Quoting Bee

Here are some of the Bees' all-time favorite quotes. Find one you like and use it as a "sig quote." If you already have a favorite quote and you think it could bee added to this list, buzz it to us.

"Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others." -- Groucho Marx

"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever." -- Napoleon Bonaparte

"Winners never quit and quitters never win." -- Vince Lombardi

"Victory goes to the player who makes the next-to-last mistake." -- Chess master Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower

"Don't be so humble -- you are not that great." -- Golda Meir to a visiting diplomat

"His ignorance is encyclopedic." -- Abba Eban

"If a man does his best, what else is there?" -- General George S. Patton

"Parenthood remains the single greatest refuge for the amateur." -- Alvin Toffler

"I'll sleep when I'm dead." -- Warren Zevon

"I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody who can write better." -- A. J. Liebling

"People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid." -- Soren Aabye Kierkegaard

"Give me chastity and continence, but not yet." -- Saint Augustine

"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." -- Albert Einstein

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." -- Albert Einstein

"The nice thing about standards is that you have so many to choose from." -- Andrew S. Tanenbaum

"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." -- Sir Winston Churchill

"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use." -- Galileo Galilei

"The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work." -- Emile Zola

"This book fills a much-needed gap." -- Moses Hadas in a review

"The full use of your powers along lines of excellence." -- definition of "happiness" by John F. Kennedy

"I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart." -- E.E. Cummings

"Give me a museum and I'll fill it." -- Pablo Picasso

"Assassins!" -- Arturo Toscanini to his orchestra

"I'll moider da bum." -- heavyweight boxer Tony Galento, when asked what he thought of William Shakespeare

"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is." -- Jan L.A. van de Snepscheut

"I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have." -- Thomas Jefferson

"Each problem that I solved became a rule which served afterwards to solve other problems." -- Rene Descartes, "Discours de la Methode"

"In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." -- Martin Luther King Jr.

"Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right." -- Henry Ford

"Do, or do not. There is no 'try'." -- Yoda, The Empire Strikes Back

"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it." -- Oscar Wilde

"Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so." -- Bertrand Russell

"Wit is educated insolence." -- Aristotle

"My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you'll be happy; if not, you'll become a philosopher." -- Socrates

"Egotist: a person more interested in himself than in me." -- Ambrose Bierce

"A narcissist is someone better looking than you are." -- Gore Vidal

"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." -- Antoine de St. Exupery

"Wise men make proverbs, but fools repeat them." -- Samuel Palmer

"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity." -- Albert Einstein

"The secret of success is to know something nobody else knows." -- Aristotle Onassis

"Sometimes when reading Goethe I have the paralyzing suspicion that he is trying to be funny." -- Guy Davenport

"When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite." -- Sir Winston Churchill

"Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has not heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains." -- Sir Winston Churchill

"The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth." -- Niels Bohr

"We all agree that your theory is crazy, but is it crazy enough?" -- Niels Bohr

"When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong." -- R. Buckminster Fuller

"In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite." - Paul Dirac

"I would have made a good Pope." -- Richard M. Nixon

"Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin." -- John von Neumann

"The mistakes are all waiting to be made." -- chessmaster Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower on the game's opening position

"It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims." -- Aristotle

"Grove giveth and Gates taketh away." -- Bob Metcalfe (inventor of Ethernet) on the trend of hardware speedups not being able to keep up with software demands

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." -- Albert Einstein

"One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important." -- Bertrand Russell

"A little inaccuracy sometimes saves a ton of explanation." -- H. H. Munro (Saki)

"Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler." -- Albert Einstein

"What do you take me for, an idiot?" -- Gen. Charles de Gaulle, when a journalist asked him if he was happy

"I heard someone tried the monkeys-on-typewriters bit trying for the plays of W. Shakespeare, but all they got was the collected works of Francis Bacon." -- Bill Hirst

"Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do." -- Jean-Paul Sartre

"A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines." -- Frank Lloyd Wright

"It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid." -- George Bernard Shaw

"If you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me." -- Alice Roosevelt Longworth

"A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies." -- Oscar Wilde

"Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names." -- John F. Kennedy

"Logic is in the eye of the logician." -- Gloria Steinem

"No one can earn a million dollars honestly." -- William Jennings Bryan

"Everything has been figured out, except how to live." -- Jean-Paul Sartre

"Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech." -- Martin Fraquhar Tupper

"Thank you for sending me a copy of your book -- I'll waste no time reading it." -- Moses Hadas

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

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

"When ideas fail, words come in very handy." -- Goethe

"In the end, everything is a gag." -- Charlie Chaplin

"The nice thing about egotists is that they don't talk about other people." -- Lucille S. Harper

"You got to be careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there." -- Yogi Berra

"I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I have ever known." -- Walt Disney

"He who hesitates is a damned fool." -- Mae West

"Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater." -- Gail Godwin

"University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small." -- Henry Kissinger

"The graveyards are full of indispensable men." -- Gen. Charles de Gaulle

"You can pretend to be serious; you can't pretend to be witty." -- Sacha Guitry

"Behind every great fortune there is a crime." -- Honore de Balzac

"If women didn't exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning." -- Aristotle Onassis

"I am not young enough to know everything." -- Oscar Wilde

"The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his." -- General George S. Patton

"Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"There is no sincerer love than the love of food." -- George Bernard Shaw

"I don't even butter my bread; I consider that cooking." -- Katherine Cebrian

"I have an existential map; it has 'you are here' written all over it." -- Steven Wright

"Mr. Wagner has beautiful moments but bad quarters of an hour." -- Gioacchino Rossini

"Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure." -- Oliver Herford

"I have read your book and much like it." -- Moses Hadas

"The covers of this book are too far apart." -- Ambrose Bierce

"Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them." -- Flannery O'Connor

"Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end." -- Igor Stravinsky

"Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung." -- Voltaire

"When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I've never tried before." -- Mae West

"I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to." -- Elvis Presley

"No Sane man will dance." -- Cicero

"Hell is a half-filled auditorium." -- Robert Frost

"Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you." -- Carl Gustav Jung

"Vote early and vote often." -- Al Capone

"If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?" -- Abraham Lincoln

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

"Hell is other people." -- Jean-Paul Sartre

"I am become death, shatterer of worlds." -- Robert J. Oppenheimer citing from the Bhagavadgita, after witnessing the world's first nuclear explosion

"Happiness is good health and a bad memory." -- Ingrid Bergman

"Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate." -- Thomas Jones

"You can get more with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone." -- Al Capone

"The gods too are fond of a joke." -- Aristotle

"Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes." -- Henry David Thoreau

"It is time I stepped aside for a less experienced and less able man." -- Professor Scott Elledge on his retirement from Cornell

"Every day I get up and look through the Forbes list of the richest people in America. If I'm not there, I go to work." -- Robert Orben

"The cynics are right nine times out of ten." -- Henry Louis Mencken

"There are some experiences in life which should not be demanded twice from any man, and one of them is listening to the Brahms Requiem." -- George Bernard Shaw

"Attention to health is life greatest hindrance." -- Plato

"Plato was a bore." -- Friedrich Nietzsche

"Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal." -- Leo Tolstoy

"I'm not going to get into the ring with Tolstoy." -- Ernest Hemingway

"Hemingway was a jerk." -- Harold Robbins

"How can I lose to such an idiot?" -- shout from chessmaster Aaron Nimzovich

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

"I don't feel good." -- last words of Luther Burbank

"Nothing is wrong with California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn't cure." -- Ross Macdonald

"Men have become the tools of their tools." -- Henry David Thoreau

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." -- Mark Twain

"It is now possible for a flight attendant to get a pilot pregnant." -- Richard J. Ferris, president of United Airlines

"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying." -- Woody Allen

"Men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all the other alternatives." -- Abba Eban

"To sit alone with my conscience will be judgment enough for me." -- Charles William Stubbs

"Sanity is a madness put to good uses." -- George Santayana

"Imitation is the sincerest form of television." -- Fred Allen

"Always do right- this will gratify some and astonish the rest." -- Mark Twain

"In America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take." -- Adlai Stevenson

"Copy from one, it's plagiarism; copy from two, it's research." -- Wilson Mizner

"Why don't you write books people can read?" -- Nora Joyce to her husband James

"Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers." -- T. S. Eliot

"Criticism is prejudice made plausible." -- Henry Louis Mencken

"It is better to be quotable than to be honest." -- Tom Stoppard

"Being on the tightrope is living; everything else is waiting." -- Karl Wallenda

"Opportunities multiply as they are seized." -- Sun Tzu

"A scholar who cherishes the love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar." -- Lao-Tzu

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

"Never mistake motion for action." -- Ernest Hemingway

"Hell is paved with good samaritans." -- William M. Holden

"The longer I live the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains that I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time." -- George Bernard Shaw

"Silence is argument carried out by other means." -- Ernesto "Che" Guevara

"Well done is better than well said." -- Benjamin Franklin

"The average person thinks he isn't." -- Father Larry Lorenzoni

"Heav'n hath no rage like love to hatred turn'd, Nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorn'd." -- William Congreve

"A husband is what is left of the lover after the nerve has been extracted." -- Helen Rowland

"Learning is what most adults will do for a living in the 21st century." -- Perelman

"The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready." -- Henry David Thoreau

"There is a country is Europe where multiple-choice tests are illegal." -- Sigfried Hulzer

"Ask her to wait a moment - I am almost done." -- Carl Friedrich Gauss, while working, when informed that his wife is dying

"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty." -- Sir Winston Churchill

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." -- Thomas Watson, Chairman of IBM, 1943

"I think it would be a good idea." -- Mahatma Ghandi, when asked what he thought of Western civilization

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." -- Edmund Burke

"I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!" -- Will Rogers

"If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?" -- Will Rogers

"The backbone of surprise is fusing speed with secrecy." -- Von Clausewitz

"Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions - it only guarantees equality of opportunity." -- Irving Kristol

"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." -- Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977

"640K ought to be enough for anybody." -- Bill Gates, 1981

"The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C', the idea must be feasible." -- Yale University management professor in response to student Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service (Smith later founded Federal Express Corporation)

"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?" -- H.M. Warner, founder of Warner Brothers, in 1927

"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out." -- Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles in 1962

"Everything that can be invented has been invented." -- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899

"Denial ain't just a river in Egypt." -- Mark Twain

"A pint of sweat, saves a gallon of blood." -- General George S. Patton

"After I'm dead I'd rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one." -- Cato the Elder (a.k.a. Marcus Porcius Cato)

"He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know." -- Abraham Lincoln

"The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it." -- George Bernard Shaw

"Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something." -- last words of Pancho Villa

"The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes

"The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense." -- Tom Clancy

"It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog." -- Mark Twain

"It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both." -- Niccolo Machiavelli, "The Prince"

"Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame." -- Benjamin Franklin

"There is only one nature - the division into science and engineering is a human imposition, not a natural one. Indeed, the division is a human failure; it reflects our limited capacity to comprehend the whole." -- Bill Wulf

"There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher." -- Flannery O'Connor

"A poem is never finished, only abandoned." -- Paul Valery

"Your Highness, I have no need of this hypothesis." -- Pierre Laplace to Napoleon on why his works on celestial mechanics make no mention of God

"I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don't need." -- Francois-Auguste Rodin when asked how he managed to make his remarkable statues

"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them." -- Mark Twain

"The truth is more important than the facts." -- Frank Lloyd Wright

"Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing." -- Wernher Von Braun

"There are only two tradgies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it." -- Oscar Wilde

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." -- George Santayana

"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle." -- Albert Einstein

"This above all: To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man." -- William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 1 Scene 3