Tom > Tom's Quotes

“Tact is the ability to tell someone to go to hell in such a way that they look forward to the trip.”
― Winston Churchill

“My tastes are simple: I am easily satisfied with the best.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”
― Isaac Asimov

“Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.”
― Isaac Asimov, Foundation

“The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but 'That's funny...”
― Isaac Asimov

“Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome.”
― Isaac Asimov

“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”
― Isaac Asimov

“In accordance with the terms of the Clarke-Asimov treaty, the second-best
science writer dedicates this book to the second-best science-fiction
writer.
[dedication to Isaac Asimov from Arthur C. Clarke in his book Report on Planet Three]”
― Arthur C. Clarke

“Perfer et obdura, dolor hic tibi proderit olim. (Be patient and tough; someday this pain will be useful to you.)”
― Ovid

“If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature and Selected Essays

“The first draft of anything is shit.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

“I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it. People think pleasing God is all God cares about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple

“Besides being blind to lots of good things, the GDP also benefits from all manner of human suffering. Gridlock, drug abuse, adultery? Goldmines for gas stations, rehab centers, and divorce attorneys. If you were the GDP, your ideal citizen would be a compulsive gambler with cancer who’s going through a drawn-out divorce that he copes with by popping fistfuls of Prozac and going berserk on Black Friday. Environmental pollution even does double duty: One company makes a mint by cutting corners while another is paid to clean up the mess. By contrast, a centuries-old tree doesn’t count until you chop it down and sell it as lumber.”
― Rutger Bregman, Utopia for Realists: And How We Can Get There – from the presenter of the 2025 BBC ‘Moral Revolution’ Reith lectures

“The goal of the future is full unemployment, so we can play. Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008)”
― Rutger Bregman, Utopia for Realists: And How We Can Get There – from the presenter of the 2025 BBC ‘Moral Revolution’ Reith lectures

“There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.”
― Shel Silverstein, Where the Sidewalk Ends