Shane's quotes

(showing 1-50 of 58)

"Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese."
— G.K. Chesterton (Alarms and Discursions)

tags: cheese, poetry
665 people liked it

"Fairy tales, are more than true. Not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be defeated."
— G.K. Chesterton

tags: books, inspirational
2,580 people liked it

"The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition. Thus we have two great types -- the advanced person who rushes us into ruin, and the retrospective person who admires the ruins. He admires them especially by moonlight, not to say moonshine. Each new blunder of the progressive or prig becomes instantly a legend of immemorial antiquity for the snob. This is called the balance, or mutual check, in our Constitution."
— G.K. Chesterton

12 people liked it

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened."
— Winston S. Churchill

tags: truth
818 people liked it

"Life is a disease: sexually transmitted, and invariably fatal."
— Neil Gaiman

788 people liked it

"If you are going through hell, keep going."
— Winston S. Churchill

tags: hell, perseverance
593 people liked it

"History will be kind to me for I intend to write it."
— Winston S. Churchill

tags: history, humor, writing
617 people liked it

"You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life."
— Winston S. Churchill

tags: convictions, criticism
468 people liked it

"For myself I am an optimist - it does not seem to be much use to be anything else."
— Winston S. Churchill

tags: inspirational, optimism
200 people liked it

"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."
— Winston S. Churchill

tags: fanatism
180 people liked it

"Lady Astor to Winston Churchill—
"Sir, if you were my husband, I would poison your drink."

His reply—
"Madam, if you were my wife, I would drink it."
— Winston S. Churchill

tags: alcohol, classic-insult, drunk
178 people liked it

"A lady came up to me one day and said 'Sir! You are drunk', to which I replied 'I am drunk today madam, and tomorrow I shall be sober but you will still be ugly.'"
— Winston S. Churchill

tags: classic-insult
113 people liked it

"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."
— Winston S. Churchill

tags: democracy, elite, elitism, elitist, meritocracy, peasant, voter, voting
95 people liked it

"Tact is the ability to tell someone to go to hell in such a way that they look forward to the trip."
— Winston S. Churchill

tags: diplomat, politics
88 people liked it

"I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter."
— Winston S. Churchill

55 people liked it

"Everyone is in favor of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people's idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone else says anything back, that is an outrage.""
— Winston S. Churchill

tags: free, speech
37 people liked it

"We can always count on the Americans to do the right thing, after they have exhausted all the other possibilities."
— Winston S. Churchill

tags: united-states
46 people liked it

"There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at with no result."
— Winston S. Churchill

34 people liked it

"To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often."
— Winston S. Churchill

tags: change
32 people liked it

"A prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails, and then asks you not to kill him."
— Winston S. Churchill

23 people liked it

"Just going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in your garage makes you a car."
— G.K. Chesterton

tags: car, funny, humor, religious
1,171 people liked it

"I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach you how to love somebody. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don't teach you how to walk away from someone you don't love any longer. They don't teach you how to know what's going on in someone else's mind. They don't teach you what to say to someone who's dying. They don't teach you anything worth knowing."
— Neil Gaiman (The Sandman Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones)

1,141 people liked it

"When I was a child, adults would tell me not to make things up, warning me of what would happen if I did. As far as I can tell so far, it seems to involve lots of foreign travel and not having to get up too early in the morning."
— Neil Gaiman (Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions)

777 people liked it

"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."
— Winston S. Churchill

tags: churchill, funny, true, winston
484 people liked it

"He had noticed that events were cowards: they didn't occur singly, but instead they would run in packs and leap out at him all at once."
— Neil Gaiman (Neverwhere: A Novel)

117 people liked it

"When in trouble or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout."
— Cory Doctorow

tags: brother, humor, little
43 people liked it

"Almost nobody dances sober, unless they happen to be insane."
— H.P. Lovecraft

tags: dance, dancing, life
91 people liked it

"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown"
— H.P. Lovecraft

68 people liked it

"I have the heart of a small boy...and I keep it in a jar on my desk."
— Stephen King

tags: dark-humor
249 people liked it

"Both Rowling and Meyer, they’re speaking directly to young people. … The real difference is that [Harry Potter author] Jo Rowling is a terrific writer and [Twilight author] Stephenie Meyer can’t write worth a darn. She’s not very good."
— Stephen King

tags: harry, jk, meyer, potter, rowling, stephanie, twilight
157 people liked it

"The thing under my bed waiting to grab my ankle isn't real. I know that, and I also know that if I'm careful to keep my foot under the covers, it will never be able to grab my ankle."
— Stephen King (Night Shift)

112 people liked it

"Fault always lies in the same place: with him weak enough to lay blame."
— Stephen King

tags: inspirational, philosophy
58 people liked it

"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."
— Douglas Adams

tags: deadlines, humor, work
5,359 people liked it

"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."
— Douglas Adams (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe)

tags: humor, scifi
3,283 people liked it

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be."
— Douglas Adams

tags: life
3,736 people liked it

"Humans think they are smarter than dolphins because we build cars and buildings and start wars etc...and all that dolphins do is swim in the water, eat fish and play around. Dolphins believe that they are smarter for exactly the same reasons."
— Douglas Adams

tags: humour
2,022 people liked it

"The Guide says that there is an art to flying,” said Ford, “or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss."
— Douglas Adams

tags: flight, flying, hg2g, humor
1,196 people liked it

"I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don't know the answer"
— Douglas Adams

tags: humor, wit
1,439 people liked it

"There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened."
— Douglas Adams (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe)

tags: humor
1,356 people liked it

"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so."
— Douglas Adams

tags: learning
986 people liked it

"The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be."
— Douglas Adams

tags: humor, perspective, science
1,029 people liked it

"The major problem- one of the major problems, for there are several- one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of whom manages to get people to let them do it to them.
To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.
To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."
— Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

tags: elections, hg2g, politics, president, rulers
501 people liked it

"The problem with designing something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of a complete fool. "
— Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

538 people liked it

"A learning experience is one of those things that says, "You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.""
— Douglas Adams (The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time)

tags: life
447 people liked it

"The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't."
— Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

tags: adams, douglas
266 people liked it

"Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable, let's prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all."
— Douglas Adams

260 people liked it

"Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it."
— Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

186 people liked it

"This must be Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays."
— Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

190 people liked it

"What to do if you find yourself stuck with no hope of rescue: Consider yourself lucky that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far, which given your present circumstances seems more likely, consider yourself lucky that it won't be troubling you much longer."
— Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

198 people liked it

"It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination."
— Douglas Adams (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe)

160 people liked it

« previous 1 2 next »

Shane's profile »

all quotes
add a quote

Shane's quotes

tags from Shane's quotes