More pearls of wisdom
The physicist Leo Szilard once announced to his friend Hans Bethe that he was thinking of keeping a diary: "I don't intend to publish. I am merely going to record the facts for the information of God." "Don't you think God knows the facts?" Bethe asked. "Yes," said Szilard. "He knows the facts, but He does not know this version of the facts." – Hans Christian von Baeyer, Taming the Atom
"All of us are watchers – of television, of time clocks, or traffic on the freeway – but few are observers. Everyone is looking, not many are seeing. – Peter Leschak.
"Outside, among your fellows, among strangers, you must preserve appearances, a hundred things you cannot do; but inside, the terrible freedom!" – Ralph Waldo Emerson.
"It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or disbelieving, it consists in professing to believe what one does not believe." – Thomas Paine.
"There are two kinds of losers: (1) the good losers and (2) those who can't act." – Laurence Peter.
"There are three kinds of deceivers: fools, those who deceive themselves but not others; knaves, those who deceive others but not themselves, and philosophers, those who deceive both themselves and others." – Anonymous.
"Have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things, in order to avoid the calamity of being ignorant of everything." – Sydney Smith.
"Any committee that is the slightest use is composed of people who are too busy to want to sit on it for a second longer than they have to." – Katharine Whitehorn.
"The committee divided between the theorists, who had done all their thinking long ago, or had it done for them, and the pragmatists, who hoped to discover what it was they thought in the process of saying it." – Ian McEwan.
"The seven social sins [are] politics without principle, wealth without work, commerce without morality, pleasure without conscience, education without character, science without humanity, and worship without sacrifice." – Mahandas Gandhi.
"A born leader of men is somebody who is afraid to go anywhere by himself." – Clifford Hanley.
"Leaders are people who do the right thing; managers are people who do things right. Both roles are crucial, but they differ profoundly. I often observe people in top positions doing the wrong things well." – Warren Bennis.
"He who would do some great thing in this short life must apply himself to work with such a concentration of his forces as, to idle spectators who live only to amuse themselves, looks like insanity." – Francis Parkman.
"Men of power have no time to read; yet the men who do not read are unfit for power." – Michael Foot.
"The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce[s] them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim." – Gustave Le Bon.
"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." – George Orwell.
"The only gracious way to accept an insult is to ignore it; if you can't ignore it, top it; it you can't top it, laugh at it; it you can't laugh at it, it's probably deserved." – Russell Lynes.
"The contemplative life is often miserable. You should do more, think less and not watch yourself living." – Nicholas-Sebastien Chamfort.
"Nothing comes of so many things, if you have patience." – Joyce Carol Oates.
"What you have become is the price you paid to get what you used to want." – Mignon McLaughlin.
"If a man wants to be of the greatest possible value to his fellow creatures, let him begin with the long, solitary task of perfecting himself." – Robertson Davies.
"It is well to remeber that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others." – John Andrew Holmes
"The fox know many tricks; the hedgehog one good one." – Anonymous.
"Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want." – Anonymous.
"No amount of genius can overcome a preoccupation with detail." – Anonymous.
Compiled, developed and maintained by Philip Smith