Favorite little sayings - I

For years, I've been collecting sayings of all types, usually aphorisms giving sage advice in interesting and memorable language. So I thought I might share a few. There's not particular theme, just some that I remember or had written down. This is the first posting in a series (I've got a LOT of these.)

It's not necessary to understand things in order to argue about them. - Caron de Beaumarchais

We cannot do everything at once, but we can do something at once. - Calvin Coolidge

Never ask of money spent
Where the spender thinks it went.
Nobody was ever meant
To remember or invent
What he did with every cent. - Robert Frost

The angry man always thinks he can do more than he can. - Albertano of Brescia

When funds are limitless, the only economy is usually in thinking. - Parkinson

Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you an automobile. - Laurence J. Peter

The world is divided into people who do things
And people who get the credit. - Dwight Morrow

The only unchangeable things in nature are either fossils or will soon become extinct.

Christianity is not something that has been tried and found wanting, but something that has been found difficult and left untried. - G.K.Chesterton

Words were given to man to enable him to conceal his true feelings. - Voltaire

Confidence is what you feel before you understand the problem.

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen. - Winston Churchill

The virtue of a man ought to be measured not by his extraordinary exertions, but by his everyday conduct. - Blaise Pascal

Conscience is the voice that tells us what other people should do.

Try not to become a person of success, but rather a person of value. - Albert Einstein

Nothing tells more about the character of a man than the things he makes fun of. - Goethe

History is full of examples of lonely thinkers who were belittled by the established figures of the time and who, it now turns out, were deservedly neglected. - Leon Lipson

Not a change for the better in our human housekeeping has ever taken place that wise and good men have not opposed it. - James Russell Lowell

Courage consists in equality to the problem before us. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Satisfaction of one's curiosity is one of the greatest sources of happiness in life. - Linus Pauling

The composer Max Reger wrote the following rebuttal to a critical review: "I am sitting in the smallest room in my house. I have your review in front of me. Soon it will be behind me."

I read in a book that a man named Christ went about doing good. It is very disconcerting to me that I am so easily satisfied with just going about. - Toyohiko Kagawa

It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare. - Mark Twain

A creative mind merely has ideas; a resourceful mind makes them practical. - Georges F. Doriot

Debt is a trap which people set and bait themselves, and then deliberately step into. - Josh Billings

It's not that people value money more, but that they value everything else so much less - not that they are more greedy, but that they have no other values to keep greed in check. - Dee Hock, former president of VISA

Scripture for dentists: "...open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it." - Psalms 81:10

To give great attention to details is one mark of genius - to putter with trifles is not. - Charles B. Rogers

Our doubts are traitors and cause us to miss the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt. - Shakespeare

The liberally educated person is one who is able to resist the easy and preferred answers; not because he is obstinate, but because he knows others worthy of consideration. - Allan Bloom

A great many of today's problems are caused by a tremendous surplus of simple answers, coupled with a horrible shortage of simple questions.

If God could have sons, all of us were his sons. If Jesus was like God, or God himself, then all men were like God and could be God himself. - Gandhi

There is no solution to any crisis that can allay an infinity of fears while assuming zero risk. Attempts to satisfy these two impossible constraints are responsible for the lack of positive action. Our current policy is enmeshed precisely in this zero-infinity dilemma. - Bernard S. Lee, President, Institute of Gas Technology

An economist is a person who, when he doesn't have a clue, will always come up with an estimate.

Education - that which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding. - Ambroise Bierce

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence. - Robert Frost

Anyone who promises you a return to the days of cheap, abundant energy is either naive, stupid, or blind to the realities of life. If this country had reacted to Pearl Harbor as we have to our energy problem, we would all be speaking Japanese today. - Robert Robel, Kansas State Univ. (from 1976!)

An expert doesn't necessarily know more than you do, but he has it better organized and shows slides. - Paul Harwitz

How many fancy they have experience simply because they have grown old! - Stanslaus Lee

It is essential that the student acquire an understanding of and a lively feeling for values. He must acquire a vivid sense of the beautiful and the morally good. Otherwise, he - with his specialized knowledge - more closely resembles a well-trained dog than a harmoniously developed person. - Albert Einstein

Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him. - Aldous Huxley