Famous Quotes & Sayings

Barbara Kingsolver

So one time when I was working in this motel one of the toilets leaked and I had to replace the flapper ball. Here's what it said on the package; I kept it till I knew it by heart: 'Please Note. Parts are included for all installations, but no installation requires all of the parts.' That's kind of my philosophy about men. I don't think there's an installation out there that could use all my parts.

Baruch Spinoza

Philosophy has no end in view save truth; faith looks for nothing but obedience and piety.

Baruch Spinoza

I do not presume that I have found the best philosophy, I know that I understand the true philosophy.

Augustine Birrell

History is a pageant and not a philosophy.

Ayelet Waldman

Those of us whose parenting style can be described as "a series of reflexes, instincts, and minute-by-minute adjustments," as Julie of A Little Pregnant puts it, rather than as a philosophy, are less invested in our own practices. What we do is often less a matter of conviction than one of convenience. What we need to remember is that there is no need to apologize for that, even in the face of the most red-faced outrage.

Ayn Rand

The men who are not interested in philosophy need it most urgently; they are most helplessly in its power.

Ayn Rand

Devotion to the truth is the hallmark of morality; there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.

Ayn Rand

Rationality is the recognition of the fact that nothing can alter the truth and nothing can take precedence over that act of perceiving it.

Ayn Rand

Let no man posture as an advocate of peace if he proposes or supports any social system that initiates the use of force against individual men, in any form.

Brandon Sanderson

Once one becomes a man, he can and must make his own decisions. But I do offer warning. Even a good thing can become destructive if taken to excess.

Auguste Rodin

Recently I have taken to isolating limbs, the torso. Why am I blamed for it? Why is the head allowed and not portions of the body? Every part of the human figure is expressive.

Arnold Schwarzenegger

I embrace technology and I just think that in 1984 when James Cameron wrote about the technology, everyone thought he was totally way out there and it was science fiction. Now it's almost reality what he talked about. The machines have taken over, except they have not become self-aware, like in Terminator. So this is really one thing that we have to watch out for, but I think technology is good.

Ayn Rand

Altruism declares that any action taken for the benefit of others is good, and any action taken for one's own benefit is evil. Thus the beneficiary of an action is the only criterion of moral value - and so long as that beneficiary is anybody other than oneself, anything goes.

Audie Murphy

I'm glad that it didn't take as long to get Shepard off the ground as it's taken this series. I'd begun to think the Congo would be ahead of us in the space race before Whispering Smith ever got on the air.

Benjamin Cardozo

Justice is not to be taken by storm. She is to be wooed by slow advances. Substitute statute for decision, and you shift the center of authority, but add no quota of inspired wisdom.

Cameron Mackintosh

I've taken considerable gambles on shows, but they're very considered gambles.

C. S. Lewis

They have chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is only in their minds, yet they are in that prison; and so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out.

Calvin Coolidge

I have done it [appointed commissions] regretfully and with the hope that it would be temporary. But after a commission is established you find it always wants to enlarge itself, employ more people, is very busy with Senators and Congressmen to impress upon them the great value of the services of the commission, and even when I talk to people that I appoint to commissions and tell them I would like them to go on to various boards with the idea that they may be abolished, they say they ought to be abolished, but when they have taken their position they very soon seem to change their mind.

Auguste Comte

Nothing is destroyed until it is replaced.

Brad Pitt

I oscillate between agnosticism and atheism.

Ricky Gervais

Atheism is a belief system”, is like saying “not going skiing, is a hobby.

Charles Spurgeon

Atheism is a strange thing. Even the devils never fell into that vice.

Elbert Hubbard

Orthodoxy is a corpse that doesn't know it's dead.

Elbert Hubbard

Theology is Classified Superstition.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Embrace truth as it is revealed to-day by human reason.

Stephen Jay Gould

... a fortuitous cosmic afterthought.

Stephen Jay Gould

... a local, indigenous, American bizarre-ity.