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Random Quotations

The following quotations were randomly selected from the collections selected below .

There are new words now that excuse everybody. Give me the good old days of heroes and villains. the people you can bravo or hiss. There was a truth to them that all the slick credulity of today cannot touch.: Bette Davis (1908 - 1989), The Lonely Life, 1962
- More quotations on: [Heroes]
I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestioned ability of a man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.: Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)
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True happiness is of a retired nature, and an enemy to pomp and noise; it arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's self, and in the next from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions.: Joseph Addison (1672 - 1719), The Spectator, March 17, 1911
- More quotations on: [Friendship] [Happiness]
What you cannot enforce, do not command.: Sophocles (496 BC - 406 BC)
A neurosis is a secret that you don't know you are keeping.: Kenneth Tynan
- More quotations on: [Sanity] [Secrets]
The human mind treats a new idea the same way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it.: P. B. Medawar (1915 - )
- More quotations on: [Ideas]
Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery.: Malcolm X (1925 - 1965), Malcolm X Speaks, 1965
A writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, because everything she does is golden. In my view, a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway.: Junot Diaz, O Magazine, November 2009
- More quotations on: [Writing]
And since, in our passage through this world, painful circumstances occur more frequently than pleasing ones, and since our sense of evil is, I fear, more acute than our sense of good, we become the victims of our feelings, unless we can in some degree command them.: Ann Radcliffe (1764 - 1823), The Mysteries of Udolpho, 1764
Progress is a nice word. But change is its motivator and change has its enemies.: Robert F. Kennedy (1925 - 1968)
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Newspapermen learn to call a murderer 'an alleged murderer' and the King of England 'the alleged King of England' to avoid libel suits.: Stephen Leacock (1869 - 1944)
- More quotations on: [Journalism]
I never forget a face, but in your case I'll be glad to make an exception.: Groucho Marx (1890 - 1977)
Publishers are just middlemen. That's all. If artists could remember that more often, they'd save themselves a lot of aggrevation.: Hugh Macleod, How To Be Creative: 4, 08-22-04
It is the wretchedness of being rich that you have to live with rich people.: Logan Pearsall Smith (1865 - 1946), Afterthoughts (1931) "In the World"
- More quotations on: [Money]
Progress is the product of human agency. Things get better because we make them better. Things go wrong when we get too comfortable, when we fail to take risks or seize opportunities.: Susan Rice, Stanford University Commencement, 2010
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I'm a born-again atheist.: Gore Vidal (1925 - )
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The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois.: Gustave Flaubert (1821 - 1880)
- More quotations on: [Democracy]
Start every day off with a smile and get it over with.: W. C. Fields (1880 - 1946)
A book burrows into your life in a very profound way because the experience of reading is not passive.: Erica Jong, O Magazine, 2003
I don't own a cell phone or a pager. I just hang around everyone I know, all the time. If someone wants to get a hold of me, they just say 'Mitch,' and I say 'what?' and turn my head slightly.: Mitch Hedberg (1968 - 2005)