecure, middle-aged thing!
Armand: I made you short?" - The Birdcage
"I do not object to people looking at their watches when I am speaking. But I do strongly object when they start shaking them to make sure they are still going." - Lord Birkett
"I feel so miserable without you, it's almost like having you here." - Stephen Bishop
"When you say that you agree to a thing in principle, you mean that you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out." - Otto von Bismarck
"Dreams come a size too big so that we can grow into them." - Josie Bisset
"I think animal testing is a terrible idea; they get all nervous and give the wrong answer." - A Bit of Fry and Laurie
"No sense being pessimistic. It wouldn't work anyway." - Bits and Pieces
"Opportunity merely knocks - temptation kicks the door in." - Bits and Pieces
"People prefer to stay with problems they understand rather than look for solutions they're uncomfortable with." - Bits and Pieces
"Some people are so indecisive that their favorite color is plaid." - Bits and Pieces
"What a day a difference makes." - Bits and Pieces
"You will never find time for anything. If you want time, you must make it." - Charles Bixten
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