All Powerful for Impotence

Image via WikipediaNothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing is so futile. – Bertrand Russell




There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision. – William James



They are decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful for impotence. – Sir Winston Churchill



The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides. Accept life, and you must accept regret. – Frederic Amiel



Indecision is fatal. It is better to make a wrong decision than build up a habit of indecision. If you’re wallowing in indecision, you certainly can’t act – and action is the basis of success. – Marie Beynon Ray



One way to get high blood pressure is to go mountain-climbing over molehills. – Earl Wilson



It is always our inabilities that vex. – Joseph Joubert

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Image by danpeters via FlickrPerhaps 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; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned, and however early a man’s training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly. – Thomas Henry Huxley




Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. – Herbert George Wells



A first-rate theory predicts: a second-rate theory forbids: and a third-rate theory explains after the event. – A.I. Kitaigorodskii



But I hang onto my prejudices. They are the testicles of my mind. – Eric Hoffer

Action will remove the doubt that theory cannot solve. – Tehyi Hsieh

No theory is good except on condition that one use it to go beyond. – Andre Gide
First a new theory is attacked as absurd: then it is admitted to be true, but obvious and insignificant: finally, it is seen to be so important that its adversaries claim that they themselves discovered it. – William James

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Ideas Contradict Ideas

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Above all do not talk yourself out of good ideas by trying to expound them at haphazard gatherings. – Jacques Barzun



Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds. – Remy de Gourmont



One thing that ideas do is to contradict other ideas and keep us from believing them. – William James.



Funny how people generally can do more than they think they can, and almost always do less than they think they do. – anonymous



Has God forgotten everything I’ve done for him? – King Louis XIV



Thunder is good, thunder is impressive, but it is the lightning that does the work. – Mark Twain



Anything that won’t sell, I don’t want to invent. – Thomas A. Edison

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The Poor Could Make a Wonderful Living - If the Rich Could Hire People to Die for Them

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If the rich could hire other people to die for them, the poor could make a wonderful living. – Yiddish proverb

Wisdom is the supreme part of happiness. – Sophocles

Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time. – Theodore Roosevelt

A man only becomes wise when he begins to calculate the approximate depth of his ignorance. – Gian Carlo Menotti

Knowledge shrinks as wisdom grows. – Alfred North Whitehead

Wisdom consists of the anticipation of consequences. – Norman Cousins

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook. – William James

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The Concatenation of Ephemeralities

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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

Whatever a man does he must do first in his mind. Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. – William James

A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

The worlds of thought and action overlap. What you think has a way of becoming true. – Roger von Oech

Something happens to a man when he puts on a necktie. It cuts off all the oxygen to his brain. – A.J. Carothers

All life is a concatenation of ephemeralities. – Alfred Kahn

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There are three faithful friends – an old wife, an old dog, and ready money. – Benjamin Franklin

We shall never have friends, if we expect to find them without faults. – Thomas Fuller

Genius is little more than the facutly of perceiving in an unhabitual way. – William James

Genius is the ability to reduce the complicated to the simple. – C.W. Ceram

Genius is one of the many forms of insanity. – Cesare Lombroso

The public is wonderfully tolerant. They forgive everything except genius. – Oscar Wilde

The trouble with our age is all signposts and no destinations. – Louis Kronenberger

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How to Make a Compact with the Devil

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Advertising agency: eighty-five percent confusion and fifteen percent commission. – Fred Allen

In science the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not to the man to whom the idea first occurs. – Sir William Osler

To sell something, tell a woman it’s a bargain; tell a man it’s deductable. – Earl Wilson

When a man sells eleven ounces for twelve, he makes a compact with the devil, and sells himself for the value of an ounce. – Henry Ward Beecher

I am the world’s worst salesman; therefore I must make it easy for people to buy. – Frank W. Woolsworth

It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place. – H.L. Mencken

Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself, each man as the other person see him, and each man as he really is. – William James

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You Have Reached the Pinnacle of Success When ...

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One of the greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody. - Mother Teresa

Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty. – Mother Teresa

The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated. – William James

It is far more impressive when others discover your good qualities without your help. – Judith S. Martin

It is always worthwhile to make others aware of their worth. – Malcolm Forbes

When you cease to make a contribution you begin to die. – Eleanor Roosevelt

You have reached the pinnacle of success as soon as you become uninterested in money, compliments, or publicity. – Dr. O.A. Battista

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Knowing What to Overlook

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The cobra will bite you whether you call it cobra or Mr. cobra. – Indian proverb

Tell not all you know, believe not all you hear, do not all you are able. – Italian proverb

Wisdom is the power to put our time and our knowledge to the proper use. -–Thomas J. Watson

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook. – William James

Incomprehensible jargon is the hallmark of a profession. – Kingman Brewster, Jr.

I can mend the break of day, heal a broken heart, and provide temporary relief to nymphomaniacs. – Larry Lee

The man who knows only one subject is almost as tiresome as the man who knows no subjects. – Charles Dickens

Violence Punctuated by Committee Meetings

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A race track is a place where windows clean people. – Danny Thomas

The deer season just opened. A deer hunter in Ventura County brought in his first man yesterday. – Will Rogers

If a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared legally dead. – Erma Bombeck

Football features two of the worst parts of American life - violence punctuated by committee meetings. – George F. Will

(on fishing) - It has always been my private conviction that any man who pits his intelligence against a fish and loses has it coming. – John Steinbeck

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be. – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Only the shallow know themselves. – Oscar Wilde

He who knows others is clever; he who knows himself is enlightened. – Lao-tzu

These then are my last words to you. Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact. – William James

Darkly Comical Quotes

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Four things come not back – the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, and the neglected opportunity. – Arabian proverb

Those who give too much attention to trifling things become generally incapable of great ones. – Cyrus H. K. Curtis

Fear not for the future, weep not for the past. – Shelley

The world is divided into people who do things and people who get the credit. Try, if you can, to belong to the first class. There’s far less competition. – Dwight Morrow

Not failure, but low aim, is a crime. – Richter

Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact. – William James

The great business of man is to improve his mind, and govern his manners; all other projects and pursuits, whether in our power to compass or not, are only amusements. – Pliny

Three things too much, and three too little are pernicious to man; to speak much, and know little; to spend much, and have little, to presume much, and be worth little. – Cervantes