A Mixture of Quotations

Knowledge is power and permits the wise to conquer without bloodshed and to accomplish deeds surpassing all others.
--Sun Tzu, Chou dynasty philosopher and military strategist, The Art of War (Fourth Century BC)

I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand.
--Ancient Chinese proverb

The further one pursues knowledge, the less one knows.
--Lao Tse, 500 BC

Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?
--Harry M. Warner, Warner Bros Pictures, 1927

There is no likelyhood man can ever tap the power of the atom.
--Robert Millikan, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics, 1923

We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.
--Decca Recording Company rejecting The Beatles.

Man is only man at the surface. Remove his skin, dissect, and immediately you come to machinery.
--Paul Valèry (French poet and critic)

My own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.
--J.B.S. Haldane (Brittish geneticist)

If I have seen farther than other men, it is because I stood on the shoulders of giants.
--Sir Isaac Newton

The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it.
--Mark Weiser, head of the Xerox PARC Computer Science Laboratory

Experience has shown that science frequently develops most fruitfully once we learn to examine the things that seem the simplest, instead of those that seem the most mysterious.
--Marvin Minsky

The Importance of Being Earnest, I

I have invented an invaluable permanent invalid called Bunbury, in order that I may be able to go down into the country whenever I choose.

The amount of women in London who flirt with their own husbands is perfectly scandalous. It looks so bad. It is simply washing one's clean linen in public.

To loose one parent, Mr Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

The old-fashioned respect for the young is fast dying out.

The Importance of Being Earnest, II

On an occasion of this kind it becomes more than a moral duty to speak one's mind. It becomes a pleasure.

The Importance of Being Earnest, III

Never speak disrespectfully of Society, Algernon. Only people who can't get into it do that.

This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.

It is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth.

The Portrait of Dorian Gray

A man cannnot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.

I can sympathize with everything, except suffering.

The Critic as Artist

Ah! don't say you agree with me. When people agree with me I always feel that I must be wrong.

As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have it´s fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.

There is no sin except stupidity.

Lady Windermere's Fan

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

A good indignation brings out all one´s powers.

The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.

Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices.

There is always a best way of doing everything, if it be only to boil an egg. Manners are the happy ways of doing things.

Every man is a consumer and ought to be a producer.

Essays

Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it.

"Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?" in My Little Chickadee

The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.

Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.

Richard Wagner, a musician who wrote music which is better than it sounds.

Get your facts first, and then you can distort 'em as much as you please.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness.

Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which, before their union, were not perceived to have any relation.

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

Everything I like is either illegal, immoral or fattening. -- Ingemar Lundberg (1921-1991) adapted from Alexander Woollcott

A broker is a man who takes your fortune and runs it into a shoestring. --Alexander Woollcott (1887-1943)

I must get out of these wet clothes and into a dry Martini. --Alexander Woollcott (1887-1943)