Got Any All Time Favorite Quotations? Let's Hear 'Em

Have long enjoyed the wisdom and humor of great quotations from a variety of sources, (especially Sir Winston Churchill) for their ability to communicate so much intent or grass roots philosophy with so few words.

Here are some of mine. How about yours?

An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile hoping it will eat him last
On Neville Chamberlain, Winston Churchill

Lady Astor to Churchill "Winston, if you were my husband I would flavour your coffee with poison"
Churchill: "Madam, if I were your husband, I should drink it"

Bessie Braddock to Churchill "Winston, your drunk!"
Churchill: "Bessie, your ugly, and tomorrow morning I shall be sober"

A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma
On Russia, Winston Churchill

I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.
Groucho Marx

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies. Groucho Marx

Alimony is like buying hay for a dead horse. Groucho Marx

Love, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage.”
― Ambrose Bierce, The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

“Faith, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.”
― Ambrose Bierce, The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

“Infidel, n. In New York, one who does not believe in the Christian religion; in Constantinople, one who does.”
― Ambrose Bierce, The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

I am not afraid of death, I just don't want to be there when it happens.
Woody Allen

The lion and the calf shall lie down together but the calf won't get much sleep.
Woody Allen

“Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity.”
― George Carlin

“Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.”
― George Carlin

“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”
― George Carlin

Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
George Santayana

History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren't there.
George Santayana

A child educated only at school is an uneducated child.
George Santayana

Skepticism, like chastity, should not be relinquished too readily.
George Santayana


and of course the iconic Albert Einstein Quote:
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

 

"No! Try not!. Do or do not, there is no try."

Master Yoda

"At least my son brought me clothes. And he said there's a wasted rock dove in the backyard. I told him to hit it with a shovel."

Monsoon

"Competitive golf is played mainly on a five-and-a-half-inch course... the space between your ears."

Robert Tyre Jones Jr.

"One morning I woke up and found my favorite pigeon, Julius, had died I was devastated and was gonna use his crate as my stickball bat to honor him. I left the crate on my stoop and went in to get something and I returned to see the sanitation man put the crate into the crusher. I rushed him and caught him flush on the temple with a titanic right hand he was out cold, convulsing on the floor like an infantile retard."

Mike Tyson

"Is that a boy or a girl seagull?"

Moooose

 

Give you another Churchill one -
"Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts."

Two from my boyhood idol, Mickey Mantle -
"If I knew I was going to live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself."
"A team is where a boy can prove his courage on his own. A gang is where a coward goes to hide."

Whether you attribute this one to George Bernard Shaw or John Kennedy or Robert Kennedy - some version of:
“There are those who look at things as they are and say, why; I dream things that never were and say, why not.”

Another from RFK - "What is objectionable, what is dangerous about extremists is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant."

Gene Kranz - "Failure is not an option."

David Letterman - "There is no 'Off' position on the genius switch."

Larry Miller - "Nominum quid geminus?" ("You call that a double?")

 

"Where there's a whip, there's a way."

 

"Speed on before you get pee'd on."

 

I feel that radio is a habitual medium

 

"It's not the end of the world. But you can see it from here."

 

"Anything that exists without my knowledge exists without my consent."

 

"Get busy living or Get busy dying"

 

Big George Orwell fan. This is from Notes on Nationalism (1945), it still applies today. "The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them."

 

"I am become death, destroyer of worlds."

 

I aspire to be the great person my dogs think I am!

 

"Hope is a good thing, Redd"

 

"THE REVOLUTION HAS BEGUN!"

 

The Americans will always do the right thing... after they've exhausted all the alternatives - Winston Churchill

What if I told you insane was working fifty hours a week in some office for fifty years at the end of which they tell you to piss off; ending up in some retirement village hoping to die before suffering the indignity of trying to make it to the toilet on time? Wouldn't you consider that to be insane? Garland Greene, Con Air

If you try to fail, and succeed, which have you done? - George Carlin

Honesty may be the best policy, but it's important to remember that apparently, by elimination, dishonesty is the second-best policy. - George Carlin

If life is a waste of time, and time is a waste of life, then let's all get wasted together and have the time of our lives. - Armand's Pizza, Washington, DC

Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut. - Ernest Hemingway

Liars are usually easily discredited; it's the truth-tellers who need to be destroyed. – J. M. Marshall

Giving money and power to Government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. - P.J. O'Rourke

 

"You see in this world there's two kinds of people, my friend: Those with loaded guns and those who dig."

 

@Beffquus LOL@ quotes from "The Commerce Comet." Don't get me started on the Yogi quotes

Here are but a few more tidbits of homespun and ever-prescient observational wisdom from some more of my favorites (especially Wilde)

I am free of all prejudice. I hate everyone equally. ”
― W.C. Fields

“If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.”
― W.C. Fields

“I don't drink water. Fish fuck in it.”
― W.C. Fields

“Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people. ”
― W.C. Fields

“No doubt exists that all women are crazy; it's only a question of degree.”
― W.C. Fields

“Hell, I never vote for anybody, I always vote against.”
― W.C. Fields

Always borrow money from a pessimist. He won’t expect it back. - Oscar Wilde

A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.
Oscar Wilde

If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn't. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism.
Oscar Wilde

Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much.
Oscar Wilde

Women are made to be loved, not understood.
Oscar Wilde

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
Oscar Wilde

Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
Oscar Wilde

Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.
Oscar Wilde

Woman begins by resisting a man's advances and ends by blocking his retreat.
Oscar Wilde

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.
Robert Frost

A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.
Robert Frost

The jury consist of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.
Robert Frost

By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day.
Robert Frost

Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.
Robert Frost

 

Some of you won't like this one and some will think it is Biblical. Here goes anyway.

"How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.


"Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen (Victoria); all know how to die; but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome."

Winston Churchill
[From “The River War: An Historical Account of the Reconquest of the Soudan” (1899) Churchill’s second book)

 

'You can bet by the time I say go, you'll never say no."