Favorite Quotes

"Let every man honor and love the land of his birth and the race from which he springs and keep their memory green. It is a pious and honorable duty. But let us have done with British-Americans and Irish-Americans and German-Americans, and so on, and all be Americans..... If a man is going to be an American at all let him be so without any qualifying adjectives; and if he is going to be something else, let him drop the word American from his personal description."
–Henry Cabot Lodge in an Address to the New England Society of Brooklyn, 1888

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."
–Theodore Roosevelt "Citizenship in a Republic", 23 April 1910

"...the man who really counts in the world is the doer, not the mere critic - the man who actually does the work, even if roughly and imperfectly, not the man who only talks or writes about how it ought to be done."
–Theodore Roosevelt 1913

We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world.
– Helen Keller

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves. – Henry David Thoreau

Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes. – Henry David Thoreau

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined. – Henry David Thoreau

I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born. – Henry David Thoreau

I was more independent than any farmer in Concord, for I was not anchored to a house or farm, but could follow the bent of my genius, which is a very crooked one, every moment. – Henry David Thoreau

In wilderness is the preservation of the world. – Henry David Thoreau

Live your life, do your work, then take your hat. – Henry David Thoreau

Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.
– Henry David Thoreau

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it. – Henry David Thoreau

I have as much authority as the Pope, I just don't have as many people who believe it. – George Carlin

Most people work just hard enough not to get fired and get paid just enough money not to quit. – George Carlin

The reason I talk to myself is that I'm the only one whose answers I accept. – George Carlin
Who's to say who's an expert? – Paul Newman

You only grow when you are alone. – Paul Newman

After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, and so on - have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear - what remains? Nature remains. – Walt Whitman

Let your tongue speak what your heart thinks. – Davy Crockett

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

Don't let schooling interfere with your education. – Mark Twain

Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please. – Mark Twain

I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it. – Mark Twain

It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt. – Mark Twain

Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.
– Albert Einstein

He who can not longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.
– Albert Einstein

I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.
– Albert Einstein

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
– Albert Einstein

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.
– Albert Einstein

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
– Oscar Wilde
I am not young enough to know everything.
– Oscar Wilde

I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.
– Oscar Wilde

I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly.
– Oscar Wilde

I have never been lost, but I will admit to being confused for several weeks.
– Daniel Boone

August 11, 2008