"It is time I stepped aside for a less experienced and less able man."
- Professor Scott Elledge on his retirement from Cornell

"Every day I get up and look through the Forbes list of the richest people in America. If I'm not there, I go to work."
- Robert Orben

"The cynics are right nine times out of ten."
- Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)

"There are some experiences in life which should not be demanded twice from any man, and one of them is listening to the Brahms Requiem."
- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"Attention to health is life greatest hindrance."
- Plato (427-347 B.C.)

"Plato was a bore."
- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

"Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal."
- Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)

"I'm not going to get into the ring with Tolstoy."
- Ernest Hemingway (1889-1961)

"Hemingway was a jerk."
- Harold Robbins

"How can I lose to such an idiot?"
- A shout from chessmaster Aaron Nimzovich (1886-1935)

"Not only is there no God, but try finding a plumber on Sunday."
- Woody Allen (1935-)

"I don't feel good."
- The last words of Luther Burbank (1849-1926)

"Nothing is wrong with California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn't cure."
- Ross MacDonald (1915-1983)

"Men have become the tools of their tools."
- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."
- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"It is now possible for a flight attendant to get a pilot pregnant."
- Richard J. Ferris, president of United Airlines

"I never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television."
- Gore Vidal

"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying."
- Woody Allen (1935-)

"Men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all the other alternatives."
- Abba Eban (1915-)

"To sit alone with my conscience will be judgment enough for me."
- Charles William Stubbs

"Sanity is a madness put to good uses."
- George Santayana (1863-1952)

"Imitation is the sincerest form of television."
- Fred Allen (1894-1956)

"Always do right- this will gratify some and astonish the rest."
- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"In America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take."
- Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965)

"Copy from one, it's plagiarism; copy from two, it's research."
- Wilson Mizner (1876-1933)

"Why don't you write books people can read?"
- Nora Joyce to her husband James (1882-1941)

"Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers."
- T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)

"Criticism is prejudice made plausible."
- Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)

"It is better to be quotable than to be honest."
- Tom Stoppard

"Being on the tightrope is living; everything else is waiting."
- Karl Wallenda

"Opportunities multiply as they are seized."
- Sun Tzu

"A scholar who cherishes the love of comfort is not fit to be deemed a scholar."
- Lao-Tzu (570?-490? BC)

" The best way to predict the future is to invent it."
- Alan Kay

"Never mistake motion for action."
- Ernest Hemingway (1889-1961)

"Hell is paved with good samaritans."
- William M. Holden

"The longer I live the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains that I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time."
- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

"Silence is argument carried out by other means."
- Ernesto"Che"Guevara (1928-1967)

"Well done is better than well said."
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

"The average person thinks he isn't."
- Father Larry Lorenzoni

"Heav'n hath no rage like love to hatred turn'd, Nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorn'd."
- William Congreve (1670-1729)

"A husband is what is left of the lover after the nerve has been extracted."
- Helen Rowland (1876-1950)

"Learning is what most adults will do for a living in the 21st century."
- Perelman

"The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready."
- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

"There is a country is Europe where multiple-choice tests are illegal."
- Sigfried Hulzer

"Ask her to wait a moment - I am almost done."
- Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855) when informed that his wife is dying

"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
- Thomas Watson (1874-1956), Chairman of IBM, 1943

"I think it would be a good idea."
- Mahatma Ghandi (1869-1948), when asked what he thought of Western civilization

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
- Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

"I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!"
- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

"If Stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?" "
- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

"The backbone of surprise is fusing speed with secrecy."
- Von Clausewitz (1780-1831)

"Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions - it only guarantees equality of opportunity."
- Irving Kristol

"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
- Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977

"640K ought to be enough for anybody."
- Bill Gates (1955-), in 1981

"The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C', the idea must be feasible."
- A Yale University management professor in response to student Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)

"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?"
- H. M. Warner (1881-1858), founder of Warner Brothers, in 1927

"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out."
- Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962

"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899

"Denial ain't just a river in Egypt."
- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"A pint of sweat, saves a gallon of blood."
- General George S. Patton (1885-1945)

"After I'm dead I'd rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one."
- Cato the Elder (234-149 BC, AKA Marcus Porcius Cato)

"He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know."
- Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

"Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something."
- last words of Pancho Villa (1877-1923)

"The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841-1935)

"The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense."
- Tom Clancy

"Its not the size of the dog in the fight, its the size of the fight in the dog."
- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both."
- Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), "The Prince"

"Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame."
- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

"There is only one nature - the division into science and engineering is a human imposition, not a natural one. Indeed, the division is a human failure; it reflects our limited capacity to comprehend the whole."
- Bill Wulf

"There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher."
- Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964)

"A poem is never finished, only abandoned."
- Paul Valery (1871-1945)

"Your Highness, I have no need of this hypothesis."
- Pierre Laplace (1749-1827), to Napoleon on why his works on celestial mechanics make no mention of God.

"I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don't need."
- Francois-Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), when asked how he managed to make his remarkable statues

"Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing."
- Wernher Von Braun (1912-1977)

"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."     - Sir Winston Churchill

"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know."

   - Ernest Hemingway

"Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans."

    - John Lennon

"We can't all be heroes because somebody has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by."

    - Will Rogers

"The secret of being miserable is to have the leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure is occupation."

    - George Bernard Shaw

"Do not look where you fell but where you slipped."

    - Proverb

"The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think."

    - Horace Walpole

"I cannot afford to waste my time making money."

    - Jean Louis Agassiz