Quotations

Collected by Donald Gudehus

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V

William Henry Vanderbilt (May 8, 1821, New Brunswick, NJ - Dec. 8, 1885, New York, NY), American capitalist and railroad magnate
The public be damned.
William Vanderbilt, responding to the suggestion of reporter Clarence Dresser of the Chicago Tribune that the train schedules accomodate the public, 1883


Gore Vidal, American author
As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.
Gore Vidal, The Day the American Empire Ran Out of Gas


Leonardo da Vinci (April 15, 1452, Vinci, Italy - May 2, 1519, Cloux, France), Italian scientist, inventor, and artist
Affective gestures pointing to things near either in time or space should be made with the hand not very far from the body of the person pointing; and if these things are distant, the hand of the painter should be more extended and the face turned toward the person to whom he is addressing the demonstration.
Leonardo da Vinci

Anyone who in discussion relies upon authority uses, not his understanding, but rather his memory.
Leonardo da Vinci

As a well spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.
Leonardo da Vinci

As every divided kingdom falls, so every mind divided between many studies confounds and saps itself.
Leonardo da Vinci

Common Sense is that which judges the things given to it by other senses.
Leonardo da Vinci

Experience does not err. Only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power.
Leonardo da Vinci

He who does not punish evil commands it to be done.
Leonardo da Vinci

He who wishes to see how the soul inhabits the body should look to see how that body uses its daily surroundings. If the dwelling is dirty and neglected, the body will be kept by its soul in the same condition, dirty and neglected.
Leonardo da Vinci

I say that in narrative paintings one should mingle direct contraries close by, because they produce strong contrasts with one another, and all the more so when they are very close together; that is, the ugly next to the beautiful, the big to the small, the old to the young, the strong to the weak; in this way you will vary as much as possible and close by.
Leonardo da Vinci

I think it is no small attraction in a painter to be able to give a pleasing air to his figures, and whoever is not naturally possessed of this grace may acquire it by study, as opportunity offers in the following manner: be on the watch to take good parts of many beautiful faces of which the beautiful parts are established by general repute rather than by your own judgement, for you may deceive yourself by selecting faces that resemble your own, since it often seems that such similarities please us; ... so therefore choose the beautiful ones as I tell you and fix them in your mind.
Leonardo da Vinci

Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigour of the mind.
Leonardo da Vinci

It's easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.
Leonardo da Vinci

Just as courage imperils life; fear protects it.
Leonardo da Vinci

Learning acquired in youth arrests the evil of old age; and if you understand that old age has wisdom for its food, you will so conduct yourself in youth that your old age will not lack for nourishment.
Leonardo da Vinci

Let the painter composing narrative pictures take pleasure in wealth and variety, and avoid repeating any part that occurs in it, so that the uniqueness and abundance attract people to it and delight the eye of the observer. I say that a narrative painting requires (depending on the scene), wherever the eye falls, a mixture of men of diverse appearances, of diverse ages and dress, combined together with women, children, dogs, horses, buildings, fields, and hills.
Leonardo da Vinci

Lying on a feather mattress or quilt will not bring you renown.
Leonardo da Vinci

Make your faces so that they do not all have the same expression, as one sees with most painters, but give them different expression, according to age, complexion, and good or bad character.
Leonardo da Vinci

Never make heads straight on the shoulders, but turn them aside to the right or to the left, even though they look down, or upward, or straight ahead, because it is necessary for them to look lively and awake and not asleep. And do not depict the front or rear half of the whole person so that too much straightness is displaced, one half above or below the other half; and if you should wish to use stiff figures, do so only in portraying old people.
Leonardo da Vinci

One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself.
Leonardo da Vinci

Patience serves as a protection against wrongs as clothes do against cold. For if you put on more clothes as the cold increases, it will have no power to hurt you. So in like manner you must grow in patience when you meet with great wrongs, and they will be powerless to vex your mind.
Leonardo da Vinci

Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master.
Leonardo da Vinci

The function of muscle is to pull and not to push, except in the case of the genitals and the tongue.
Leonardo da Vinci

The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.
Leonardo da Vinci

There is no higher or lower knowledge, but one only, flowing out of experimentation.
Leonardo da Vinci

Time stays long enough for anyone who will use it.
Leonardo da Vinci

Those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.
Leonardo da Vinci, in describing three classes of people

When fortune comes, seize her firmly by the forelock, for, I tell you, she is bald at the back.
Leonardo da Vinci

Where there is shouting there is no true knowledge.
Leonardo da Vinci

While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.
Leonardo da Vinci

Wisdom is the daughter of experience.
Leonardo da Vinci

You can have no dominion greater or less than that over yourself.
Leonardo da Vinci


Virgil
Happy is he who has been able to learn the causes of things.
Virgil


Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet) (Nov. 21, 1694, Paris, France - May 30, 1778, Paris, France), French author and philosopher
Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.
Voltaire

History is nothing but a pack of tricks that we play upon the dead.
Voltaire

I have just been informed that he is dead. He was a hardy patriot, a gifted writer, a faithful friend and an affectionate husband and father - provided he is really dead.
Voltaire, when called upon to eulogize an acquaintanccce he detested, after first refusing and finally being persuaded to say a few words

In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of the citizens to give to the other.
Voltaire

Is this any time to make enemies?
Voltaire, on being told on his deathbed to renounce Satan

It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Voltaire

Think for yourself and let others enjoy the priviledge of doing so too.
Voltaire

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
Voltaire

To hold a pen is to be at war.
Voltaire

When he to whom one speaks does not understand, and he who speaks himself does not understand, that is metaphysics.
Voltaire, in Philosophical Dictionary, 1764


Peter de Vries
Confession is good for the soul only in the sense that a tweed coat is good for dandruff.
Peter de Vries


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H. M. Warner, founder of Warner Brothers film studios
Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?
H. M. Warner, 1927


George Washington (Feb. 22, 1732, Wakefield Plantation, Westmoreland Co., VA - Dec. 14, 1799, Mt. Vernon, VA), Founding Father and 1st President of the United States (1789 - 1797)
Be courteous to all, but intimate with few; and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence.
George Washington

Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
George Washington, in his farewell address to the people of the United States, September, 1796

I am not only retired from all public employments, but I am retiring within myself, and shall be able to view the solitary walk and tread the paths of private life with heartfelt satisfaction.
George Washington, in a letter to the Marquis de Lafayette, 1784

Offensive operations, often times, is the surest, if not the only means of defence.
George Washington, 1799

The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.
George Washington

The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional as to how they perceive the veterans of earlier wars were treated and appreciated by their nation
George Washington, 1789


Harvey Wasserman (c. 1945 - ), American author and columnist
It is not the Judeo-Christian Ten Commandments that form the bedrock of American values. It is the first Ten Amendments to the Constitution.
Harvey Wasserman


Thomas Watson, Chairman of IBM
I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.
Thomas Watson, 1943


John Wayne (Marion Michael Morrison) (May 26, 1907, Winterset, IA - June 11, 1979, Newport Beach, CA), American actor
If everything isn't black and white, I say, 'Why the hell not?'
John Wayne


Ivan Weber, American envirnomentalist
When environmentalists would bring up an issue, SLOC would say, "It's too early to do anything" and then at some point later would say, "It would have been nice, but it's too late now".
Ivan Weber, describing his experience with the Salt Lake Olympic Committee (SLOC) in the years leading up to the Winter Olympic games in 2002


Richard Webb, British scientist and editor
Consider this injustice. Governments tax labour and profit, the engines of prosperity, while pollution and the depletion of resources - arguably the greatest threats to our economic well-being - remain largely untouched. So while we're thinking about how to rebuild our broken economies, here's a plea for a new cornerstone; a universal carbon tax.
Richard Webb, in New Scientist, Sept. 12, 2009


Harvey Weiss, American archaeologist
Science changes one funeral at a time.
Harvey Weiss, in reference to doubters of the idea that climate can influence the success of civilizations; from Scientic American, Dec., 2002


Steven Weinberg, American Nobel Laureate in physics
Even where they do not attempt to formulate a science of war, military historians often write as if generals lose battles because they do not follow some well-established rules of military science. For instance, two generals of the Union Army in the Civil War that come in for pretty wide disparagement are George McClellan and Ambrose Burnside. McClellan is generally blamed for not being willing to come to grips with the enemy, Lee's army of northern Virginia. Burnside is blamed for squandering the lives of his troops in a headlong assault on a well-entrenched opponent at Fredericksburg. It will not excape your attnetion that McClellan is criticized for not acting like Burnside, and Burnside is criticized for not acting like McClellan.
Steven Weinberg, in Dreams of a Final Theory


Joseph Welch
Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. ... Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?
Joseph Welch, as Army counsel from the Boston firm of Hale and Dorr, addressing Senator Joseph McCarthy, June 9, 1954, in the Army-McCarthy hearings in Congress,


Orson Welles, American filmaker
In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.
Orson Welles


Colonel Gerald Wellman, ROTC Instructor
We don't necessarily discriminate. We simply exclude certain types of people.
Colonel Gerald Wellman


Herbert George Wells (September 21, 1866, Bromley, Kent, England - August 13, 1946, London, England), English author
Go away. I'm all right.
H. G. Wells, his last words


Mae Jane West (August 17, 1893, Bushwick, NY - November 22, 1980, Los Angeles, CA), American actress
When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I've never tried before.
Mae West


Western Union
This `telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.
Western Union internal memo, 1876


William Westmoreland, U.S. Army General
Vietnam was the first was ever fought without any censorship. Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind.
William Westmoreland


John Archibald Wheeler, American physicist
To hate is to study, to study is to understand, to understand is to appreciate, to appreciate is to love. So maybe I'll end up loving your theory.
John Archibald Wheeler, to a young physicist, Scientific American, June, 1991


Elwyn Brooks White (July 11, 1899, Mt. Vernon, NY - Oct. 1, 1985, North Brooklin, ME), American essayist and writer
Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it.
E. B. White

Be obscure clearly.
E. B. White

Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but the settlers give it passion.
E. B. White

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half the time.
E. B. White

Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one.
E. B. White

His words leap across rivers and mountains, but his thoughts are still only six inches long.
E. B. White

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.
E. B. White

Prejudice is a great time saver. You can form opinions without having to get the facts.
E. B. White


Walt Whitman, American author and poet
Who are they, as bats and night-bogs, askant in the Capitol?
Are those really Congressmen?
Walt Whitman


Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), Irish dramatist, novelist, and poet
A cynic is a person who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Oscar Wilde

Democracy is the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.
Oscar Wilde

Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
Oscar Wilde

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.
Oscar Wilde

The basis of optimism is sheer terror.
Oscar Wilde, in The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891

The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the youth know everything.
Oscar Wilde

There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
Oscar Wilde

Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are. That is the difference between the sexes.
Oscar Wilde


John Wilkes (Oct, 17, 1725 - Dec. 26, 1797, London, England), English politician, satirist, and champion of a free press
That depends, my lord, on whether I first embrace your lordship's principles or your lordship's mistresses.
John Wilkes, responding to the Fourth Earl of Sandwich in his prosecution of Wilkes, after the Earl of Snadwich stated:
"Upon my soul, Wilkes, I don't know whether you'll die upon the gallows or of the pox."


William of Occam (c. 1285, Ockham, Surrey, England - Apr. 10, 1349, Munich, Germany), English theologian and philosopher
Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate.
(Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily.)
William of Occam, in Quodlibeta Septem. This is known as Occam's Razor, which for scientists is sometimes stated as "when you have two competing theories which make exactly the same predictions, the one that is simpler is the better."


Edward Osborne Wilson (June 10, 1929, Birmingham, AL - ), American biologist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author
So important are insects and other land-dwelling arthropods that if all were to disappear, humanity probably could not last more than a few months.
Edward O. Wilson


Robert Anton Wilson
We say, "Seeing is believing," but acutally ... we are all much better at believing than at seeing. In fact, we are seeing what we believe nearly all the time and only occasionally seeing what we can't believe.
Robert Anton Wilson


Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856, Staunton, VA - February 3, 1924, Washington DC), Twenty-Eighth President of the United States ( 1913 - 1921)
Liberty has never come from government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of government. The history of liberty is the history of resistance.
Woodrow Wilson


Walter Winchell (Walter Winchel) (Apr. 7, 1897, Chicago, IL - Feb. 20, 1972, Los Angeles, CA), American journalist and broadcaster
A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.
Walter Winchell

Gossip is the art of saying nothing in a way that leaves practically nothing unsaid.
Walter Winchell

She's been on more laps than a napkin.
Walter Winchell

The way to become famous fast, is to throw a brick at someone who is famous.
Walter Winchell


John Wing, Jr. (c. 1959, Sarnia, Canada - ), Canadian commedian
A Canadian is just an unarmed American with health insurance.
John Wing

And God said: 'Let there be Satan, so people don't blame everything on me. And let there be lawyers, so people don't blame everything on Satan.'
John Wing


Jonanthan Harshman Winters III (November 11, 1925, Bellbrook, OH - ), American comedian, actor, and artist
If your ship doesn't come in, swim out to it.
Jonathan Winters


William Wordsworth (April 7, 1770, Cockermouth, Cumbria, England - April 13, 1850, Rydal Mount, Grasmere, Cumbria, England), English poet
The child is the father of the man.
William Wordsworth


Benjamin Woznik - American Physicist
This reads like it was translated from Zulu by an illiterate Indian.
Benjamin Woznik, a comment on a student's term project while working as a teachinig assistant in the MIT Junior Physics Laboratory,1960


Christopher Wren, English architect
All celestial mysteries were at once disclosed to him. His successors are envious because they believe that there can scarcely be any new worlds left.
Christopher Wren, commenting on Galileo's astronomical discoveries

Si monumentum requiris, circumspice. (If you are searching for his monument, look around.)
Epitaph to Christopher Wren inscribed in the floor of Saint Paul's Cathedral, written by his son


Frank LLoyd Wright (Frank Lincoln Wright) (June 8, 1867, Richland Center, WI - April 9, 1959, Taliesin West, Phoenix, AZ), American architect
Beauty dissolves conflicts, quiets us within, inspires us, creates a sense of happiness and serenity, refreshes us, and consoles us in times of depression. Beauty is not unnecessary or impractical.
Frank Lloyd Wright

If you ever tilted the map of the U.S.A. very sharply, Los Angeles is the spot where everything would spill out.
Frank Lloyd Wright


Steven Wright, (Dec. 6, 1955, New York City, NY - ), American comedian
A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.
Steven Wright

A fool and his money are soon partying.
Steven Wright

A friend of mine is into Voodoo Acupuncture. You don't have to go. You'll just be walking down the street, and ........... ooooohhhhhh, that's much better...
Steven Wright

All those who believe in psychokinesis raise my hand.
Steven Wright

Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.
Steven Wright

Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.
Steven Wright

Ever notice how irons have a setting for PERMANENT press? I don't get it...
Steven Wright

Everyone has a photographic memory. Some just don't have film.
Steven Wright

For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.
Steven Wright

Hard work pays off in the future. Laziness pays off now.
Steven Wright

How do you tell when you're out of invisible ink?
Steven Wright

I almost had a psychic girlfriend but she left me before we met.
Steven Wright

I broke a mirror in my house. I'm supposed to get seven years of bad luck, but my lawyer thinks he can get me five.
Steven Wright

I couldn't repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder.
Steven Wright

I installed a skylight in my apartment... The people who live above me are furious!
Steven Wright

I was pulled over for speeding today. The officer said, "Don't you know the speed limit is 55 miles an hour?" I replied, "Yes, but I wasn't going to be out that long."
Steven Wright

I went fishing with a dotted line... I caught every other fish.
Steven Wright

I went to a general store, but they wouldn't let me buy anything specific.
Steven Wright

I'd kill for a Nobel Peace Prize.
Steven Wright

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Steven Wright

If you tell a joke in the forest, but nobody laughs, was it a joke?
Steven Wright

I've got some powdered water, but I don't know what to add.
Steven Wright

OK, so what's the speed of dark?
Steven Wright

Someone sent me a postcard picture of the earth. On the back it said, "Wish you were here."
Steven Wright

The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
Steven Wright

The other day, I was walking my dog around my building - on the ledge... Some people are afraid of heights. Not me. I'm afraid of widths.
Steven Wright

The other day when I was walking through the woods, I saw a rabbit standing in front of a candle making shadows of people on a tree.
Steven Wright

The sooner you fall behind, the more time you'll have to catch up.
Steven Wright

The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.
Steven Wright

To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.
Steven Wright

What happens if you get scared half to death twice?
Steven Wright

When everything is coming your way, you're in the wrong lane.
Steven Wright

When I'm not in my right mind, my left mind gets pretty crowded.
Steven Wright


Ronald Lee Wyden (May 3, 1949, Wichita, KS - ), United States Senator from Oregon
General, I can't tell now if you've simply said one thing and done another, or whether you have just parsed your words like a lawyer to intentionally mislead the public. What's to say that if your're confirmed to head the CIA, we won't go through exactly this kind of drill with you over there?
Ron Wyden, to General Michael Hayden during the Senate confirmation hearings, May 18, 2006


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William Butler Yeats (June 13, 1865, Dublin, Ireland - Jan. 28, 1939, Roquebrune, France), Irish poet and Nobel Laureate in Literature, 1923
I have seen more men destroyed by the desire to have a wife and child and keep them in comfort than I have seen destroyed by drink and harlots.
William Butler Yeats


Henny Youngman (Mar. 16, 1906, London, England - Feb. 24, 1998, Manhattan, NY), American comedian and "King of the One-Liners"
A doctor gave a man six months to live. The man couldn't pay his bill, so the doctor gave him another six months.
Henny Youngman

A man goes to a psychiatrist. The doctor says, "You're crazy." The man says, "I want a second opinion !" "OK, you're ugly too !"
Henny Youngman

Doctor, I have a ringing in my ears. "Don't answer!"
Henny Youngman

I don't believe in reincarnation, but what were you when you were alive?
Henny Youngman

I once wanted to become an atheist, but I gave up - they have no holidays.
Henny Youngman

I was so ugly when I was born, the doctor slapped my mother.
Henny Youngman

I'll never forget my first words in the theatre. `Peanuts. Popcorn.'
Henny Youngman

I've got all the money I'll ever need if I die by four o'clock.
Henny Youngman

My doctor grabbed me by the wallet and said "Cough !"
Henny Youngman

My wife and I got remarried. Our divorce didn't work out.
Henny Youngman

The patient says, "Doctor, it hurts when I do this." The doctor replies, "Then don't do that !"
Henny Youngman


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Emiliano Zapata (August 8, 1879 - April 10, 1919), Mexican revolutionary and champion of agrarianism
It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees!
Emiliano Zapata


Fritz Zwicky (February 14, 1898, Varna, Bulgaria - 1974, February 8, Pasadena, CA), Swiss astronomer
Spherical bastards - 'spherical' because they still look like bastards from every possible angle.
Fritz Zwicky, in describing some astronomers at Mt. Wilson and Palomar Mt. Observatories

To base the unexplainabilty and the immense wonder of nature onto an other miracle, God, is unnecessary and not acceptable for any serious thinker.
Fritz Zwicky

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