Famous Quotes & Sayings

Carl Sagan

Books tap the wisdom of our species -- the greatest minds, the best teachers -- from all over the world and from all our history. And they're patient.

Carl Sagan

We are the first species to have taken our evolution into our own hands.

Carl Sagan

The vast distances that separate the stars are providential. Beings and worlds are quarantined from one another. The quarantine is lifted only for those with sufficient self-knowledge and judgment to have safely traveled from star to star.

Carl Sagan

We are at a crossroads in human history. Never before has there been a moment so simultaneously perilous and promising. We are the first species to have taken evolution into our own hands.

Carl Sagan

First rule in government spending: Why build one, when you can have two at twice the price?

Bill Bryson

I turned to my own bunk and examined it with a kind of appalled fascination. If the mattress stains were anything to go by, a previous user had not so much suffered from incontinence as rejoiced in it. He had evidently included the pillow in his celebrations.

Bill Bryson

I love the feeling of being anonymous in a city I've never been before.

Bill Bryson

A third...candidate for Shakespearean authorship was Christopher Marlowe. He was the right age (just two months older than Shakespeare), had the requisite talent, and would certainly have had ample leisure after 1593, assuming he wasn't too dead to work.

Bill Bryson

Traveling makes you realize what an immeasurably nice place much of America could be if only people possessed the same instinct for preservation as they do in Europe.

Bill Bryson

Taking a scenic route in Southeast Iowa is like talking about a good Barry Manilow album. You have to make certain allowances.

Bill Bryson

Most scientists are without exception adorably quirky, and one of the ways of making it more accessible was to try to get readers interested in the person.

Bill Bryson

What is it about maps? I could look at them all day, earnestly studying the names of towns and villages I have never heard of and will never visit...

Bill Bryson

Christmas tree stands are the work of the devil and they want you dead.

Bill Bryson

I could spend my life arriving each evening in a new city.

Bill Bryson

Perhaps it's my natural pessimism, but it seems that an awfully large part of travel these days is to see things while you still can.

Beth Simone Noveck

In the 21st century, you have to use technology as one of the tools in the toolkit to bring about social change.

Beth Simone Noveck

Network technology has irrevocably changed campaigning and elections. It has the potential to transform governance and the workings of our democracy for the better.

Bethany Mota

I’m not too into the trends - I like to look at trends as suggestions, not as rules.

Betsey Johnson

I'm not the type of person who dwells too much on bad things.

Bethenny Frankel

Taste everything, eat nothing.

Bethany Hamilton

Fear is something that can really hold us all back from different things in life. It's important to notice what your fears are and try to conquer them.

Bethany Hamilton

I could never have embraced this many people with two arms.

Bethany Hamilton

I wouldn't change what happened to me because then I wouldn't have this chance, in front of all of you, to embrace more people than I ever could have with two arms.

Bette Davis

Pray to God and say the lines.

Bette Davis

You can lose everything but you can't lose your talent!

Bette Davis

She's the original good time who was had by all.

Bette Davis

She did it the hard way.

Bette Davis

I will never be below the title.

Bernard Beckett

I write with teenagers in mind.

The civilized man has a moral obligation to be skeptical, to demand the credentials of all statements that claim to be facts.

Bernard Berenson

Taste begins when appetite is satisfied.

Bernard Berenson

Genius is the capacity for productive reaction against one's training.

Bernard Berenson

I would I could stand on a busy corner, hat in hand, and beg people to throw me all their wasted hours.