Gracyk ~ Archive of quotes

Somebody's putting something in his Metamucil.

—David Letterman on John McCain

Week of September 26, 2008

The government-sponsored institution Fannie Mae, when I look
at its risks, seems to be sitting on a barrel of dynamite, vulnerable
to the slightest hiccup. But not to worry: their large staff of scientists
deemed these events "unlikely."

—Nassim Taleb, statistician, 2006

Week of September 19, 2008

This election is not about issues.

—Rick Davis, advisor to presidential candidate John McCain

Week of September 12, 2008

Bearing babies irresponsibly is simply wrong.

—Vice President Dan Quayle (Republican) 1992

Week of September 5, 2008

It is the habit of the unthinking to turn in times like this to the illusions of economic magic.

—Franklin D. Roosevelt , 1932

Week of Aug. 22, 2008

What is the use of art? There's a nasty one.

—E. M. Forster

Week of Aug. 15, 2008

Experience has its dangers: it may bring wisdom, but it may also bring stiffness and cause hardened deposits in the mind.

—E. F. Benson

Week of Aug. 15, 2008

Collectivism is not inherently democratic, but, on the contrary, gives
to a tyrannical minority such powers as the Spanish Inquisitors never
dreamt of.

—George Orwell

Week of July 25, 2008

Discordant visual art does not cause visceral pain,
discordant music does.

—Tom Service

Week of July 18, 2008

What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof.

—Christopher Hitchens

Week of July 11, 2008

Nothing is just one thing.

—Virginia Woolf

Week of July 4, 2008

What if there were no hypothetical questions?

—George Carlin

Week of June 27, 2008

Of course, God will forgive me. That's his job.

—Heinrich Heine

Week of June 20, 2008

Painting is mute poetry, and poetry a speaking picture.

—Simonides

Week of June 13, 2008

Our wills and fates do so contrary run that our devices still are overthrown;
Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.

—William Shakespeare (Hamlet)

Week of June 6, 2008

The world is but a large prison, out of which some are daily led to execution.

—Sir Walter Raleigh

Week of May 23, 2008

It's a bad plan that can't be changed.

—Publius Syrus

Week of May 16, 2008

Human affairs can be administered,
but administration is not management.

—Simon Blackburn

Week of May 9, 2008

An action which would be bad if done openly
is not rendered good by secrecy.

—Henry Sidgwick

Week of May 2, 2008

If music is too closely united to words, and tries to form itself according
to the events, it is striving to speak a language which is not its own.

—Arthur Schopenhauer

Week of April 25, 2008

Even the blossoming tree lies the moment its bloom is seen
without the shadow of terror.

—Theodor W. Adorno

Week of April 18, 2008

Americans do not take kindly to things being impossible.

—Francois Cusset

Week of April 11, 2008

The work of art in the machine age is a construction;
it is built like the Parthenon.

—Herbert Read

Week of April 4, 2008

Our energy policy has not been very wise.

—President George W. Bush

Week of March 28, 2008

The religion of art makes people worse, because it encourages contempt
for those considered inartistic.

—John Carey

Week of March 21, 2008

Hope is not a plan.

—U.S. Army Maxim

Week of March 14, 2008

I never dared to be radical when young
for fear it would make me conservative when old.

—Robert Frost

Week of Feb. 29, 2008

The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Week of Feb. 22, 2008

The time when music could change the world is past.

—Neil Young, 2008

Week of Feb. 15, 2008

Music resembles poetry, in each
Are nameless graces which no methods teach.

—Alexander Pope

Week of Feb. 1, 2008

If you don't know where you are going, any road will take you there.

—Lewis Carroll

Week of Jan. 25, 2008

The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists.
That is why they invented hell.

—Bertrand Russell

Week of Jan. 18, 2008

from http://icanhascheezburger.com/

Week of Jan. 11, 2008

Everything is what it is, and not another thing.

—Joseph Butler, Bishop

Week of Jan. 5, 2008

The nation that will insist upon drawing a broad line of demarcation between
the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools
and its thinking by cowards.

—William Francis Butler

Week of Dec. 28, 2007

The act of reading is not natural.

—Maryanne Wolf

Week of Dec. 14, 2007

That which we are, we are.

—Tennyson

Week of Dec. 7, 2007

The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.

—Leslie Poles Hartley

Week of Nov. 23, 2007

A time of revolution . . . is an uneasy time to live in. It is easier to tear down a code than to put a new one in its place.

—Frederick Lewis Allen

Week of Nov. 23, 2007

What is most excellent in any way is always the least showy.

—Erasmus

Week of Nov. 9, 2007

No one likes armed missionaries.

—Robespierre

Week of Nov. 2, 2007

It is a function of all art to give us some perception of an order in life,
by imposing an order upon it.

—T. S. Eliot

Week of October 26, 2007

The attempt to make heaven on earth invariably produces hell.

—Karl Popper

Week of October 19, 2007

Autumn's the mellow time.

—William Allingham, Irish poet

Week of October 12, 2007

Mechanization means never having to wonder what to pretend to desire next.

—John Daniels

Week of October 5, 2007

What we have to do is to be forever curiously testing new opinions
and courting new impressions.

—Walter Pater

Week of September 28, 2007

If only God were a decent man.

—French Proverb

Week of September 14, 2007

To say nothing, especially when speaking, is half the art of diplomacy.

—Will Durant

Week of September 7, 2007

"I Left My Brain in My Locker"

—Message on shirt marketed to pre-teen girls by Limited Too

Week of August 31, 2007

For us to be able to enter the world that music creates for us,
we need a silence within which to listen.

—Andrew Waggoner

Week of August 24, 2007

Procrastination is even costlier in politics than it is in private life.

—Michael Ignatieff

Week of August 17, 2007

I have always affirmed that I'm a very mediocre painter.
I simply believe that I'm a better painter that my contemporaries.

—Salvador Dali

Week of August 3, 2007

Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless;
peacocks and lilies, for example.

—John Ruskin

Week of July 27, 2007

There is no more somber enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.

—Cyril Connolly

Week of July 20, 2007

The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please:
we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations.

—Edmund Burke

Week of Independence Day, 2007

There are some things that are so serious that you can only joke about them.

—Niels Bohr

Week of June 22, 2007

All problems are divided into two classes, soluble questions, which are trivial,
and important questions, which are insoluble.

—George Santayana

Week of June 8, 2007

English departments ... rely on some kind of mimetic, osmotic process
whereby ideas about form and style and structure get absorbed by the fledgling
academic while she concentrates on the important stuff: content. And if I
just spend enough time bird-watching, I will be able to fly.

—Rachel Toor

Week of June 1, 2007

No matter how pure and impassioned the intention, the inevitable effect of
most artistic or cultural revolutions is to feed the public’s appetite for titillation.

—Joe Boyd

Week of May 25, 2007

The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this
because God will not be mocked.

—Jerry Falwell (1933-2007) explains the 9/11/2001 terrorist attacks

Week of May 18, 2007

In writing about art, a pretense of objectivity never succeeds.

—Charles Rosen

Week of May 11, 2007

Every uneducated person is a caricature of himself.

—Friedrich von Schlegel

Week of April 27, 2007

Human beings, past and present, have trashed the joint.

—Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007)

Week of April 20, 2007

There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something we'd all love one another.

—Frank Zappa

Week of April 13, 2007

What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expected generally happens.

—Benjamin Disraeli

Week of March 30, 2007

Epilepsy taught me that we're not in control of ourselves.

—Neil Young

Week of March 23, 2007

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

—Aristotle

Week of March 16, 2007

Bad taste is better than no taste.

—Alexis Smith

Week of March 9, 2007

No poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder,
no symphony for the listener.

—Walter Benjamin

Week of March 2, 2007

It is enough that the arrows fit exactly in the wounds that they have made.

—Franz Kafka

Week of February 23, 2007

In philosophy, the name of the game is disagreement.

—John Searle

Week of February 9, 2007

There are essentially four wars going on in Iraq.

—Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates

Week of February 2, 2007

I'm vice president and they're not.

—Vice President Dick Cheney responds to his critics

Week of January 26, 2007

Week of January 19, 2007

The highest justification of liberal education is that by forming free and
well-furnished minds it prepares students to fashion for themselves a good life.

—John Stuart Mill

Week of January 12, 2007

I resent in art the definitive explanation for people's behavior.

—filmmaker Robert Altman

Week of December 29, 2006

The old-fashioned bookstore was a charming place, but charm alone
will not solve the problem of modern book distribution.

—Carnegie Corporation report, 1930

Week of December 22, 2006

To educate a person in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.

—Theodore Roosevelt

Week of December 15, 2006

Grave. Deteriorating. Daunting.

—The Iraq Study Group summarizes U.S. prospects in Iraq

Week of December 8, 2006

Freedom and individualism in the creation of art is an irritant,
like so much sand thrown into our shells.

—Kirk Varnedoe

Week of November 24, 2006

Election Day, 2006

How could a society that cared too little for truth make sufficiently
well-informed judgments and decisions concerning the most suitable
disposition of its public business?

— Harry G. Frankfurt

Week of November 3, 2006

In college I assumed that just about everyone would major in philosophy if not for worries about getting a job; wasn't it obvious that all the really interesting questions were philosophical ones? I quickly learned that this point of view was not widely shared.

— Erick Wielenberg

Week of October 28, 2006

I'm not in the commercial plane so that means I'm not on TV like preachers are,
like the politicians are, like the philosophers are.

— Sun Ra, jazz musician

Week of October 21, 2006

Stupidity has a certain charm -- ignorance does not.

—Frank Zappa

Week of October 13, 2006

Time to put your war uniform on.

—President Bush to Secretary of State Colin Powell
immediately prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq
(Source: Bob Woodward)

Week of September 29, 2006

No matter what the demands of 'self-expression' may be, nothing is anything
without fully articulate, conscious form.

—Robert Hughes

Week of September 22, 2006

There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do,
and that is to contradict other philosophers.

—William James

Week of September 15, 2006

I'm sure there's a lot of good songs getting recorded today, but I can't hear them.
I'm just hearing buzz.

—Bob Dylan

Week of September 8, 2006

If you look after truth and goodness, beauty looks after herself.

—Eric Gill, typographer

Week of September 1, 2006

Men must be taught as if you taught them not
And things unknown proposed as things forgot.

—Alexander Pope

Week of August 25, 2006

Imagination has no source except in reality, and ceases to have any value when it departs from reality.

—Wallace Stevens

Week of August 18, 2006

No patents on life.

Week of August 4, 2006

Happiness? That's nothing more than a good health and a poor memory.

—Albert Schweitzer

Week of July 28, 2006

Be civil to all; sociable to many; familiar with few; friend to one; enemy to none.

—Benjamin Franklin

Week of July 21, 2006

We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.

—Abraham Lincoln, 1862

Week of July 4, 2006

Skepticism is the agent of reason against organized irrationalism
--and is therefore one of the keys to human social and civic decency.

— Stephen Jay Gould

Week of July 1, 2006

To be merely shocking is vulgar.

— Igor Stravinsky

Week of June 23, 2006

If people are not interested in reading Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason,'
I can't make them do it.

— bookseller Andy Ross explains the demise of independent bookstores

Week of June 16, 2006

If a musical experience is forcibly transferred to a political plane,
it no longer has the thing that made it attractive. There is something
uniquely groovy about the musical experience; it is its own beginning
and end. It threatens no one.

— Jerry Garcia

Week of June 9, 2006

Historians always yearn for closure, a date when their narratives can end.

— Niall Ferguson

Week of June 2, 2006

When shall we live, if not now?

— Seneca

Week of May 26, 2006

I've got 1,500 faculty who've all got free speech. In fact, they think they have a multiplier of free speech.

— Stephen Trachtenberg,
president of George Washington University

Week of May 12, 2006

Gobbledygook.

— Harry T. Edwards, U.S. Circuit Court judge, summarizes the Executive Branch legal defense of its wiretap policies

Week of May 5, 2006

Making children cry since 2004.

— slogan of the Birdwar record label

Week of April 28, 2006

I wish I could hold George Bush down and thrash him with Bob Dylan songs until he either agrees to stop being an idiot or resigns.

— Gordon Cook

Week of April 21, 2006

Fanaticism consists of redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.

— George Santayana

Week of April 14, 2006

I still have no big idea of writing.
My only idea is that if you are doing non-fiction it should be truthful.

— V S Naipaul

Week of April 7, 2006

The rage and the pride have married and produced a sturdy son: the disdain.

— Oriana Fallaci

Week of March 31, 2006

It is no great matter to associate with the good and gentle; for this is a naturally
pleasing to all ... But to be able to live peaceably with hard and perverse persons,
or with the disorderly, or with such as go contrary to us, is a great grace, and a
most commendable thing.

— Thomas à Kempis

Week of March 24, 2006

Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.

— Samuel Johnson, 1775

Week of March 17, 2006

Is the law a law or is it a piece of toast?

— Garrison Keiller on the President

Week of March 3, 2006

If ego were marketable, all Ph.D. graduates would get tenure.

— Gary North

Week of February 24, 2006

Strange it is, that men should admit the validity of the arguments for free discussion, but object to their being 'pushed to an extreme'; not seeing that unless the reasons are good for an extreme case, they are not good for any case.

— John Stuart Mill

Week of February 10, 2006

Posterity will not see such a talent for a century to come.

— Josef Haydn on W. A. Mozart

Week of Mozart's 250th Birthday

You would never tell Ralph Ellison that Invisible Man is his most Negro book,
would you? ... identity labels have nothing to do with how anyone actually
experiences life.

— Philip Roth

Week of January 14, 2006

Civilizations die from suicide, not murder.

— Arnold Toynbee

Week of January 7, 2006

The cyber guys can talk all they want about the cyber community, but they
still can't tell you the color of each other's eyes. What kind of community is that?

— Bob Weir

Week of Dec. 30, 2005

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and
effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated,
and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or
affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons
or things to be seized.

— The United States Constitution

Week of Dec. 16, 2005, as Congress calls for investigations on domestic
eavesdropping without judicial oversight

Pain is what we're in most of the time.
And I think that the bigger the pain, the more gods we need.

— John Lennon

Week of Dec. 8, 2005 (25th anniversary of Lennon's death)

It is quite possible — overwhelmingly probable, one might guess — that we will
always learn more about human life and human personality from novels than
from scientific psychology.

— Noam Chomsky

Week of November 25, 2005

Education which stops with efficiency may prove to be the greatest menace to society.

— Martin Luther King, Jr.

Week of November 11, 2005

Away, then, with all those prophets who say to the people of Christ, "Peace, peace," and there is no peace!

— Martin Luther, 1517

Week of Reformation Day, 2005

The greatest ideas are the greatest events.

— Nietzsche

Week of October 28, 2005

"What do you think is the meaning of true happiness?" Calvin asks Hobbes.
"Is it money, cars and women? Or is it just money and cars?"

— Cartoonist Bill Watterson

Week of October 14, 2005

I'm bored out of my mind when I have to converse in the realm of ideas.

— Jean Paul Sartre

Week of October 7, 2005

Virginia Woolf used to read every book she reviewed twice: the first time
surrendering to the author, the second questioning every point and not
letting him or her get away with anything. It's a practice that every critic
should follow.

— Rupert Christiansen

Week of September 30, 2005

Music doesn't argue, discuss, or quarrel.

— Harold Arlen

Week of September 23, 2005

It’s simply a myth that the old order was more honest and intelligent than the new.

— Michael Kazin, The Wilson Quarterly

Week of September 9, 2005

Every natural disaster comes in two waves. First the wind and rain arrives,
then the political storm.

— Denmark's Kristeligt Dagblad on Hurricane Katrina

Week of September 2, 2005

As I look out among your smiling, eager faces, I can readily understand
why this college is flat on its back.

— Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff, 1932

Week of August 26, 2005

I haven't read a book in my life.

— Victoria Beckham ("Posh" Spice)

Week of August 19, 2005

We scan and approve the better; we go for the worse.

— Ovid

Week of August 5, 2005

All art of the past must be destroyed.

— Pierre Boulez

Week of July 29, 2005

Insanity in individuals is something rare -- but in groups, parties,
nations and epochs, it is the rule.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Week of July 22, 2005

If men were rational in their conduct, intelligence would be enough
to make the world almost a paradise.

— Bertrand Russell

Week of July 15, 2005

When history becomes ineluctable and transcends us, wisdom dictates
that those in power should at least pretend to be the instigators of change.

— François Mitterrand, 1996

Week of July 4, 2005

Adam was the only man who, when he said a good thing, knew that nobody
had said it before him.

— Mark Twain

Week of June 24, 2005

When our country is wrong she is worse than other countries when they are
wrong, for she has more light than other countries, and we somehow ought to
make her feel that we are sorry and ashamed for her.

— William Dean Howells, 1912

Week of June 17, 2005

We may have to give up the notion of a popular Church.

— Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, 1996 (Benedict XVI)

Week of June 3, 2005

Cynicism is reality with maybe an alternate spelling.

— Woody Allen

Week of May 20, 2005

A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.

— Stalin

Week of V.E. Day, 2005

Even that vulgar and Tavern-Music, which makes one man merry, another mad,
strikes in me a deep fit of devotion, and a profound contemplation of the First
Composer. There is something in it of Divinity more than the ear discovers.

— Sir Thomas Browne

Week of May 6, 2005

Our age is the most parochial since Homer.

— Bertrand Russell

Week of April 29, 2005

Four hundred and 73 pages of this, folks. Is there no God?

— conclusion of a book review by Matt Taibbi

Week of April 22, 2005

Pope is dead, Pope is dead. Hello!

— Rachel McEntee, Fox News,
makes a premature announcement

Week of April 8, 2005

The philosophical writer (in especial contrast to the poet)
follows the trade not of a jeweler but of a lens-grinder.

— R. G. Collingwood

Week of March 29, 2005

Modern economic life for humans is like a monkey driving a car.

— Colin F. Camerer

Week of March 22, 2005

There really is no such thing as Art. There are only artists.

— E. H. Gombrich

Week of March 15, 2005

If politicians speak in soundbites, how can we expect
voters to sit through a Bruckner symphony?

— Norman Lebrecht

Week of March 1, 2005

Oh, father and mother pay all the bills,
And we have all the fun,
That's the way we do in college life.
Hooray!

— College Drinking Song, 1912

Week of February 21, 2005

There are no mysteries out of ourselves.

— Herman Melville

Week of February 7, 2005

Some things are up to us, and some things are not up to us.

— Epictetus

Week of January 29, 2005

Prudence is the footprint of wisdom.

—Bronson Alcott

Week of January 21, 2005

Reason and free inquiry can be neutral and tolerant only of those
opinions which submit to the test of reason and inquiry.

—Walter Lippmann

Week of January 8, 2005

Some art aims directly at arousing the feelings;
some art appeals to the feeling through the route of the intelligence.

—Susan Sontag (1933-2004)

Week of January 1, 2005

Week of December 25, 2004

In order to be reputable it must be wasteful.

-- Thorstein Veblen

Week of December 17, 2004

Beauty is the battlefield where God and the Devil war for the
soul of man.

-- Dostoyevsky

Week of December 10, 2004

Life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy
for those who feel.

-- Horace Walpole

Week of December 3, 2004

Cheap liquor is not good, and good liquor is not cheap.

-- Dorothy Draper

Week of November 26, 2004

I have no special talents: I am only passionately curious.

-- Albert Einstein

Week of November 19, 2004

You can't read the Old Testament without knowing God was
concerned about the environment, war and peace, poverty.

-- Rev. Robert Edgar, general secretary
of the National Council of Churches

Week of November 12, 2004

The press have been cowed, because they didn't want to be
unpatriotic.

--Former President Jimmy Carter

Election Day, 2004

Our concern about Islamic fundamentalism is that there's no
separation of church and state, yet we are about to erode
that here.

--George Soros

Week of October 23, 2004

I'm not going to be your monkey.

--John Stewart

Week of October 16, 2004

I sought to challenge the zeitgeist.

--Glenn Gould

Week of October 9, 2004

I could make a career of being blue.
I could dress in black and read Camus.

--Stephin Merritt

Week of October 1, 2004

Can human beings know anything, and if so, what and how?
This question is really the most essentially philosophical of all
questions.

-- Bertrand Russell, 1911

Week of September 19, 2004

It is a truth universally acknowledged that an academic, even
one given a clothing allowance, will dress like a schlemiel.

-- Regina Barreca

Week of September 19, 2004

Americans went to their death in Iraq thinking that they were
avenging September 11th, when Iraq had nothing to do with
September 11th.

-- Richard Clarke, Bush Administration counter-terrorism official
who in January 2001 warned President Bush of an impending
al Qaeda attack

September 11, 2004

You don't even live once.

-- Karl Kraus

Week of September 1, 2004

A common song sung to a great melody is another way to
find beauty

-- Lu Chi

Week of September 1, 2004

We actually misnamed the war on terror. It ought to be the
Struggle Against Ideological Extremists Who Do Not Believe
in Free Societies Who Happen to Use Terror as a Weapon to
Try to Shake the Conscience of the Free World.

-- President George Bush

Week of August 13, 2004

In any given situation, there are always going to be more
dumb people than smart people.

-- Ken Kesey

Week of August 13, 2004

I spend my days writing symphonies, concertos, ballads,
and I am not a political thinker.

-- Aaron Copland

Week of August 6, 2004

The specter of Vietnam has been buried forever in the desert
sands of the Arabian Peninsula.

-- President George H. W. Bush, 1991

Week of July 25, 2004

Every true work of art must express a distinct feeling.

-- Caspar David Friedrich

Week of July 18, 2004

I want the frighteningly original all the time.

-- Frank Zappa

Week of July 11, 2004

People do not believe what they believe they believe.

-- Pascal Boyer

Week of July 4, 2004

Summer afternoon - summer afternoon; to me those
have always been the two most beautiful words in
the English language.

-- Henry James

Week of June 25, 2004

It is the beginning of the end when you discover
that you have a style.

-- Dashiell Hammett

Week of June 18, 2004

Facts are stupid things.

-- Ronald Reagan (1911-2004)

Week of June 11, 2004

Art is the secret of how to produce by a false thing
the effect of a true.

-- Thomas Hardy, 1891

Week of June 4, 2004

Science, separated from philosophy, is the opium of
the suburbs.

-- W. B. Yeats

Week of May 28, 2004

Do the right thing.

-- Colin Powell, Secretary of State, gives a
university commencement address

Week of May 21, 2004

Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful
and murder respectable, and to give the appearance of
solidity to pure wind.

-- George Orwell

Week of May 14, 2004

Morale is fragile because it rests not so much on
present conditions -- although those are certainly
important -- but on one's faith in the future.

-- Stanley Fish on higher education

Week of May 7, 2004

No age is ever contemporary with itself.

-- Mallarmé

Week of April 30, 2004

It is not enough to succeed; others must fail.

-- Gore Vidal

Week of April 23, 2004

To the memory of myself.

-- dedication page of Dmitri Shostakovich’s
String Quartet No. 8

Week of April 9, 2004