QUOTATIONS   

   
"If one tells the truth, then sooner or later one will be found out"  (Oscar Wilde)

"If all else fails, we could tell the truth"   (Abdus Salam)
                  
"The truth is rarely pure, and never simple"   (Oscar Wilde)
         
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes"   (Oscar Wilde)

"No experiment should be believed until it has been confirmed by theory"  
 (Sir Arthur Eddington)

"Il y a en Angleterre soixante sectes religieuses differentes, et une seule sauce"  
 (Francesco Caraccioli)

"Alcohol, if taken in sufficient quantities, produces all the effects of intoxication"   
(Oscar Wilde)

When a nobleman reported that he had consumed three bottles of
port the previous night, he was asked if he had drunk them all
without assistance.  "Not quite," he replied, "I had the help 
of a bottle of Madeira."    (Hugh Johnson)

"Although we, the French, love the United States, our respect and 
admiration are not based on gastronomy nor on nutrition" (Michel Montignac)

"The goose is a silly bird; too much for one, and not enough for two"
(Samuel Johnson)

"The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything"
(Edward John Phelps)

"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject"
(Sir Winston Churchill)

"I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us.  Pigs treat us as equals"
(Sir Winston Churchill)

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened"
(Sir Winston Churchill)

"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty"
(Sir Winston Churchill) 

"I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me"
(Sir Winston Churchill)

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources"
(Albert Einstein)

"You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his 
tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand 
this?  And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, 
they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat"
(Albert Einstein, when asked to describe radio)

"A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain"
(Mark Twain)

"An Englishman is a person who does things because they have been done before.  An American is a person who does things because they haven't been 
done before"
(Mark Twain)

"Education: that which reveals to the wise, and conceals from the stupid, the vast limits of their knowledge"
(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)

"Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside"
(Mark Twain)

"America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up"
(Oscar Wilde)

"There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly 
what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear 
and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is 
another theory which states that this has already happened"
(Douglas Adams)

"He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it"
(Douglas Adams)

"Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking"
(H. L. Mencken)

"It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf"
(H. L. Mencken)

"Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy"
(H. L. Mencken)

"The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal"
(H. L. Mencken)

"More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One 
path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total 
extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly"
(Woody Allen)

"You can only be young once. But you can always be immature"
(Dave Barry)

"Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep"
(Albert Camus)

"Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end; then stop"
(Lewis Carroll)

"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes"
(Winston Churchill)

"There are trivial truths, and there are great truths. The opposite of 
a trivial truth is plainly false. The opposite of a great truth is 
also true"
(Neils Bohr)

"An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field"
(Niels Bohr)

"Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think"
(Niels Bohr)

"I do not like broccoli. And I haven't liked it since I was a little kid 
and my mother made me eat it. And I'm President of the United States and 
I'm not going to eat any more broccoli"
(George Bush, U.S. president, 1990)

"The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit"
(W. Somerset Maugham)

"After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations"
(H. L. Mencken, on Shakespeare)

"Opera in English is, in the main, about as sensible as baseball in Italian"
(H. L. Mencken)

"A drama critic is a man who leaves no turn unstoned"
(George Bernard Shaw)

"I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize"
(George Bernard Shaw)

"The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech"
(George Bernard Shaw) 

"He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire."
(Sir Winston Churchill)

"Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there 
will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, 
ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the 
journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory 
of the climb."
(Sir Winston Churchill)

"It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."
(Sir Winston Churchill)

"Democracy means government by discussion, but it is only effective if you can stop people talking."
(Clement Atlee)

"Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room."
(Sir Winston Churchill)

"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm."
(Sir Winston Churchill)

"Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions."
(Oliver Wendell Holmes)

"It is always the best policy to speak the truth--unless, of course, you are an exceptionally good liar."
(Jerome K. Jerome)

"I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours."
(Jerome K. Jerome, "Three Men in a Boat", 1889)

"Middle age is when you've met so many people that every new person you meet reminds you of someone else."
(Ogden Nash)

"Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy."
(Isaac Newton)

"There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But 
it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We 
used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them 
economical numbers."
(Richard Feynman)

"Eat a live toad the first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day."
(Anon)

"It is a curious thing... that every creed promises a paradise which will be absolutely uninhabitable for anyone of civilized taste."
(Evelyn Waugh)

"I don't mind what language an opera is sung in so long as it is a language I don't understand."
(Sir Edward Appleton)

"Her own mother lived the latter years of her life in the horrible suspicion that electricity was dripping invisibly all over the house."
(James Thurber)

"Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are more pliable."
(Mark Twain)

"An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile -- hoping it will eat him last"
(Winston Churchill)

"Although present on the occasion, I have no clear recollection of the events leading up to it."
(Winston Churchill, on his birth, recalled on his death 24 Jan 1965)

"My rule of life prescribed as an absolutely sacred rite smoking cigars and 
also the drinking of alcohol before, after and if need be during all meals 
and in the intervals between them."
(Winston Churchill, on dining with the abstinent 
 King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia)

"Playing golf is like chasing a quinine pill around a cow pasture"
(Winston Churchill)

"In war, you can only be killed once, but in politics, many times"
(Winston Churchill)

"If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons."
(Winston Churchill)

"If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. 
Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. 
Then hit it a third time--a tremendous whack."
(Winston Churchill)

"I shall always be glad to have seen it--for the same reason Papa gave for 
being glad to have seen Lisbon--namely, 'that it will be unnecessary ever 
to see it again.'
(Winston Churchill, on Calcutta, in 1896 letter to his mother)

"If the Almighty were to rebuild the world and asked me for advice, I 
would have English Channels round every country. And the atmosphere would 
be such that anything which attempted to fly would be set on fire."
(Winston Churchill)

"It cannot in the opinion of His Majesty's Government be classified as 
slavery in the extreme acceptance of the word without some risk of 
terminological inexactitude."
(Winston Churchill)

"Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never--in nothing, great 
or small, large or petty--never give in except to convictions of honour and 
good sense."
(Winston Churchill)

"For myself I am an optimist--it does not seem to be much use being anything else."
(Winston Churchill)

"KBO"
(Winston Churchill)

"The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives."
(Albert Einstein)

"If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing."
(Anatole France)


During the inter-war years, Churchill once mischievously invited a party of 
Mormons down to Chartwell for lunch. They duly attacked the fizzy water 
and the orange juice with their accustomed gusto, while Churchill 
imbibed something stronger with equal vigour.  At some point, the chief 
Mormon turned to his host, and observed: 
   "Mr Churchill, the reason I do not drink is that alcohol combines the 
    kick of the antelope with the bite of the viper."
Churchill fixed the Mormon with his most beatifically wicked smile, and 
replied: 
    "All my life, I have been searching for a drink like that."


Lady Astor: "Winston, if I were your wife, I'd poison your soup." 
Churchill:  "Nancy, if I were your husband, I'd drink it."


"And this brings me by natural sequence to the great drink question. 
As you know, of course, the American does not drink at meals as a sensible 
man should. Indeed, he has no meals. He stuffs for ten minutes thrice a day. 
Also he has no decent notions about the sun being over the yardarm or below 
the horizon."
(Rudyard Kipling)

"I feel that philosophy will never lead to important discoveries.  It's just a way of talking about discoveries which have already been made."
(Paul Dirac)

"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it."
(Groucho Marx)

"He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends."
(Oscar Wilde)

"A modest little person, with much to be modest about."
(Winston Churchill)

"He is not only dull himself, he is the cause of dullness in others."
(Samuel Johnson)

"He had delusions of adequacy."
(Walter Kerr)

"To save a man from the consequences of his folly is to breed a nation of fools."
(Herbert Spencer)

"Isn't it enough to see that the garden is beautiful, without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?"
(Douglas Adams)

"Obscurantism in an academic subject expands to fill the vacuum of its intrinsic simplicity"
(Richard Dawkins)

"The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if 
there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing 
but blind pitiless indifference"
(Richard Dawkins)

"There are three types of economist; those who can add up, and those who cannot."
(Eddie George)

"An empty taxi arrived at 10 Downing Street, and when the door was opened, Atlee got out"
(Winston Churchill)

"Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence"
(Napoleon Bonaparte)

"I divide my officers into four classes; the clever, the lazy, the 
industrious, and the stupid. Each officer possesses at least two of these 
qualities. Those who are clever and industrious are fitted for the highest 
staff appointments. Use can be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The 
man who is clever and lazy however is for the very highest command; he has 
the temperament and nerves to deal with all situations. But whoever is 
stupid and industrious is a menace and must be removed immediately"
(General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord)

"I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order 
to enjoy ourselves"
(Ludwig Wittgenstein)

"The power of accurate observation is frequently called cynicism by those 
who don't have it"
(George Bernard Shaw)

"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake"
(Napoleon Bonaparte)

"If you are going through hell, keep going"
(Sir Winston Churchill)

"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go"
(Oscar Wilde)

"We all agree that your theory is crazy, but is it crazy enough?"
(Niels Bohr)

"In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by 
everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the 
exact opposite"
(Paul Dirac)

"I would have made a good Pope"
(Richard M. Nixon)

"A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies"
(Oscar Wilde)

"University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small"
(Henry Kissinger) 

"For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of 
the not-worth-knowing"
(H.L. Mencken)

"Everything will be all right in the end... if it's not all right then it's not yet the end."  (Sonny, in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel) 

"The email of the species is deadlier than the mail"  (Stephen Fry)

"The key to success is sincerity - if you can fake that, you've got it made."  (George Burns)

"Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit, wisdom is not 
putting it in a fruit salad"   (Miles Kington)

"My tastes are simple: I am easily satisfied with the best"  (Winston Churchill)

"Prejudice is a great time-saver; it allows one to draw conclusions without having to first consider the facts." (George Bernard Shaw)


"'Oh, I'm, not complaining,' said Chuffy, looking rather like Saint Sebastian on receipt of about the fifteenth arrow. 'You have a perfect right to love who you like . . .'
"'Whom, old man,' I couldn't help saying. Jeeves has made me rather a purist in these matters."

(P.G. Wodehouse, Thank You, Jeeves, 1934)

"If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, then what are we to think of an empty desk?" (Albert Einstein)

"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results."
(Winston Churchill)

"However dire the dangers of his enmity may be, they pale before the perils of his friendship."  (Violet Bonham Carter, of Lord Beaverbrook)

"Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something."  (Plato)

"Religion began when the first scoundrel met the first fool." (Voltaire)

"It may be worth exploring a possible metaphoric relation between the semiotic realm and its possible capacity to mirror exotic ontology in the context of original creativity." (Arthur Gibson, in "God and the Universe.")

"As the leader of all illegal activities in Casablanca, I am an influential and respected man."    Signor Ferrari (Casablanca)