Quotes

If I waited for perfection... I would never write a word.
— Margaret Atwood
Victor Hugo was a madman who thought he was Victor Hugo
— Jean Cocteau
To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, and be nothing
— Elbert Hubbard
For years there has been a theory that millions of monkeys typing at random on millions of typewriters would reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. The Internet has proven this theory to be untrue
— Robert Wilseny
History is the autobiography of a madman
— Alexander Herzen
Every action in our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity
— Edwin Hubbel Chapin
I don't have any oratory skills. But I would not use them if I had.
— Noam Chomsky
There are moments when one has to choose between living one's own life fully, entirely, completely, or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands
— Oscar Wilde
I shall pass through this world but once. Any good, therefore, that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it for I shall not pass this way again
— Etienne de Grellet
For the man who thinks for himself becomes acquainted with the authorities for his opinions only after he has acquired them and merely as confirmation of them, while the book philosopher starts with his authorities, in that he constructs his opinions by collecting together the opinions of others: his mind then compares with that of the former as an automon compares with a living man
— Arthur Schopenhauer
Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very, very edge of despair. I have sought love first because it brings ecstasy - ecstasy so great I would often have sacrificed all the rest of my life for a few hours of that joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieved loneliness - that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it, finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined, This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what - at last - I have found. Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a hated burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer. This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me
— Bertrand Russell
I don't have any solution, but I certainly admire the problem
— Oscar Wilde
Any PC built after 1985 has the storage capacity to house an evil spirit
— Reverend Jim Peasboro
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between
— Oscar Wilde
All of God's children are not beautiful. Most of God's children are, in fact, barely presentable
— Fran Lebowitz