Quote of the Week Archive
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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
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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
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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
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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. FrankfurtWeek 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 WielenbergWeek 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 musicianWeek of October 21, 2006
Stupidity has a certain charm -- ignorance does not.
—Frank ZappaWeek 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 HughesWeek 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 JamesWeek 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 DylanWeek of September 8, 2006
If you look after truth and goodness, beauty looks after herself.
—Eric Gill, typographerWeek of September 1, 2006
Men must be taught as if you taught them not
And things unknown proposed as things forgot.
—Alexander PopeWeek 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
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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 UniversityWeek 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 announcementWeek 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
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Week of December 25, 2004
In order to be reputable it must be wasteful.
-- Thorstein VeblenWeek of December 17, 2004
Beauty is the battlefield where God and the Devil war for the
soul of man.
-- DostoyevskyWeek of December 10, 2004
Life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy
for those who feel.
-- Horace WalpoleWeek of December 3, 2004
Cheap liquor is not good, and good liquor is not cheap.
-- Dorothy DraperWeek of November 26, 2004
I have no special talents: I am only passionately curious.
-- Albert EinsteinWeek 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 ChurchesWeek of November 12, 2004
The press have been cowed, because they didn't want to be
unpatriotic.
--Former President Jimmy CarterElection 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 SorosWeek of October 23, 2004
I'm not going to be your monkey.
--John StewartWeek of October 16, 2004
I sought to challenge the zeitgeist.
--Glenn GouldWeek of October 9, 2004
I could make a career of being blue.
I could dress in black and read Camus.
--Stephin MerrittWeek 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 addressWeek 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. 8Week of April 9, 2004