We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds;
our planet is the mental institution of the universe.

What the superior man seeks is in himself.
What the mean man seeks is in others.
-----The Confucian Analetics

A man that does not think for himself
does not think at all.
-----Oscar Wilde

What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us
are tiny matters to what lies within us.
-----Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you don’t stand for something,
you will fall for anything.
-----Unknown

The function of the imagination is not to make strange things settled
so much as to make settled things strange.
-----G.K.Chesterton

Everyone must row with the oars he has.
-----English Proverb

We are all in this together—by ourselves
-----Lily Tomlin

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
-----Eleanor Roosevelt

If you have no confidence in self,
you are twice defeated in the race of life.
With confidence you have won even before you have started.
-----Marcus Garvey

It lies with the young people of this nation
whether or not it is going to go on to a finish
in any wise worthy of its beginnings.
-----Jane Adams

He who thus considers things in their first growth and origin
will obtain the clearest view of them.
-----Aristotle

Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment,
and especially on their children,
than the unlived lives of the parents.
-----Carl Jung

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders,
but they have never failed to imitate them.
-----James Baldwin

Those who talk about individuality the most
are the ones who most object to deviation,
and in a few years,
it will probably be the other way around.
-----Andy Warhol

I count him braver who overcomes his desire
than he who overcomes his enemies;
for the hardest victory is the victory over self.
-----Aristotle

Developing Judgment

He who asks is a fool for five minutes,
but he who does not ask remains a fool forever.
-----Chinese Proverb

I don’t know the key to success.
But the key to failure is trying to please everybody.
-----Bill Cosby

You have to be willing to look bad,
in order to get good.
-----Jack Canfield

A man who has never been humiliated is a monster.
-----The Animals

I can resist everything except temptation.
-----Oscar Wilde

Do not assume that because I am frivolous I am shallow,
just as I do not assume that because you are grave you are profound.
-----Sydney Smith

To have a good memory is to be both blessed and cursed.
-----A.C. Crispin

Reality has changed so chameleon like before my eyes so many times,
that I have learned, or am learning, to trust almost anything
except what appears to be so.
-----Maya Angelou

Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps;
for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference
between what things are, and what they ought to be.
-----William Hazlitt

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passion a quotation.
-----Oscar Wilde

Every man alone is sincere;
at the entrance of a second person hypocrisy begins.
-----Ralph Waldo Emerson

Circumstances do not change a man; they reveal him.
-----Anonymous

Deafness has left me acutely aware of both the duplicity
that language is capable of
and the many expressions the body cannot hide.
-----Terry Galloway

Find out what you do the best
and have someone pay you for doing it.
-----Katherine White Horn

Many individuals have, like uncut diamonds,
shining qualities beneath a rough exterior.
-----Juvenal

A near-sighted rich man has all the windows in his house
ground to his optical prescription.
He remains rich and nearsighted.
-----Russel Edson

A pessimist is an optimist with experience.
-----Chuck Daly

Continental people have sex lives;
the English have hot-water bottles.
-----Eric Nix

The world is not growing worse and it is not growing better.
It is just turning around as usual.
-----Finley Peter Dunne

It’s often safer to be in chains than to be free.
-----Franz Kafka

Money often costs too much.
-----Ralph Waldo Emerson

Discipline is remembering what you want.
-----David Campbell

All men by nature desire knowledge.
-----Aristotle

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere
-----Martin Luther King

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions.
Small people always do that,
but the really great make you feel
that you too can become great.
-----Mark Twain

It disturbs a torturer more to burn his toast
than to toast his victims.
-----Jack Read

I’ve learned more from my failures than from my successes.
-----Dave Brown

But what a fool believes he sees
No wise man has the power to reason away.
-----Doobie Brothers

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world;
the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.
Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
-----George Bernard Shaw

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance
and conscientious stupidity.
-----Martin Luther King

Imagination is more important than knowledge.
-----Albert Einstein

Dreaming permits each and every one of use to be
quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.
-----William Dennet

Only two thing are infinite—the universe and human stupidity,
and I’m not sure of the former.
-----Albert Einstein

A sharp tongue is the only edged tool
that grows keener with constant use.
-----Washington Irving

What I must do is all that concerns me,
not what the people think
-----Ralph Waldo Emerson

Do not judge me by the color of my skin,
but by the content of my character.
-----Martin Luther King, Jr.

There can be not real freedom without the freedom to fail.
-----Eric Hoffer

Laws too gentle are seldom obeyed;
too severe, seldom executed.
-----Benjamin Franklin

The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them,
but to be indifferent to them;
that is the essence of inhumanity.
-----George Bernard Shaw

Always be nice to people on your way up
because you will meet the same people on the way down.
-----Wilson Mizner

I don’t want to express an opinion.
You see I have friends in both places.
-----Mark Twain

It is amazing what can get accomplished
when no one cares who gets the credit.
-----Anonymous

Of all sad words of tongue or pen,
the saddest are these: it might have been.
-----John Greenleaf Whittier

Men love the women they’re attracted to,
and women are attracted to the men they love.
-----Crystal Bernard

Men don’t care what’s on TV.
They only care what else is on TV.
-----Jerry Seinfeld

Any man who says he can see through a woman
is missing a lot.
-----Groucho

You guys on white horses keep trying to save women in distress,
not realizing you just end up with distressed women.
-----Laura Schlessinger

The president in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land.
But how can you buy or sell the sky?
-----Chief Seattle

There are two ways to slide easily through life;
to believe everything or doubt everything.
Both ways save you from thinking.
-----Alfred Korzybski

Tell me your friends,
and I’ll tell you who you are.
-----Assyrian proverb

In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies
but the silence of our friends.
-----Martin Luther King

There are two things to aim at in life;
first, to get what you want,
and, after that, to enjoy it.
Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.
-----Logan Pearsall Smith

Living with a conscience is like driving with the brakes on.
-----Budd Schulberg

There is a time when one must risk something,
or sit forever with one’s dreams.
-----Trevor Peterson

As he succeeds he takes no credit.
And just because he does not take it,
Credit never leaves him.
-----inspired by Confucius

I am more and more convinced that our happiness or our unhappiness
depends far more on the way we meet the events of life
than on the nature of those events themselves.
-----William von Humboldt

The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook.
-----William James

When you die, what you take with you is what you leave behind.
If you don’t share, no matter how much you have,
you will always be poor.
-----Chi Chi Rodriguez

The best kind of pride is that which compels a man
to do his very best
when no one else is watching.
-----Brian Schottenheimer

An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind.
-----The Soap Box Gang

It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid
than to open it and remove all doubt.
-----Mark Twain

The greatest of faults, I would say, is to be conscious of none.
-----Thomas Carlyle

Thinking is the hardest work there is,
which is probably why so few people engage in it.
-----Henry Ford

The great masses of people will more easily fall victimsto a great lie
than to a small one.
-----Adolf Hitler

People demand freedom of speech
to make up for the freedom of thought
which they avoid.
-----Soren A. Kierkegaard

Wise men talk because they have something to say;
fools because they have to say something.
-----Plato

Ten people who speak make more noise than then thousand who are silent.
-----Napoleon

To know even one life has breathed easier because you lived.
This is to have succeeded.
-----Ralph Waldo Emerson

And in much of your talking,
thinking is half murdered.
-----Kalil Gibran

Joy unmixed with sorrow is suspect.
-----A.C. Crispin

It is better to deserve honors and not have them
then to have them and not deserve them.
-----Mark Twain

I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month,
and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it.
-----Thomas Jefferson

Life can only be understood backwards,
but it must be lived forwards.
-----unknown

The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions
and not on our circumstances.
-----Martha Washington

The truly excellent in the world is not separate from the good life.
-----David Jordan

It takes a clever man to turn cynic
and a wise man to be clever enough not to.
-----Fannie Hurst

The Funny and Sublime

Always serve too much hot fudge sauce on hot fudge sundaes.
It makes people overjoyed, and puts them in your debt.
-----Judith Olney

While alive, be a dead man thoroughly dead,
and then act as you will and all is good.
-----Japanese Zen Master

A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide
who has the better lawyer.
-----Robert Frost

A sign reads—no animals except seeing eye dogs.
Who is the sign for? The Dog?
-----Jerry Seinfeld

Why should I be bitter
about someone who was a complete stranger
until a certain moment in a day that has passed.
-----Saigyo

Joking is undignified; that’s why it is so good for one’s soul.
-----G. K. Chesterton

I am ready to meet my maker,
but whether my maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me
is another matter.
-----Winston Churchill

Such is the human race. Often it does seem such a pity
that Noah didn’t miss the boat.
-----Mark Twain