... the mind works with ideas, not with information

-- Theodore Roszak, The Cult of Information, 2nd. ed. p. 88, 1994

...After all, all he did was string together a lot of old well-known quotations.

-- H.L. Mencken on Shakespeare, Unknown , Unknown

...attacking a paper heavy with footnotes means that the dissenter has to weaken each of the other papers, or will at least be threatened with having to do so, whereas attacking a naked paper means that the reader and the author are of the same weight: face to face.

-- Bruno Latour, Science in Action - How to Follow Scientists & Engineers Through Society, 1987

...but what has been said once can always be repeated.

-- Zeno of Elia, Unknown , Unknown

...lying matters. Truth is a rock; if you chip away at it enough, you wind up with gravel, then sand.

-- Anna Quindlen,commentary on untruthful book, A Million Little Pieces,, Newsweek, p. 74, January 23, 2006

A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.

-- Maya Angelou, Unknown , Unknown

A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.

-- Martin Fischer, Unknown , born November 10, 1879

A degree of chaos is essential to discover what we don't know we're looking for.

-- George ?, theater designer, Box Conspiracy play., Unknown , Unknown

A figure of speech can often get into a crack too small for logic.

-- Unknown, Unknown , Unknown

A good catchword can obscure analysis for 50 years.

-- Wendell Wilkie, Unknown , Unknown

A half truth is a whole lie.

-- Yiddish Proverb, Unknown , Unknown

A memorandum is written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer.

-- Morimer Zuckerman, USNews & World Report, 1998, January 12

A person who publishes a book willfully appears before the populace with his pants down.

-- Edna St. Vincent Millay, in Leslie Frewin, (1986). The Late Mrs. Dorothy Parker, lived 1892-1950.

A person's wound is where their passion is born.

-- Marilyn Hamilton, Unknown , Unknown

A problem is a chance for you to do your best.

-- Duke Ellington, Unknown , Unknown

A problem well stated is a problem half solved.

-- Charles F. Kettering, Unknown , Unknown

A schedule defends from chaos and whim.

-- Annie Dillard, Unknown , Unknown

A short pencil is better than a long memory.

-- unknown, Unknown , Unknown

A university floats on paper and rewards the creation of more words on paper.

-- Robin W. Winks, Cloak and Gown, Scholars in the Secret War, 1939-1961, Unknown

A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.

-- Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own., 1929.

Actions speak louder than words.

-- Theodore Roosevelt, Unknown , Unknown

All generalizations are false.

-- Unknown , Unknown , Unknown

All great truths started out as blasphemies.

-- George Bernard Shaw, Unknown , Unknown

All letters, methinks, should be as free and easy as one's discourse, not studied as an oration, nor made up of hard words like a charm.

-- Dorothy Osborne (Lady Temple), letter, 1653

All logic texts are divided into two parts. In the first part, on deductible logic, the fallacies are explained; in the second part, on inductive logic, they are committed.

-- Morris Raphael Cohen, attributed in Meehl, P. E. Appraising and amending theories. Psychological Inquiry, 1, p. 110., 1990

All things are difficult before they are easy.

-- Thomas Fuller, Unknown , Unknown

An artist is a person who has invented an artist.

-- Harold Rosenberg, Unknown , Unknown

An expert is a person who can take something you already know and make it sound confusing.

-- Anonymous, Unknown , Unknown

Any fool can write a bad advertisement, but it takes a genius to keep his hands off a good one.

-- David Ogilvy, Unknown , Unknown

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction.

-- Albert Einstein, Unknown , 1879-1955

Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent--which attitude certainly has a great deal to support it.

-- James Baldwin, Unknown , Unknown

Anything more dull and commonplace it wouldn't be easy to reproduce.

-- The London Times, on Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, Unknown , Unknown

Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work.

-- Bette Davis, Mother Goddamn, 1974

Bad spellers of the world, Untie!

-- Unknown , Unknown , Unknown

Be careful with words, they’re dangerous. Be wary of them. They begat either demons or angels. It’s up to you to give life to one or the other. Be careful, I tell you, nothing is as dangerous as giving free rein to words

-- Elie Wiesel, Legends of Our Time, Unknown

Be obscure clearly.

-- E. B. White, Unknown , born July 11, 1908

Beauty is in the details.

-- German proverb, Unknown , Unknown

Before enlightenment, there is much carrying of water; after enlightenment, there is much carrying of water.

-- Buddhist saying, Unknown , Unknown

Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.

-- George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans], 1819-1880, Theophrastus Such, 1878

Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they are written.

-- Henry David Thoreau, Unknown , Unknown

Both teaching and rational inquiry, at their creative and inspired best, thus lead us to the very threshold of ultimate mystery and induce in us a sense of profound humility and awe.

-- Theodore Meyer Greene, Unknown , Unknown

Breathe-in experience, breathe-out poetry.

-- Muriel Rukeyser, 1913-1980, Poem Out of childhood, 1935

Bureaucrats write memoranda both because they appear to be busy when they are writing and because the memos, once written, immediately become proof that they were busy.

-- Charles Peters, Unknown , Unknown

But this is slavery, not to speak one's thought.

-- Euripedes, Unknown , Unknown

Cato used to assert that wise men profited more by fools than fools by wise men; for that wise men avoided the faults of fools, but that fools would not imitate the good examples of wise men.

-- Plutarch, Life of Marcus Cato, Unknown

Clarity is a social matter, not something to be decided unilaterally by the writer....If the reader thinks something you write is unclear, then it is, by definition. There's no arguing.

-- Deirdre McCloskey, Economical Writing, Waveland Pr Inc., p. 12, 1999

Consider the postage stamp: its usefulness consists in the ability to stick to one thing till it gets there.

-- John Billings, Unknown , 1818-1885

Context is always as relevant as concept.

-- Terry Olson, Focus on Faculty, Vol 15(2), Brigham Young University Faculty Center, 2005

Copy from one, it's plagiarism; copy from two, it's research.

-- Wilson Mizner, Unknown , 1876-1933

Cover less, uncover more.

-- possibly Bland Tomkinson, Unknown , Unknown

Dakota tribal wisdom says that when you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.

-- Unknown , Unknown , Unknown

Decision is a sharp knife that cuts clean and straight; indecision is a dull one that hacks and tears and leaves ragged edges behind it.

-- Gordon Graham, Unknown , Unknown

Do not follow where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

-- Bob Rivera & Peter Yates, janitors, Kingswood Regional High., Unknown , 1991

Don't wait for something big to occur. Start where you are, with what you have, and that will always lead you into something greater.

-- Mary Manin Morrissey, Unknown , Unknown

Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.

-- Howard Aiken., Unknown , Unknown

Educated people do not simply believe; they believe what they can explain and cogently defend.

-- S.M. Cahn, Unknown , Unknown

Even when educators survey grade school texts and create new bibliographies to help teachers include Asians, Eskimos, and other Americans, females in and out of those groups may be down-played or forgotten.

-- Gloria Steinem, Unknown , 1934

Every word she writes is a lie, including "and" and "the."

-- Mary McCarthy of Lillian Hellman, New York Times, February 16, 1980

Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.

-- Flannery O'Connor, Unknown , Unknown

Facing up to your mistakes keeps you from repeating them. Successful people make plenty of mistakes but hardly ever the same one twice.

-- Debra A. Benton, Lions Don't Need to Roar. Warner Books, 1993

Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.

-- Jessamyn West, Unknown , Unknown

Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.

-- Jessamyn West, 1902-1984, To See the Dream, 1956

Fiction writing is great. You can make up almost anything.

-- Ivana Trump, Unknown , Unknown

Find out who you are and do it on purpose.

-- Dolly Parton, Unknown , Unknown

Five mysteries hold the keys to the unseen: the act of love, and the birth of a baby, and the contemplation of great art, and being in the presence of death or disaster, and hearing the human voice lifted in song.

-- Salman Rushdie, The Ground Beneath Her Feet. NY: Henry Holt & Co., P. 13, 1999

Fool! said my muse to me, look in thy heart, and write.

-- Sir Philip Sidney, Astrophel and Stella, I, Unknown

For every complex question there is a simple answer -- and it's wrong.

-- H.L. Mencken, Unknown , Unknown

For me, words are a form of action, capable of influencing change.

-- Ingrid Bengis, Unknown , Unknown

Four be the things I'd been better without: Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt

-- Dorothy Parker, "Inventory," Enough Rope, 1927

Freedom of inquiry, freedom of discussion, and freedom of teaching - without these a university cannot exist.

-- Robert Maynard Hutchins, Unknown , Unknown

Genius is only a form of sustained patience.

-- Donald Murray, Unknown , Unknown

Get all the education you can, but then, by God, do something. Don't just stand there; make it happen.

-- Lee Iacocca, Unknown , Unknown

Grammar Police enforce the syntax.

-- on a Button, Unknown , Unknown

He and his boys up there were keeping it new, at the risk of ruin, destruction, madness, and death, in order to find new ways to make us listen. For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph it is never new, it always must be heard. There isn't any other tale to tell, it's the only light we've got in all this darkness.

-- James Baldwin, Sonny's Blues, 1957

He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know.

-- Abraham Lincoln, Unknown , Unknown

He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met.

-- Abraham Lincoln., Unknown , Unknown

He who influences the thought of his times, influences all the times that follow. He has made his impress on eternity.

-- Hypatia, in Elbert Hubbard, (1908) Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Teachers, c. 370-415

He [Hercule Poirot] tapped his forehead. "These little grey cells. It is 'up to them.'"

-- Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, 1920

Help stamp out, eliminate and abolish redundancy!

-- Unknown, Unknown , Unknown

How does it feel To have you on your own With no direction home Like a complete unknown Like a rolling stone.

-- Bob Dylan, "Like a rolling stone", 196?

How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when clearly it is Ocean.

-- Arthur C. Clarke, Unknown , Unknown

How often we recall with regret that Napolean once shot at a magazine editor and missed him and killed a publisher. But we remember with charity that his intentions were good.

-- Mark Twain, Unknown , Unknown

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.

-- Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See, Unknown

I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.

-- Stephen Leacock, Unknown , Unknown

I can't understand why a person will take a year or two to write a novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars.

-- Fred Allen, Unknown , Unknown

I don't think necessity is the mother of invention--invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble.

-- Agatha Christie, An Autobiography, 1977

I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake. But through the process of amendment, interpretation, and court decision, I have finally been included in "We, the people."

-- Barbara Jordan, Unknown , Unknown

I found your essay to be good and original. However, the part that was original was not good and the part that was good was not original.

-- Samuel Johnson, Unknown , born September 18, 1779

I fully realize that I have not succeeded in answering all of your questions…Indeed, I feel I have not answered any of them completely. The answers I have found only serve to raise a whole new set of questions, which only lead to more problems, some of which we weren’t even aware were problems. To sum it all up…In some ways I feel we are confused as ever, but I believe we are confused on a higher level, and about more important things.

-- Unknown, Unknown , Unknown

I get up every morning determined both to change the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning the day difficult.

-- E.B. White, Unknown , Unknown

I got so tired of hearing those proverbs when I was a child. Now I use them all the time. Sometimes they are the best way to say what needs to be said. I teach them to my students. I have a collection of proverbs for class discussion and writing assignments.

-- Marva Collins, Unknown , Unknown

I had a linguistics professor who said that it's man's ability to use language that makes him the dominant species on the planet. That may be. But I think there's one other thing that separates us from the animals. We aren't afraid of vacuum cleaners.

-- Jeff Stilson, Unknown , Unknown

I have come to realize that an early symptom of approaching mental illness is the belief that one's work is terribly important. If you consider your work very important you should take a day off.

-- B. Russell, Unknown , Unknown

I have come to the conclusion, after many years of sometimes sad experience, that you cannot come to any conclusion at all.

-- Vita Sackville-West, Unknown , Unknown

I have gathered a posie of other men’s flowers, and nothing but the thread that binds them is mine own.

-- John Bartlett (of Bartlett's Familar Quotations), Unknown , Unknown

I have great belief in the fact that whenever there is chaos, it creates wonderful thinking. I consider chaos a gift.

-- Septima Clark, in Brian Lanker (1989). I Dream a World., 1898-1987

I have made this letter longer than usual, because I lack the time to make it short.

-- Blaise Pascal, Unknown , born June 19, 1623

I have never been hurt by anything I didn't say.

-- Calvin Coolidge, Unknown , Unknown

I keep six honest serving men. They taught me all I knew. Their names are What and Why and When and How and Where and Who.

-- Rudyard Kipling, Unknown , Unknown

I love smooth words, like gold-enameled fish Which circle slowly with a silken swish

-- Elinor Wylie, "Pretty Words", 1922.

I might repeat to myself, slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound; if I can remember any of the damn things.

-- Dorothy Parker, Unknown , Unknown

I must govern the clock, not be governed by it.

-- Golda Meir, Unknown , Unknown

I personally think we developed language because of our deep need to complain.

-- Lily Tomlin, Unknown , Unknown

I think it's hard to make a living as a writer, but I think it's hard to work at McDonald's too…. I think the commitment is to get up everyday and say, "I'm a writer, therefore what I'm supposed to do today is write." And to do that, and to do that and to do that.

-- Pearl Cleage, Unknown , Unknown

I used to believe that anything was better than nothing. Now I know that sometimes nothing is better.

-- Glenda Jackson, Unknown , Unknown

I used to think I was an interesting person, but I must tell you how sobering a thought it is to realize your life's story fills about thirty-five pages and you have, actually, not much to say.

-- Roseanne, book Roseanne, 1990

I would honor a man who would give to his country a good newspaper.

-- Rutherford B. Hayes, Unknown , Unknown

I write from my knowledge not my lack, from my strength not my weakness.

-- Lucille Clifton, Unknown , Unknown

I'm glad I understand that while language is a gift, listening is a responsibility.

-- Nikki Giovanni, Unknown , 1943-

I'm glad this question came up, in a way, because there are so many different ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right.

-- Robert Benchley, Unknown , born September 15, 1889

I'm not bald, I'm a person of scalp.

-- Unknown, Unknown , Unknown

If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well.

-- Martin Luther King, Jr., Unknown , Unknown

If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.

-- Benjamin Franklin, Unknown , Unknown

If I could read a book, I'd definitely read one of yours.

-- Paris Hilton, when introduced to author Joan Collins, Unknown

If I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad. As to that regular, uninterrupted love of writing. I do not understand it. I feel it as a torture, which I must get rid of, but never as a pleasure. On the contrary, I think composition a great pain.

-- Lord Byron, Unknown , Unknown

If you call a tail a leg, how many legs has a dog? 5? no, 4. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.

-- Abraham Lincoln, Unknown , Unknown

If you can’t annoy somebody, there’s little point in writing.

-- Kingsley Amis, Unknown , born 1922

If you have anything to tell me of importance, for God's sake begin at the end.

-- Sara Jeannette Duncan, Unknown , 1861-1922

Imagination is more powerful even than knowledge.

-- Albert Einstein, Unknown , Unknown

In fact, nothing is said that has not been said before.

-- Publius Terentius Afer, Unknown , Unknown

In my writing, as much as I could, I tried to find the good, and praise it.

-- Alex Haley, Unknown , Unknown

In order to appreciate the English language one has to have a certain contempt for logic.

-- Lin Yutang, Unknown , born October 10, 1895

In the realm of ideas, it is better to let the mind sally forth, even if some precious preconceptions suffer a mauling.

-- Robert F. Goheen, Commencement Address, June 18, 1966

Information can’t be put in any container that isn’t leaky.

-- Spider Robinson, Unknown , Unknown

Information is the oxygen of the modern age. It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders.

-- Ronald Reagan, Unknown , Unknown

It ain't nothing to find no starting place in the world. You just start from where you find yourself.

-- August Wilson, Unknown , Unknown

It is a cardinal sin to bore the reader.

-- Larry Niven, Unknown , Unknown

It is a great pity that every human being does not, at an early stage of his life, have to write a historical work. He would then realize that the human race is in quite a jam about truth.

-- Rebecca West, Unknown , 1892-1983

It is better to know some of the questions than all the answers.

-- J. Thurber, Unknown , Unknown

It is by teaching that we teach ourselves, by relating that we observe, by affirming that we examine, by showing that we look, by writing that we think, by pumping that we draw water into the well.

-- Henri Frederic Amiel, Unknown , Unknown

It is easier to perceive error than to find truth, for the former lies on the surface and is easily seen, while the latter lies in the depth, where few are willing to search for it.

-- Johann von Goethe, Unknown , Unknown

It isn't what you know but the simple things you don't overlook.

-- Unknown, Unknown , Unknown

It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.

-- Robert Benchley, Unknown , Unknown

It was a book to kill time for those who liked it better dead.

-- Rose Macaulay, Unknown , Unknown

It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word.

-- Andrew Johnson, Unknown , Unknown

It's easy to have faith in yourself and have discipline when you're a winner, when you're number one. What you got to have is faith and discipline when you're not a winner.

-- Vince Lombardi, Unknown , Unknown

It's never too late--in fiction or in life--to revise.

-- Nancy Thayer, Unknown , Unknown

Knowledge is power.

-- Hobbs or Sir Francis Bacon, Unknown , Unknown

Language grows out of life, out of its needs and experiences…Language and knowledge are indissolubly connected; they are interdependent. Good work in language presupposes and depends on a real knowledge of things.

-- Anne Sullivan, Unknown , Unknown

Leaving behind books is even more beautiful-- there are far too many children.

-- Marguerite Yourcenar., Unknown , Unknown

Let such teach others who themselves excel, And censure freely who have written well.

-- Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism, Unknown

Let those who will write the nation's laws, if I can write its textbooks.

-- Paul Samuelson, author of seminal Economics text and winner of Nobel Prize in economics., 20th century

Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write.

-- John Adams, Unknown , Unknown

Life forms illogical patterns. It is haphazard and full of beauties which I try to catch as they fly by, for who knows whether any of them will ever return?

-- Margot Fonteyn, Unknown , Unknown

Life IS a multiple choice test, only we first have to think up the possible choices, of which there are at a large, if not infinite number for each problem, and then we must choose among them.

-- Mike Chejlava, Unknown , Unknown

Life is the game of boomerangs. Our thoughts, words and deeds return to us--sooner or later--with astounding accuracy.

-- Florence Shinn, Unknown , Unknown

Life requires thorough preparation. Veneer isn't worth anything.

-- George Washington Carver, Unknown , Unknown

Literature is my utopia.

-- Helen Keller, Unknown , Unknown

Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure.

-- Oliver Herford, Unknown , born December 1, 1863

Mastery of language affords remarkable power.

-- Frantz Fanon, Unknown , Unknown

Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands.

-- Jane Austen, 1775-1817, Persuasion, 1818

My commitment is to truth, not consistency.

-- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Unknown , Unknown

My evil genius Procrastination has whispered me to tarry 'til a more convenient season.

-- Mary Todd Lincoln, Unknown , Unknown

My teacher has a reading problem. He can't read my writing

-- Leopold Fechtner, Unknown , Unknown

Never accept the initial premise of the opposition.

-- John W. Campbell, Unknown , Unknown

Never get so fascinated by the extraordinary that you forget the ordinary.

-- Magdalen Nabb, Unknown , Unknown

Never place a period where God has placed a comma.

-- Gracie Allen, Unknown , Unknown

No experiment is ever a complete failure. It can always be used as a bad example.

-- Paul Dickson, Unknown , Unknown

No man but a blockhead, ever wrote, except for money.

-- Samuel Johnson, Unknown , Unknown

No matter how often you use the same brushes and paints, each canvas will be different.

-- Greg Henry Quinn, 365 Meditations for Teachers, March 19., 1995

Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold.

-- Zelda Fitzgerald, Unknown , Unknown

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Unknown , Unknown

Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must be first overcome.

-- Dr. Samuel Johnson, Unknown , Unknown

On July 22, 1962, Mariner I, a NASA rocket, deviated from its course and had to be destroyed. It swerved because a hyphen had been omitted from a program.

-- Unknown , Unknown , Unknown

On those who overanalyze his music: When you tear the wings off a butterfly, it is no longer a butterfly

-- Claude Debussy, Unknown , Unknown

Once you decide you have nothing else to learn, you have nothing else to teach.

-- Terry Olson, Focus on Faculty, Vol 15(2), Brigham Young University Faculty Center, 2005

One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach; one can collect only a few, and they are more beautiful if they are few.

-- Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Unknown , Unknown

One cannot create an art that speaks to men when one has nothing to say.

-- Andre Malraux, Unknown , Unknown

One who has imagination without learning, has wings without feet.

-- Joseph Joubert, Unknown , Unknown

Only people who do things make mistakes.

-- Unknown , Unknown , Unknown

Original thinking migrates each day in search of nourishment.

-- Maya Angelou, Unknown , Unknown

Originality is the art of concealing your sources.

-- Unknown, Unknown , Unknown

Originality usually amounts only to plagiarizing something unfamiliar.

-- Katherine Fullerton Gerould, Modes and Morals, 1920

Paperwork is the invention of the devil.

-- Alexis A. Gilliland, Unknown , Unknown

People ask where [the stories] come from--I don't know and I'm not bothering it, because if I keep bothering it I am not going to be able to do it.

-- J. California Cooper, Unknown , Unknown

People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.

-- Unknown, Unknown , Unknown

People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.

-- Unknown, Unknown , Unknown

People seldom see the halting and painful steps by which the most insignificant success is achieved.

-- Anne Sullivan, letter in 'Helen Keller, The Story of My Life', Oct. 30, 1887

Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not.

-- Walter Bagehot, Unknown , Unknown

Plato used the dialogue format because the exchange of views, the posing and answering of questions, showed that understanding is a living, dynamic process. He distrusted writing because the settled character of the written word makes it look as if truth can be fixed and made to stand still. It is worth remembering that this greatest advocate of the objective reality of truth also believed that our access to that truth was sustained in reasoned discussion.

-- John Churchill, From the Secretary: Inspiring Conversations in The Key Reporter. Vol 67, Number 4. P. 2., Summer 2002

Problems are to the mind what exercise is to the muscles; they toughen and make strong.

-- Norman Vincent Peale, Unknown , Unknown

Professor: “This essay on your dog is, word for word, the same as your brother’s.” Student: “Yes, sir, it’s the same dog.”

-- Mildred Meiers and Jack Knapp, Unknown , Unknown

Quoting: the act of repeating erroneously the words of another.

-- Ambrose Bierce, Unknown , Unknown

Reading without thinking is as nothing, as a book is less important for what it says than for what it makes one think.

-- Louis L'Amour, Unknown , Unknown

Remember, any jackass can kick over the barn, but it takes a carpenter to build one.

-- Tip O'Neil quoting Sam Rayburn, former Speaker of the House, Unknown , Unknown

Republicans say that before you criticize a man, you should walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when they criticize him, they are a mile away and they have his shoes.

-- Morimer Zuckerman, USNews & World Report, 1998, January 12

Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.

-- William O. Douglas, Unknown , Unknown

Robert Pirsig... wrote about a student who had difficulty writing about his her house. He asked the student to write about the door of the house. And if the student still couldn't think of anything to write, Persig would ask him her to write about the door knob.

-- Robert Pirsig as reported by Richard Tiberius, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance as reported on POD@listserv.nd.edu by Wed, 24 Oct 2001, Unknown

Sigmund Freud was a half-baked Viennese quack. Our literature, culture, and the films of Woody Allen would be better today if Freud had never written a word.

-- Ian Shoales, Unknown , Unknown

So I haven't been writing lately. Neither has Shakespeare.

-- On a Button., Unknown , Unknown

So many a good story is ruined by over reliance on truth.

-- James Gordon Bennett, Unknown , born Sept 1, 1795

Sometimes it is more important to discover what one cannot do, than what one can do.

-- Lin Yutang, Unknown , Unknown

Sometimes you just have to take the leap, and build your wings on the way down.

-- Kobi Yamada, Unknown , Unknown

Speed, quality, price. Pick any two.

-- James M. Wallace, Unknown , Unknown

Strong and bitter words indicate a weak cause.

-- Fortune Cookie, Unknown , Unknown

Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very," your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

-- Mark Twain, Unknown , Unknown

Teachers at all levels encourage the idea that you have to talk about things in order to understand them, because they wouldn't have jobs, otherwise. But it's phony, you know.

-- Denise Levertov, The Craft of Poetry, Unknown

Teaching has ruined more American novelists than drink.

-- Gore Vidal, Oui, April 1975

That's not writing, that's typing.

-- Truman Capote, about Jack Kerouac's style in On the Road, Unknown , Unknown

The advantage of the incomprehensible is that it never loses its freshness.

-- Paul Valery, Unknown , born October 30, 1871

The average Ph.D. thesis is nothing but the transference of bones from one graveyard to another.

-- Florence King, The Portable Curmudgeon Redux., Unknown

The boughs of no two trees ever have the same arrangement. Nature always produces individuals; She never produces classes.

-- Lydia Maria Child, Unknown , Unknown

The covers of this book are too far apart.

-- Ambrose Bierce, Unknown , Unknown

The cruelest lies are often told in silence.

-- Adlai Stevenson, Unknown , Unknown

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.

-- Mark Twain, Unknown , Unknown

The distance is nothing; it's only the first step that is difficult.

-- Mme. du Deffand, Unknown , Unknown

The ee's are cummings! The ee's are cummings!

-- Unknown , Unknown , Unknown

The elevator to success is out of order. You'll have to use the stairs…one step at a time.

-- Joe Girard, Unknown , Unknown

The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn.

-- Gloria Steinem, Unknown , 1934

The full area of ignorance is not yet mapped. We are at present only exploring its fringes.

-- John Desmond Bernal, Unknown , born 1901

The grandest homage we can pay to truth is to use it.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Unknown , Unknown

The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passions.

-- Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Unknown , Unknown

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

-- Albert Einstein, Unknown , Unknown

The job of the writer is to make revolution irresistible.

-- Toni Cade Bambara, Unknown , Unknown

The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.

-- Unknown, Unknown , Unknown

The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything.

-- Bishop W. C. Mager, Unknown , Unknown

The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.

-- Thomas Jefferson, Unknown , Unknown

The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.

-- William Arthur Ward, Unknown , Unknown

The more I read him, the less I wonder that they poisoned him.

-- Thomas Babington Macaulay comment on Socrates., Unknown , Unknown

The most important questions in life are unanswerable--but approachable.

-- Jamie McKenzie, Unknown , Unknown

The most powerful factors in the world are clear ideas in the minds of energetic men of good will.

-- J. Arthur Thomson, Unknown , Unknown

The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.

-- Thomas Jefferson, Unknown , Unknown

The number of external friends the text comes with is a good indication of its strength, but there is a surer sign: references to other documents. The presence or the absence of references, quotations, and footnotes is so much a sign that a document is serious or not that you can transform a fact into fiction or fiction into fact just by adding references. The effect of references on persuasion is not limited to that of 'prestige' or 'bluff'. Again, it is a question of NUMBERS. A paper that does not have references is like a child without an escort walking at night in a big city it does not know: isolated, lost, anything may happen to it. On the contrary, attacking a paper heavy with footnotes means that the dissenter has to weaken each of the other papers, or will at least be threatened with having to do so, whereas attacking a naked paper means that the reader and the author are of the same weight: face to face.

-- Bruno Latour, p. 33, Science in action: How to follow scientists and engineers through society. Harvard University Press, 1987

The only difference between a good shot and a bad shot is whether it goes in or not.

-- Charles Barkley, Unknown , Unknown

The only interesting answers are those which destroy the questions.

-- Susan Sontag, Unknown , Unknown

The pen is noisier than the sword.

-- Marta Randall, Unknown , Unknown

The pen is the tongue of the mind.

-- Miguel de Cervantes, Unknown , Unknown

The play was a great success, but the audience was a disaster.

-- Oscar Wilde, Unknown , Unknown

The power of generalizing ideas, of drawing comprehensive conclusions from individual observations, is the only acquirement, for an immortal being, that really deserves the name of knowledge.

-- Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Women, 1792

The quickest way to unlock your talent is to take the flute out of the box.

-- James Galway, Centrepiece, 2003

The road to success is always under construction.

-- Unknown, Unknown , Unknown

The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.

-- Mark Twain, Unknown , Unknown

The sooner you fall behind the more time you'll have to catch up.

-- Unknown, Unknown , Unknown

The superfluous is very

-- Unknown , Unknown , Unknown

The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him.

-- Robert Benchley, Unknown , born September 15, 1889

The text is a machine for producing meaning.

-- Octavio Paz, Unknown , Unknown

The things we sweep under the rug have a disconcerting habit of creeping out on the other side.

-- Unknown , Unknown , Unknown

The trouble with a lot of artists today is that they have too much technique and equipment. They don't know what to do with it all. If you cut down on it, you can work more strongly within narrower limits.

-- Alexander Calder, Unknown , Unknown

The trouble with facts is that there are so many of them.

-- Samuel McChord Crothers, Unknown , born June 7, 1857

The way a question is asked limits and disposes the ways in which any answer to it--right or wrong--may be given.

-- Susanne K. Langer, Unknown , Unknown

The way to get good ideas is to get lots of ideas and throw the bad ones away.

-- Linus Pauling, Unknown , Unknown

The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.

-- Fortune Cookie, Unknown , Unknown

The white fathers told us, "I think, therefore, I am" and the black mother within each of us--the poet--whispers in our dreams, I feel, therefore I can be free.

-- Audre Lorde, Unknown , Unknown

The whole world of thought lay unexplored before me, -- a world of which I had already caught large and tempting glimpses…

-- Lucy Larcom, A New England Girlhood, 1889

The world is but canvas to our imaginations.

-- Henry David Thoreau, Unknown , Unknown

The writing career is not a romantic one. The writer's life may be colorful, but his work itself is rather drab.

-- Mary Roberts Rinehart, My Story, 1931

The written word endures. Litera scripta manet.

-- unknown, Unknown , Unknown

The [U.S.] Constitution was the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.

-- Sir William Gladstone, British Prime Minister, Unknown , Unknown

There are few nudities so objectionable as the naked truth.

-- Agnes Repplier, Unknown , Unknown

There are no limits to the power of the human mind to construct new meaning from experience.

-- Novak and Gowin, Unknown , 1984

There are only two ways of telling the complete truth--anonymously and posthumously.

-- Thomas Sowell, Unknown , born July 30, 1930

There can hardly be a stranger commodity in the world than books. Printed by people who don't understand them; sold by people who don't understand them; bound, criticized and read by people who don't understand them; and now even written by people who don't understand them.

-- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Unknown , born July 1, 1742

There is a great difference between information and inspiration. You can get information by the cartful and the wagonful and the libraryful and the Sunday newspaperful, or in any other chunks or lumps that you choose. ..It is cheap; it is common; and it is worth about as much as it costs. But inspiration which comes from touching the life of truth itself is a priceless gem which comes only from close, devoted and continuous toil. A man knows when he has touched red-hot truth. He feels the shock…

-- Martin Grove Brumbaugh, Unknown , 1898

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

-- Maya Angelou, Unknown , 1928

There is no pleasure in having nothing to do; the fun is in having lots to do and not doing it.

-- Mary Little, Unknown , Unknown

There is no reason why good can’t triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia.

-- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Unknown , Unknown

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written.

-- Oscar Wilde, Unknown , 1856-1900

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.

-- Red Smith, Unknown , born September 25, 1905

There must be possible a fiction which, leaving sociology and case histories to the scientists, can arrive at the truth about the human condition, here and now, with all the bright magic of the fairy tale.

-- Ralph Ellison, Unknown , Unknown

There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.

-- Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 1881

There's a difference between a mystery and a question. Questions demand answers, but a mystery demands something more valuable--explanation.

-- Robert Cialdini, quoted in Jaffe, E. "Those who can, teach." APS Observer, 17(9), p. 22, 2004