Idealism is what precedes experience; cynicism is what follows.
-- David T. Wolf

I may not be the brightest bulb in the chandelier but I'm always on.
-- D.D. Johnson

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.
-- Dr. Seuss

That which cannot be remedied must be survived.
-- Spanish proverb

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
--Aristotle

To teach is to learn twice.
-- Joseph Joubert, essayist

Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.
-- Igor Stravinsky

Hindsight is an exact science.
-- M.H. Alderson

I don't have any solution, but I certainly admire the problem.
-- Oscar Wilde

He who has imagination without learning has wings but no feet.
-- Joseph Joubert, essayist

Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius.
-- unknown

Education is what remains after what has been learned is forgotten."
-- B.F. Skinner

People are like crystals. It is the defects in them that make them interesting.
-- Sir F. Charles Frank

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
-- Douglas Adams

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

The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from.
--Andrew Tanenbaum

What the country needs is dirtier fingernails and cleaner minds.
--Will Rogers

Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing.
--Robert Benchley

Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us worthy evidence of the fact.
--George Eliot

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

No good deed goes unpunished.
-- Clare Booth Luce

Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but she did it backwards and in high heels.
-- Faith Whittlesey

From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend reading it.
-- Groucho Marx

Prejudice is a great time saver. It allows one to form an opinion without bothering to gather the facts.
-- Illini locker room sign by Coach Lou Tepper

Maybe I'm lucky to be going so slowly, because I may be going in the wrong direction.
-- Oscar Wilde

An infallible method of conciliating a tiger is to allow oneself to be devoured.
-- Konrad Adenauer

Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius.
-- unknown

People seem to enjoy things more when they know a lot of other people have been left out of the pleasure.
-- Russell Baker

Experience enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.
-- F.P. Jones

We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it and stop there, lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid: She will never sit down on a hot stove lid again, and that is well; but also, she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.
-- Mark Twain

Nostalgia is a seductive liar.
-- George Ball

No one is completely unhappy at the failure of his best friend.
-- Groucho Marx

When Congress gets the Constitution all fixed up, they're going to start on the Ten Commandments, just as soon as they can find someone in Washington who has read them.
-- Will Rogers

Congressmen and fellows like me are alike in some ways, I guess. But when I make a joke, it's a joke; when they make a joke, it's a law.
-- Will Rogers

Being a woman is terribly difficult, since it consists principally in dealing with men.
-- Joseph Conrad

In times like these, it is helpful to recall that there have always been times like these.
-- Paul Harvey

Democracy is a process by which people are free to choose the man who will get the blame.
-- Laurence J. Peter

There are only two things that are infinite: the universe and human stupidity. Only I'm not sure about the former.
-- Albert Einstein

If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.
-- James Goldsmith

Naked people have little or no influence on society.
-- Mark Twain

NAPOLEON: What shall we do with this soldier, Guiseppe?
Everything he says is wrong.
GUISEPPE: Make him a general, Excellency, and then everything he says will be right.
-- G.B. Shaw

The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you've got it made.
-- Jean Giraudoux

We are faced with insurmountable opportunities.
-- Pogo

Ignorance doesn't happen when someone doesn't comprehend; ignorance happens when someone who doesn't comprehend opens his mouth.
-- Anonymous

I either want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it.
-- Oscar Wilde

Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.
-- Mark Twain

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.
-- Alvin Toffler

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid.
-- Mark Twain.

Playwrite George S. Kaufman once wrote to a writer whose manuscript was filled with spelling errors: "I'm not very good at it myself, but the first rule about spelling is that there is only one 'z' in 'is'."

A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five.
-- Groucho Marx

To do is to be. -- Sartre
To be is to do. -- Aristotle
To be or not to be. -- Shakespeare
. . . do be do be do. . . -- Sinatra

Sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes the bug.
-- Sam Varnado

The basis of optimism is sheer terror.
-- Oscar Wilde

Was it you or your brother who was killed in the war? --
Rev. William Spooner, Oxford don famed for his tongue-twisting "spoonerisms," to a student after World War I

The Victor, by C.W. Longenecker
"If you think you are beaten, you are.
If you think you dare not, you don't.
If you like to win but think you can't,
It's almost a cinch you won't.
If you think you'll lose, you're lost.
For out in the world we find
Success begins with a fellow's will.
It's all in the state of mind.
If you think you are outclassed, you are.
You've got to think high to rise.
You've got to be sure of yourself before
You can ever win a prize.
Life's battles don't always go
To the stronger or faster man.
But sooner or later, the man who wins
Is the man who thinks he can."