"Success and the opportunity it affords rarely comes without personal sacrifice. This decision is only one of many you’ll be making throughout your long career. It’s a delicate balance - personal desires set against professional needs. Commitments to the heart; commitments to the mind, balanced on scales which only you can measure. Freedom can often be a heavy burden. With it goes the need for courage to stand by a decision which will alter and shape your entire life. The years have taught me that in weighing the consequences of such a decision - it will take a whole lifetime of retrospection to know if you charted the right course. Today at 80 I have the luxury of an eventful past to bolster my judgments. But yours is a lonely vantage point from which to survey the infinite possibilities of your future. For the counsel you are seeking, you can only look to yourself."

"It is only people with a sense of personal responsibility who can help others. It is only people with a sense of personal responsibility who can be helped in a lasting way."

"There are always going to be reasons to do the wrong thing. And the smarter the person, the better the reasons. That doesn’t make it right."

"We are all sprung from woman, although we are unlike in many things...We are just as we were made by the Great Spirit, and you cannot change us; then why should children of one mother and one father quarrel? Why should one try to cheat the other? I do not believe that the Great Spirit Chief gave one kind of men the right to tell another kind of men what they must do."

"Cable and video disc are NOT novelties...the proliferation of cable will be amazing...the networks will remain financing organizations, but there will be enormous fragmentation in terms of viewing audiences. With fifty or more stations to choose from, a certain segment of the public will be able to tune into a certain horticulture show, and other very esoteric programming will be possible and profitable.

"We’re going to see an expanded popular use of videotape...I think that the videotape camera will soon compete commercially with the home Super-8 movie camera."

"In 1938 President Roosevelt assembled the brightest scientists in America...to help him envisage the things he might have to adjust to in the future. ‘I want you to tell me what to expect,’ he said, and after three days of intense speculation these men, whose job it was to anticipate the future and who commanded more keys to that future than any other group, failed to predict atomic power, radar, rockets, jet aircraft, computers, xerography and penicillin, all of which were to burst upon the world within the next few years. They knew about the exploratory research, of course, but they could not believe it would produce functional products so soon."

In December, 1993, astronaut Story Musgrave walked in space to help repair the sadly malfunctioning Hubble Telescope. Television newsman Ted Koppel asked him whether the effort was worth all the trouble, expense and danger.

"We had no choice, sir," Musgrave replied. "It’s the nature of humans to be exploratory and push on. There is a risk. There is a penalty...but exploring and frontiering is the essence of what human beings are."

"I’d rather set my hair on fire and put it out with a ball peen hammer than be city manager of Fresno."

"I will say this about being an optimist--even when things don’t turn out well, you are certain they will get better."

"Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see."

"To obtain maximum attention, it’s hard to beat a good, big mistake."

"I was born silly and had a relapse."

"I’m going to start water skiing someday...as soon as I can separate it from being dragged by a boat."

"If it is true that God created man, by now he surely has laughed himself to death."

"[Pam Tillis has] a voice so powerful and incisive you could harvest wheat with it."

"We used to laugh together, and dance to any old song;
You know, she still laughs with me, but she waits just a little too long."

"You must learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t possibly live long enough to make them all yourself."

"The human story does not always unfold like a mathematical calculation on the principle that two and two make four. Sometimes in life they make five or minus three; sometimes the blackboard topples down...and leaves the class in disorder and the pedagogue with a black eye."

"If you can’t take people’s money and screw ‘em, then you don’t have any business being in (politics)."

A lifelong Democrat, Larry Flynt ran for president as a Republican in 1984 because "I was wealthy, white and pornographic, and, like Ronald Reagan, I’d been shot for what I believe in."

"I trust those who are seeking the truth; I don’t trust those who have found it."

"This page is printed on recycled electrons."

"‘The Ten Commandments’--a three hour blockbuster based on a list."

"The risk of being a dry wit--there’s always someone waiting to throw cold water on your wisdom."

"The Philadelphia Flyers with their condor-like wing spread..."

"The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon...and at length the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them."

"Mick Jagger sang the bowdlerized version of ‘Let’s Spend the Night Together’ as ‘Let’s Spend Some Time Together’ on ‘The Ed Sullivan Show,’ but even Ed had to know that Mick Jagger could sing the instructions for assembling a tricycle and they’d sound lewd."

"Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn’t the work he is supposed to be doing."

"I had a Huck Finn childhood, a John Lennon adolescence, a Jack Nicholson adulthood, and now I’m looking forward to a Timothy Leary old age."

"When it comes to mood-altering substances, you can’t beat hot fudge brownies and a glass of milk!"

Bakersfield fire chief (about 1964), explaining why they do not answer calls about cats stuck up in trees: "The cat will manage to get down. You don’t see many cat skeletons up in trees."

"There is a price we pay for having everything we ever wanted to know at our fingertips--and that price is that we have everything we ever wanted to know at our fingertips."

"If you're going to get old, you might as well get as old as you can get."

"[in the doctor's waiting room] thinking about my crumbling innards,...perusing tattered issues of People, thinking, I am spending some of my precious last hours on earth learning more about Tammy Wynette."

"These companies, such as Microsoft, Intel, Apple, and America Online, are in a peculiar relationship with each other. That comes out clearly in the testimony. They are at the same time each other's suppliers, customers, and competitors. One of these executives said that they all live in the same ecology, and they have to get along with each other. That is an interesting metaphor. The grass, the gazelle, and the lion all live in the same ecology. The gazelle eats the grass and the lion eats the gazelle. That is a way of getting along together. And, you can say that there will always be grass, gazelles, and lions. But individual gazelles may not be so happy with the balanced equilibrium of this ecosystem."

"It's too bad he lives in the city--he's depriving some village of an idiot."

"I can't think of a more potent combination than God and a good lawyer."

"I love having ten times as much stuff to do as I can possibly find time to do. That way, I can pick the one-tenth that I want to do most. But if I only have enough to just occupy all my time, I’m stuck doing all of whatever stuff it happens to be."

"Scientists believe that the universe is made of hydrogen because they claim it's the most plentiful ingredient. I claim that the most plentiful ingredient is stupidity."

"Picking the best vegan soy burger is like picking the best way to get your arm mangled in a corn thresher."

--Eliza Truitt in Slate (on-line magazine)

"There is no escalator to success - only steps."

--Glen Sather, National Hockey League coach and general manager

"A handy breakfast tip: Always check your Grape Nuts for squirrels." 

--Garfield

In response to a question about a friend who acts a little nutty: "There are always going to be people who do whatever their Rice Krispies tell them to do."

--Dear Prudence in Slate Magazine

"Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will buy a funny hat."

--Dogbert, in Scott Adams' "Dilbert" comic strip

"America - love it or give it back."

--Bumper sticker on vehicle identified as "Indian Van"

"The public arts are created for a mass audience and for a profit; that is their essential nature. But they can at times achieve truth and beauty, and given freedom they will achieve it more and more often."

--Roy Huggins, creator of Maverick, The Fugitive, Rockford Files and other successful TV shows

"Today is the first day of the rest of your life, but so was yesterday, and look how you  messed that up!"

--Thaves, Frank & Ernest cartoon

"Cell phones have gotten so small, you can't tell who's a cell phone user and who's a schizophrenic."

--Bob Newhart

"The secret of managing is to keep the guys who hate you away from the guys who are undecided."

--Casey Stengel


"There are those who believe and either ignore, reject or distort any finding that disfavors the beliefs. Others use evidence and fact to build belief, subject to change in the face of contrary evidence. The latter is the defining hallmark of science."

--Richard Haas, retired biology professor

"Cats are Indians; dogs are cowboys."

--Kinky Friedman

"People who are religious must make clear that religion does not have a monopoly on morality."

--Jim Wallis (author of God's Politics)

"Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the world and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that."

--Steve Earle

"I've met Bob Dylan's bodyguards, and if Steve thinks he can stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table, he's sadly mistaken."

--Townes Van Zandt

"This is by the greatest songwriter in the world."

--Bob Dylan, introducing Townes' Poncho & Lefty

"It was my favorite thing forever. When I was born I didn't have it, but right after that I did. At first, I didn't know how to ride it. My feet didn't touch the pedals or the ground. But now I've been riding it for my whole life all over the world."

--Atticus Boone, 4-year-old whose tricycle was inadvertently sold during a trip to a thrift store (PS: The buyer read about the boy's plea in the paper and returned the bike.)

“Feeling unrelenting anger or hatred is like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies.”

--Mary Doub

(Q&A to/from Marilyn vos Savant in Parade magazine):

Q. Why do our high school experiences occupy such a prominent place in our memories?

A. During high school, we develop the most vigorous adult bodies we will ever have. At the same time, we possess the least amount of sense we will ever have. This combination produces many memorable moments!

"Most rattlesnake bites in the United States are caused by young, drunken men handling snakes."

--Dan Vierria in an article on rattlesnakes in The Sacramento Bee

"I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.”

--Susan B Anthony
 
 

"When you're single, you're exactly as happy as you are. When you're married, you can only be as happy as the least happy person in the relationship."

--Opening of TV series Rules of Engagement

"Winning isn't everything - but wanting to win is."

--Vince Lombardi

"I haven't the slightest idea how to change people, but I keep a long list of prospective candidates just in case I should ever figure it out."

--David Sedaris

"I had to take a sick day, I'm so sick of these people."

--Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Elaine on Seinfeld, talking about her co-workers

--Albert Einstein  

Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad name.

-- Henry Kissinger

"PRACTICAL HOMEMAKER TIP -- Keep an open box of baking soda in your refrigerator. That way, when people come to visit, you can say: 'Would you care for some cold baking soda?' Then they will leave."

--Dave Barry

"Unaccompanied children will be given an espresso and a free puppy."

--Sign on an antique store in Clovis, CA