Jacques-Yves Cousteau

"When one man, for whatever reason, has the opportunity to lead an extraordinary life, he has no right to keep it to himself." - Jacques-Yves Cousteau

This selection was stolen from a scene in Wes Anderson's Rushmore (1998) in which the aforementioned quote is found scribbled in a school library book.

Great movie. And a great quote.

Arnold Toynbee

"Civilization is a movement and not a condition a voyage and not a harbor" - Arnold Toynbee

The Limits of Control (2009), film

"Sometimes the reflection is far more present than the thing being reflected" - Mexican, Jim Jarmusch's The Limits of Control (2009)

Jump below to see a trailer for the film. And don't forget to watch it in HD!

Pablo Picasso

"If there were only one truth you couldn't paint a hundred canvases on the same theme" - Pablo Picasso

Barry Goldwater

"A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away." - Barry Goldwater

George Eliot

"An election is coming. Universal peace is declared and foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry." - George Eliot

Sir Francis Bacon

"As for the possibility, they are ill discoverers that think there is no land when they can see nothing but sea" - Sir Francis Bacon

Victor Hugo

"A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor." - Victor Hugo

Niels Bohr

"An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field." - Niels Bohr

Tennessee Williams

"I have found it easier to identify with the characters who verge upon hysteria, who were frightened of life, who were desperate to reach out to another person. But these seemingly fragile people are the strong people really." - Tennessee Williams (American Playwright)

E. M. Forster

"Let yourself go. Pull out from the depth those thoughts that you do not understand and spread them out in the sunlight and know the meaning of them." - E. M. Forster (English Novelist)

John Andrew Holmes

"Speech is conveniently located midway between thought and action, where it often substitutes for both." - John Andrew Holmes

Unknown

"A gentleman is a man who can play the accordion but doesn't." - Unknown

Charles Baudelaire, poetry

Excerpt of Charles Baudelaire's poem, "Be Drunken"

'It is the hour to be drunken
Be drunken if you would not be the
martyred slaves of Time.
Be drunken Continually, with wine, with
poetry or with virtue, as you please.'

- Charles Baudelaire (French Poet), "Be Drunken"

Complete poem, after the Jump:

Umberto Eco

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth." - Umberto Eco

Pär Lagerkvist

"One for whom the pebble has value must be surrounded by treasures wherever he goes." - Pär Lagerkvist

Peter De Vries

"It is the final proof of God's omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us." - Peter De Vries

Hubert H. Humphrey

"In real life, unlike in Shakespeare, the sweetness of the rose depends upon the name it bears. Things are not only what they are. They are, in very important respects, what they seem to be." - Hubert H. Humphrey

Robert Pirsig

"There is an evil tendency underlying all our technology - the tendency to do what is reasonable even when it isn't any good." - Robert Pirsig

Battlestar Galactica (2003-2009), television

"I don't want to be human! I want to see gamma rays! I want to hear X-rays! And I want to - I want to smell dark matter! Do you see the absurdity of what I am? I can't even express these things properly because I have to - I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid limiting spoken language!

But I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws! And feel the wind of a supernova flowing over me! I'm a machine! And I can know much more! I can experience so much more. But I'm trapped in this absurd body! And why? Because my five creators thought that God wanted it that way!"

- Brother Cavil, Battlestar Galactica (2003-2009)

George Orwell

"The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it." - George Orwell

Voltaire

"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." - Voltaire

Mark Twain

"Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven." - Mark Twain

Oliver Wendell Holmes

"It is the province of knowledge to speak and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen." - Oliver Wendell Holmes

Rita Mae Brown

The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they're okay, then it's you." - Rita Mae Brown (American Writer)

G. K. Chesterton

"An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered." - G. K. Chesterton

Ben Hecht

"Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock." - Ben Hecht

P. J. O'Rourke

"When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators." - P. J. O'Rourke

George Orwell

"Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it." - George Orwell

Scott Adams

"Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep." - Scott Adams

Elie Wiesel

"There is a difference between a book of two hundred pages from the very beginning, and a book of two hundred pages which is the result of an original eight hundred pages. The six hundred are there. Only you don't see them." - Elie Wiesel

Robert H. Schuller

"Tough times never last, but tough people do." - Robert H. Schuller

Thomas Wolfe

"All things on earth point home in old October; sailors to sea, travellers to walls and fences, hunters to field and hollow and the long voice of the hounds, the lover to the love he has forsaken." - Thomas Wolfe (American)

Albert Einstein

"Ethical axioms are found and tested not very differently from the axioms of science. Truth is what stands the test of experience." - Albert Einstein

John Muir

"Going to the woods is going home, for I suppose we came from the woods originally." - John Muir

Fernando Pessoa

"To feel today what one felt yesterday isn't to feel - it's to remember today what was felt yesterday, to be today's living corpse of what yesterday was lived and lost." - Fernando Pessoa (Portuguese Poet)

Paul Beatty

"If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door." - Paul Beatty

Alan Key

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it." - Alan Kay

Victor Hugo

"I don't mind what Congress does, as long as they don't do it in the streets and frighten the horses." - Victor Hugo (1802-1885)

John le Carre

"Coming home from very lonely places, all of us go a little mad: whether from great personal success, or just an all-night drive, we are the sole survivors of a world no one else has ever seen." - John le Carre, "The Chancellor Who Agreed To Play Spy", The New York Times, May 8, 1974

Ernest Hemingway

"Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut." - Ernest Hemingway (American Writer)

Bill Hicks

"It's just a ride and we can change it any time we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings and money, a choice, right now, between fear and love." - Bill Hicks, Revelations (1993)

Expanded and in video form, after the Jump.

Horace Walpole

"Life is a comedy for those who think... and a tragedy for those who feel." - Horace Walpole

Albert Einstein

"The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life." - Albert Einstein

TS Eliot, poetry & theatre

Excerpt of TS Eliot's poem "Choruses" from The Rock, a pageant play:

Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

- TS Eliot (American Poet), "Choruses"

Complete poem, after the Jump:

Max Beerbohm

"You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind legs. But by standing a flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men." - Max Beerbohm

Norman Mailer

"There is no greater importance in all the world like knowing you are right and that the wave of the world is wrong, yet the wave crashes upon you." - Norman Mailer

Albert Einstein

"The physicists say that I am a mathematician, and the mathematicians say that I am a physicist. I am a completely isolated man and though everybody knows me, there are very few people who really know me." - Albert Einstein

Giacomo Cassanova

"By recollecting the pleasures formerly, I renew them, I enjoy them a second time, while I laugh at the remembrance of troubles now past, and which I no longer feel." - Giacomo Cassanova (Venetian Writer)

Alfred Korzybski

"There are two ways to slide easily through life; to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking." - Alfred Korzybski

Edward Abbey

"No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets." - Edward Abbey

Blaise Cendrars

"Writing is to descend like a miner to the depths of the mine with a lamp on your forehead, a light whose dubious brightness falsifies everyting, whose wick is in permanent danger of explosion, whose blinking illumination in the coal dust exhausts and corrodes your eyes." - Blaise Cendrars (Swiss/French)

Hồ Xuân Hương, poem

Excerpt of a poem:

In the dead of night, nightwatcher's drums resound
I awake and find myself lonely in the vast world
After many an inebriating farewell cup, I come to my senses
The slanting moon on the wax is shaped like a crescent

- Hồ Xuân Hương (Vietnamese Poet), untitled

Complete poem, after the Jump

Network (1976), film

"…At the bottom of all our terrified souls we know that democracy is a dying giant; a sick, sick, dying, decaying political concept riding in it's final pain. I don't mean that the United States is finished as a world power… What is finished, is the idea that this great country is dedicated to the freedom and flourish of every individual in it; it's the individual that's finished. It's the single, solitary human being that's finished; it's every single one of you out there that's finished. Because this is no longer a nation of independent individuals, it's a nation of two-hundred some-odd million transistorized, deodorized, whiter-that-white steel-belted bodies, totally unnecessary as human beings, and as replaceable as piston rods." - Howard Beale, Sidney Lumet's Network (1976)

Complete quote as well as video, after the Jump.

Janet Long

"Part of being sane, is being a little bit crazy." - Janet Long

Hmmm, so conversely does that mean part of being crazy, is being a little bit sane?

Harlan Ellison

"The two most common elements in the universe are Hydrogen and stupidity." - Harlan Ellison

Doug Larson

"If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur." - Doug Larson

Sir Richard Steele

"Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body." - Sir Richard Steele

Network (1976), film

"So, you listen to me. Listen to me: Television is not the truth!...Go to God! Go to your gurus! Go to yourselves! Because that's the only place you're ever going to find any real truth. But, man, you're never going to get any truth from us [Television Networks]…We deal in illusions, man! None of it is true!...You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here. You're beginning to think that the tube is reality, and that your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you! You dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube, you even think like the tube! This is mass madness, you maniacs! In God's name, you people are the real thing! WE are the illusion!" - Howard Beale, Sidney Lumet's Network (1976)

Complete quote as well as video, after the Jump.

Alan Dean Foster

"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." - Alan Dean Foster

Spike Milligan

"Money can't buy friends, but it can get you a better class of enemy." - Spike Milligan

Arnold Toynbee

"America is a large, friendly dog in a very small room. Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a chair." - Arnold Toynbee

Network (1976), film

You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today!


...There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state, Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do.

We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. - Arthur Jensen, Sidney Lumet's Network (1976)

Complete quote as well as video, after the Jump.

Bill Hicks

"Watching television is like taking black spray paint to your third eye." - Bill Hicks

Alan Corenk

"Television is more interesting than people. If it were not, we would have people standing in the corners of our rooms." - Alan Corenk

Bill Hicks

"I'll show you politics in America. Here it is, right here. 'I think the puppet on the right shares my beliefs.' 'I think the puppet on the left is more to my liking.' 'Hey, wait a minute, there's one guy holding out both puppets!' 'Shut up! Go back to bed, America. Your government is in control. Here's Love Connection. Watch this and get fat and stupid. By the way, keep drinking beer, you fucking morons.'" - Bill Hicks, Rant in E-Minor (1997)

TS Eliot

"As things are, and as fundamentally they must always be, poetry is not a a career, but a mug's game. No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: He may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing." - TS Eliot (American Poet)

Richard M. Nixon

"Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest men in national government too." - Richard M. Nixon

Nicholas Chamfort

"In great affairs men show themselves as they wish to be seen; in small things they show themselves as they are." - Nicholas Chamfort

Richard Gere

"I know who I am. No one else knows who I am. If I was a giraffe, and someone said I was a snake, I'd think, no, actually I'm a giraffe." - Richard Gere

François de La Rochefoucauld

"Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires." - François de La Rochefoucauld

Bill Hicks

"Folks, it's time to evolve. That's why we're troubled. You know why our institutions are failing us, the church, the state, everything's failing? It's because, um – they're no longer relevant. We're supposed to keep evolving. Evolution did not end with us growing opposable thumbs. You do know that, right? There's another 90 percent of our brains that we have to illuminate." - Bill Hicks, Filling Up the Hump (1993)

Sure we have Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, but there's no question that the world is worse off for the absence of Bill Hicks. Then again, if the pancreatic cancer hadn't killed him todays politics sure would have.

Gao Xingjian

"When you use words, you're able to keep your mind alive. Writing is my way of reaffirming my own existence." - Gao Xingjian (French/Chinese Writer)

Nicholas Gurewitch

"…that laughter is a cough-like defense that occurs when a reader's cognitive facilities experience a sudden overflow of information -often in the form of a paradox, silly face, or boobie." - Nicholas Gurewitch

Check out his awesome, funny, ironic, vulgar, satirical, hysterical, just plain ingenious web comic: The Perry Bible Fellowship (you won't be sorry)

Robert Frost

"The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office." - Robert Frost

Plato

"No human thing is of serious importance." - Plato

Richard Bach

"The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work." - Richard Bach

Conversely and not so optimistically, but just as true as ever: The less we want to get something done, the more we call it work.

Jean Paul Richter

"A timid person is frightened before a danger, a coward during the time, and a courageous person afterward." - Jean Paul Richter

W. H. Auden

"We are here on Earth to do good to others. What the others are here for, I don't know." - W. H. Auden

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974), film

"Even great men have to pee." - Lt. Rico Patrone, Joseph Sargent's The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)

Mahatma Gandhi

"If you're going to be a bear, be a grizzly." - Mahatma Gandhi

Short. Simple. And powerful.

Mel Brooks

"Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die." – Mel Brooks

William H. Mauldin

"I feel like a fugitive from the law of averages." - William H. Mauldin

Bill Lyon

"If at first you don't succeed, find out if the loser gets anything." - Bill Lyon

Mel Brooks

"Humor is just another defense against the universe." - Mel Brooks

Edwin Shlossberg

"The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think." - Edwin Schlossberg

John Locke

This quote was suggested by my mom!

"I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts." - John Locke

Joseph Brodsky

"Every individual ought to know at least on poet from cover to cover: if not as a guide through the world, then as a yardstick for the language." - Joseph Brodsky (Russian-American Poet)

Woody Allen

"Not only is there no God, but try getting a plumber on weekends." - Woody Allen

Bill Cosby

"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody." - Bill Cosby

Robert Mitchum

"Life’s hard. But it’s a lot harder if you’re stupid." – Robert Mitchum, The Friends of Eddie Coyle

Fyodor Dostoevsky

"You may be perfectly sure that if Columbus was happy, it was not after he had discovered America, but when he was discovering it." - Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot (Book 3, Chapter 6)

George Carlin

"I'm not concerned about all hell breaking loose, but that a PART of hell will break loose... it'll be much harder to detect." - George Carlin

Evelyn Waugh

"It is a curious thing... that every creed promises a paradise which will be absolutely uninhabitable for anyone of civilized taste." - Evelyn Waugh

Albert Camus

"Too many have dispensed with generosity in order to practice charity." - Albert Camus

Joseph Roux

"A fine quotation is a diamond on the finger of a man of wit, and a pebble in the hand of a fool." - Joseph Roux

Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Norm Papernick

"Those who can laugh without cause have either found the true meaning of happiness or have gone stark raving mad." - Norm Papernick

Blade Runner (1982), film

“The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long - and you have burned so very, very brightly, Roy.” – Eldon Tyrell, Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982)

John F. Kennedy

"We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth." - John F. Kennedy

François Mauriac

"'Tell me what you read and I'll tell you who you are' is true enough, but I'd know you better if you told me what you reread." - François Mauriac (French Writer)

George Orwell

"All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others." - George Orwell

George Bernard Shaw

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

Oscar Wilde

"It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating." - Oscar Wilde

Thomas Jefferson

"I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it." - Thomas Jefferson

Lawrence Durrell

"It takes a lot of energy and a lot of neurosis to write a novel. If you were really sensible, you’d do something else.” – Lawrence Durrell (British Novelist)

Blade Runner (1982), film

“I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.” – Roy Batty, Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982)

Glaser and Way

"The problem with any unwritten law is that you don't know where to go to erase it." - Glaser and Way

Betrand Russell

"The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution." - Bertrand Russell

Ambrose Bierce

"To be positive: To be mistaken at the top of one's voice." - Ambrose Bierce

H. P. Lovecraft

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents." - H. P. Lovecraft

Amy Benfer

“There is nothing wrong with being a sex object if your object is to have sex.” – Amy Benfer

Henry Miller

“Obscenity is a cleansing process, whereas pornography only adds to the murk” – Henry Miller (American Novelist)

Percy Bysche Shelley

“A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own.” – Percy Bysche Shelley (English Romantic Poet)

Speaking of Bodily Functions...

"I'm not here to wipe your ass; I'm just here to give you the key to the bathroom." - me, actually!

Something I unfortunately didn't say, but was definitely thinking when helping a customer on the copier today.

Mark Millar

"I’m always amazed to see people saying they can fire out stories and find it easy. The only thing your body can fire out easy is diarrhea and I want my comics to be a little better than that." – Mark Millar

Liam Sharp

"I can't for the life of me imagine why God would create man, but I can certainly fathom why man would need to create God."— Liam Sharp

Seth Fisher

“Art is really just problem solving in action. You start with a few lines, then you try to balance those lines with other lines compositionally, then you balance that with trying to explain a certain space or emotion….Perspective, composition, timing, and color theory are technical skills. You have a problem, and you have this toolbox full of techniques that you use to paint a totally unique bridge from an assumption to its implications.” – Seth Fisher

Philip K. Dick

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick

PSSSssst!

And don't worry, those recycled Facebook quotes will be coming just soon enough. :P

Let's Get This Party Started

Our first quote comes from my good friend:

"Sometimes you gotta give up because it's not worth your time. When the time arrives, then you depart to discover new possibilities in life. I'm out." - Jai (8/23/09)

I like it because it reminds me of the whole choice vs. destiny argument.  Sometimes you just have listen to the universe and let it decide.  As they say, don't fight the current.  Go with the flow.

Anyways, yeah, I'm not making any real original thoughts here, but the point is I like his quote.  Don't give-up the fight.  But when it's obviously not working out, move on to fight again.  Besides, it usually seems to be for the better.

If you like Jai's style, check him out at http://studio4jai.blogspot.com/

Heads Up

I'm going to start off by recycling a bunch of quotes from my Facebook page.  Yeah, pretty lazy I know, but since I never log onto my Facebook account anyways, it doesn't count!

For the record, I'll be labeling any of the recycled Facebook quotes I post with, what else, "Facebook".  But don't worry, once I blow through those, I'll start stealin--*AHErm!  I mean, recycling quotes from places other than my Facebook page.

And I must confess, I don't intend on posting any of my own personal quotes.  Mostly because I'm not nearly creative enough, or more importantly, wise enough to come up with any significant words of wisdom.  But if anything does come to mind, I'll be sure to let you know!