"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
— F.Scott Fitzgerald

"I'm a monkey!"
— Mick Jagger and Keith Richards

"To know a thing you have to trust what you know, and all that you know, and as far as you know in whatever direction your knowing drags you. I once had a pet pine squirrel named Omar who lived in the cotton secret and springy dark of our old green davenport; Omar knew that davenport; he knew from the Inside what I only sat on from the Out, and trusted his knowledge to keep from being squashed by my ignorance. He survived until a red plaid blanket--spread to camouflage the worn-out Outside--confused him so he lost his faith in his familiarity with the In. Instead of trying to incorporate a plaid exterior into the scheme of his world he moved to the rainspout at the back of the house and was drowned in the first fall shower, probably still blaming that blanket: damn this world that just won't hold still for us! Damn it anyway!"
— Ken Kesey (Sometimes a Great Notion)

"Can you still have any famous last words if you're somebody nobody knows?"
— Ryan Adams

"If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library."
— Frank Zappa

"Yeah and it's over before you know it
It all goes by so fast
Yeah the bad nights take forever
And the good nights don't ever seem to last"
— Tom Petty

"I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion."
— Henry David Thoreau

"We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane."
— Kurt Vonnegut (Breakfast of Champions)

"Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are capable of being."
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"I feel the same way about disco as I do about herpes."
— Hunter S. Thompson

"But it's the truth even if it didn't happen."
— Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)

"Keep passing the open windows."
— John Irving

"I stand for what I stand on."
— Edward Abbey

"The best thing about graduating from the university was that I finally had time to sit on a log and read a good book."
— Edward Abbey

"When a man's best friend is his dog, that dog has a problem."
— Edward Abbey

"Give me silence, water, hope
Give me struggle, iron, volcanoes"
— Pablo Neruda

"The vanity of teaching doth oft tempt a man to forget that he is a blockhead. "
— George Saville Marquis of Halifax

"So many books, so little time."
— Frank Zappa

"I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying."
— Oscar Wilde

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
— Mark Twain

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
— Oscar Wilde (Lady Windermere's Fan)

"Without music, life would be a mistake."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"Note to self: don't die."
— Ryan Adams

"Calvin: I used to hate writing assignments, but now I enjoy them. I realized that the purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure poor reasoning, and inhibit clarity. With a little practice, writing can be an intimidating and impenetrable fog! Want to see my book report?

Hobbes: (Reading Calvin's paper) "The Dynamics of Interbeing and Monological Imperatives in Dick and Jane: A Study in Psychic Transrelational Gender modes."

Calvin: Academia, here I come!"
— Bill Watterson (Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat)

"Education: the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty."
— Mark Twain

"Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in."
— Leonardo da Vinci

"Try not to have a good time...this is supposed to be educational."
— Charles M. Schulz

"Game shows are designed to make us feel better about the random, useless facts that are all we have left of our education."
— Chuck Palahniuk

"Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young."
— Henry Ford

"All these people talk so eloquently about getting back to good old-fashioned values. Well, as an old poop I can remember back to when we had those old-fashioned values, and I say let's get back to the good old-fashioned First Amendment of the good old-fashioned Constitution of the United States -- and to hell with the censors! Give me knowledge or give me death!"
— Kurt Vonnegut

"By seeking and blundering we learn."
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"I'm the one that has to die when it's time for me to die, so let me live my life, the way I want to."
— Jimi Hendrix

"Unbeing dead isn't being alive."
— e.e. cummings

"Anyone who thinks sitting in church can make you a Christian must also think that sitting in a garage can make you a car."
— Garrison Keillor

"In heaven, all the interesting people are missing."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"Yes, reason has been a part of organized religion, ever since two nudists took dietary advice from a talking snake."
— Jon Stewart

"For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us."
— Charles Bukowski

"Yes, the long war on Christianity. I pray that one day we may live in an America where Christians can worship freely! In broad daylight! Openly wearing the symbols of their religion... perhaps around their necks? And maybe -- dare I dream it? -- maybe one day there can be an openly Christian President. Or, perhaps, 43 of them. Consecutively."
— Jon Stewart

"I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness."
— Dalai Lama XIV

"A sense of humor...is superior to any religion so far devised."
— Tom Robbins (Jitterbug Perfume)

"CALVIN:
This whole Santa Claus thing just doesn't make sense. Why all the secrecy? Why all the mystery?

If the guy exists why doesn't he ever show himself and prove it?

And if he doesn't exist what's the meaning of all this?

HOBBES:
I dunno. Isn't this a religious holiday?

CALVIN:
Yeah, but actually, I've got the same questions about God."
— Bill Watterson

"How 'bout a cheer for all those bad girls?
And all those boys that play that rock and roll?
They love it like you love Jesus,
It does the same thing to their souls."
— Tom Petty

"Dear future generations: Please accept our apologies. We were rolling drunk on petroleum."
— Kurt Vonnegut

"1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them."
— Kurt Vonnegut

"Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter could be said to remedy anything."
— Kurt Vonnegut

"One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us."
— Kurt Vonnegut

"True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country."
— Kurt Vonnegut

"Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops."
— Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse-Five)

"Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life."
— Mark Twain