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Milan Kundera: Dogs
“Dogs are our link to paradise. They don’t know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring – it was peace.” —Milan Kundera.
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Ovid: Opportunity
“Opportunity is ever worth expecting; let our hood be ever hanging ready. The fish will be in the pool where you least imagine it to be.” —Ovid.
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Gulzar: Walk across the line
“Dreams heed no borders, the eyes need no visas. With eyes shut I walk across the line in time. All the time.” —Gulzar.
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F Scott Fitzgerald: Test of a first-rate intelligence
“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” —F. Scott Fitzgerald.
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Bruce Schneier: History has taught us
“History has taught us: never underestimate the amount of money, time, and effort someone will expend to thwart a security system. It’s always better to assume the worst. Assume your adversaries are better than they are. Assume science and technology will soon be able to do things they cannot yet. Give yourself a margin for…
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Kehlog Albran: I have seen the future
“I have seen the future and it is just like the present, only longer.” —Kehlog Albran, The Profit.
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Walter Scott: High though his titles
“High though his titles, proud his name, / Boundless his wealth as wish can claim; / Despite those titles, power, and pelf, / The wretch, concentred all in self, / Living, shall forfeit fair renown, / And, doubly dying, shall go down / To the vile dust from whence he sprung, / Unwept, unhonour’d, and…
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Emilio Estevez: What will endure
“Film is an illusion, fame is ephemeral, faith and family are what will endure.” —Emilio Estevez.
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Thomas Alva Edison: Infinite intelligence
“I know this world is ruled by infinite intelligence. Everything that surrounds us—everything that exists—proves that there are infinite laws behind it. There can be no denying this fact. It is mathematical in its precision.” —Thomas A Edison.
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George Bernard Shaw: Support of Paul
“A govt that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.” —George Bernard Shaw.
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Edith Hamilton: World of thought
“It has always seemed strange to me that in our endless discussions about education so little stress is laid on the pleasure of becoming an educated person, the enormous interest it adds to life. To be able to be caught up into the world of thought — that is to be educated.” —Edith Hamilton.
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Polish proverb: Greatest love
“The greatest love is a mother’s, then a dog’s, then a sweetheart’s.” —Polish proverb.
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Robert Green Ingersoll: The hands that help
“The hands that help are better far / Than lips that pray. / Love is the ever gleaming star / That leads the way, / That shines, not on vague worlds of bliss, / But on a paradise in this.” —Robert Green Ingersoll.
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Chuck Jones: Anyone can say ‘no’
“Anyone can say ‘no’. It is the first word a child learns and often the first word he speaks. It is a cheap word because it requires no explanation, and many men and women have acquired a reputation for intelligence who know only this word and have used it in place of thought on every occasion.” —Chuck Jones (Warner Bros.…
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Ralph Waldo Emerson: We all quote
“By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. In fact, it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson.
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John Abraham: Our friend in the US
“Our friend in the US is changing things on a daily basis – on an hourly basis with us – you know, like they say, having the US as an adversary is dangerous, but having the US as a friend is fatal.” —John Abraham.
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Corwin: Matter of discretion
“Steady movement is more important than speed, much of the time. So long as there is a regular progression of stimuli to get your mental hooks into, there is room for lateral movement. Once this begins, its rate is a matter of discretion. “ —Corwin, Prince of Amber.
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Sara Teasdale: Youth
“When I can look Life in the eyes, / Grown calm and very coldly wise, / Life will have given me the truth, / And taken in exchange — my youth.” —Sara Teasdale.
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William Shakespeare: Wise father
“It is a wise father that knows his own child. “ —William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice.
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Bill Maher: Cable TV sex channels
“The cable TV sex channels don’t expand our horizons, don’t make us better people, and don’t come in clearly enough.” —Bill Maher.
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James Randi: Fact
“No amount of belief makes something a fact.” —James Randi.
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Erwin Tomash: Everything takes longer
“Everything takes longer, costs more, and is less useful.” —Erwin Tomash.
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Loni Anderson: Young people
“Young people think that nothing bad will ever happen to them.” —Loni Anderson.
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Sir Peter Medawar: Treatment
“If a person (a) is poorly, (b) receives treatment intended to make him better, and (c) gets better, then no power of reasoning known to medical science can convince him that it may not have been the treatment that restored his health.” —Sir Peter Medawar, The Art of the Soluble.
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George D Prentice: Profundity
“Many a writer seems to think he is never profound except when he can’t understand his own meaning.” —George D. Prentice.
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Thomas Jefferson: Uniformity
“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 of the world fools, and the other half hypocrites.” —Thomas Jefferson.
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Albert Einstein: Peace
“Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.” —Albert Einstein.
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Phyllis Dorothy James: What a child doesn’t receive
“What a child doesn’t receive he can seldom later give.” —P.D. James (Phyllis Dorothy James).
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Douglas McIlroy: Negative code
“The real hero of programming is the one who writes negative code.” —Douglas McIlroy.
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David Wheeler: Layers of indirection
“All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection, except for the problem of too many layers of indirection.” —David Wheeler.
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Herman Melville: Pasteboard masks
“All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event — in the living act, the undoubted deed — there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask.” —Herman Melville.
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Mark Twain: Kindness
“Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can read.”—Mark Twain.
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Premchand: First step to love
“Trust is the first step to love.” —Premchand.
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Susan Sontag: Tourist in other people’s reality
“The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people’s reality, and eventually in one’s own.” —Susan Sontag.
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Susan Sontag: Soft murder
“To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them that they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed. Just as a camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is a subliminal murder — a soft…
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Meghnad Desai: They were all liberals
“India had a very long independence movement. It started in 1886, [with] the first generation of Western-educated Indians. They were all liberals. They followed the Liberal Party in Britain, and they were very proud of their knowledge of parliamentary systems, parliamentary manners. They were big debaters. They [had], as it were, a long apprenticeship in…
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Friedrich Nietzsche: Strong individual
“The strong individual loves the earth so much he lusts for recurrence. He can smile in the face of the most terrible thought: meaningless, aimless existence recurring eternally. The second characteristic of such a man is that he has the strength to recognize — and to live with the recognition — that the world is valueless in itself and…
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Karl Popper: Social creatures
“We are social creatures to the inmost centre of our being. The notion that one can begin anything at all from scratch, free from the past, or unindebted to others, could not conceivably be more wrong.” —Karl Popper.
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Ellen Goodman: ‘Graceful exit’
“There’s a trick to the ‘graceful exit.’ It begins with the vision to recognize when a job, a life stage, or a relationship is over — and let it go. It means leaving what’s over without denying its validity or its past importance to our lives. It involves a sense of future, a belief that…
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Arthur Miller: Challenge any inaccuracies
“People should have access to the data which you have about them. There should be a process for them to challenge any inaccuracies.” —Arthur Miller.
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Benjamin Franklin: Don’t pull down your hedge
“Love your neighbour, yet don’t pull down your hedge.” —Benjamin Franklin.
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Eric Hoffer: Minding other people’s business
“The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race, or his holy cause. A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind…
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William Shakespeare: Smallest worm
“The smallest worm will turn being trodden on. “ —William Shakespeare, Henry VI.
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Hulk Hogan: Be a father first
“Be a father first. Don’t put a priority of being a friend with your wife first, or a friend with your kids first.” —Hulk Hogan.
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Carsten Jensen: Only the stupid
“Only the stupid steal from the rich. The clever steal from the poor. The law usually protects the rich.” —Carsten Jensen.
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Bernard Levin: First they make Gods
“Whom the mad would destroy, first they make Gods.” —Bernard Levin.
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Haile Selassie: Throughout history
“Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted, the indifference of those who should have known better, the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most, that has made it possible for evil to triumph.” —Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia.
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Ozzy Osbourne: I miss my mind the most
“Of all the things I’ve lost I miss my mind the most.” —Ozzy Osbourne.
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Ozzy Osbourne: ‘Secret intelligence’
“They say military have the so-called ‘secret intelligence’ — this amount of intelligence must be very secret, since I’ve never seen any intelligent military person, nor I have seen any sense in the bloody stupid wars.” —Ozzy Osbourne.
