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)