Knowing Nothing about a Great Many Things

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Knowledge is the antidote to fear. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

‘Tis not knowing much, but what is useful, that makes a man wise. – Thomas Fuller

It is possible to fly without motors, but not without knowledge and skill. – Wilbur Wright

Get to know what it is you don’t know as fast as you can. – Robert Heller

I have tried to know absolutely nothing about a great many things and I have succeeded fairly well. – Robert Benchley

Order and simplification are the first steps toward the mastery of a subject – the actual enemy is the unknown. – Thomas Mann

I’m astounded by people who want to know the universe when it’s hard enough to find your way around Chinatown. – Woody Allen

Why do I Wake up Feeling Like Veal?

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My experience has been – that in the end, when you fight for a desperate cause and have good reasons to fight, you usually win. – Edward Teller

Beware the financial man who does not have confrontations; a good financial man can be expected to have at least one confrontation every day. – Henry O. Golightly

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

Many men can bear adversity, but few contempt. – Thomas Fuller

“Queuemania” is an ailment that afflicts people with a compulsive urge to line up behind someone or something, even a lamppost. – Thomas P. Roman

Play the revolutionary and challenge the rules – especially the ones you use to govern your day-to-day activities. – Roger von Oech

A man who does not think for himself does not think at all. – Oscar Wilde

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What Makes Balloons Larger and Candy Bars Smaller?

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He that speaks ill of the mare will buy her. – Benjamin Franklin

There are worse things in life than death. Have you ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman? – Woody Allen

The farmer is the only man in our economy who buys everything he buys at retail, sells everything he sells at wholesale, and pays the freight both ways. – John F. Kennedy

I never knew an auctioneer to lie unless it was absolutely necessary. – Josh Billings

What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. And a sentimentalist -–is a man who sees an absurd value in everything, and doesn’t know the market price of any single thing. – Oscar Wilde

Inflation makes balloons larger and candy bars smaller. – David L. Kurtz

A hamburger by any other name costs twice as much. – Evan Esar

The only difference between a pigeon and the American farmer today is that a pigeon can still make a deposit on a John Deere. – James Allen

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It's Tolerated Only for Race Horses and Fancy Women

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The difficult we do at once; the impossible takes a bit longer. – Inscription on the memorial to the SeaBees (U.S. naval construction battalions)

My father worked for the same firm for twelve years. They fired him. They replaced him with a tiny gadget this big. It does everything that my father does, only much better. The depressing thing is my mother ran out and bought one. – Woody Allen

It costs me a dollar to make my product, and I can sell all I care to make for four dollars apiece. You just can’t believe the profit there is in that three percent. – anonymous

Seek simplicity and distrust it. – Alfred North Whitehead

Large increases in cost with questionable increases in performance can be tolerated only for race horses and fancy women. – William Thomson

Production is not the application of tools to materials, but logic to work. – Peter Drucker

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Involvement Vs. Commitment

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“Involvement” in this context differs from “commitment” in the same sense as the pig’s and the chicken’s roles in one’s breakfast was involved – the pig was committed. – anonymous

There are no traffic jams when you go the extra mile. – anonymous

In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be for it. They must not do too much of it. And they must have a sense of success in it. – John Ruskin

Showing up is 80 percent of life. – Woody Allen

Our minds are lazier than our bodies. – Francois Duc de La Rochefoucauld

Jack, the python, got loose again. Don’t go in there alone. It takes two to handle him. – Note on the front door of a hunter’s isolated cabin

Natural man has only two primal passions: to get and to beget. – Sir William Osler

Snore and You Sleep Alone

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Men are shits. It hit me when I realized that I wouldn’t take myself out or go to bed with me. – Dustin Hoffman (from the movie Tootsie)

An optimist is a fellow who believes a housefly is looking for a way to get out. – George Jean Nathan

Laugh and the world laughs with you, snore and you sleep alone. – Anthony Burgess

A celebrity is a person who works hard all his life to become well known, then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized. – Fred Allen

Animals have these advantages over man: they never hear the clock strike, they die without any idea of death, they have no theologians to instruct them, their last moments are not disturbed by unwelcome and unpleasant ceremonies, their funerals cost them nothing, and no one starts lawsuits over their wills. – Voltaire

Even as a kid I always went for the wrong women. I feel that’s my problem. When my mother took me to see Snow White, everyone fell in love with Snow White. I immediately fell for the wicked queen. – Woody Allen

She’s Descended From a Long Line her Mother Listened to

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The honeymoon is over when he phones that he’ll be late for supper – and she has already left a note that it’s in the refrigerator. – Bill Lawrence

When I was born my mother was terribly disappointed. Not that she wanted a girl – she wanted a divorce. – Woody Allen

Why do Jewish divorces cost so much? Because they’re worth it. – Henny Youngman

I told my wife the truth. I told her I was seeing a psychiatrist. Then she told me the truth: that she was seeing a psychiatrist, two plumbers, and a bartender. – Rodney Dangerfield

She’s descended from a long line her mother listened to. – Gypsy Rose Lee

You don’t know a woman till you’ve met her in court. – Norman Mailer

She cried and the judge wiped her tears with my check book. – Tommy Manville

I don’t think I’ll get married again. I’ll just find a woman I don’t like and give her a house. – Lewis Grizzard

Capitalism is Humanitarianism?

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Any business arrangement that is not profitable to the other fellow will in the end prove unprofitable to you. The bargain that yields mutual satisfaction is the only one that is apt to be repeated. – B.C. Forbes

Capitalism is humanitarianism. – Margaret Thatcher

Money alone sets all the world in motion. – Publius Syrus

The highest use of capital is not to make more money, but to make money do more for the betterment of life. – Henry Ford

Little by little, the pimps have taken over the world. They don’t do anything, they don’t make anything – they just stand there and take their cut. – Jean Giraudoux

I use the words “profit” and “capitalism” proudly. Because when business is healthy, all of society is healthy. – Henry Jack Gray

Business without profit is not business any more than a pickle is candy. – Charles F. Abbott

Social responsibility is tied directly to making a profit. – John D. Harper

It is no secret that organized crime in America takes in over forty billion dollars a year. This is quite a profitable sum especially when one considers that the Mafia spends very little for office supplies. – Woody Allen

Where Neon Goes to Die; Masturbation Too!

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Martyrdom is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability. – George Bernard Shaw

Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins. – Mark Twain

Don’t knock masturbation – it’s sex with someone I love. – Woody Allen

The good thing about masturbation is that you don’t have to dress up for it. – Truman Capote

Women want mediocre men, and men are working hard to become as mediocre as possible. – Margaret Mead

A memorandum is written not to infrom the reader but to protect the writer. – Dean Acheson

Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals. – Oscar Wilde

Miami is where neon goes to die. – Lenny Bruce

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The Meaning of Life is that it ---

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A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel. – Robert Frost

Liberty means responsibility; that is why most men dread it. – George Bernard Shaw

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh. – George Bernard Shaw

Life is the predicament which precedes death. – Henry James

Life is a zoo in a jungle. – Peter De Vries

People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading. – Logan Pearsall Smith

Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable. – Woody Allen

The meaning of life is that it stops. – Franz Kafka

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You Have to Expect a Few Blisters

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All they ever did for me at MGM was to change my leading men and the water in the pool. – Esther Williams

You get tough in this business, until you get big enough to hire people to get tough for you. Then you can sit back and be a lady. – Natalie Wood

If you want a place in the sun, you have to expect a few blisters. – Loretta Young

In the language of screen comedians, four of the main grades of laugh are the titter, the yowl, the belly laugh, and the boffo. – James Agee

Comedy offers a more pessimistic worldview than tragedy. Comedy deals, after all, with our limitation, not our freedom. It describes our trivial rather than our heroic concerns. – Herman G. Weinberg

Not only is God dead, but try to get a plumber on weekends. – Woody Allen

I failed to make the chess team, because of my height. – Woody Allen.

I know one star in Hollywood who hasn’t been spoiled by success and that is Mickey Mouse. – Eddie Cantor

I don’t relate to Mickey as a rodent but as a comic character of the grand proportion. Along with the swastika and the Coca-Cola bottle, Mickey Mouse is the most powerful graphic image of the 20th Century. – Ernest Trova

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