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Well, my friends, it’s a Friday, and nearly the end of a month that ends in a “Y”, so what the heck, it seems like a great time for another thrilling edition of Great Quotes!

So if you find yourself running on empty and searching for some encouragement, inspiration or perhaps even just a chuckle or two, you’ve come to the right place! Check these out:

• The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it with deliberately with faulty arguments. – Friedrich Nietzsche
• There are two kinds of light – the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures. – James Thurber
• The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them. – Albert Einstein
• Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard. – Daphne du Maurier
• Sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. – Lewis Carroll
• If it’s true we are here to help others, what are the others doing here? – unknown
• Cats are smarter than dogs. You can’t get eight cats to pull a sled through snow. – Jeff Valdez
• If only we’d stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time. – Edith Wharton



• A gentleman is a man who can play the accordion but doesn’t. – Unknown
• If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principle difference between a dog and a man. – Mark Twain
• Sometimes I get the feeling the whole world is against me, but deep down I know it’s not true. Some smaller countries are neutral. – Robert Orben
• I am against using death as a punishment. I am also against using it as a reward. – Stanislaw J. Lec
• Why is it our memories are good enough to remember the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not good enough to recollect how often we have told it to the same person? – Francois de la Rouchefoucauld



• To be great is to be misunderstood. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
• If you call yourself a writer because you are a blogger, then live up to the expectations of your readers. More so if you make money off them. – Stellify
• When you are looking for an excuse, any excuse will do. – Chris Cree
• That you may retain your self-respect, it is better to displease the people by doing what you know is right, than to temporarily please them by doing what you know is wrong. – William J. H. Boetcker
• I think age is a high price to pay for maturity. – Tom Stoppard
• One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain’t nothin’ can beat teamwork. – Edward Abbey



• I knew this was going to happen, but not so soon. – a tombstone’s epitaph in Boot Hill cemetery, Arizona
• Ordinarily he was insane, but he had lucid moments when he was merely stupid. – Heinrich Heine
• A good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a stamped, self-addressed envelope, big enough for the manuscript to come back in. This is too much of a temptation to the editor. – Ring Lardner
• You don’t stop laughing when you grow old. You grow old because you stop laughing. – Michael Pritchard
• Democracy is a process by which the people are free to choose the man who will get the blame. – Lawrence J. Peter
• A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul. – George Bernard Shaw

And, to round out this month’s edition, I’d like to extend my profound sympathies to Richard on his, er, loss:

• I have a rock garden. Last week, three of them died. – Richard Diran

You know, it would just be absolutely finer than a frogs hair if you would subscribe to my RSS feed!

Well, ladies and gentlemen, we’re about to the end of another thrilling month of potentially preposterous possibilities. So the BIG question is, how’s that been workin’ for ya? Ah, well, if you find you’re a bit short of the mark – hey, no worries, I’ve got the cure for what ails you right here. That’s right, it’s time for another rousing edition of Great Quotes.

So my friends, if you find yourself running a little low on “oomph”, and you’re looking for a bit of encouragement, inspiration, or perhaps even just a chuckle or two - well, you’ve come to the right place! Check these out:

• Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else is silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to always be part of unanimity. – Christopher Morley
• Life is not advancement. It is growth. It does not move upward, but expands outward, in all directions. – Russell G. Alexander
• A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after awhile he gets to know something. – Wilson Mizner
• You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club. – Jack London
• The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best – and therefore never scrutinize or question. – Stephen Jay Gould
• The sad truth is that excellence makes people nervous. – Shana Alexander



• The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they’re OK, then it’s you. – Rita Mae Brown
• In theory there’s no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. – Yogi Berra
• One of the advantages to being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries. – A. A. Milne
• The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern. – Lord Acton
• You live and you learn. At any rate, you live. – Douglas Adams
• What if this weren’t a hypothetical question? – Unknown



• When I came back to Dublin I was court-martialed in my absence and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence. – Brendan Behan
• Look for the ridiculous in everything and you will find it. – Jules Reynard
• Only the mediocre are always at their best. – Jean Giraudoux
• The trouble with facts is there are so very many of them. – Samuel McChord Crothers
• Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do doesn’t mean it’s useless. – Thomas A. Edison



• The best defense against the atom bomb is to not be there when it goes off. – Anonymous
• Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together. – Carl Zwanzig
• I’m a great believer in luck, and I find that the harder I work the more I have of it. – Thomas Jefferson
• Is sloppiness in speech caused by ignorance or apathy? I don’t know and I don’t care. – William Safire
• On my income tax 1040 is says ‘Check this box if you are blind.’ I wanted to put a check mark about three inches away. – Tom Lehrer

And finally, just to give the American citizens in the audience a few words of encouragement after our annual lovefest hair-pulling ordeal Tax Month:

• The reason worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work. – Robert Frost

You know, it would just be absolutely finer than a frogs hair if you would subscribe to my RSS feed!

Alright, I admit it: this is a “throw-down” post! I have been unusually busy for the last two weeks, and the trend continues today. So I said to myself, “Self, instead of your usual feeble attempt at pontificating on life, the universe and everything, why not let others do the work for you?”

Now, since I’m such an agreeable fellow, I agreed with myself this was a rather good idea! Hence this month’s edition of Great Quotes! So if you’re looking for inspiration, something to make you think, or perhaps even a good chuckle or two, then by all means, check these out:

• Great people talk about ideas, average people talk about things, and small people talk about wine. – Fran Lebowitz
• Get all the fools on your side and you can be elected to anything. – Frank Dane
• Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away. – Philip K. Dick
• The word ‘politics’ is derived from the word ‘poly’, meaning ‘many’, and the word ‘tics’, meaning ‘blood-sucking parasites’. – Larry Hardiman
• How my achievements mock me! – William Shakespeare
• To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it. – G. K. Chesterton
• Love thy neighbor as yourself, but choose your neighborhood. – Louise Beal
• A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works. – John Gaule
• The intermediate stage between socialism and capitalism is alcoholism. – Norman Brenner
• You must first have a lot of patience to learn to have patience. – Stanislaw J. Lec
• If you are not criticized, you may not be doing much. – Donald Rumsfeld
• When men are pure, laws are useless; when men are corrupt, laws are broken. – Benjamin Disraeli
• The average man, who doesn’t know what to do with his life, wants another one which will last forever. – Anatole France
• Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom. – Soren Kierkegaard
• You know everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects. – Will Rogers
• Every ass likes to hear himself bray. – English proverb
• Someday we’ll look back on this moment and plow into a parked car. – Evan Davis
• When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained. – Will Rogers
• On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog. – Peter Steiner
• There’s no secret about success. Did you ever know a successful man who didn’t tell you all about it? – Kin Hubbard
• Never answer a critic, unless he’s right. – Bernard M. Baruch
• Sometimes the appropriate response to reality is to go insane. – Philip K. Dick
• We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over. – Aneurin Bevin

And finally, since this is tax season, here’s something particularly appropriate:

• There is no kind of dishonesty into which otherwise good people more easily and frequently fall than that of defrauding the government. – Benjamin Franklin

Ouch!

You know, it would just be absolutely finer than a frogs hair if you would subscribe to my RSS feed!

If you find yourself occasionally running on empty and searching for some encouragement, inspiration or perhaps even just a chuckle or two, you’ve come to the right place! Check these out:

• “You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” – Jack London
• “If I own company FOO, I don’t need employees with a passion for FOO. I want those with a passion for the work they’re doing. The company should behave just like a good user interface.” – Kathy Sierra
• “No matter how rich you become, how famous or powerful, when you die the size of your funeral will still pretty much depend on the weather.” – Michael Pritchard
• “We live in a Newtonian world of Einsteinian physics ruled by Frankenstein logic.” – David Russell
• “The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they’re going to have some pretty annoying virtues.” – Elizabeth Taylor
• “When you’re through changing, you’re through.” – Bruce Barton
• “Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.” – Abraham Lincoln
• “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” – Peter Drucker
• “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.” – Henry David Thoreau
• “Whenever I dwell for any length of time on my own shortcomings, they gradually seem to become mild, harmless, engaging little things, not at all like the staring defects in other people’s characters.” – Margaret Halsey
• “You can never learn less. You can only learn more.” – Buckminster Fuller
• “I do not have a psychiatrist and I do not want one, for the simple reason that if he listened to me long enough, he might become disturbed.” – James Thurber
• “It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety. – Isaac Asimov
• “If there is ever another war in Europe, it will come out of some damned silly thing in the Balkans.” – Otto von Bismarck (1898)
• “A sense of duty is useful in work, but offensive in personal relations. People wish to be liked, not be endured with patient resignation. – Bertrand Russel
• “Ours is the age that is proud of machines that think and suspicious of men who try to.” – H. Mumford Jones
• “The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire.” – Ferdinand Foch
• “No matter what side of the argument you are on, you always find people on your side that you wish were on the other.” – Jascha Heifetz
• “Anger is the feeling that makes your mouth work faster than your mind.” – Evan Eser
• “Basic research is what I am doing when I don’t know what I am doing.” – Wernher von Braun
• “If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of some expert saying it couldn’t be done.” – Peter Ustinov
• “In the history of the world, there always has been and always will be more horse’s asses than horses.” – Jeffrey Fry
• “Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what’s for lunch.” – Orson Welles
• “Quit worrying about your health. It’ll go away.” – Robert Orben
• “There are only two kinds of scholars; those who love ideas and those who hate them.” – Emile Chartier
• “With hurricanes, tornados, fires out of control, mud slides, flooding, severe thunderstorms tearing up the country from one end to another, and with the threat of bird flu and terrorist attacks, are we sure this is a good time to take God out of the Pledge of Allegiance?” – Jay Leno
• “Men are not against you. They are merely for themselves.” – Gene Fowler
• “I know that there are people who do not love their fellow man, and I hate people like that!” – Tom Lehrer
• “Acquaintance, n.: A person whom we know enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.” – Ambrose Bierce
• “If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.” – Isaac Asimov
• “If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.” – Abraham Lincoln

And finally, as a final pithy thought (try to say that real fast three times!) before you go on with your day:

• “Men who never get carried away should be.” – Malcolm Forbes

You know, it would just be absolutely finer than a frogs hair if you would subscribe to my RSS feed!

If you find yourself occasionally running on empty and searching for some encouragement, inspiration or perhaps even just a chuckle or two, you’ve come to the right place! Check these out:

• “Each problem that I solved became a rule which served afterwards to solve other problems.” – Rene Descartes
• “Too many have dispensed with generosity in order to practice charity.” – Albert Camus
• “There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else.” – James Thurber
• “Stuffed deer heads on walls are bad enough, but it’s worse when they are wearing dark glasses and have streamers in their antlers because then you know they were enjoying themselves at a party when they were shot.” – Ellen DeGeneres
• “An optimist stays up to see the new year in. A pessimist waits to make sure the old one leaves.” – Bill Vaughan
• “It is our responsibilities, not ourselves, that we should take seriously.” – Peter Ustinov
• “It is said that power corrupts, but actually it’s more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power.” – David Brin
• “The National Rifle Association says, ‘Guns don’t kill people. People do.’ But I think the gun helps.” – Eddie Izzard
• “The secret of eternal youth is arrested development.” – Alice Roosevelt Longworth
• “Love is not blind - it sees more, not less. But because it sees more, it is willing to see less.” – Rabbi Julius Gordon
• “Acting is the most minor of gifts and not a very high-class way to earn a living. After all, Shirley Temple could do it at the age of four.” – Katherine Hepburn
• “Personally, I’m always ready to learn, although I do not always like to be taught.” – Winston Churchill
• “Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature.” – Samuel Butler
• “I wanna hang a map of the world in my house. Then I’m gonna put pins into all the locations that I’ve traveled to. But first, I’m gonna have to travel to the top two corners of the map so it won’t fall down.” – Mitch Hedberg
• “Don’t knock the weather. If it didn’t change once in a while, nine out of ten people couldn’t start a conversation.” – Kim Hubbard
• “We are here and it is now. Further than that all human knowledge is moonshine.” – H. L. Menken
• “It is not a bad idea to get in the habit of writing down one’s thoughts. It saves one having to bother anyone else with them.” – Isabelle Colgate
• “Nothing changes your opinion of a friend so surely as success – yours or his.” – Franklin P. Jones
• “If God had meant for men to fly, He’d have made it easier to get to the airport.” – George Winters
• “Or one might say, people who don’t share trust are less intelligent together; people who share trust are smarter together.” – Jack Ricchiuto
• “Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a function.” – unknown
• “The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.” – Thomas Carlyle
• “Laugh, and the world laughs with you, snore, and you sleep alone.” – Anthony Burgess
• “Wherever you go, there you are.” – Jon Kabat-Zinn
• “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.” – E. F. Shumacher
• “Thus the metric system did not really catch on in the States, unless you count the increasing popularity of the nine-millimeter bullet.” – Dave Barry
• “After twelve years of therapy my psychiatrist said something that brought tears to my eyes. He said, ‘No hablo ingles.’” – Ronnie Shakes
• “Don’t try to solve serious matters in the middle of the night.” – Phillip K. Dick
• “Youth would be an ideal state if it came a little later in life.” – Herbert Henry Asquith
• “The nice thing about being a celebrity is that when you bore people, they think it’s their fault.” – Henry Kissinger
• “Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
• “We do not remember days … we remember moments. – Cesare Pavese
• “Thomas Jefferson once said, ‘We should never judge a president by his age, only by his works.’ And ever since he told me that, I stopped worrying.” – Ronald Reagan
• “Any man whose errors take 10 years to correct is quite a man.” – J. Robert Oppenhiemer

And to wrap up this edition of Great Quotes, I leave you with what may be the best, most practical advice I’ve seen to date:

• “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” – Winston Churchill

You know, it would just be absolutely finer than a frogs hair if you would subscribe to my RSS feed!

For your edification, today I present a few choice bits of inspiration from the famous, the infamous, and the not-so-famous. And the fictional. Check these out:

• “In looking for someone to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. But the most important is integrity because if they don’t have that, the other two qualities, intelligence and energy, are going to kill you.” – Warren Buffet
• “If you want perfection, you gotta expect a few flaws.” - Wayne Strauss
• “When a person can no longer laugh at himself, it is time for others to laugh at him.” – Thomas Szasz
• “Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.” – B. F. Skinner
• “This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.” – Dorothy Parker
• “The ultimate effect of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.” – Herbert Spencer
• “I was so naïve as a kid I used to sneak behind the barn and do nothing.” – Johnny Carson
• “Discovery consists of looking at the same thing as everyone else and thinking something different.” – Albert Szent-Gyorgyi
• “To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.” – Henri Bergson
• “The most wasted day of all is that in which we have not laughed.” – Sebastian Roch Nicolas Chamfort
• “What luck for rulers than men do not think.” – Adolf Hitler
• “Things are only impossible until they’re not.” – Cpt. Jean-Luc Picard
• “A newspaper consists of the same number of words, whether there be news in it or not.” – Henry Fielding
• “When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.” – Arthur C. Clarke
• “My theory of evolution is that Darwin was adopted.” – Stephen Wright
• “Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention to arrive safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming: Wow!! What a ride!” – Lou Karnazes
• “If you ask me to write a song about the ocean, I’m stumped. But if you tell me to write a ballad about a woman in a red dress falling off her stool at three in the morning, I’m inspired.” – Stephen Sondheim
• “We’ve heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true.” – Robert Wilensky
• “He hasn’t an enemy in the world – but all his friends hate him.” – Eddie Cantor
• “No matter what, I believe that in our quest to exploit the ‘We’ in Web, we must not sacrifice the ‘I’ in Internet.” – Kathy Sierra
• “The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand.” – Frank Herbert
• “If you gave an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of typewriters, eventually one of them would write Hey Hey We’re the Monkees!” – unknown
• “There is absolutely no inevitability as long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening.” – Marshall McLuhan
• “I don’t mind what Congress does, as long as they don’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses.” – Victor Hugo
• “There are 350 varieties of shark, not counting loan or pool.” – L. M. Boyd
• “Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.” – Paul Valery
• “I struggle to be brief, and become obscure.” – Horace (Roman poet)
• “First you’re an unknown, then you write one book and move up to obscurity.” – Martin Myers
• “By all means marry; if you get a good wife you’ll be happy. If you get a bad one you’ll become a philosopher.” – Socrates
• “I can think of nothing less pleasurable than a life devoted to pleasure.” – John D. Rockefeller
• “Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.” – Franklin P. Jones
• “If life were fair, Elvis would still be alive and all the impersonators would be dead.” – Johnny Carson
• “The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.” – Flannery O’Conner

And to cap off this month’s edition of Great Quotes:

• “Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop.” – Lewis Carroll (from Alice in Wonderland)

You know, it would just be absolutely finer than a frogs hair if you would subscribe to my RSS feed!

To help you finish your year off on a high note, here’s a few bits of inspiration from the famous, infamous, and what the heck, even a few from the rabble. Check these out:

• “I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We’ve created life in our own image.” – Stephen Hawking
• “There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it.” – Cicero
• “The only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him.” – Henry Stimson
• “Her virtue was that she said what she thought, her vice that what she thought didn’t amount to much.” – Peter Ustinov
• “When love is gone, there’s always justice./ And when justice is gone, there’s always force./ And when force is gone, there’s always Mom./ Hi, Mom!” – Laurie Anderson
• “Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.” – Pablo Picasso
• “The whole world is in revolt. Soon there will be only five Kings left – the King of England, the King of Spades, The King of Clubs, the King of Hearts, and the King of Diamonds.” – King Farouk of Egypt
• “There is a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased the line.” – Oscar Levant
• “When they discover the center of the universe, a lot of people will be disappointed to discover they are not it.” – Bernard Bailey
• “I hate music, especially when it’s played.” – Jimmy Durante
• “A healthy male adult bore consumes each year one and a half times his own weight in other people’s patience.” – John Updike
• “People who have what they want are fond of telling people who haven’t what they want that they really don’t want it.” – Ogden Nash
• “If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.” – Sir Francis Bacon
• “Everywhere is walking distance, if you have the time.” – Steven Wright
• “I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.” – Douglas Adams
• “What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.” – Thomas Carlyle
• “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
• “Once the game is over, the King and the Pawn go back in the same box.” – Italian Proverb
• “If I had to live my life again, I’d make the same mistakes, only sooner.” – Tallulah Bankhead
• “There are two types of people–those who come into a room and say, ‘Well, here I am!’ and those who come in and say, ‘Ah, there you are.’” – Fredrick L. Collins
• “It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.” – Voltaire
• “I phoned my dad to tell him I had stopped smoking. He called me a quitter.” – Stephen Pearl
• “The deepest definition of youth is life untouched by tragedy.” – Alfred North Whitehead
• “My Grandmother is over eighty and still doesn’t need glasses. Drinks right out of the bottle.” – Henny Youngman
• “A life of pleasure makes even the strongest mind frivolous at last.” – Edward Bulwer-Lytton
• “All of us learn to write in the second grade. Most of us go on to greater things.” – Bobby Knight
• “You can pretend to be serious; you can’t pretend to be witty.” – Sacha Guitry
• “Never try to tell everything you know. It may take too short a time.” – Norman Ford
• “The covers of this book are too far apart.” – Ambrose Bierce
• “Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.” – John Kenneth Galbraith
• “Eat a live toad first thing in the morning, and nothing worse will happen to you all the rest of the day.” – Unknown
• “When I was born, the doctor took one look at my face… turned me over and said, “Look, twins!” – Rodney Dangerfield
• “Never go out to meet trouble. If you just sit still, nine cases out of ten someone will intercept it before it reaches you.” – Calvin Coolidge
• “Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one.” – A. J. Liebling
• “With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another.” – Georg Christopher Lichtenberg
• “It is disease that makes health pleasant, hunger that makes fullness good, and weariness that makes rest sweet.” – Heraclitus

And finally, as a worthy thought to end your year:

• “I give you peace, the kind of peace that only I can give. It isn’t like the peace that this world can give. So don’t be worried or afraid.” – Jesus Christ (John 14:27; CEV)

_______________

Note from the proprieter: The Middle Zone will be taking a short end-of-the-year break (que the weeping and gnashing of teeth). But take courage, my friends! The Zone will be back, bright and early next year. To all those who dropped by to visit in 2006, you’ve helped make the Zone what it is, and for that I thank you from the bottom of my heart (that’s the reverb effect you hear). If you’ve dropped by to read, to comment, to debate, and yes, to argue: thanks, and ya’ll come back, y’hear!
Have a great, safe, and happy New Year!

You know, it would just be absolutely finer than a frogs hair if you would subscribe to my RSS feed!