G-- > G--'s Quotes

“He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which.”
― Douglas Adams

“It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”
― Sid Ziff

“America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.”
― Mark Twain

“I happen to feel that the degree of a person's intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting attitudes she can bring to bear on the same topic.”
― Lisa Alther

“Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality.”
― Jules de Gaultier

“I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.”
― Groucho Marx

“Mistakes are part of the dues one pays for a full life.”
― Sophia Loren

“It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.”
― Voltaire

“An ad that pretends to be art is -- at absolute best -- like somebody who smiles warmly at you only because he wants something from you. This is dishonest, but what's sinister is the cumulative effect that such dishonesty has on us: since it offers a perfect facsimile or simulacrum of goodwill without goodwill's real spirit, it messes with our heads and eventually starts upping our defenses even in cases of genuine smiles and real art and true goodwill. It makes us feel confused and lonely and impotent and angry and scared. It causes despair.”
― David Foster Wallace

“I'm drawn to people who look different. I'm not exploiting. I'm not making fun of them. I'm drawn to them.”
― Amy Sedaris

“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

“Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship—be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles—is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.”
― David Foster Wallace , This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life

“I never took hallucinogenic drugs because I never wanted my consciousness expanded one unnecessary iota.”
― Fran Lebowitz