quotations
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Quotations on dofferent topics.
Part 1
Television
All television is educational television. The question is: what is it teaching? ~Nicholas Johnson I wish there was a knob on the TV so you could turn up the intelligence. They got one marked "brightness" but it don't work, does it? ~Leo Anthony Gallagher How can you put on a meaningful drama when, every fifteen minutes, proceedings are interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits with toilet paper? ~Rod Serling, quoted in Submitted for Your Approval, Public Broadcasting Station, 1995 Television has proved that people will look at anything rather than each other. ~Ann Landers I find television to be very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go in the other room and read a book. ~Groucho Marx Television has changed a child from an irresistible force to an immovable object. ~Author Unknown We cannot blame the schools alone for the dismal decline in SAT verbal scores. When our kids come home from school do they pick up a book or do they sit glued to the tube, watching music videos? Parents, don't make the mistake of thinking your kid only learns between 9:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. ~George Bush If you came and you found a strange man... teaching your kids to punch each other, or trying to sell them all kinds of products, you'd kick him right out of the house, but here you are; you come in and the TV is on, and you don't think twice about it. ~Jerome Singer Television: A medium - so called because it is neither rare nor well done. ~Ernie Kovacs Today, watching television often means fighting, violence and foul language - and that's just deciding who gets to hold the remote control. ~Donna Gephart Television is an invention that permits you to be entertained in your living room by people you wouldn't have in your home. ~David Frost Television! Teacher, mother, secret lover. ~Homer Simpson, The Simpsons Television is simply automated day-dreaming. ~Lee Lovinger They say that ninety percent of TV is junk. But, ninety percent of everything is junk. ~Gene Roddenberry The publishers and others should quit worrying about losing customers to TV. The guy who can sit through a trio of deodorant commercials to look at Flashgun Casey or swallow a flock of beer and loan-shark spiels in order to watch a couple of fourth-rate club fighters rub noses on the ropes is not losing any time from book reading. ~Raymond Chandler, 1946 It's the menace that everyone loves to hate but can't seem to live without. ~Paddy Chayevsky
What is being lost is the magic of the word. I am not an image person. Imagery belongs to another civilization: the caveman. Caveman couldn't express himself so he put images on walls. ~Elie Wiesel, 1995 Everything is for the eye these days - TV, Life, Look, the movies. Nothing is just for the mind. The next generation will have eyeballs as big as cantaloupes and no brain at all. ~Fred Allen Time has convinced me of one thing. Television is for appearing on, not looking at. ~Noel Coward, attributed We can put it in its proper perspective by supposing that Gutenberg's great invention had been directed at printing only comic books. ~Robert M. Hutchins,News Summaries, 31 December 1977 TV. If kids are entertained by two letters, imagine the fun they'll have with twenty-six. Open your child's imagination. Open a book. ~Author Unknown
Each day, the American housewife turns toward television as toward a lover. She feels guilty about it, and well she might, for he's covered with warts and is only after her money. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966 Leisure time
A man can never be idle with safety and advantage until he has been so trained by work that he makes his freedom from times and tasks more fruitful than his toil has been. ~Hamilton Wright Mabie We give up leisure in order that we may have leisure, just as we go to war in order that we may have peace. ~Aristotle Leisure only means a chance to do other jobs that demand attention. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. It is in his pleasure that a man really lives; it is from his leisure that he constructs the true fabric of self. ~Agnes Repplier The real problem of leisure time is how to keep others from using yours. ~Arthur Lacey He enjoys true leisure who has time to improve his soul's estate. ~Henry David Thoreau Any notion of the serious life of leisure, as well as men's taste and capacity to live it, has disappeared. Leisure [has become] entertainment. ~Allan Bloom,The Closing of the American Mind, 1987 Leisure: A fancy word for people who don't want to admit they're bored. ~Gene Perret If you are losing your leisure, look out; you may be losing your soul. ~Logan P. Smith I would not exchange my leisure hours for all the wealth in the world. ~Comte de Mirabeau Leisure tends to corrupt, and absolute leisure corrupts absolutely. ~Edgar A. Shoaff We seldom enjoy leisure we haven't earned. ~Quoted in P.S. I Love You, compiled by H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
Language
We should have a great fewer disputes in the world if words were taken for what they are, the signs of our ideas only, and not for things themselves. ~John Locke Language forces us to perceive the world as man presents it to us. ~Julia Penelope The quantity of consonants in the English language is constant. If omitted in one place, they turn up in another. When a Bostonian "pahks" his "cah," the lost r's migrate southwest, causing a Texan to "warsh" his car and invest in "erl wells." ~Author Unknown English is a funny language; that explains why we park our car on the driveway and drive our car on the parkway. ~Author Unknown
The reaction to any word may be, in an individual, either a mob-reaction or an individual reaction. It is up to the individual to ask himself: Is my reaction individual, or am I merely reacting from my mob-self? When it comes to the so-called obscene words, I should say that hardly one person in a million escapes mob-reaction. ~D.H. Lawrence Lymph, v.: to walk with a lisp. ~From a Washington Post reader submission word contest No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous. ~Henry Brooks Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, 1907 One man's frankness is another man's vulgarity. ~Kevin Smith I personally believe we developed language because of our deep inner need to complain. ~Jane Wagner Euphemisms are unpleasant truths wearing diplomatic cologne. ~Quentin Crisp Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands and goes to work. ~Carl Sandburg, New York Times, 13 February 1959 It's a strange world of language in which skating on thin ice can get you into hot water. ~Franklin P. Jones In certain trying circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity furnishes a relief denied even to prayer. ~Mark Twain At no time is freedom of speech more precious than when a man hits his thumb with a hammer. ~Marshall Lumsden What words say does not last. The words last. Because words are always the same, and what they say is never the same. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes We have too many high sounding words and too few actions that correspond with them. ~Abigail Adams Man is a creature who lives not upon bread alone, but primarily by catchwords. ~Robert Louis Stevenson A good catchword can obscure analysis for fifty years. ~Wendell L. Willkie Our major obligation is not to mistake slogans for solutions. ~Edward R. Murrow If you can speak three languages you're trilingual. If you can speak two languages you're bilingual. If you can speak only one language you're an American. ~Author Unknown Sometimes it's just a short swim from the shipwreck of your life to the island paradise of your dreams - assuming you don't drown in the metaphor. ~Robert Brault, I like the word "indolence." It makes my laziness seem classy. ~Bern Williams Dictionaries are like watches; the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true. ~Samuel Johnson Words signify man's refusal to accept the world as it is. ~Walter Kaufmann The English language is nobody's special property. It is the property of the imagination: it is the property of the language itself. ~Derek Walcott
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Thanks to words, we have been able to rise above the brutes; and thanks to words, we have often sunk to the level of the demons. ~Aldous Huxley
The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand. ~Lewis Thomas
Language is the most imperfect and expensive means yet discovered for communicating thought. ~William James
Be not the slave of Words. ~Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, Book I, chapter 8
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as if it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink. ~George Orwell
Language is the means of getting an idea from my brain into yours without surgery. ~Mark Amidon
Any man who does not make himself proficient in at least two languages other than his own is a fool. ~Martin H. Fischer
It is a safe rule to apply that, when a mathematical or philosophical author writes with a misty profundity, he is talking nonsense. ~Alfred North Whitehead
He who does not know foreign languages does not know anything about his own. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Kunst and Alterthum
A definition is the enclosing a wilderness of idea within a wall of words. ~Samuel Butler (1835-1902), Note-Books
I would never use a long word where a short one would answer the purpose. I know there are professors in this country who 'ligate' arteries. Other surgeons only tie them, and it stops the bleeding just as well. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes Our language is funny - a fat chance and slim chance are the same thing. ~J. Gustav White Words want to be free! ~Author Unknown Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, the language of the Devil; for which reason I have, long since, as good as renounced it. ~Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, Book II, chapter 4 Oaths are but words, and words but wind. ~Samuel Butler (1612-1680),Hudribas There is a certain age at which a child looks at you in all earnestness and delivers a long, pleased speech in all the true inflections of spoken English, but with not one recognizable syllable. There is no way you can tell the child that if language had been a melody, he had mastered it and done well, but that since it was in fact a sense, he had botched it utterly. ~Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek Whenever ideas fail, men invent words. ~Martin H. Fischer Words, like Nature, half reveal And half conceal the Soul within. ~Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Im memoriam A.H.H.," 1850 Learning preserves the errors of the past, as well as its wisdom. For this reason, dictionaries are public dangers, although they are necessities. ~Alfred North Whitehead Every American child should grow up knowing a second language, preferably English. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960
BOOKS
A good book on your shelf is a friend that turns its back on you and remains a friend. ~Author Unknown A book is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it, or explore an explosive idea without fear it will go off in your face. It is one of the few havens remaining where a man's mind can get both provocation and privacy. ~Edward P. Morgan The worth of a book is to be measured by what you can carry away from it. ~James Bryce Anyone who says they have only one life to live must not know how to read a book. ~Author Unknown A good book should leave you... slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading it. ~William Styron, interview, Writers at Work, 1958 There is a great deal of difference between an eager man who wants to read a book and a tired man who wants a book to read. ~G.K. Chesterton Many people, other than the authors, contribute to the making of a book, from the first person who had the bright idea of alphabetic writing through the inventor of movable type to the lumberjacks who felled the trees that were pulped for its printing. It is not customary to acknowledge the trees themselves, though their commitment is total. ~Forsyth and Rada,Machine Learning If there's a book you really want to read but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it. ~Toni Morrison A good book has no ending. ~R.D. Cumming I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves. ~Anna Quindlen, "Enough Bookshelves," New York Times, 7 August 1991 Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers. ~Charles W. Eliot Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it. ~P.J. O'Rourke Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read. ~Groucho Marx I find television to be very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go in the other room and read a book. ~Groucho Marx The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them. ~Mark Twain, attributed A book reads the better which is our own, and has been so long known to us, that we know the topography of its blots, and dog's ears, and can trace the dirt in it to having read it at tea with buttered muffins. ~Charles Lamb, Last Essays of Elia, 1833 Let books be your dining table, And you shall be full of delights Let them be your mattress And you shall sleep restful nights. ~Author Unknown
Friendship
A friend is one of the nicest things you can have, and one of the best things you can be. ~Douglas Pagels Friendship isn't a big thing - it's a million little things. ~Author Unknown A single rose can be my garden... a single friend, my world. ~Leo Buscaglia Only your real friends will tell you when your face is dirty. ~Sicilian Proverb The antidote for fifty enemies is one friend. ~Aristotle In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit. ~Albert Schweitzer A loyal friend laughs at your jokes when they're not so good, and sympathizes with your problems when they're not so bad. ~Arnold H. Glasgow The friend is the man who knows all about you, and still likes you. ~Elbert Hubbard, The Notebook, 1927 A good friend is cheaper than therapy. ~Author Unknown If a friend is in trouble, don't annoy him by asking if there is anything you can do. Think up something appropriate and do it. ~Edgar Watson Howe The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend. ~Henry David Thoreau
FUTURE
The future is called "perhaps," which is the only possible thing to call the future. And the only important thing is not to allow that to scare you. ~Tennessee Williams, Orpheus Descending, 1957 Our faith in the present dies out long before our faith in the future. ~Ruth Benedict I believe the future is only the past again, entered through another gate. ~Arthur Wing Pinero, The Second Mrs. Tanqueray, 1893 We should all be concerned about the future because we will have to spend the rest of our lives there. ~Charles F. Kettering I never think of the future - it comes soon enough. ~Albert Einstein The past can't see you, but the future is listening. ~Terri Guillemets And in today already walks tomorrow. ~Samuel Taylor Coleridge The future is always beginning now. ~Mark Strand,Reasons for Moving A preoccupation with the future not only prevents us from seeing the present as it is but often prompts us to rearrange the past. ~Eric Hoffer The future, according to some scientists, will be exactly like the past, only far more expensive. ~John Sladek The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be. ~Paul Valery You can never plan the future by the past. ~Edmund Burke, "Letter to a Member of the National Assembly" I have seen the future and it is very much like the present - only longer. ~Kehlog Albran I know not what the future holds, but I know who holds the future. ~Author Unknown The course of life is unpredictable... no one can write his autobiography in advance. ~Abraham Joshua Heschel The future is an opaque mirror. Anyone who tries to look into it sees nothing but the dim outlines of an old and worried face. ~Jim Bishop