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IDEALISM
You
can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertisements, its state
of development by the condition of the toilets at the airport,
and the advancement of its people by the way they treat their
animals.
- Lee
Ouzman.
Like
it’s politicians and it’s war, society has the teenagers it
deserves.
- J.B.
Priestly.
If you
are not an idealist by the time you are twenty you don’t have a
heart, but if you are still an idealist by thirty you don’t have
a head.
-
Randolph Bourne.
Idealists....foolish enough to throw caution to the
winds....have advanced mankind and have enriched the world.
- Emma
Goldman.
Idealism increases in direct proportion to one's distance from
the problem.
- John
Galsworthy.
An
idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than
a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.
- H.L.
Mencken.
I am
always meeting idealists with very long necks.
- G.K.
Chesterton.
Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality the cost becomes
prohibitive.
IGNORANCE
It is
impossible to defeat an ignorant man in argument.
-
William G. McAdoo.
I
refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don't know
the answer.
-
Douglas Adams.
The
trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the
intelligent are full of doubt.
-
Bertrand Russell.
Not
ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of
knowledge.
-
Alfred North Whitehead.
Only
two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and
I'm not sure about the former.
-
Albert Einstein.
What
he doesn’t know would make a library anybody would be proud of.
I
wonder who came up with the expression, “Ignorance is bliss?”
Then again, maybe I’d be happier if I didn’t know.
If
ignorance is bliss, why aren’t more people happy?
IMAGINATION
I saw
the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.
-
Michelangelo.
It's a
poor sort of memory that only works backwards.
-
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland.
I
paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.
-
Pablo Picasso.
I am enough of an artist
to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more
important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination
encircles the world.
- Albert Einstein.
Skill
without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful
objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without
skill gives us modern art.
- Tom
Stoppard.
When
you are describing,
A
shape, or sound, or tint;
Don't
state the matter plainly,
But
put it in a hint;
And
learn to look at all things,
With a
sort of mental squint.
-
Lewis Carroll.
Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before
breakfast.
-
Lewis Carroll.
Things
are only impossible until they're not.
-
Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek: The Next Generation.
When I
have a terrible need of - shall I say the word - religion. Then
I go out and paint the stars.
-
Vincent Van Gogh.
Trust
that little voice in your head that says "Wouldn't it be
interesting if..." And then do it.
-
Duane Michals, More Joy of Photography.
Perhaps imagination is only intelligence having fun.
-
George Scialabba.
It's
not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.
-
Henry David Thoreau.
The
most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is
the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion
is a stranger, who can no longer pause and stand wrapped in awe,
is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.
-
Albert Einstein.
I
doubt that the imagination can be suppressed. If you truly
eradicated it in a child, he would grow up to be an eggplant.
-
Ursula K. Le Guin, The Language of the Night.
Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and
thinking what nobody has thought.
-
Albert Szent-Györgyi.
When
patterns are broken, new worlds emerge.
- Tuli
Kupferberg.
A
fool-proof method for sculpting an elephant: first, get a huge
block of marble; then you chip away everything that doesn't look
like an elephant
But
what if I’m a figment of my OWN imagination.
IMMORTALITY
If all
else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular
error.
- John
Kenneth Galbraith, Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went.
INDECISION
Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing is so
futile.
-
Bertrand Russell.
His
indecision is final.
INFERIORITY
No one
can make you feel inferior without your consent.
-
Eleanor Roosevelt.
INJUSTICE
To have a grievance is
to have a purpose in life.
- Eric Hoffer.
INSECTS
Nothing seems to please a fly so much as to be taken for a
currant; and if it can be baked in a cake and palmed off on the
unwary, it dies happy.
- Mark
Twain.
Some
primal termite knocked on wood;
and
tasted it, and found it good.
That
is why your Cousin May
fell
through the parlour floor today.
-
Ogden Nash.
Two
silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.
INTEGRITY & REPUTATION
I have
had more trouble with myself than with any other man I have ever
met.
-
Dwight Lyman Moody.
Live
in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot
to the town gossip.
- Will
Rogers.
You
can't build a reputation on what you are going to do.
-
Henry Ford.
There
is only one way to achieve happiness on this terrestrial ball,
And
that is to have either a clear conscience or none at all.
-
Ogden Nash.
Reputation is character minus what you've been caught doing.
-
Michael Iapoce, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the
Boardroom.
Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed.
- Mark
Twain.
The
more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.
- G.B.
Shaw, Man and Superman.
INTELLECTUAL & IDEAS
I wonder why. I
wonder why.
I wonder why I
wonder.
I wonder WHY I
wonder why
I wonder why I
wonder!
- Richard P.
Feynman.
Great
minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds
discuss people.
-
Eleanor Rooseveld.
Stop
thinking and put an end to your problems.
- Tao
Te Ching.
A
great many people think they are thinking when they are merely
rearranging their prejudices.
-
Oscar Wilde.
Most
people would die sooner than think; in fact, they often do.
-
Bertrand Russell.
When
ideas fail, words come in very handy.
-
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
I
think I think, therefore I think I am.
-
Ambrose Bierce.
Man's
mind, stretched by a new idea, never goes back to its original
dimensions.
-
Oliver Wendell Holmes.
Do you
think my mind is maturing late, or simply rotted early?
-
Ogden Nash
Great
ideas need landing gear as well as wings.
- C.D.
Jackson.
An
idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea
at all.
-
Oscar Wilde.
An
intellectual is someone who has found something more interesting
than sex.
-
Edgar Wallace.
No one
has ever had an idea in a dress suit.
- Sir
Frederick G. Banting.
Ideas
shape the course of history.
- John
Maynard Keynes.
There
is only one way in which a person acquires a new idea: by the
combination or association of two or more ideas he already has
into a new juxtaposition in such a manner as to discover a
relationship among them of which he was not previously aware.
-
Francis A. Cartier.
If you
have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then
you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an
idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each
of us will have two ideas.
-
George Bernard Shaw.
Anyone
who has begun to think places some portion of the world in
jeopardy.
- John
Dewey.
To die
for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it
would be if men died for ideas that were true!
- H.
L. Mencken.
There
is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world: and that
is an idea whose time has come.
-
Victor Hugo.
Don't
worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any
good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.
-
Howard Aiken, IBM engineer.
Every
truth passes through three stages before it is recognized. In
the first, it is ridiculed, in the second it is opposed, in the
third it is regarded as self-evident.
-
Arthur Schopenhauer.
The
captain’s thoughts raced through his head like paper bags in a
hurricane.
- J.B.
Morton.
It is
discouraging to try to penetrate a mind like yours. You ought to
get it out and dance on it. That would take some of the rigidity
out of it.
- Mark
Twain.
What
if nothing exists and we're all in somebody's dream? Or what's
worse, what if only that fat guy in the third row exists?
-
Woody Allen.
The
mind is the most capricious of insects - flitting, fluttering.
-
Virginia Woolf.
Do you
have trouble making up your mind?
-
Well, yes and no.
Ideas
won't work unless YOU do.
My
mind not only wanders, sometimes it leaves completely.
Never
hold your farts in. They travel up your spine, into your brain,
and that’s where the shitty ideas come from.
An
idea isn’t responsible for the people who believe in it.
I doubt, therefore I might be.
INTELLIGENCE
Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists
elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to
contact us.
-
Calvin
It is
a well-known fact that although the public is fine when taken
individually, when it forms itself into large groups, it tends
to act as though it has one partially consumed Pez tablet for a
brain.
- Dave
Barry.
Sharks
are as tough as those football fans who take their shirts off
during games in Chicago in January, only more intelligent.
- Dave
Barry.
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
intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the
sensible man hardly anything.
-
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
If the
Aborigine drafted an I.Q. test, all of Western civilization
would presumably flunk it.
-
Stanley Garn.
It's a
scientific fact that if you stay in California you lose one
point of your IQ every year.
- Truman Capote.
I wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence. There's a knob called "brightness", but it doesn't work.
Since
light travels faster than sound, isn't that why some people
appear bright until you hear them speak?
A beard signifies lice, not brains.
I took an IQ test and the results were negative.
Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.
IRELAND
The
Irish: Charming, soft-voiced, quarrelsome, feckless and happily
devoid of the slightest integrity in our stodgy English sense of
the word.
- Noël
Coward.
Geographically, Ireland is a medium-sized rural island that is
slowly but steadily being consumed by sheep.
- Dave
Barry.
An
Irishman believes everything he can't see, and nothing he
can...has such great respect for the truth, he only uses it in
emergencies...can lick any man in a house he is sole occupant
of.
- Jim
Murray.
The
English should give Ireland home rule - and reserve the motion
picture rights.
- Will
Rogers.
I
showed my appreciation of my native land in the usual Irish way
by getting out of it as soon as I possibly could.
-
George Bernard Shaw.
Q:
What is Irish and loves to be in the backyard, rain or shine,
night or day?
A:
Patty O'Furniture.
Northern Ireland has a problem for every solution.
What
did the Irishman call his pet zebra? Spot!
‘Open
this end, Paddy’ - with large arrow pointing to the rear end of
an Irish articulated lorry.
ITALY
The
average Italian….is a cowardly baritone who consumes 78.3
kilometres of carbohydrates a month and drives about in a car
slightly smaller than he is, looking for a divorce.
- Alan
Coren.
Streets flooded. Please advise.
-
Robert Benchley, telegram to home on arriving in Venice.
What
would you call it when an Italian has one arm shorter than the
other?
A speech impediment.
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