Jon Taber > Jon's Quotes

“Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life.”
― Terry Pratchett, Jingo

“Nobody's perfect. Well, there was this one guy, but we killed him....”
― Christopher Moore, Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal

“The entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks.”
― Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites

“...inside every old person is a young person wondering what happened.”
― Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures

“There's no such thing as writer's block. That was invented by people in California who couldn't write.”
― Terry Pratchett

“Don't be smart. Smart is only a polished version of dumb. Try intelligence. It will surely see you through.”
― Terry Pratchett, Unseen Academicals

“The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“To be is to do - Socrates

To do is to be - Sartre

Do Be Do Be Do - Sinatra”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“The story so far:
In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“A learning experience is one of those things that says, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

“If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands.”
― Douglas Adams

“I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting. But it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously.”
― Douglas Adams

“Let us be dreamers, thinkers, speculative philosophers, or as our spouses would have it: Idiots”
― Douglas Adams

“I have never, in all my life, not for one moment, been tempted toward religion of any kind. The fact is that I feel no spiritual void. I have my philosophy of life, which does not include any aspect of the supernatural and which I find totally satisfying. I am, in short, a rationalist and believe only that which reason tells me is so.”
― Isaac Asimov, I. Asimov: A Memoir

“Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.”
― George Orwell

“Patriotism has nothing to do with Conservatism. It is actually the opposite of Conservatism, since it is a devotion to something that is always changing and yet is felt to be mystically the same.”
― George Orwell

“In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.”
― Carl Sagan

“The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there's little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides.”
― Carl Sagan

“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.”
― Daniel J. Boorstin

“For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen. Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible. Mankind's greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn't have to be like this. Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future. With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.”
― Stephen Hawking

“It surprises me how disinterested we are today about things like physics, space, the universe and philosophy of our existence, our purpose, our final destination. Its a crazy world out there. Be curious.”
― Stephen Hawking

“A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.”
― Steve Martin

“Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

“I love mankind ... it's people I can't stand!!”
― Charles M. Schulz

“A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it.”
― Albert Einstein

“This life’s hard, but it’s harder if you’re stupid.”
― George V. Higgins, The Friends of Eddie Coyle

“If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it.”
― W.C. Fields

“God created war so that Americans would learn geography.”
― Mark Twain

“Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before.”
― Mae West