Popular Quotations

Popular Quotations

Quotations about Education:

When I give a lecture, I accept that people look at their watches, but what I do not tolerate is when they look at it and raise it to their ear to find out if it stopped. –– Marcel Achard Of course there's a lot of knowledge in universities: the freshmen bring a little in; the seniors don't take much away, so knowledge sort of accumulates... –– Anonymous Universities incline wits to sophistry and affectation. –– Francis Bacon Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a losttradition. –– Jacques Barzun Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils. –– Hector Louis Berlioz It is possible to store the mind with a million facts and still be entirely uneducated. –– Alec Bourne, A Doctor's Creed It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot, irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it. –– J. Bronowski, The Ascent of Man The best teacher is the one who suggests rather than dogmatizes, and inspires his listener with the wish to teach himself. –– Edward Bulwer-Lytton Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep. –– Albert Camus A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary. –– Thomas Carruthers Learning is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere. –– Chinese Proverb A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students. –– John Ciardi The authority of those who teach is often an obstacle to those who want to learn. –– Cicero The wit of a graduate student is like champagne. Canadian champagne. –– Robertson Davies Seeing much, suffering much, and studying much, are the three pillars of learning. –– Benjamin Disraeli The average Ph.D thesis is nothing but the transference of bones from one graveyard to another. –– Frank J. Dobie, A Texan in England, 1945 Education is the state-controlled manufacture of echoes. –– Norman Douglas How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so stupid? It must be education that does it. –– Alexandre Dumas fils If you would thoroughly know anything, teach it to others. –– Tryon Edwards It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. –– Albert Einstein Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis. –– Ralph Waldo Emerson The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards. –– Anatole France You are educated when you have the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or self-confidence. –– Robert Frost Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater. –– Gail Godwin The advantage of a classical education is that it enables you to despise the wealth which it prevents you from achieving. –– Russell Green I have a daughter who goes to SMU. She could've gone to UCLA here in California, but it's one more letter she'd have to remember. –– Shecky Greene Our schools have been scientifically designed to prevent over-education from happening. [...] The average American (should be) content with their humble role in life, because they're not tempted to think about any other role. –– William Torrey Harris, U.S. Commissioner of Education, 1889 Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not. –– Aldous Huxley Colleges are places where pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed. –– Robert G. Ingersoll, (seen attributed to "R.S. Ingersoll" - a typo?) If someone had told me I would be Pope one day, I would have studied harder. –– Pope John Paul I To teach is to learn twice. –– Joseph Joubert An understanding heart is everything is a teacher, and cannot be esteemed highly enough. One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feeling. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child. –– Carl Gustav Jung University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small. –– Henry Kissinger Learning is what most adults will do for a living in the 21st century. –– Bob Perelman A university professor set an examination question in which he asked what is the difference between ignorance and apathy. The professor had to give an A+ to a student who answered: I don't know and I don't care. –– Richard Pratt, Pacific Computer Weekly, 20 July 1990 Grad school is the snooze button on the clock-radio of life. –– John Rogers, comedian (who holds a graduate degree in physics) It is because modern education is so seldom inspired by a great hope that it so seldom achieves great results. The wish to preserve the past rather that the hope of creating the future dominates the minds of those who control the teaching of the young. –– Bertrand Russell It is best to learn as we go, not go as we have learned. –– Leslie Jeanne Sahler A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education. –– George Bernard Shaw Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten. –– B.F. Skinner The philosophy exam was a piece of cake –– which was a bit of a surprise, actually, because I was expecting some questions on a sheet of paper. –– Smith & Jones I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think. –– Socrates Education ... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading. –– G. M. Trevelyan I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. –– Mark Twain The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires. –– William Arthur Ward If your professor wrote it, it's as near to the truth as you ever need to get. –– John Watson, University of Canterbury The first duty of a lecturer: to hand you after an hour's discourse a nugget of pure truth to wrap up between the pages of your notebooks, and keep on the mantlepiece forever. –– Virginia Woolf

Quotations about Communication:

Elegance of language may not be in the power of all of us; but simplicity and straight forwardness are. Write much as you would speak; speak as you think. If with your inferior, speak no coarser than usual; if with your superiors, no finer. Be what you say; and, within the rules of prudence, say what you are. –– Alford I have often regretted my speech, never my silence. –– Anonymous The only weapon that becomes sharper with constant use is the tongue. –– Anonymous There's nothing wrong with having nothing to say –– unless you insist on saying it. –– Anonymous The best time to hold your tongue is the time you feel you must say something or bust. –– Josh Billings The true spirit of conversation consists in building on another man's observation, not overturning it. –– Edward Bulwer-Lytton I have noticed that nothing I have never said ever did me any harm. –– Calvin Coolidge Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress. –– Gandhi Silence is argument carried out by other means. –– Ernesto "Che" Guevara When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen. –– Ernest Hemingway The only way to entertain some folks is to listen to them. –– Kin Hubbard Silence is as full of potential wisdom and wit as the unhewn marble of a great sculpture. –– Aldous Huxley Value your words. Each one may be the last. –– Stanislaw J. Lec I feel that if a person has problems communicating the very least he can do is to shut up. –– Tom Lehrer Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt. –– Abraham Lincoln Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves. –– Abraham Lincoln Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after. –– Anne Morrow Lindbergh No one really listens to anyone else, and if you try it for a while you'll see why. –– Mignon McLaughlin He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. –– John Stuart Mill We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still. –– John Stuart Mill Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless. –– Mother Teresa It was the greatest of the imperfect ventriloquist acts: when his lips moved, her body sang. –– Tom Robbins The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech. –– George Bernard Shaw He had occasional flashes of silence that made his conversation perfectly delightful. –– Sydney Smith, referring to Macaulay If other people are going to talk, conversation becomes impossible. –– James McNeill Whistler Conversation, fastidious Goddess, loves blood better than brick, and feasts most subtly on the human will. –– Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

Quotations about Experience

You cannot create experience. You must undergo it. –– Albert Camus The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. –– Albert Einstein Experience is the name every one gives his mistakes. –– Elbert Hubbard Experience is not what happens to you; it's what you do with what happens to you. –– Aldous Huxley Experience is not what happens to you; it's what you do with what happens to you. –– Aldous Huxley Experience teaches only the teachable. –– Aldous Huxley Experience is the worst teacher; it gives the test before presenting the lesson. –– Vernon Law Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing. –– Vince Lombardi We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience. –– George Bernard Shaw Great Spirit, help me never to judge another until I have walked in his moccasins. –– Sioux Indian Prayer Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want. –– Don Stanford To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour. –– Robert L. Stevenson Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing. –– Oscar Wilde Experience is the name that everyone gives to their mistakes. –– Oscar Wilde Good judgement comes from experience, and experience––well, that comes from poor judgement. –– Cousin Woodman

Quotations about Success-Failure:

If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded. –– Maya Angelou 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 The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth. –– Niels Bohr Destiny is not a matter of chance; but a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, It is a thing to be acheived. –– William Jennings Bryant To expect defeat is nine-tenths of defeat itself. –– Francis Crawford Defeat never comes to any man until he admits it. –– Josephus Daniels ... I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work. –– Thomas Edison Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new. –– Albert Einstein Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right. –– Henry Ford The greatest test of courage on earth is to bear defeat without losing heart. –– Robert G. Ingersoll Mistakes are the portals of discovery. –– James Joyce Always bear in mind that your own resolution to success is more important than any other one thing. –– Abraham Lincoln The possibility that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just. –– Abraham Lincoln Many a man has finally succeeded only because he has failed after repeated efforts. If he had never met defeat he would never have known any great victory. –– Orison Swett Marden No other success can compensate for failure in the home. –– David O. McKay, Encyclopedia of Mormonism What would you attempt if you knew you could not fail? –– Robert Schuller What would you attempt to do if you knew you would not fail? –– Robert Schuller You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try. –– Beverly Sills Whatever you are from nature, keep to it; never desert your own line of talent. Be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed; be anything else, and you will be ten thousands times worse than nothing. –– Sydney Smith Do not let yourselves be discouraged or embittered by the smallness of the success you are likely to achieve in trying to make life better. You certainly would not be able, in a single generation, to create an earthly paradise. Who could expect that? But, if you make life ever so little better, you will have done splendidly, and your lives will have been worthwhile. –– Arnold Toynbee If you want a place in the sun, you've got to put up with a few blisters. –– Abigail Van Buren It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail. –– Gore Vidal Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure. –– George E. Woodberry

Quotations about Friendship:

It is well, when judging a friend, to remember that he is judging you with the same godlike and superior impartiality. –– Arnold Bennett Friendship is like money, easier made than kept. –– Samuel Butler A friend is one who knows us, but loves us anyway. –– Fr. Jerome Cummings It destroys one's nerves to be amiable everyday to the same human being. –– Benjamin Disraeli I hate it in friends when they come too late to help. –– Euripides My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me! –– Henry Ford There are three great friends: an old wife, an old dog, and ready money. –– Benjamin Franklin When a friend is in trouble, don't annoy him by asking if there is anything you can do. Think up something appropriate and do it. –– E. W. Howe Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate. –– Thomas Jones The real test of friendship is: Can you literally do nothing with the other person? Can you enjoy together those moments of life that are utterly simple? They are the moments people looks back on at the end of life and number as their most sacred experiences. –– Eugene Kennedy The better part of one's life consists of his friendships. –– Abraham Lincoln The imaginary friends I had as a kid dropped me because their friends thought I didn't exist. –– Aaron Machado When one is trying to do something beyond his known powers it is useless to seek the approval of friends. Friends are at their best in moments of defeat. –– Henry Miller A woman may very well form a friendship with a man, but for this to endure, it must be assisted by a little physical antipathy. –– Friedrich Nietzsche Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive. –– Anaïs Nin We have been friends together in sunshine and in shade. –– Caroline Norton When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate now knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares. –– Henri Nouwen, Out of Solitude Books, like friends, should be few and well chosen. –– Samuel Paterson Do not assume that she who seeks to comfort you now, lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. Her life may also have much sadness and difficulty, that remains far beyond yours. Were it otherwise, she would never have been able to find these words. –– Rainer Maria Rilke Friends need not agree in everything or go always together, or have no comparable other friendships of the same intimacy. On the contrary, in friendship union is more about ideal things: and in that sense it is more ideal and less subject to trouble than marriage is. –– George Santayana Good friends are good for your health. –– Irwin Sarason Life is to be fortified by many friendships. To love and to be loved is the greatest happiness of existence. –– Sydney Smith A friend is a gift you give yourself. –– Robert Louis Stevenson A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out. –– Walter Winchell Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends. –– Virginia Woolf

Quotations about Health:

Giving birth is like taking your lower lip and forcing it over your head. –– Carol Burnett You have to stay in shape. My grandmother, she started walking five miles a day when she was 60. She's 97 today and we don't know where the hell she is. –– Ellen DeGeneres The average, healthy, well-adjusted adult gets up at seven-thirty in the morning feeling just plain terrible. –– Jean Kerr I'm not into working out. My philosophy: No pain, no pain. –– Carol Leifer A multiple personality is in a certain sense normal. –– George H. Mead I was under medication when I made the decision not to burn the tapes. –– Richard Nixon, U.S. President I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting. –– Mark Twain You have a cough? Go home tonight, eat a whole box of Ex-Lax––tomorrow you'll be afraid to cough. –– Pearl Williams

Quotations about Computers-Technology

If you have any trouble sounding condescending, find a Unix user to show you how it's done. –– Scott Adams There are three kinds of death in this world. There's heart death, there's brain death, and there's being off the network. –– Guy Almes There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence. –– Jeremy S. Anderson If you don't double-click me, I can't do anything. –– John Aniston, on how computers have taken over his life Guide to understanding a net.addict's day: Slow day: didn't have much to do, so spent three hours on usenet. Busy day: managed to work in three hours of usenet. Bad day: barely squeezed in three hours of usenet. –– Anonymous If you put garbage in a computer nothing comes out but garbage. But this garbage, having passed through a very expensive machine, is somehow ennobled and none dare criticize it. –– Anonymous Multimedia? As far as I'm concerned, it's reading with the radio on! –– Rory Bremner The Internet is so big, so powerful and pointless that for some people it is a complete substitute for life. –– Andrew Brown Usenet is like Tetris for people who still remember how to read. –– Button from the Computer Museum, Boston, MA By the time (the Leaning Tower of Pisa) was 10% built, everyone knew it would be a total disaster. But the investment was so big they felt compelled to go on. Since its completion, it cost a fortune to maintain and is still in danger of collapsing. There are no plans to replace it, since it was never needed in the first place. I expect every installation has its own pet software which is analogous to the above. –– Ken Iverson Saying that Windows95 is equal to Macintosh is like finding a potato that looks like Jesus and believing you've witnessed the second coming. –– Guy Kawasaki I'd wipe the machines off the face of the earth again, and end the industrial epoch absolutely, like a black mistake. –– D. H. Lawrence Live TV died in the late 1950s, electronic bulletin boards came along in the mid-1980s, meaning there was about a 25-year gap when it was difficult to put your foot in your mouth and have people all across the country know about it. –– Mark Leeper Considering the flames and intolerance, shouldn't USENET be spelled ABUSENET? –– Michael Meissner In view of all the deadly computer viruses that have been spreading lately, Weekend Update would like to remind you: when you link up to another computer, you're linking up to every computer that that computer has ever linked up to. –– Dennis Miller, "Saturday Night Live," U.S. television show The last good thing written in C++ was the Pachelbel Canon. –– Jerry Olson There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home. –– Kenneth H. Olson, President of DEC, Convention of the World Future Society, 1977 Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody thinks of complaining. –– Jeff Raskin The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do. –– B. F. Skinner If unix is the face of the future I wanna go back to quill pens. –– Joseph Snipp Usenet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea –– massive, difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a source of mind-boggling amounts of excrement when you least expect it. –– Gene Spafford If addiction is judged by how long a dumb animal will sit pressing a lever to get a 'fix' of something, to its own detriment, then I would conclude that netnews is far more addictive than cocaine. –– Rob Stampfli Men have become the tools of their tools. –– Henry David Thoreau Technology makes it possible for people to gain control over everything, except over technology. –– John Tudor Those parts of the system that you can hit with a hammer (not advised) are called hardware; those program instructions that you can only curse at are called software. –– Unknown author