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"Self-esteem is different than conceit. Conceit is the weirdest disease in the world. It makes everyone sick except the one who has it." - Hartman Rector, Jr., Ensign (May 1979)

"If this is the best of all possible worlds, I wonder what the others are like!" - Voltaire, Candide

"America is a large friendly dog in a small room. Every time it wags its tail it knocks over a chair." - Arnold Toynbee

"It is the ability to choose which makes us human." - Madeleine L'Engle, Walking on Water

"I sometimes look in the face of my dog Stan and see wistful sadness and existential angst, when all he is actually doing is slowly scanning the ceiling for flies." - Marrill Markoe, What the Dogs Have Taught Us

"I still say a church steeple with a lightning rod on top shows a lack of confidence." - Doug MacLeod

"Try out the unlikely option." - Fortune cookie

"Once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination." - Thomas De Quincy

"One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries." - A.A. Milne

"We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

How to Raise Your I.Q. by Eating Gifted Children - Book title by Lewis B. Frumkes

"Like many other scientists, LeVay did not study lesbians. He explained, without apparent hint of irony, that he was unable to locate any lesbian brains. I've been to that bar too." - Kate Clinton, Don't Get Me Started

"You've seen me at my worst, and it won't be the last time I'm down there." - Crowded House

"An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today." - Laurence J. Peter

"Martin: I sincerely wish... that she may some day make you happy, but I strongly doubt it.
Candide: You are very incredulous.
Martin: That is because I have seen what life is." - Voltaire, Candide

"Some folks go through life pleased that the glass is half full. Others spend a lifetime lamenting that it's half-empty. The truth is: There is a glass with a certain volume of liquid in it. From there, it's up to you!" - Dr. James S. Vuocolo

"Attention: Moshing May Occur" - sign outside Lords of Acid show at Irving Plaza

"Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl accidentally kills the first woman she meets, then teams up with three complete strangers to kill the woman's sister for personal gain." -TV listing for The Wizard of Oz

"The man who is brutally honest enjoys the brutality quite as much as the honesty." - Richard Needham

"You rescued me. I didn't want to be saved." - Cyndi Lauper

"If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one." - Mother Teresa

"Cameron: You're abnormal.
Roark: Probably.
Cameron: I didn't mean it as a compliment.
Roark: I didn't either." - Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

"If love is not enough, than what's enough?" - Peter Mulvey

"With $10,000, we'd be millionaires! We could buy all kinds of useful things like love." - Homer Simpson

"If we could decide who we love it would be much simpler but less magical." - South Park

"For all the times I never said the things I should have, I thank you for all the times you understood." - Flavia Weedn

"Where is the leader who leads me? I'm still waiting." - Wolfsheim

"Cacambo: What is optimism?
Candide: ...it is the mania for maintaining that all is right when everything is wrong." - Francois-Marie Arouet de Voltaire, Candide

"Do not fear truth, only fear those who keep the truth from you." - Malcolm Burns

"Some people think it's holding on that makes one strong - sometimes it's letting go." - Anonymous

"The question is not, can they reason? Nor, can they talk? but, can they suffer?" - Jeremy Bentham

"Why am I upset when I think that I'm different from everybody else, but angry when I realize that I'm the same?" - Heather Heine

"Roark: Shall I tell you what's wrong with it?
Dean: It's the Parthenon!
Roark: Yes, God damn it, the Parthenon!... Look... the famous flutings on the famous columns - what are they there for? To hide the joints in wood - when columns were made of wood, only these aren't, they're marble. The triglyphs, what are they? Wood. Wooden beams, the way they had to be laid when people began to build wooden shacks. Your Greeks took marble and they made copies of their wooden structures out of it, because others had done it that way. Then your masters of the Renaissance came along and made copies in plaster of copies in marble of copies in wood. Now here we are, making copies in steel and concrete of copies in plaster of copies in marble of copies of wood. Why?... The Parthenon did not serve the same purpose as its wooden ancestor. An airline terminal does not serve the same purpose as the Parthenon. Every form has its own meaning. Every man creates his meaning and form and goal. Why is it so important - what others have done? Why does it become sacred by the mere fact of not being your own? Why is anyone and everyone right - so long as it's not yourself? Why does the number of those others take the place of truth? Why is truth made a mere matter of arithmetic - and only of addition at that? Why is everything twisted out of all sense to fit everything else? There must be some reason. I don't know. I've never known it. I'd like to understand." - Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

"Those who have suffered much become very bitter or very gentle." - Will Durant

"If people speak ill of you, live so that no one will believe them." - Plato

"It sucks when you try your best, and your best sucks." - Andrea Lipman

"He told me he likes men as well as he likes women, which seems only natural, he says, since he is the offspring of two sexes as well as two races. No one is surprised he is biracial; why should they be surprised he is bisexual? This is an explanation I have never heard and cannot entirely grasp; it seems too logical for my brain." - Alice Walker

"You can't hide the pain, I can see it scrawled on your empty face... Tell me what you will, 'cause I've got to know the truth inside of you." - Anything Box

"It's not important to be defined. It's only important to use your time well." - ani difranco

"Maybe that is all any bravery is, a stronger fear of not being brave."-Audre Lorde, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name

"When you have found your own room, be kind to those who have chosen different doors and to those who are still in the hall." -C.S Lewis

"If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country." -E. M. Forster

"Incidental question: A librarian writing about librarian building, insists that libraries must be made to look as accessible to the public as possible - to 'bring the library nearer to the people.' 'Spacious and inviting entrances are placed at grade level, close to the public thoroughfare, with as few steps as possible between the pedestrian and the building.' This may be quite sound in relation to library architecture, but the question it raises, in a more general sense, is this: is it advisable to spread out all the conveniences of culture before people to whom a few steps up a stair to a library is a sufficient deterrent from reading?" - Ayn Rand

"You could get a new lease on life--if only you didn't need the first and last month in advance." - Anonymous

"For a woman there is nothing more erotic than being understood." - Molly Haskell

"I cannot open the windows from the outside without breaking them; but from the inside, you can lift them with ease." - B. Sbragia

"Love is not blind -
It sees more, not less.
But because it sees more,
It is willing to see less." - Julius Gordon

"I get asked to do benefits a lot and I've decided I've got to be a bit more discerning, I can't just do all of them. . . . I got asked to do a benefit for babies born addicted to crack. And I said well, all right, I'll help you raise money for them, but I think we both know what they're gonna spend it on." - Laura Kightlinger

"It gets annoying when all I hear some people saying is 'What Would Jesus Do?' and I'm like: what, for a Klondike bar?" - Arjuna Greist

"Light travels faster than sound. That's why people appear bright until they start to speak." - Anonymous

"He that cannot reason is a fool. He that will not is a bigot. He that dare not is a slave." - Andrew Carnegie

"Francisco: I wish you'd learn to run faster. I'll always have to wait for you.
Dagny: Will you wait for me?
Francisco: Always." - Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

"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

"The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose." - William Cowper

"When I am getting ready to reason with a man, I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself and what I am going to say and two-thirds about him and what he is going to say." - Abraham Lincoln

"Friends are people who help you be more yourself." - Merle Shain

"My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless there are three other people." - Orson Welles

"What's money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night and in between he does what he wants to." - Bob Dylan

"The happiest of people don't necessarily have the best of everything; they just make the most of everything that comes along their way." - Anonymous

"Faith in God necessarily implies a lack of faith in humanity." - Barbara G. Walker

Musically, we are more talented than any Bob Dylan. Musically, we are more talented than Paul McCartney...I'm the new Elvis." - Robert Pilatus of the band Milli Vanilli in 1990

"'Why yes, I can,' said Midas Mulligan, when he was asked whether he could name a person more evil than the man with a heart closed to pity. 'The man who uses another's pity for him as a weapon.'" - Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

"Do you remember that song by Three Dog Night, 'Joy to the World'? It started off with 'Jeremiah was a bullfrog.' It was catchy, so you wanted to sing. And then we were hooked, and we were just singing along 'Jeremiah was a bullfrog. Was a good friend of mine. I never understood a single word he said, but I helped him drink his wine.' Of course that made perfect sense to us. Why should we question that? We've all had friends who were frogs. We didn't fully understand what they were saying, but if it seemed like that wanted you to help them drink some wine, you did it. They would always have some mighty fine wine with 'em too. Frogs could get ahold of that stuff." - Ellen Degeneres, My Point... And I Do Have One

"Everything that can be invented has been invented." - Charles H. Duell, Commissioner of the U.S. Office of Patents in 1899

"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

"Every person is a fool in somebody's opinion." - Spanish Proverb

"One thing I hope I'll never be is drunk with my own power. And anybody who says I am will never work in this town again." - Jim Carrey

"I think of lotteries as a tax on the mathematically challenged." - Roger Jones

"Does your lizard glow in the dark?" - Sarah L.

"There was never a war on poverty. Maybe there was a skirmish on poverty." - Andrew Cuomo

"Better break your word than do worse in keeping it." - Thomas Fuller

"You don't think he's buying the old Branch Davidian place, do you?" - Dan Rather (after hearing George W. Bush was buying property in Waco, Texas)

"Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote." - George Jean Nathan

"I never did give anybody hell. I just told the truth and they thought it was hell." - Harry S Truman

"Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality." - Jules de Gaultier

"Some guy hit my fender, and I said to him, 'Be fruitful and multiply,' but not in those words." - Woody Allen

"There is only one success - to be able to spend your life in your own way." - Christopher Morley

"Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person." - Mother Teresa

"Let us hope that we are all preceded in this world by a love story." - Don Snyder

"Love is the answer, but while you are waiting for the answer, sex raises some pretty good questions." - Woody Allen

"Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired." - Jules Renard

"I've been forcing myself not to forget just to feel worse." - Electronic

"Happiness is a choice, not a result. Nothing will make you happy until you choose to be happy. No person will make you happy unless you decide to be happy. Your happiness will not come to you. It can only come from you. Happiness is what you are, not what you have. It depends solely upon your own attitude. You can be happy no matter what your circumstances might be. You can never get happy. You can always be happy. Lift your own self-imposed restrictions on happiness. Count your many blessings, and be happy. Spread your happiness and it will grow." - Ralph S. Marston, Jr.

"There comes a time in a man's life when to get where he has to go - if there are no doors or windows - he walks through a wall." - Bernard Malamud

"Neutrality, as a lasting principle, is an evidence of weakness." - Lajos Kossuth

"It's hard to beat a person who never gives up." - Babe Ruth

"The cruelest lies are often told in silence." - Robert Louis Stevenson

"You can feel the punishment, but you can't commit the sin... You can build a mansion, but you just can't live in it. You're the fastest runner but you're not allowed to win. Some break the rules, and let you cut the cost. The insecurity is the thing that won't get lost" - Howard Jones

"Happiness belongs to those who are sufficient unto themselves. For all external sources of happiness and pleasure are, by their very nature, highly uncertain, precarious, ephemeral and subject to chance." - Arthur Schopenhauer

"No mistake, I shall regret the absence of your keen mind. Unfortunately, it is inseparable from an extremely disturbing body." - Ball of Fire

"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up." - Pablo Picasso

"The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn." - David Russell

"If I put you first and you put me first, no one will ever be second." - Lisa Meyer

"Trust me, but look to thyself." - Irish Proverb

"If Murphy had used a computer his law would probably have been lost when the machine crashed." - Mike Knowles

"The happiest people seem to be those who have no particular reason for being so except that they are so." - William Ralph Inge

"Originality is a thing we constantly clamor for, and constantly quarrel with." - Thomas Carlyle

"A five year old boy had a very precocious interest in motorcycles. Whenever he saw one, he would let out a howl of job, accompanied by animated remarks like 'Look at that! Look at that! I'm going to get a motorcycles someday.' His father's answer was always the same. 'Not so long as I'm alive, you won't.'
One day, while the boy was talking to his friend, a brand-new stylish bike zoomed by. He excitedly pointed it out to the boy and exclaimed, 'Look at that! Look at that! I'm getting one of those - as soon as my dad dies!'" - Adapted from a story by Elizabeth Leyda, 601 Quotes about Marriage & Family

"There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them." - Dr. Denis Waitley

"Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right." - Isaac Asimov

"I love being married. It's so great to find one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life." - Rita Rudner

"It isn't what you have, or who you are, or where you are, or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about." - Dale Carnegie

"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

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