In this posting you will find my selection of the very best 60 quotes, from nearly a decade of collecting them. They range from the profound to the intriguing to the just plain funny.
One way or the other, you’ll surely find many of them to be thought-provoking and entertaining.
This selection is, of course, based solely on my personal taste (and even that varies largely from day to day according to my mood). You are welcome to browse the entire collection and look for your own favorite ones or contribute new quotes from your own personal collection.
Wisdom Quotes
1. You can do anything, but not everything.
—David Allen
2. Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
3. The richest man is not he who has the most, but he who needs the least.
—Unknown Author
4. You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take.
—Wayne Gretzky
5. Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear.
—Ambrose Redmoon
6. You must be the change you wish to see in the world.
—Gandhi
7. When hungry, eat your rice; when tired, close your eyes. Fools may laugh at me, but wise men will know what I mean.
—Lin-Chi
8. The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.
—A. A. Milne
9. To the man who only has a hammer, everything he encounters begins to look like a nail.
—Abraham Maslow
10. We are what we repeatedly do; excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.
—Aristotle
11. A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends.
—Baltasar Gracian
12. Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought.
—Basho
13. Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.
—Lao-Tze
14. Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
15. What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do.
—John Ruskin
16. The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but seeing with new eyes.
—Marcel Proust
17. Work like you don’t need money, love like you’ve never been hurt, and dance like no one’s watching
—Unknown Author
18. Try a thing you haven’t done three times. Once, to get over the fear of doing it. Twice, to learn how to do it. And a third time, to figure out whether you like it or not.
—Virgil Garnett Thomson
19. Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.
—Will Rogers
20. People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.
—Zig Ziglar
Funny Quotes
21. Before I got married I had six theories about bringing up children; now I have six children and no theories.
—John Wilmot
22. What the world needs is more geniuses with humility, there are so few of us left.
—Oscar Levant
23. Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.
—Oscar Wilde
24. I’ve gone into hundreds of [fortune-teller's parlors], and have been told thousands of things, but nobody ever told me I was a policewoman getting ready to arrest her.
—New York City detective
25. When you go into court you are putting your fate into the hands of twelve people who weren’t smart enough to get out of jury duty.
—Norm Crosby
26. Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand.
—Kurt Vonnegut
27. Just the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
—Carl Sagan
28. My pessimism extends to the point of even suspecting the sincerity of the pessimists.
—Jean Rostand
29. Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world.
—Lily Tomlin
30. I quit therapy because my analyst was trying to help me behind my back.
—Richard Lewis
31. We’ve heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true.
—Robert Wilensky
32. If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?
—Scott Adams
33. If the lessons of history teach us anything it is that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
—Anon
34. When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President. Now I’m beginning to believe it.
—Clarence Darrow
35. Laughing at our mistakes can lengthen our own life. Laughing at someone else’s can shorten it.
—Cullen Hightower
36. There are many who dare not kill themselves for fear of what the neighbors will say.
—Cyril Connolly
37. There’s so much comedy on television. Does that cause comedy in the streets?
—Dick Cavett
38. All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.
—H. L. Mencken
39. I don’t mind what Congress does, as long as they don’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses.
—Victor Hugo
40. I took a speed reading course and read ‘War and Peace’ in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.
—Woody Allen
Otherwise Intelligent Quotes
41. The person who reads too much and uses his brain too little will fall into lazy habits of thinking.
—Albert Einstein
42. Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.
—André Gide
43. It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
—Aristotle
44. I’d rather live with a good question than a bad answer.
—Aryeh Frimer
45. We learn something every day, and lots of times it’s that what we learned the day before was wrong.
—Bill Vaughan
46. I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter.
—Blaise Pascal
47. Don’t ever wrestle with a pig. You’ll both get dirty, but the pig will enjoy it.
—Cale Yarborough
48. An inventor is simply a fellow who doesn’t take his education too seriously.
—Charles F. Kettering
49. Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.
—Christopher Hampton
50. Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.
—Cyril Connolly
51. Never be afraid to laugh at yourself, after all, you could be missing out on the joke of the century.
—Dame Edna Everage
52. I am patient with stupidity but not with those who are proud of it.
—Edith Sitwell
53. Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for – in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.
—Ellen Goodman
54. The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.
—Ellen Parr
55. Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t.
—Erica Jong
56. Some people like my advice so much that they frame it upon the wall instead of using it.
—Gordon R. Dickson
57. The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat.
—Lily Tomlin
58. Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence.
—Napoleon (Hanlon’s Razor)
59. Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not, and a sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is.
—Oscar Wilde
60. When a person can no longer laugh at himself, it is time for others to laugh at him.
—Thomas Szasz
Help! How to Better Manage my Unwieldy Collection of Quotes?
After I first published my favorite quotes collection (along with its companion article 5 Reasons to Collect Favorite Quotes), it grew faster than ever from 400 to over 500 quotes.
Nowadays, I’m much more demanding about which quotes to add to my collection. However — judging from the number of quotes I find on the web on a daily basis — I can only expect it to grow even faster than before.
Years ago, I faced the same situation with my browser bookmarks. Even being extremely conservative about adding them, after years they inevitably started adding up to the point of being unmanageable. Cleaning and categorizing those bookmarks was both time-consuming and inefficient.
The problem was eventually solved not by tidying them up regularly, but by the smart use of tagging and searching technology. Now my bookmarks are online at del.icio.us, tagged and fully searchable — and I still have ways to own the data. (Call me paranoid, but I don’t feel comfortable relying entirely on a third party to hold years of data, no matter how much I like their service.)
Now I feel I need a similar solution for my quotes — having a long flat list isn’t working very well anymore. At first, Quotiki seemed like a perfect fit. Unfortunately, however, there’s currently no way to export my quotes or otherwise retain ownership of the data.
So, here’s the question to my smart readers: How do you think I should go with my quotes collection? Do you have any suggestions of online services I can use and still retain my collection while making it more useful to myself and to others? facebook
One way or the other, you’ll surely find many of them to be thought-provoking and entertaining.
This selection is, of course, based solely on my personal taste (and even that varies largely from day to day according to my mood). You are welcome to browse the entire collection and look for your own favorite ones or contribute new quotes from your own personal collection.
Wisdom Quotes
1. You can do anything, but not everything.
—David Allen
2. Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
3. The richest man is not he who has the most, but he who needs the least.
—Unknown Author
4. You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take.
—Wayne Gretzky
5. Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear.
—Ambrose Redmoon
6. You must be the change you wish to see in the world.
—Gandhi
7. When hungry, eat your rice; when tired, close your eyes. Fools may laugh at me, but wise men will know what I mean.
—Lin-Chi
8. The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.
—A. A. Milne
9. To the man who only has a hammer, everything he encounters begins to look like a nail.
—Abraham Maslow
10. We are what we repeatedly do; excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.
—Aristotle
11. A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends.
—Baltasar Gracian
12. Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought.
—Basho
13. Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.
—Lao-Tze
14. Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
15. What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do.
—John Ruskin
16. The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but seeing with new eyes.
—Marcel Proust
17. Work like you don’t need money, love like you’ve never been hurt, and dance like no one’s watching
—Unknown Author
18. Try a thing you haven’t done three times. Once, to get over the fear of doing it. Twice, to learn how to do it. And a third time, to figure out whether you like it or not.
—Virgil Garnett Thomson
19. Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.
—Will Rogers
20. People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.
—Zig Ziglar
Funny Quotes
21. Before I got married I had six theories about bringing up children; now I have six children and no theories.
—John Wilmot
22. What the world needs is more geniuses with humility, there are so few of us left.
—Oscar Levant
23. Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.
—Oscar Wilde
24. I’ve gone into hundreds of [fortune-teller's parlors], and have been told thousands of things, but nobody ever told me I was a policewoman getting ready to arrest her.
—New York City detective
25. When you go into court you are putting your fate into the hands of twelve people who weren’t smart enough to get out of jury duty.
—Norm Crosby
26. Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand.
—Kurt Vonnegut
27. Just the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
—Carl Sagan
28. My pessimism extends to the point of even suspecting the sincerity of the pessimists.
—Jean Rostand
29. Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world.
—Lily Tomlin
30. I quit therapy because my analyst was trying to help me behind my back.
—Richard Lewis
31. We’ve heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true.
—Robert Wilensky
32. If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?
—Scott Adams
33. If the lessons of history teach us anything it is that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
—Anon
34. When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President. Now I’m beginning to believe it.
—Clarence Darrow
35. Laughing at our mistakes can lengthen our own life. Laughing at someone else’s can shorten it.
—Cullen Hightower
36. There are many who dare not kill themselves for fear of what the neighbors will say.
—Cyril Connolly
37. There’s so much comedy on television. Does that cause comedy in the streets?
—Dick Cavett
38. All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it.
—H. L. Mencken
39. I don’t mind what Congress does, as long as they don’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses.
—Victor Hugo
40. I took a speed reading course and read ‘War and Peace’ in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.
—Woody Allen
Otherwise Intelligent Quotes
41. The person who reads too much and uses his brain too little will fall into lazy habits of thinking.
—Albert Einstein
42. Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.
—André Gide
43. It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
—Aristotle
44. I’d rather live with a good question than a bad answer.
—Aryeh Frimer
45. We learn something every day, and lots of times it’s that what we learned the day before was wrong.
—Bill Vaughan
46. I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter.
—Blaise Pascal
47. Don’t ever wrestle with a pig. You’ll both get dirty, but the pig will enjoy it.
—Cale Yarborough
48. An inventor is simply a fellow who doesn’t take his education too seriously.
—Charles F. Kettering
49. Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.
—Christopher Hampton
50. Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.
—Cyril Connolly
51. Never be afraid to laugh at yourself, after all, you could be missing out on the joke of the century.
—Dame Edna Everage
52. I am patient with stupidity but not with those who are proud of it.
—Edith Sitwell
53. Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for – in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.
—Ellen Goodman
54. The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.
—Ellen Parr
55. Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t.
—Erica Jong
56. Some people like my advice so much that they frame it upon the wall instead of using it.
—Gordon R. Dickson
57. The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat.
—Lily Tomlin
58. Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence.
—Napoleon (Hanlon’s Razor)
59. Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not, and a sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is.
—Oscar Wilde
60. When a person can no longer laugh at himself, it is time for others to laugh at him.
—Thomas Szasz
Help! How to Better Manage my Unwieldy Collection of Quotes?
After I first published my favorite quotes collection (along with its companion article 5 Reasons to Collect Favorite Quotes), it grew faster than ever from 400 to over 500 quotes.
Nowadays, I’m much more demanding about which quotes to add to my collection. However — judging from the number of quotes I find on the web on a daily basis — I can only expect it to grow even faster than before.
Years ago, I faced the same situation with my browser bookmarks. Even being extremely conservative about adding them, after years they inevitably started adding up to the point of being unmanageable. Cleaning and categorizing those bookmarks was both time-consuming and inefficient.
The problem was eventually solved not by tidying them up regularly, but by the smart use of tagging and searching technology. Now my bookmarks are online at del.icio.us, tagged and fully searchable — and I still have ways to own the data. (Call me paranoid, but I don’t feel comfortable relying entirely on a third party to hold years of data, no matter how much I like their service.)
Now I feel I need a similar solution for my quotes — having a long flat list isn’t working very well anymore. At first, Quotiki seemed like a perfect fit. Unfortunately, however, there’s currently no way to export my quotes or otherwise retain ownership of the data.
So, here’s the question to my smart readers: How do you think I should go with my quotes collection? Do you have any suggestions of online services I can use and still retain my collection while making it more useful to myself and to others? facebook
