If something goes wrong, it is more important to talk about who is going to fix it, than who is to blame.
- Francis J. Gable
A man in love is incomplete until he is married. Then he is finished.
- Zsa Zsa Gabor
Getting divorced just because you don’t love a man is almost as silly as getting married just because you do.
- Zsa Zsa Gabor
Husbands are like fires - they go out when unattended.
- Zsa Zsa Gabor
I have never hated a man enough to give his diamonds back.
- Zsa Zsa Gabor
You can blow out a candle,
but you can’t blow out a fire.
Once the flame begins to catch,
the wind will blow it higher.
- Peter Gabriel, "Biko"
Spring is here. For the love of heaven, let’s open our windows or we’ll all die, suffocated by our false fears.
- Lysiane Gagnon
Anyone who says he isn’t going to resign, four times, definitely will.
- John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-)
As a man of more than average caution, I have never felt absolutely secure until Evans and Novak have spoken.
- John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-)
Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.
- John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-)
Getting on the cover of TIME guarantees the existence of opposition in the future.
- John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-)
I have a feeling that at any time about three million Americans can be had for any militant reaction against law, decency, the Constitution, the Supreme Court, compassion and the rule of reason.
- John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-)
I was brought up in southwestern Ontario where we were taught that Canadian patriotism should not withstand anything more than a five-dollar-a-month wage differential. Anything more than that and you went to Detroit.
- John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-)
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
- John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-)
If both Alsops say it’s true, it can’t be so.
- John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-)
If it is dangerous to suppose that government is always right, it will sooner or later be awkward for public administration if most people suppose that it is always wrong.
- John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-)
It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled seas of thought.
- John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-)
Meetings are indispensable when you don’t want to do anything.Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.
- John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-)
One does not have to keep bad governments in to keep Communists out.
- John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-)
Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.
- John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-)
Talk of revolution is one way of avoiding reality.
- John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-)
The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.
- John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-)
The happiest time of anyone’s life is just after the first divorce.
- John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-)
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.
- John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-)
Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it’s just the opposite.
- John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-)
What is called a high standard of living consists, in considerable measure, in arrangements for avoiding muscular energy, for increasing sensual pleasure and enhancing caloric intake above any conceivable nutritional requirement.
- John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-)
When people are least sure, they are often most dogmatic.
- John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-)
Where humor is concerned there are no standards -- no one can say what is good or bad, although you can be sure that everyone will.
- John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-)
And who can doubt that it will lead to the worst disorders when minds created free by God are compelled to submit slavishly to an outside will? When we are told to deny our senses and subject them to the will of others? When people devoid of whatsoever competence are made judges over experts and are granted authority to treat them as they please? These are the novelties which are apt to bring about the ruin of commonwealths and the subversion of the state.
- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
But where the senses fail us, reason must step in.
- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
In questions of science the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.
- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
It has always seemed to me extreme presumptuousness on the part of those who want to make human ability the measure of what nature can and knows how to do, since, when one comes down to it, there is not one effect in nature, no matter how small, that even the most speculative minds can fully understand.
- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
If I had a plantation in Georgia and a home in Hell, I’d sell the plantation and go home.
- Eugene P. Gallagher
I wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence. There’s a knob called brightness, but it doesn’t work.
- Gallagher
I can see stopping a car for a dog. But a cat? You squish a cat and go on. I think we’re overcomplicating life.
- Iowa Democratic State Sen. James Gallagher
If you put garbage in a computer nothing comes out but garbage. But this garbage, having passed through a very expensive machine, is somehow enobled and none dare criticize it.
- Pierre Gallois
A hypothetical paradox: What would happen in a battle between an Enterprise security team, who always get killed soon after appearing, and a squad of Imperial Stormtroopers, who can’t hit the broad side of a planet?
- Tom Galloway
It’s a well known fact that computing devices such as the abacus were invented thousands of years ago. But it’s not well known that the first use of a common computer protocol occured in the Old Testament. This, of course, was when Moses aborted the Egyptians’ process with a control-sea...
- Tom Galloway
I could prove God statistically.
- George Gallup
Anergy-State: Any state of the Universe, or any portion of it, which requires the expenditure of human effort or ingenuity to bring it into line with human desires, needs, or pleasures.
- Dr. John Gall
Any large system is going to be operating most of the time in failure mode.
- Dr. John Gall
New systems create new problems.
- Dr. John Gall
Systems display antics.
- Dr. John Gall
Systems in general work very poorly or not at all.
- Dr. John Gall
Systems tend to grow, and as they grow, they encroach.
- Dr. John Gall
The dossier is not the person.
- Dr. John Gall
Idealism increases in direct proportion to one’s distance from the problem.
- John Galsworthy
The beginnings and the endings of all human undertakings are untidy.
- John Galsworthy
In a bureaucratic system an increase in expenditure will be matched by a fall in production. Such systems will act rather like "black holes" in the economic universe, simultaneously sucking in resources and shrinking in terms of "emitted" production.
- Dr. Max Gammon
A ’No’ uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a ’Yes’ merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble.
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948)
Adaptability is not imitation. It means power of resistance and assimilation.
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948)
Capital as such is not evil; it is its wrong use that is evil.
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948)
Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948)
God has no religion.
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948)
I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers.
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948)
In matters of conscience, the law of majority has no place.
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948)
Indolence is a delightful but distressing state; we must be doing something to be happy. Action is no less necessary than thought to the instinctive tendencies of the human frame.
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948)
The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be measured by the way in which its animals are treated.
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948)
There is more to life than increasing its speed.
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948)
Tipper and Al came to a show the last time we were in Washington. They’re nice people, a nice family. We made every effort not to frighten them.
- Jerry Garcia, on rumors the Grateful Dead may play at the Inaugural. Boston Globe, Dec 12,1992.
Opera is where a guy gets stabbed in the back and instead of bleeding he sings.
- Ed Gardner
One of my less pleasant chores when I was young was to read the Bible from one end to the other. Reading the Bible straight through is at least 70 percent discipline, like learning Latin. But the good parts are, of course, simply amazing. God is an extremely uneven writer, but when He’s good, nobody can touch Him.
- John W. Gardner, NYT Book Review, Jan 1983
The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exaulted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy ... neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.
- John W. Gardner
When people are starving, life is no longer meaningless.
- John W. Gardner
Every psychic investigator of [the medium] Mrs. Piper was impressed by her simplicity and honesty. It never occurred to them that no charlatan ever achieves greatness by acting like a charlatan. No professional spy acts like a spy. No card cheat behaves at the table like a card cheat.
- Martin Gardner
It is sad to find him belaboring the science community for its united opposition to ignorant creationists who want teachers and textbooks to give equal time to crank arguments that have advanced not a step beyond the flyblown rhetoric of Bishop Wilberforce and William Jennings Bryan.
- Martin Gardner
Today’s pop counterculture, especially among the young, is an awesome mix of maximum mindlessness, minimum historical awareness, and a pathetic yearning for (to quote Chico Marx) strawberry shortcut. To hell with established religions, with science, with philosophy, with economics and politics, with the liberal arts-- with anything that demands time and effort.
- Martin Gardner
Not everything that counts can be counted. Not everything that can be counted counts.
- Charles Garfield
Give me the ready hand rather than the ready tongue.
- Giuseppe Garibaldi
Cataloging my virtues won’t work either. I hold them to a minimum so that they’re easy to keep track of.
- James Garner as Jim Rockford in "The Rockford Files"
The vice-presidency ain’t worth a pitcher of warm spit.
- Vice President John Nance Garner (1868-1967)
If the aborigine drafted an IQ test, all of Western civilization would presumably flunk it.
- Stanley Garn
Maybe it was the snake drills. Maybe that’s what got to them. From time to time, it seemed right to throw a length of hose into the river, yell ’Snake!’, and everyone open up with shotguns, Magnums, semi-automatic weapons, whatever was handy on the boats. Apart from being fun, it established that the Gunkhole was heavily armed and crazy, which was all to the good. You wound up being able to leave your tools out on the deck and go for a beer and come back, and nobody had messed with your stuff.
- Joel Garreau, _The Nine Nations of North America_
The general prizes most the fortress which took the longest siege.
- Edward Garrett
We show our present joking, giggling race, True joy consists in gravity and grace.
- Garrick
My country is the world. My countrymen are all mankind.
- William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879)
That which is not just is not law.
- William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879)
With reasonable men, I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost.
- William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879)
In differing breasts what differing passions glow! Ours kindle quick, but yours extinguish slow.
- Garth
Humor is an affirmation of dignity, a declaration of man’s superiority to all that befalls him.
- Romain Gary
Hey Steve, just because you broke into Xerox’s store before I did and took the TV doesn’t mean I can’t go in later and take the stereo.
- Bill Gates
I think it would be pretty bizarre if OS/2 finds any popularity.
- Bill Gates
Man, I’d give anything to be as articulate as Steve Jobs.
- Bill Gates
Software suppliers are trying to make their software packages more ’user-friendly’ [...] Their best approach, so far, has been to take all the old brochures, and stamp the words, ’user-friendly’ on the cover.
- Bill Gates
That we can comprehend the little we know already is mindboggling in itself.
- Tom Gates
Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge.
- Paul Gauguin (1848-1903)
Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.
- Jules de Gaultier
There *are* standards. If you can’t see one, you *make* one and stick to it come Hell or high water- until you see a BETTER one.
- John Gaunt
I was part of that strange race of people aptly described as spending their lives doing things they detest to make money they don’t want to buy things they don’t need to impress people they dislike.
- Emile Henry Gauvreay
Expressing anger is a form of public littering.
- Willard Gaylin
Look round the wrecks of play behold, Estates dismember’d, mortgaged, sold; Their owners now to jail confin’d, Show equal poverty of mind.
- Gay
Those who in quarrels interpose, Must often wipe a bloody nose.
- Gay
The comfortable estate of widowhood is the only hope that keeps up a wife’s spirits.
- John Gay
If you want to make an enemy, do someone a favor.
- Charles L. Geanangel
Death is life’s way of telling you you’ve been fired.
- R. Geis
I wouldn’t mind dying -- it’s the business of having to stay dead that scares the shit out of me.
- R. Geis
Ten years of rejection slips is nature’s way of telling you to stop writing.
- R. Geis
Impeccability, a finely honed strategic sense, and an intelligent application of personal ferocity beat out fear and hate every time.
- Joshua Geller
Whatever isn’t forbidden is required.
- Murray Gell-Mann
If there is no reason why something shouldn’t exist, then it must exist.
- Murray Gell-Martin
3. Someone broke into your credit card database and stole 400,000 middle initials.
- Dave George, The Top 5 Signs Your Website Was Hacked by Dumb Guys (topfive.com), 11 Feb 2000
When a group of newsmen go out to dinner together, the bill is to be evenly divided among them, regardless of what each one eats and drinks.
- Jack Germond
When we watch a movie, we are actually seeing 24 still pictures flashed on the screen every second... yet, we have the illusion of seeing continuous motion. In this case, the cinematic process works because our brain is somehow doing the interpolation for us. This is an example of sampling in action in our everyday lives. Another example is watching soap operas on television. It is typically sufficient to tune in to one out of four episodes of these ongoing daily serials to keep track of the story and the events in the lives of the characters.
- Allen Gersho, Robert Gray, _Vector Quantization and Signal Compression_
Given enough time, what you put off doing today will eventually get done by itself.
- G. Gestra
If you can count your money, you don’t have a billion dollars.
- John Paul Getty
If you owe the bank $100, that’s your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that’s the bank’s problem
- John Paul Getty
The meek shall inherit the Earth, but not its mineral rights.
- John Paul Getty
If we can’t fix it, we’ll fix it so nobody can.
- Billy Gibbons
A kiss: the anatomical juxtaposition of 2 orbicularis oris muslces in a state of contraction.
- Dr. Henry Gibbons
The anatomical juxtaposition of 2 orbicularis oris muscles in a state of contraction.
- Dr. Henry Gibbons
The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful. And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord.
- Edward Gibbon (1737-1794), "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", ch. 2
All that is human must retrograde if it do not advance.
- Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)
As long as mankind shall continue to bestow more liberal applause on their destroyers than on their benefactors, the thirst of military glory will ever be the vice of the most exalted characters.
- Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)
In the end more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free.
- Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)
My early and invincible love of reading, which I would not exchange for the treasures of India. . .
- Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)
The wind and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.
- Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)
Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book.
- Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)
It’s ironic that the average user has more computing power on his desk than a mainframe shop of 20 years ago could dream of, but still has trouble writing a letter.
- Charlie Gibbs
Most people don’t know the difference between "ease of learning" and "ease of use".
- Charlie Gibbs
Our only hope is that the general literacy level falls fast enough that the newsgroups are left to those of us who still have the ability and desire to deal with text.
- Charlie Gibbs
The purpose of JCL is to give you something to debug once you have your programs running.
- Charlie_Gibbs@mindlink.bc.ca
He wasn’t exactly hostile to facts, but he was apathetic about them.
- Woolcott Gibbs
A system tends to grow in terms of complexity rather than of simplification, until the resulting unreliability becomes intolerable.
- Tom Gibb
All real programs contain errors until proven otherwise, which is impossible.
- Tom Gibb
At the source of every error which is blamed on the computer you will find at least two human errors, including the error of blaming it on the computer.
- Tom Gibb
Self-checking systems tend to have a complexity in proportion to the inherent unreliability of the system in which they are used.
- Tom Gibb
The error-detection and correction capabilities of any system will serve as the key to understanding the type of errors which they cannot handle.
- Tom Gibb
The only difference between a fool and a criminal who attacks a system is that the fool attacks unpredictably and on a broader front.
- Tom Gibb
Be Yourself. Who else is better qualified?
- Frank J. Giblin II
Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.
- Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931)
Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too grave to laugh, and too self-ful to seek other than itself.
- Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931)
You may forget the one with whom you have laughed, but never the one with whom you have wept.
- Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931)
If you reveal your secrets to the wind you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees.
- Khalil Gibran (1883-1931)
I wouldn’t be surprised if the architecture of Intel’s microprocessors were eventually linked to the eventual fall of mankind.
- Steve Gibson
It’s nothing short of sheer, unadulterated lunacy to even briefly entertain the notion that anything useful could ever possibly evolve from this ill-begotten and desperate shotgun marriage between IBM and Apple.
- Steve Gibson
Art is a collarboration between God an the artist, and the less the artist does the better.
- Andre Gide (1869-1951)
If a young writer can refrain from writing, he shouldn’t hesitate to do so.
- Andre Gide (1869-1951)
It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.
- Andre Gide (1869-1951)
Know thyself? A maxim as pernicious as it is ugly. Whoever observes himself arrests his own development. A caterpillar who wanted to know itself well would never become a butterfly.
- Andre Gide (1869-1951)
Seize from every moment its unique novelty, and do not prepare your joys.
- Andre Gide (1869-1951)
The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that you’ve got it made.
- Jean Gieraudoux
Distributed computing is where someone tripping over a cable in another building can ruin your day
- D. Gifford
Hey babe, I’ve got an O(n) method for computing form factors.
- Stephen Gifford
No one can have a higher opinion of him than I have, and I think he’s a dirty little beast.
- W. S. Gilbert (1836-1911)
Humor is a drug which it’s the fashion to abuse.
- W. S. Gilbert (1836-1911)
No one can have a higher opinion of him than I have, and I think he’s a dirty little beast.
- W. S. Gilbert (1836-1911)
When everyone is somebody, then no one’s anybody.
- W. S. Gilbert (1836-1911)
A pleasing trembling thrills through all my blood Whene’er you touch me with your melting hand; But when you kiss, oh! ’tis not to be spoke.
- Gildon
Layered protocols give the software implementor a chance to ruin his performance in each layer.
- Don Gillies
A libertarian is just an anarchist on the gold standard.
- Alexis Gilliland
Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious.
- Brendan Gill
Eternity is not something that begins after you are dead. It is going on all the time. We are in it now.
- Charlotte P Gilman
If love makes the world go ’round, Why are we going to outer space?
- Margaret Gilman
Look over your shoulder now and then to be sure someone’s following you.
- Henry Gilmer
I’d be glad to throw the ANSI C committee a retirement party, if they won’t ever meet again for the next 10 years. I’m serious.
- John Gilmore
The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.
- John Gilmore
Working in the theater has a lot in common with unemployment.
- Arthur Gingold
Contrary to popular belief, English women do not wear tweed nightgowns.
- Hermione Gingold
America, how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
- Allen Ginsberg
Only the mediocre are always at their best.
- Jean Giraudoux
There is no better way to exercise the imagination than the study of the law. No artist ever interpreted nature as freely as a lawyer interprets the truth.
- Jean Giraudoux
All the world over, I will back the masses against the classes.
- William Ewart Gladstone (1809-1898)
To comprehend a man’s life, it is necessary to know mot merely what he does but also what he purposely leaves undone. There is a limit to the work that can be got out of a human body or a human brain, and he is a wise man who wastes no energy on pursuits for which he is not fitted; and he is still wiser who, among the things that he can do well, chooses and resolutely follows the best.
- William Ewart Gladstone (1809-1898)
The problem with any unwritten law is that you don’t know where to go to erase it.
- Glaser and Way
There’s something wrong if you’re always right.
- Arnold Glasow
Live so that your friends can defend you but never have to.
- Arnold H. Glasgow
What with chromodynamics and electroweak too Our Standardized Model should please even you, Tho once you did say that of charm there was none It took courage to switch as to say Earth moves not Sun. Yet your state of the union penultimate large Is the last known haunt of the Fractional Charge, And as you surf in the hot tub with sourdough roll Please ponder the passing of your sole Monopole. Your Olympics were fun, you should bring them all back For transsexual tennis or Anamalon Track, But Hollywood movies remain sinfully crude Whether seen on the telly or Remotely Viewed. Now fasten your sunbelts, for you’ve done it once more, You said it in Leipzig of the thing we adore, That you’ve built an incredible crystalline sphere Whose German attendants spread trembling and fear Of the death of our theory by Particle Zeta Which I’ll bet is not there say your article, later.
- Sheldon Glashow, Physics Today, Dec. 1984
But I was not, to use the theological phrase, _receptive_. The great obstacle to the influx of grace was my own perfect happiness, and it is well known that God takes no thought for the happy, any more than He does for birds and puppies, perhaps realizing they have no need of Him and mercifully letting them alone.
- John Glassco
PS - There is no truth to the rumor that nns got ’stuck’ in alt.sex because it got ’interested’ in what it saw there, despite those who say that such behavior would be normal for a program I wrote.
- Bob Glickstein, 10/9/89 andrew.ms
American husbands are the best in the world; no other husbands are so generous to their wives, or can be so easily divorced.
- Elinor Glyn
I have never been drunk, but often I’ve been overserved.
- George Gobel
I’m proud of paying taxes. The only thing is--I could be just as proud for half the money.
- Arthur Godfrey
I’m proud to be paying taxes in the United States. The only thing is, I could be just as proud for half the money.
- Arthur Godfrey
When a workstation hangs there’s a reason... When a Mac crashes it’s just Mac OS..
- Forest Godfrey
Celibacy is not hereditary.
- Guy Godin
Generalizedness of incompetence is directly proportional to highestness in hierarchy.
- Guy Godin
You can’t out-sarcasm reality.
- Jens Goerke
A man’s errors are what makes him amiable.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
And here, poor fool, with all my lore I stand no wiser than before.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
Death is a comingling of eternity with time; in the death of a good man, eternity is seen looking through time.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
Es ist nicht genug zu wissen, man muss auch anwenden. Es ist nicht genug zu wollen, man muss auch tun. (It is not enough to have knowledge, one must also apply it. It is not enough to have wishes, one must also accomplish.)
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
He who possesses art and science has religion; he who does not possess them, needs religion.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
I do not know myself, and God forbid that I should.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
I will not be as those who spend the day in complaining of the head-ache, and the night in drinking the wine that gives the headache.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
Just trust yourself, then you will know how to live.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
Know thyself? If I knew myself, I’d run away.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they translate into their own laguage, and forthwith it is something entirely different.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
Men are so constituted that everybody undertakes what he sees another successful in, whether he has aptitude for it or not.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
Nature is beneficent. I praise her and all her works. She is silent and wise. She is cunning, but for good ends. She has brought me here and will also lead me away. She may scold me, but she will not hate her work. I trust her.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
Oh God, how do the world and heavens confine themselves, when our hearts tremble in their own barriers!
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture and, if possible, speak a few reasonable words.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
The unnatural, that too is natural.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
What is hardest of all? That which seems most simple: to see with your eyes what is before your eyes.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
What we do not understand we do not possess.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
Whatever you can do or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
My rage is not malicious; like a spark of fire by steel enforced out of a flint it is no sooner kindled, but extinct.
- Goffe
Man is not like other animals in the ways that are really significant: Animals have instincts, we have taxes.
- Erving Goffman
If you have both feet planted on level ground, then the university has failed you.
- Robert F. Goheen
Modern diplomats approach every problem with an open mouth.
- Arthur J. Goldberg
I am surprised nothing has been made of the fact that astronaut Neil Armstrong carried no sidearms when he landed on the moon.
- Justice Arthur Goldberg
Learning from one’s own experience is even more impractical if the injury is a very serious one. In the extreme case of a fatal accident, of course, the learning experience might be profound, but the learning curve is abruptly truncated.
- Victor Goldberg (1974)
Where do you place your hate?
- Henry Goldblum
That is one of the Laws of Usenet, up there with ’You can tell when a Usenet discussion is getting old when someone drags out Hitler and the Nazis.’
- David Goldfarb
Only exceptionally rational men can afford to be absurd.
- Allen Goldfein
A flattering painter, who made it his care to draw men as they ought to be, not as they are.
- Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774)
A reserved lover, it is said, always makes a suspicious husband.
- Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774)
Eternal sunshine settles on its head.
- Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774)
How blest is he who crowns, in shades like these, A youth of labor with an age of ease.
- Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774)
I do not love a man who is zealous for nothing.
- Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774)
In arguing, too, the parson owned his skill, for even tho’ vanquish’d he could argue still.
- Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774)
Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law.
- Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774)
Logicians have but ill defined As rational the human kind. Logic, they say, belongs to man, But let them prove it if they can.
- Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774)
Our greatest glory consists not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
- Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774)
People seldom improve, when they have no other model but themselves to copy.
- Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774)
The English laws punish vice; the Chinese laws do more, they reward virtue.
- Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774)
The little mind who loves itself, will write and think with the vulgar; but the great mind will be bravely eccentric, and scorn the beaten road, from universal benevolence.
- Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774)
The person whose clothes are extremely fine I am too apt to consider as not being possessed of any superiority of fortune, but resembling those Indians who are found to wear all the gold they have in the world in a bob at the nose.
- Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774)
There is nothing so absurd or ridiculous that has not at some time been said by some philosopher.
- Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774)
Want of prudence is too frequently the want of virtue; nor is there on earth a more powerful advocate for vice than poverty?
- Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774)
I’m not sure I’ve even got the brains to be President.
- Barry Goldwater in 1964
A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.
- Barry Goldwater
Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.
- Samuel Goldwyn (1882-1974)
Every Tom, Dick and Harry is named William.
- Samuel Goldwyn (1882-1974)
I had a monumental idea this morning, but I didn’t like it.
- Samuel Goldwyn (1882-1974)
I may not always be right, but I’m never wrong.
- Samuel Goldwyn (1882-1974)
If I could drop dead right now, I’d be the happiest man alive!
- Samuel Goldwyn (1882-1974)
Include me out.
- Samuel Goldwyn (1882-1974)
Television has raised writing to a new low.
- Samuel Goldwyn (1882-1974)
Lif is too short
- Bart Gold
A column about errors will contain errors.
- Bill Gold
All other things being equal, a bald man cannot be elected President of the United States.
- Vic Gold
Experts do not like surprises. It makes them look bad at the home office.
- Vic Gold
Given a choice between two bald political candidates, the American people will vote for the less bald of the two.
- Vic Gold
Never say maybe in the same circulation area where you just said never.
- Vic Gold
The candidate who is expected to do well because of experience and reputation (Douglas, Nixon) must do better than well, while the candidate expected to fare poorly (Lincoln, Kennedy) can put points on the media board by simply surviving.
- Vic Gold
The worst crime against working people is a company which fails to operate at a profit.
- Samuel Gompers (1850-1924), 1908
Humor is a universal language.
- Joel Goodman
Few great men could pass Personnel.
- Paul Goodman (1911-1972)
Abuse is the weapon of the vulgar.
- Samuel Griswold Goodrich
After several minutes of utterly dull conversation I began to think of her not as a woman but as a human, then not as a human but as an animal, then not as an animal but as a source of high-grade protein.
- Mark Gooley
The market is not an invention of capitalism. It has existed for centuries. It is an invention of civilization.
- Mikhail Gorbachev (June 8, 1990)
Canadian consumers race across the border to buy the kind of cheap goods that a country with low wages and a third-rate social security system can produce. So empty are their lives, apparently, that a three-hour lineup of cars at the border coming back is viewed as an acceptable trade-off.
- Charles Gordon
Great men are not always idiots
- Karen Elizabeth Gordon
Crossposting isn’t inherently evil, in the same sense that necrophilia doesn’t really hurt anybody. One wonders only whether it’s appropriate to the occasion.
- Rick Gordon
In our family we don’t divorce our men - we bury them.
- Ruth Gordon (1897-1985)
You have to have a talent for having talent.
- Ruth Gordon (1897-1985)
What publishers are looking for these days isn’t radical feminism. It’s corporate feminism - a brand of feminism designed to sell books and magazines, three-piece suits, airline tickets, Scotch, cigarettes and, most important, corporate America’s message, which runs: Yes, women were discriminated against in the past, but that unfortunate mistake has been remedied; now every woman can attain wealth, prestige and power by dint of individual rather than collective effort.
- Susan Gordon
The trouble with my wife is that she is a whore in the kitchen and a cook in the bed.
- Geoffrey Gorer
A detective digs around in the garbage of people’s lives. A novelist invents people and then digs around in their garbage.
- Joe Gores
Adorable in her not-very-bright submissiveness, charming in her childlike delight in shiny floors, even forgivable in her spiteful competition for the whitest, brightest wash, Madison Avenue’s girl-next-door is all the American male could wish for-- unless, by some miscarriage, he should fancy human companionship.
- Vivian Gornick and Barbara K. Moran
/* This is the tricky part. */
- James Gosling
For some reason a glaze passes over people’s faces when you say ’Canada’. Maybe we should invade South Dakota or something.
- Sandra Gotlieb, wife of the Canadian ambassador to the U.S.
Goulden’s Axiom of the Bouncing Can: If you drop a full can of beer, and remember to rap the top sharply with your knuckle prior to opening, the ensuing gush of foam will be between 89 and 94 percent of the volume that would splatter you if you didn’t do a damn thing and went ahead and pulled the top immediately.
- Joseph C. Goulden
If a jury in a criminal trial stays out for more than twenty-four hours, it is certain to vote acquittal, save in those instances where it votes guilty.
- Joseph C. Goulden
We all enter this world the same way: naked, screaming, and covered in blood. But if you live your life right, that kind of thing doesn’t have to stop there.
- Dana Gould
Acquired characteristics are inherited in technology and culture. Lamarckian evolution is rapid and accumulative. It explains the cardinal difference between our past, purely biological mode of change, and our current, maddening acceleration toward something new and liberating-- or toward the abyss.
- Stephen Jay Gould
Human consciousness arose but a minute before midnight on the geological clock. Yet we mayflies try to bend an ancient world to our purposes, ignorant perhaps of the messages buried in its long history. Let us hope that we are still in the early morning of our April day.
- Stephen Jay Gould
If we are still here to witness the destruction of our planet some five billion years or more hence, then we will have achieved something so unprecedented in the history of life that we should be willing to sing our swansong with joy-- _sic transit gloria mundi_.
- Stephen Jay Gould
In science, "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent." I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.
- Stephen Jay Gould
We pass through this world but once. Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life, few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope, by a limit imposed from without, but falsely identified as lying within.
- Stephen Jay Gould
Man has made use of his intelligence, he invented stupidity.
- Remy de Gourmont (1858-1915)
Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters; united with it, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of marvels.
- Goya
A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends.
- Baltasar Gracian
To know how to refuse is as important as to know how to consent.
- Baltasar Gracian
If it can break, it will, but only after the warranty expires.
- Sherry Graditor
I’m not a lawyer, but I’m pedantic and that’s just as good.
- D Gary Grady
Since prehistoric man, no battle has ever gone as planned.
- Donal Graeme
You’re damn right we need a rational code of morality and ethics. But not much progress can be made in that direction while we’ve still got a majority ranting about gods, devils, souls, and absolute morality, and using an ancient book written by ignorant nomads as a guide.
- Doug Graham (dgraham@bnr.ca)
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
There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, which is translated through into action. And because there is only one You in all time, this expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium, and the world will have lost it.
- Martha Graham
We will occasionally use this arrow notation unless there is danger of no confusion.
- Ronald Graham, "Rudiments of Ramsey Theory"
The people who are dragging American bodies [through Somalia] don’t look very hungry to the people of Texas.
- Sen. Phil Gramm, R Texas
If ... it seems easier to subvert UNIX systems than most other systems, the impression is a false one. The subversion techniques are the same. It is just that it is often easier to write, install, and use programs on UNIX systems than on most other systems, and that is why the UNIX system was designed in the first place.
- Frederick T. Grampp & Robert H. Morris
Paranoia will get you through times of no enemies better than enemies will get you through times of no paranoia.
- Pete Granger
So you think *I’m* the murderer? What do I have to do to convince you that I’m not, be the next victim?
Well that would be a start.
- Cary Grant & Audrey Hepburn in "Charade", 1963
Everyone wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant.
- Cary Grant
I will fight it out at this line if it takes all summer.
- General Ulysses S. Grant
The idea is for a woman to make her life as big, as challenging as she can, and know that during that life there will be men who will love her for what she is trying to be, just as there have always been men who loved her for not trying to be anything at all.
- Lee Grant
I may kid around about drugs, but really, I take them seriously.
- Doctor Graper
At twenty years of age the will reigns; at thirty, the wit; and at forty, the judgment.
- Grattan
Genius not only diagnoses the situation but supplies the answers.
- Robert Ranke Graves (1895-1985)
The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he really is very good, in spite of all the people who say he is very good.
- Robert Ranke Graves (1895-1985)
There is no money in poetry, but then there is no poetry in money either.
- Robert Ranke Graves (1895-1985)
To know only one thing well is to have a barbaric mind: civilization implies the graceful relation of all varieties of experience to a central humane system of thought. The present age is peculiarly barbaric: introduce, say, a Hebrew scholar to an ichthyologist or an authority on Danish place names and the pair of them would have no single topic in common but the weather or the war (if there happened to be a war in progress, which is usual in this barbaric age).
- Robert Ranke Graves (1895-1985)
A bore is a man who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.
- Gian Vincenzo Gravina
The whole earth is in jail and we’re plotting this incredible jailbreak.
- Wavy Gravy
Commandment Number One of any truly civilized society is this: Let people be different.
- David Grayson
A little humility is arrogance.
- Bill Gray
A lot of what appears to be progress is just so much technological rococo.
- Bill Gray
Anything is possible, but nothing is easy.
- Bill Gray
Capitalism can exist in one of only two states: welfare or warfare.
- Bill Gray
History proves nothing.
- Bill Gray
I’d rather go whoring than warring.
- Bill Gray
The organization of any program reflects the organization of the people who develop it.
- Bill Gray
There is no such thing as a "dirty capitalist", only a capitalist.
- Bill Gray
There is nothing so unbecoming on the beach as a wet kilt.
- Bill Gray
Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise.
- Gray
Information flows efficiently through organizations, except that bad news encounters high impedance in flowing upwards.
- Paul Gray
People at the top make decisions as though times were good when people at the bottom that the organization is collapsing.
- Paul Gray
When I was in therapy about two years ago, one day I noticed that I hadn’t had any children. And I like children at a distance. I wondered if I’d like them up close. I wondered why I didn’t have any. I wondered if it was a mistake, or if I’d done it on purpose, or what. And I noticed my therapist didn’t have any children either. He had pictures of his cats on the wall. Framed.
- Spalding Gray from Swimming to Cambodia: The collected works of Spalding Gray
The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, / And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave, / Awaits alike th’ inevitable hour: / The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
- Thomas Gray
The overwhelming majority of people have more than the average (mean) number of legs.
- E. Grebenik
Abstaining is favorable both to the head and to the pocket.
- Horace Greeley
Creation, to me, is to try to orchestrate the universe to understand what surrounds us. Even if, to accomplish that, we use all sorts of strategems which in the end prove completely incapable of staving off chaos.
- Peter Greenaway
I think that every artist dreams of renewing the forms which came before, but I think very few can be considered to have achieved that. We are all dwarves standing upon the shoulders of the giants who preceded us, and I think we must never forget that. After all, even iconoclasts only exist with respect to that which they destroy.
- Peter Greenaway
_Prospero’s Books_ is the _Terminator 2_ for intellectuals.
- Peter Greenaway
A CONS is an object which cares.
- Bernie Greenberg
Don’t ask the barber whether you need a haircut.
- Daniel S. Greenberg
There is no proposition, no matter how foolish, for which a dozen Nobel signatures cannot be collected. Furthermore, any such petition is guaranteed page-one treatment in The New York Times.
- Daniel S. Greenberg
Usefulness is inversely proportional to reputation for being useful.
- Daniel S. Greenberg
What must be noted about the many fallen political celebrities of recent years is that salvation eluded them, though they knew all the people in Washington who are useful to know.
- Daniel S. Greenberg
They had been corrupted by money, and he had been corrupted by sentiment. Sentiment was the more dangerous, because you couldn’t name its price. A man open to bribes was to be relied upon below a certain figure, but sentiment might uncoil in the heart at a name, a photograph, even a smell remembered.
- Graham Greene, "The Heart of the Matter"
Most men have more courage than even they themselves think they have.
- Grenville
No man was ever so much deceived by another man as by himself.
- Grenville
The criterion of true beauty is, that it increases in examination; of false, that it lessens. There is something, therefore, in true beauty that corresponds with the right reason, and it is not merely the creature of fancy.
- Grenville
We laugh heartily to see a whole flock of sheep jump because one did so; might not one imagine that superior beings do the same by us, and for exactly the same reason?
- Grenville
Whatever natural right men have to freedom and independency, it is manifest that some men have a natural ascendency over others.
- Grenville
The advantage of a classical education is that it enables you to despise the wealth which it prevents you from achieving.
- Russell Green
Freud is the father of psychoanalysis. It has no mother.
- Germaine Greer
Mother Theresa epitomizes for me the blinkered charitableness upon which we pride ourselves and for which we expect reward in this world and the next. There is very little on earth that I hate more than that.
- Germaine Greer
Mother is the dead heart of the family, spending father’s earnings on consumer goods to enhance the environment in which he eats, sleeps, and watches television.
- Germaine Greer
Hell hath no fury like a liberal scorned.
- Dick Gregory
Without an adequate theory, reality is irrelevant.
- Kent "Sparky" Gregory
Some people are quick to criticize cliches, but what is a cliche? It is a truth that has retained its validity through time. Mankind would lose half its hard- earned wisdom, built up patiently over the ages, if it ever lost its cliches.
- Marvin G. Gregory
Of course, the best way to defend an indefensible position is to announce loudly that it should be above attack.
- Greg@phoenix.princeton.edu
It is courage the world needs, not infallibility ... courage is always the surest wisdom.
- Sir Wilfred Grenfell
Real joy comes not from ease or riches or from the praise of men, but from doing something worthwhile.
- Sir Wilfred Grenfell
Bad money drives out good.
- Sir Thomas Gresham
I hardly know so true a mark of a little mind as the servile imitation of another.
- Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke (1554-1628)
Man is the only creature endowed with the power of laughter; is he not the only one that deserves to be laughed at?
- Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke (1554-1628)
May not taste be compared to that exquisite sense of the bee, which instantly discovers and extracts te quintessence of every flower, and disregards all the rest of it.
- Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke (1554-1628)
Some men put me in mind of half-bred horses, which often grow worse in proportion as you feed and exercise them for improvement.
- Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke (1554-1628)
There sometimes wants only a stroke of fortune to discover numberless latent good or bad qualities, which would otherwise have been eternally concealed: as words written with a certain liquor appear only when applied to the fire.
- Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke (1554-1628)
Those men who are commended by every body, must be very extraordinary men; or, which is more probable, very inconsiderable men.
- Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke (1554-1628)
To divest one’s self of some prejudices, would be like taking off the skin to feel the better.
- Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke (1554-1628)
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
- Grey’s Elegy
A formal parsing algorithm should not always be used.
- D. Gries
Every time I try to define a perfectly stable person, I am appalled by the dullness of that person.
- J.D. Griffin
The very technology that makes our living simpler makes society more complex. The more efficient we get, the more specialized we become and the more dependent.
- Thomas Griffith
Being a newspaper columnist is like marrying a nymphomaniac - It’s great for the first two weeks.
- Lewis Grizzard
I don’t think I’ll get married again. I’ll just find a woman I don’t like and giver a house.
- Lewis Grizzard
Life is like a dogsled team. If you ain’t the lead dog, the scenery never changes.
- Lewis Grizzard
If you can’t remember it, it couldn’t have been important.
- Larry Groebe
If at first you don’t succeed -- give it up. It isn’t worth the pain.
- Matt Groening
Anything anybody can say about America is true.
- Emmett Grogan
Computing power increases as the square of the cost. If you want to do it twice as cheaply, you have to do it four times as slowly.
- Herb Grosch
It is no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.
- Jim Grue
That’s ’portable’ in the Navy sense, as a 16" gun is ’portable’ because it can be mounted on a ship and moved around.
- Andrew Grygus
Art is either plagiarism or revolution.
- Paul Guaguin
Who can believe that there is no soul behind those luminous eyes!
- Theophile Gautier (1811-1872)
Autobiography is an unrivalled vehicle for telling the truth about other people.
- Philip Guedalla (1889-1944)
Men will sooner surrender their rights than their customs.
- Moritz Guedemann
The things that make a solider great and send him out to die,
To face the flaming cannon’s mouth, nor ever question why,
Are lilacs by a little proch, the row of tulips red,
The peonies and pansies, too, the old petunia bed,
The grass plot where his children play, the roses on the wall,
’Tis these that make a solider great. He’s fighting for them all.
- Edgar A. Guest
This fellow Charles Lindbergh will never make it. He’s doomed.
- Harry Guggenheim, millionaire aviation enthusiast
Who’s more foolish? The fool or the fool who follows him?
- Alec Guiness as Obi-Wan Kenobi, "Star Wars"
Quotations (such as have point and lack triteness) from the great old authors are an act of reverence on the part of the quoter, and a blessing to a public grown superficial and external.
- Louise Guiney
A man must marry only a very pretty woman in case he should ever want some other man to take her off his hands.
- Sacha Guitry (1885-1957)
An ideal wife is one who remains faithful to you but tries to be just as charming as if she weren’t.
- Sacha Guitry (1885-1957)
The little I know I owe to my ignorance.
- Sacha Guitry (1885-1957)
There are women whose infidelities are the only link they still have with their husbands.
- Sacha Guitry (1885-1957)
When a man steals your wife, there is no better revenge than to let him keep her.
- Sacha Guitry (1885-1957)
You can pretend to be serious, you can’t pretend to be witty.
- Sacha Guitry (1885-1957)
After a raise in salary you will have less money at the end of each month than you had before.
- Dr. R. F. Gumperson
Children have more energy after a hard day of play than they do after a good night’s sleep.
- Dr. R. F. Gumperson
Good parking places are always on the other side of the street.
- Dr. R. F. Gumperson
The more a recruit knew about a given subject, the better chance he had of receiving an assignment involving some other subject.
- Dr. R. F. Gumperson
The person who buys the most raffle tickets has the least chance of winning.
- Dr. R. F. Gumperson
This album contains language which some listeners may find objectionable. They can F?!* OFF and buy something from the New Age section.
- Guns N’ Roses tape warning label
Ten of us to a hundred of them, eh? Well, one British soldier is worth twenty of those beggars...so the odds are two to one in our favor. Hardly sporting!
- GURPS Basic Set, 3rd Ed
...There are three kinds of mathematicians--those that can count and those that can’t count.
- Professor Gurtin during Calc in 3-D
Thirty seconds on the evening news is worth a front page headline in every newspaper in the world.
- Edwin Guthman
Y’know, you can’t have, like, a light, without a dark to stick it in... You know what I’m sayin’?
- Arlo Guthrie
A sunny temper gilds the edges of life’s blackest cloud.
- Guthrie
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