C

The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; the pessimist fears this is true.
- James Branch Cabell, The Silver Stallion, bk. iv, ch. 26

There is not any memory with less satisfaction than the memory of some temptation we resisted.
- James Branch Cabell

Are tectonic plates dishwashwer-safe?
- Herb Caen, S. F. Chronicle, 8/12/93

A man begins cutting his wisdom teeth the first time he bites off more than he can chew.
- Herb Caen

All American cars are basically Chevrolets.
- Herb Caen

Isn’t it nice that people who prefer Los Angles to San Francisco live there?
- Herb Caen

San Francisco isn’t what it used to be, and it never was.
- Herb Caen

The trouble with Oakland is that when you get there, it’s there.
- Herb Caen

The trouble with born-again Christians is that they are an even bigger pain the second time around.
- Herb Caen

Whatever became of Strange de Jim? Well, he found a substitute for cocaine: You cover Q-tips with sandpaper and ram them up your nostrils as far as they will go. Then you sniff talcum powder while shredding hundred dollar bills.
- Herb Caen

Veni, vidi, vici. (I came, I saw, I conquered.)
- Gaius Julius Caesar (c. 102-44 BC)

Will you come quietly, or must I use earplugs?
- Russ Cage

When one considers just what man is, Happy it be that short his span is.
- James Cagney

It is a great and dangerous error to suppose that all people are equally entitled to liberty.
- John C. Calhoun

The number of adjectives and verbs that are added to the description of a menu item is in inverse proportion to the quality of the resulting dish.
- John Calkins

Love is so much better when you are not married.
- Maria Callas

A big book is a big bore.
- Callimachus (c. 260 B.C.)

When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.
- Dom Helder Camara

In order to get a loan, you must first prove you don’t need it.
- John Cameron

No matter how many times you’ve had it, if it’s offered, take it, because it’ll never be quite the same again.
- John Cameron

’Tis home felt pleasure prompts the patriot’s sigh; 
This makes him wish to live and dare to die.
- Campbell

Beauty’s tears are lovelier than her smile.
- Campbell

What millions died that Ceasar might be great!
- Campbell

The simple realization that there are other points of view is the beginning of wisdom. Understanding what they are is a great step. The final test is understanding why they are held.
- Charles M. Campbell

Free and fair discussion will ever by found the firmest friend to truth.
- George Campbell

Pioneering basically amounts to finding new and more horrible ways to die.
- John W. Campbell

Poetry is the eloquence of truth.
- Joseph Campbell

[A computer is] like an Old Testament god, with a lot of rules and no mercy.
- Joseph Campbell

I don’t mind where people make love, so long as they don’t do it in the street and frighten the horses.
- Mrs. Patrick Campbell

Marriage is the deep, deep peace of the double bed after the hurly-burly of the chaise lounge.
- Mrs. Patrick Campbell

Politics is made up largely of irrelevancies.
- Dalton Camp

Know what I hate most? Rhetorical questions.
- Henry N. Camp

When a war breaks out, people say, "It’s too stupid; it can’t last long." But though a war may well be "too stupid," that doesn’t prevent its lasting. Stupidity has knack of getting its way . . .
- Albert Camus (1913-1960), The Plague

An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.
- Albert Camus (1913-1960)

By definition, a government has no conscience. Sometimes it has a policy, but nothing more.
- Albert Camus (1913-1960)

Charm is a way of getting the answer yes without asking a clear question.
- Albert Camus (1913-1960)

Everyone would like to behave like a pagan, with everyone else behaving like a Christian.
- Albert Camus (1913-1960)

Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better.
- Albert Camus (1913-1960)

He who despairs over an event is a coward, but he who holds hope for the human condition is a fool.
- Albert Camus (1913-1960)

In the midst of winter, there is in me an invincible summer.
- Albert Camus (1913-1960)

Integrity has no need of rules.
- Albert Camus (1913-1960)

It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.
- Albert Camus (1913-1960)

When you have once seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him; and you are torn by the thought of the unhappiness and night you cast, by the mere fact of living, in the hearts you encounter.
- Albert Camus (1913-1960)

You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.
- Albert Camus (1913-1960)

Everything has a boolean value, if you stand far enough away from it.
- Galena Alyson Canada

Anything left over today will be needed tomorrow to pay an unexpected bill.
- Betty Canary

Most religions do not make men better, only warier.
- Elias Canetti

Christmas is a holiday that persecutes the lonely, the frayed, and the rejected.
- Jimmy Cannon (1910-1973)

England produces the best fat actors.
- Jimmy Cannon (1910-1973)

Fishing, with me, has always been an excuse to drink in the daytime.
- Jimmy Cannon (1910-1973)

There is one difference between a tax collector and a taxidermist- the taxidermist leaves the hide.
- Mortimer Caplin

I don’t even know what street Canada is on!
- Al Capone

When I sell liquor, its called bootlegging; when my patrons serve it on Lake Shore Drive, its called hospitality.
- Al Capone

You can go a long way with a smile. You can go a lot farther with a smile and a gun.
- Al Capone

The world looks as if it has been left in the custody of trolls.
- Father Robert F. Capon

Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it.
- Truman Capote (1924-1984)

In California everyone goes to a therapist, is a therapist, or is a therapist going to a therapist.
- Truman Capote (1924-1984)

It’s a scientific fact that if you stay in California you lose one point of your IQ every year.
- Truman Capote (1924-1984)

That’s not writing, that’s typing!
- Truman Capote (1924-1984)

Abstract art: a product of the untalented sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.
- Al Capp

In England there are sixty different religions and only one sauce.
- Francesco Caracciolo (1752-1799)

Nobody controls his own life. The best you can do is choose to be controlled by good pepole, By pepole who love you.
- Orson Scott Card, "Ender’s Game"

But whether there’s some grand design really matters little to me. My only hope was this: to see what might be, to believe that it should be, and then to do all I could to bring it to pass, whatever the cost. When a life spins out as joyfully as mine has done, then the price, once paid so painfully, is now recalled in gladness. I have received full value. Here among the shepherds, my cup is filled with the water of life; it overflows.
- Orson Scott Card, "Treason"

The ultimate metric that I would like to propose for user friendliness is quite simple: if this system was a person, how long would it take before you punched it in the nose?
- Tom Carey

If you think C++ is not overly complicated, just what is a ’protected abstract virtual base pure virtual private destructor’, and when was the last time you need one?
- Tom Cargill, C++ Journal, Fall 1990

I’m not concerned about all hell breaking loose, but that a PART of hell will break loose... it’ll be much harder to detect.
- George Carlin

May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house.
- George Carlin

Weather forecast for tonight: dark.
- George Carlin

Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part to us, do they?
- George Carlin

A lie should be trampled on and extinguished wherever found. I am for fumigating the atmosphere, when I suspect that falsehood, like pestilence, breathes around me.
- Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

Alas! while the body stands so broad and brawny, must the soul lie blinded, dwarfed, stupefied, almost annihilated? Alas! this was, too, a breath of God, bestowed in heaven, but on earth never to be unfolded!
- Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

All that Mankind has done, thought, gained or been, it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books. They are the choicest possessions of men.
- Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

Earnestness alone makes life eternity.
- Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

France was a long despotism tempered by epigrams.
- Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

Give us, O give us, the man who is cheerful in his work! Be his occupation what it may, he is equal to any of those who follow the same pursuit in silent sullenness. He will do more in the same time, he will do it better, he will persevere longer.
- Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

God gave you that gifted tongue of yours, and set it between your teeth, to make known your true meaning to us, not be rattled like a muffin man’s bell.
- Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

Heroism- the divine relation which in all times unites a great men to other men.
- Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

How much lies in laughter; the cipher-key wherewith we decipher the whole man! Some men wear an everlasting barren simper; in the smile of others lies the cold glitter, as of ice; the fewest are able to laugh what can be called laughing, but only shiff and titter and sniggle from the throat outwards, or at least produce some whiffing, husky cachinnation, as if they were laughing through wool; of none such comes good. The man who cannot laugh is only fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils; but his own whole life is already a treason and a stratagem.
- Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
- Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not even crucify him. They would ask him to dinner, and hear what he had to say, and make fun of it.
- Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

Is not light grander than fire? It is the same element in a state of purity.
- Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

Love is not altogether a delirium, yet it has many points in common therewith. I call it rather a discerning of the infinite in the finite- the ideal made real.
- Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure there is one less rascal in the world.
- Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

Our grand business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.
- Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

Produce! Produce! Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce it, in God’s name! ’Tis the utmost thou hast in thee: out with it, then. Up, up! Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy whole might. Work while it is called Today; for the night cometh, wherein no man can work.
- Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

The end of man is an action, and not a thought, though it were the noblest.
- Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

The goal of yesterday will be the starting point of tomorrow.
- Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

The greatest of all faults is to be conscious of none.
- Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

The opponents in the American Civil War are cutting each other’s throats because one half of them prefer hiring their servants for life and the other for the hour.
- Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

The universe is but one vast Symbol of God.
- Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

The work of an unknown good man is like a vein of water flowing hidden in the underground, secretly making the ground greener.
- Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

The world is an old woman, that mistakes any gilt farthing for a gold coin; thereby being often cheated, she will henceforth trust nothing but the common copper.
- Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

To him nothing is impossible, who is always dreaming of his past possibilities.
- Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

Truth," I cried, "though the heavens crush me for following her; no falsehood, though a whole celestial Lubberland were the price of apostasy!
- Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

What is philosophy but a continual battle against custom?
- Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

When have the Prophets not been stoned, from Christ down to Wagner? Crazy, enthusiastic, or madmen all of them.... Why, my dear friend, what do you mean by complaining of neglect, abuse, scorn? These are the precious rewards of the teachers of mankind.
- Andrew Carnegie to Herbert Spencer 5 January 1897, LofC A.C. Papers vol. 41

When have the Prophets not been stoned, from Christ down to Wagner? Crazy, enthusiastic, or madmen all of them.... Why, my dear friend, what do you mean by complaining of neglect, abuse, scorn? These are the precious rewards of the teachers of mankind.
- Andrew Carnegie, 1897

It markes a big step in a man’s development when he comes to realize that other men can be called on to help him do a better job than he can do alone.
- Andrew Carnegie

One of the serious obstacles to the improvement of our race is indiscriminate charity.
- Andrew Carnegie

Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain - and most fools do.
- Dale Carnegie

"Hello," he lied.
- Don Carpenter quoting a Hollywood agent

No word meaning "art" occurs in Aivilik, nor does "artist": there are only people. Nor is any distinction made between utilitarian and decorative objects. The Aivilik say simply, "A man should do all things properly."
- Edmund Carpenter

It is now 10 p.m. Do you know where Henry Kissinger is?
- Elizabeth Carpenter

When the going gets tough, the tough get empirical
- Jon Carroll

You have to walk carefully in the beginning of love; the running across fields into your lover’s arms can only come later when you’re sure they won’t laugh if you trip.
- Jonathan Carroll

"Begin at the beginning," the King said gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop."
- Lewis Carroll (pseudonym of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, 1832-1898), "Alice in Wonderland"

"Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn’t, it ain’t. That’s logic!"
- Lewis Carroll (pseudonym of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, 1832-1898), "Alice in Wonderland"

How cheerfully he seems to grin, How neatly spreads his claws, And welcomes little fishes in, With gently smiling jaws!
- Lewis Carroll (pseudonym of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, 1832-1898), "Alice in Wonderland"

I quite agree with you, said the Duchess; and the moral of that is - ’Be what you would seem to be’ - or, if you’d like it put more simply - ’Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.’
- Lewis Carroll (pseudonym of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, 1832-1898), "Alice in Wonderland"

It’s a really crappy sort of memory that only works backwards
- Lewis Carroll (pseudonym of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, 1832-1898), "Through the Looking Glass".

The sun was shining on the sea, Shining with all his might: He did his very best to make The billows smooth and bright - And this was very odd, because it was The middle of the night.
- Lewis Carroll (pseudonym of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, 1832-1898), "Through the Looking Glass"

Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!
- Lewis Carroll (pseudonym of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, 1832-1898), "Through the Looking Glass

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone. "It means just what I choose it to mean - neither more or less. The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things. The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master - that’s all."
- Lewis Carroll (pseudonym of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, 1832-1898)

When _I_ come upon anything -- in Logic or in any other hard subject-- that entirely puzzles me, I find it a capital plan to talk it over, _aloud_, even when I am all alone. One can explain things so _clearly_ to one’s self! And then, you know, one is so _patient_ with one’s self: one _never_ gets irritated at one’s own stupidity!
- Lewis Carroll (pseudonym of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, 1832-1898)

I’ll leave the anarchists alone since they usually shoot back. The liberals wring their hands so much that they make easy moving targets.
- Patrick Carroll, Capt., USAF

Liberals are an easy target. They’re so soft and furry, and they make lovely pleading noises when trod on.
- Patrick Carroll, Capt., USAF

The news personalities display the same symptoms as large dogs excited by their internal parasites. In running from congress to president to ’situation experts,’ they leak from all orifices in their frenzy to gather the latest and greatest sound bite.
- Patrick Carroll, Capt., USAF

A good teacher has been defined as one who makes himself progressively unnecessary.
- Thomas J. Carruthers

It means that you have, as performers will call it, ’fuck you’ money... All that means is that I don’t have to do what I don’t want to do.
- Johnny Carson on success

Blow in it’s ear.
- Johnny Carson on the best way to thaw a frozen turkey

A two-pound turkey and a fifty-pound cranberry - that’s Thanksgiving dinner at Three-Mile Island.
- Johnny Carson

The Hollywood tradition I like best is called "sucking up to the stars.
- Johnny Carson

The cowards never start and the weak die along the way.
- Kit Carson

The most alarming of all man’s assaults upon the environment is the contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea. This pollution is for the most part irrecoverable.
- Rachel Carson

I will never lie to you.
- James E. Carter

Outer space is no place for a person of breeding.
- Lady Violet Bonham Carter (1887-1969)

Sometimes when I look at my children I say to myself, Lillian, you should have stayed a virgin."
- Lillian Carter, mother of Jimmy and Billy

As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life-- so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.
- M. Cartmill

Brave spirits are a balsam to themselves; there is a nobleness of mind that heals wounds beyond salves.
- Cartwright

A man can do something for peace without having to jump into politics. Each man has inside him a basic decency and goodness. If he listens to it and acts on it, he is giving a great deal of what it is the world needs most.
- Pablo Casals

When a customer buys a low-grade article, he feels pleased when he pays for it and displeased every time he uses it. But when he buys a well-made article, he feels extravagant when he pays for it and well pleased every time he uses it.
- Herbert N. Casson

The problem with political jokes is they get elected.
- Henry Cate VII

I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.
- Willa Cather

Diplomacy --- the art of saying "Nice doggie" ’til you can find a stick.
- Wynn Catlin

After I’m dead I’d rather people ask why I have no monument than why I have one.
- Cato the Elder

If you are ruled by mind you are a king; if by body, a slave.
- Cato, Roman statesman and historian (234 b.c. - 149 b.c.)

Oh, this age! How tasteless and ill-bred it is!
- Catullus (87?-54? BC)

...Editors are, in my opinion, a low form of life, inferior to viruses and only slightly above academic deans
- D. Causey, "Crimes in Scientific Editing"

So we follow our wandering paths, and the very darkness acts as our guide and our doubts serve to reassure us.
- Jean-Pierre de Caussade, eighteenth-century Jesuit priest

PS. Did you ever realize that Peter O’Toole has a double-phallic name?
- Dick Cavett quoting Groucho Marx

It’s a rare person who wants to hear what he doesn’t want to hear.
- Dick Cavett

I have discovered the art of deceiving diplomats. I speak the truth, and they never believe me.
- Conte Camillo Benso di Cavour (1810-1861)

The first step to knowledge is to know that we are ignorant.
- Cecil

The first step towards knowledge is to know that we are ignorant.
- Richard Cecil

The poetry of heroism appeals irresitably to those who don’t go to a war, and even more so to those whom the war is making enormously wealthy.
- Celine

The more one is hated, I find, the happier one is.
- Louis Ferdinand Celine

My brother is an only child.
- Bennett Cerf

Let us say that I despise stupidity. Especially when it masquerades as virtue.
- Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616), "Don Quixote"

Too much sanity may be madness. And maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be!
- Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616), "Don Quixote"

Every man is as God made him, ay, and often worse.
- Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616)

Good actions ennoble us, and we are the sons of our own deeds.
- Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616)

I do not say a proverb is amiss when aptly and reasonably applied, but to be forever discharging them, right or wrong, hit or miss, renders conversation insipid and vulgar.
- Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616)

When thou art at Rome, do as they do at Rome
- Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616)

The majority of us are for free speech only when it deals with those subjects concerning which we have no intense convictions.
- Edmund B. Chafee

Everything tastes more or less like chicken.
- Jeffery F. Chamberlain

In a country as big as the United States, you can find fifty examples of anything.
- Jeffery F. Chamberlain

The big guys always win.
- Jeffrey F. Chamberlain

Better to have loved and lost a short person than never to have loved a tall.
- David Chambless

An economist is a surgeon with an excellent scalpel and a rough-edged lancet, who operates beautifully on the dead and tortures the living.
- Nicholas Chamfort (1741-1794)

The most utterly lost of all days, is that in which you have not once laughed.
- Nicholas Chamfort (1741-1794)

The only thing that stops God from sending another flood is that the first one was useless.
- Nicholas Chamfort (1741-1794)

California, the department store state.
- Raymond Chandler (1888-1959)

Chess is as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you can find outside an advertising agency.
- Raymond Chandler (1888-1959)

It was a blonde, a blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window.
- Raymond Chandler (1888-1959)

When in doubt, have two guys come through the door with guns.
- Raymond Chandler (1888-1959)

What doesn’t kill me better be able to run damn fast
- Rich Chandler

If it can be borrowed and it can be broken, you will borrow it and you will break it.
- W. W. Chandler

To behave with dignity is nothing less than to allow others freely to be themselves.
- Sol Chaneles

How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something but to be someone.
- Coco Chanel

I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man.
- Chang-Tzu

Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage.
- William Ellery Channing

The final delusion is the belief that one has lost all delusions.
- Maurice Chapelain

Every action in our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity.
- Edwin Hubbel Chapin

In the end, everything is a gag.
- Charlie Chaplin

Let no man value at a little price a virtuous woman’s counsel; her winged spirit is feathered often times with heavenly words, and, like her beauty, ravishing and pure.
- Chapman

Opinion, the blind goddess of fools, foe To the virtuous, and only friend to Undeserving persons.
- Chapman

Ignorance is the mother of admiration.
- George Chapman (1599?-1634)

Committee Rules: 1) Never arrive on time, or you will be stamped a beginner. 2) Don’t say anything until the meeting is half over; this stamps you as being wise. 3) Be as vague as possible; this prevents irritating the others. 4) When in doubt, suggest that a subcommittee be appointed. 5) Be the first to move for adjournment; this will make you popular -- it’s what everyone is waiting for.
- Harry Chapman

A quotation, like a pun, should come unsought, and then be welcomed only for some propriety of felicity justifying the intrusion.
- Robert Chapman

Name me an emperor who was ever struck by a cannonball.
- Charles V (1500-1558)

There are only two kinds of scholars; those who love ideas and those who hate them.
- Emile Chartier

A donut without a hole...is a danish.
- Chevy Chase on "SNL’s Weekend Update

My house is small, but you are learned men 
And by your arguments can make a place 
Twenty foot broad as infinite as space.
- Geoffrey Chaucer, "The Reeve’s Tale"

Of studie took he moost cure and moost heede. 
Noght o word spak he moore than was neede, 
And that was seyd in forme and reverence, 
And short and quyk and ful of hy sentence; 
Sownynge in moral vertu was his speche, 
And gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche.
- Geoffrey Chaucer, from the general Prologue to The Canterbury Tales

Nature is the vicar of the Almighty Lord.
- Geoffrey Chaucer

One ear heard it, and at the other out it went.
- Geoffrey Chaucer

Television is democracy at its ugliest.
- Paddy Chayefsky (1923-1982)

I don’t believe in sweeping social change being manifested by one person, unless he has an atomic weapon.
- Howard Chaykin

I think we should stop looking for issues to discuss. I think we should shut up and get to work.
- Howard Chaykin

If a group of N persons implements a COBOL compiler, there will be N-1 passes. Someone in the group has to be the manager.
- T. Cheatham

Safewords: Pronounce the consonants. A string of vowels doesn’t sound all that different from the noises you’re making anyway.
- Troy H. Cheek

Doctors are the same as lawyers; the only difference is that lawyers merely rob you, whereas doctors rob you and kill you too.
- Anton Chekhov (1860-1904)

I don’t understand anything about the ballet; all I know is that during the intervals the ballerinas stink like horses.
- Anton Chekhov (1860-1904)

People are far more sincere and good-humored at speeding their parting guests than on meeting them.
- Anton Chekhov (1860-1904)

The FDA has so many rules that can be gotten around that the consumer has no protection at all. You never know what you’re eating. I’m horrified when I discover the nature of ingredients in consumer products as a result of my scientific work.
- Tina Chen

A gentleman has ease without familiarity, is respectful without meanness; genteel without affectation, insinuating without seeming art.
- Chesterfield

A light supper, a good night’s sleep and a fine morning have often made a hero out of the same man, who, by indigestion, a restless night and a rainy morning would have proved a coward.
- Chesterfield

A man’s good breeding is the best security against another’s bad manners.
- Chesterfield

A weak mind is like a microscope, which magnifies trifling things, but cannot receive great ones.
- Chesterfield

All ceremonies are, in themselves, very silly things; but yet a man of the world should know them. They are the outworks of manners and decency, which would be too often broken in upon, if it were not for that defense, which keeps the enemy at a proper distance. It is for this reason that I always treat fools with great ceremony: true good breeding not being a sufficient barrier against them.
- Chesterfield

An able man shows his spirit by gentle words and resolute actions; he is neither hot nor timid.
- Chesterfield

As charity covers a multitude of sins before God, so does politeness before men.
- Chesterfield

Compliments of congratulations are always kindly taken, and cost nothing but pen, ink, and paper. I consider them as droughts upon good breeding, where the exchange is always greatly in favor of the drawer.
- Chesterfield

No man can possibly improve in any company for which he has not respect enough to be under some degree of restraint.
- Chesterfield

Speak the language of the country you are in; speak it purely, and unlarded with any other.
- Chesterfield

Take rather than give the tone to the company you are in. If you gave parts you will show them more or less upon every subject; and if you have not, you had better talk sillily upon a subject of other people’s than of your own choosing.
- Chesterfield

The insolent civility of a proud man is, if possible, more shocking than his rudeness could be; because he shows you, by his manner, that he thinks it mere condescension in him; and that his goodness alone bestows upon you what you have no pretense to claim.
- Chesterfield

The scholar without good-breeding is a pedant, the philosopher a cynic, the soldier a brute, and every man disagreeable.
- Chesterfield

Since attaining the full use of my reason no one has ever heard me laugh.
- Earl of Chesterfield

Be wiser than other people if you can; but do not tell them so.
- Lord Chesterfield (1694-1773)

Choose the company of your superiors whenever you can have it; that is the right and true pride.
- Lord Chesterfield (1694-1773)

Most people enjoy the inferiority of their friends.
- Lord Chesterfield (1694-1773)

Sex: the pleasure is momentary, the position ridiculous, and the expense damnable.
- Lord Chesterfield (1694-1773)

A large section of the intelligentsia seems wholly devoid of intelligence.
- G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

A man must love a thing very much if he not only practises it without any hope of fame and money, but even practises it without any hope of doing it well.
- G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.
- G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

Coincidences are spiritual puns.
- G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.
- G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.
- G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

Don’t ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up.
- G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean.
- G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

I regard golf as an expensive way of playing marbles.
- G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.
- G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

Nowadays a citizen can hardly distinguish between a tax and a fine, except that the fine is generally much lighter.
- G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

Psychoanalysis is confession without absolution.
- G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.
- G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.
- G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

The classes that wash most are those that work least.
- G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

The doctrine of human equality reposes on this: that there is no man really clever who has not found that he is stupid.
- G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

The home is not the one tame place in the world of adventure. It is the one wild place in the world of rules and set tasks.
- G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

The man who sees the consistency in things is a wit, the man who sees the inconsistency in things is a humorist.
- G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

The only people who seem to have nothing to do with the education of the children are the parents.
- G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
- G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

The world will never starve for wonders; but only for want of wonder.
- G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

There is more simplicity in the man who eats caviar on impulse than in the man who eats Grape Nuts on principle.
- G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

To downgrade the human mind is bad theology.
- G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
- G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

What a glorious garden of wonders the lights of Broadway would be to anyone lucky enough to be unable to read.
- G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

When some English moralists write about the importance of having character, they appear to mean only the importance of having a dull character.
- G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

Enthusiasm is the greatest asset in the world. It beats money and power and influence.
- Henry Chester

Many a man has fallen in love with a girl in a light so dim he would not have chosen a suit by it.
- Maurice Chevalier

Old age is not so bad when you consider the alternatives.
- Maurice Chevalier

One man’s brain plus one other will produce one half as many ideas as one man would have produced alone. These two plus two more will produce half again as many ideas. These four plus four more begin to represent a creative meeting, and the ratio changes to one quarter as many.
- Anthony Chevins

If the weather is extremely bad, church attendance will be down. If the weather is extremely good, church attendance will be down. If the bulletin covers are in short supply, however, church attendance will exceed all expectations.
- Reverend Chichester

Dammit! White people should *not* be allowed to handle knives.
- Chico 8/14/88

Truth: the most deadly weapon ever discovered by humanity. Capable of destroying entire perceptual sets, cultures, and realities. Outlawed by all governments everywhere. Possession is normally punishable by death.
- Richard Childers

I was in this prematurely air conditioned supermarket and there were all these aisles and there were these bathing caps you could buy that had these kind of Fourth of July plumes on them that were red and yellow and blue and I wasn’t tempted to buy one but I was reminded of the fact that I had been avoiding the beach.
- Lucinda Childs (Philip Glass: Einstein On The Beach)

It’s so beautifully arranged on the plate - you know someone’s fingers have been all over it.
- Julia Child on nouvelle cuisine

It’s Wednesday. By tomorrow got to get two papers done, study for two tests, do my laundry. I have to get my car washed, pick up a friend for the airport, find something for her to do while I’m studying so she doesn’t get bored. I need to talk to my parents. I need to incorporate drinking in there somewhere...
- Stephanie Chimenti

That all men should be brothers is the dream of people who have no brothers.
- Charles Chincholles

If anything can go wrong, it will. Corollary: If anything just can’t go wrong, it will anyway.
- Francis P. Chisholm

Purposes, as understood by the purposer, will be judged otherwise by others. Corollary: If you explain so clearly that nobody can misunderstand, somebody will. Corollary: If you do something which you are sure will meet with everybody’s approval, somebody won’t like it. Corollary: Procedures devised to implement the purpose won’t quite work.
- Francis P. Chisholm

Whenever in time, and wherever in the universe, any man speaks or writes in any detail about the technical management of a poem, the resulting irascibility of the reader’s response is a constant.
- Francis P. Chisholm

We join ourselves to no party that does not carry the flag and keep step to the music of the Union.
- Rufus Choate

As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise, human science is at a loss.
- Noam Chomsky

Emacs is a fine operating system, but I still prefer UNIX.
- Tom Christiansen

It’s a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965) My Early Life - 1930

[He] looks at foreign affairs through the wrong end of a municipal drainpipe.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965) of Chamberlain

There but for the grace of God goes God.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965) of Cripps

If heaven is going to be full of people like Hardie, well, the Almighty can have them to himself.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965) of Keir Hardie

In defeat, unbeatable; in victory, unbearable.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965) of Montgomery

Who will relieve me of this Wuthering Height
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965) of Sir Stafford Cripps at a dinner party

[On recognizing China] But if you recognize anyone it does not mean you like them. For instance, we all recognize the right honourable gentleman the member for Ebbw Vale.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965) on Mr Bevan

When you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965) on formal declarations of war

.... You ask, What is our policy? I will say; "It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us: to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy." You ask, What is our aim? I can answer with one word: Victory - victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965) to the House of Commons on May 13, 1940 in his first address as the newly appointed Prime Minister.

What General Weygand called the "Battle of France" is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands; but if we fail then the whole world, including the United States, and all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister, and perhaps more prolonged, by the lights of a perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Commonwealth and its Empire lasts for a thousand years, men will still say, "This was their finest hour."
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965), Hansard 18 June 1940, col. 60

Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the new world, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965), Hansard, 4 June 1940, col. 796

...I told my doctor I got all the exercise I needed being a pallbearer for all my friends who run and do exercises!
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

A joke is a very serious thing.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

Although prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it be postponed.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

Atlee is a very modest man. And with reason.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees all the others.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

Democracy is the worst system devised by the wit of man, except for all the others.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

I gather, young man, that you wish to be a Member of Parliament. The first lesson that you must learn is, when I call for statistics about the rate of infant mortality, what I want is proof that fewer babies died when I was Prime Minister than when anyone else was Prime Minister. That is a political statistic.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

I like a man who grins when he fights.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

If this principle of giving up without a fight any place you cannot be sure of holding were adopted, would not the enemy be able to make an unlimited number of valuable conquests without any fighting at all?
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is make the rubble bounce.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

It might be said that Lord Rosebery outlived his future by ten years and his past by more than twenty.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

It’s a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

MacDonald has the gift of compressing the largest amount of words into the smallest amount of thoughts.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most times he will pick himself up and carry on.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

Most essential qualification for a politician: The ability to foretell what will happen tomorrow, next month, and next year- and to explain afterward why it did not happen.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

My wife and I tried to breakfast together, but we had to stop or our marriage would have been wrecked.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

Patience is sorrow’s salve.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

Prime Minister Joseph Chamberlain loves the working man - he loves to see him work.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

Running together all about, The servents put each other out, Till the grave master had decreed, The more haste, ever the worst speed.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

Should the invader come to Britain, there will be no placid lying down of the people in submission before him, as we have seen, alas! in other countries. We will defend every village, every town, and every city. The vast mass of London itself, fought street by street, could easily devour an entire hostile army, and we would rather see London laid in ashes and ruins than that it should be tamely and abjectly enslaved.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

Sir Stafford Cripps has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

Some regard private enterprise as if it were a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look upon it as a cow that they can milk. Only a handful see it for what it really is-the strong horse the pulls the whole cart.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

The Arabs are a backwards people who eat nothing but Camel dung.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

The leadership of the privileged has passed away; but it has not been succeeded by the leadership of the eminent. We have entered the region of mass effects.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

The nation had the lion’s heart. I had the luck to give the roar.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

There are a lot of lies going around... and half of them are true.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

There are vast numbers, not only in this island but in every land, who will render faithful service in this war but whose names will never be known. This is a war of the unknown warriors.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at without result.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

To gain one’s way is no escape from the responsibility for an inferior solution.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

Victory at all costs; victory in spite of all terror; victory no matter how long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.
- Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

A dollar saved is a quarter earned.
- John Ciardi

A good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened into place but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed toward the hope of greening the landscape of idea.
- John Ciardi

A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
- John Ciardi

Gentility is what is left over from rich ancestors after the money is gone.
- John Ciardi

There is nothing wrong with sobriety in moderation.
- John Ciardi

Oh! how many torments lie in the small circle of a wedding ring.
- Colley Cibber

Tea! thou soft, thou sober sage, and venerable liquid;- thou female tongue-running, smile-smoothing, heart-opening, wink tippling cordial, to whose glorious insipidity I owe the happiest moments of ny life, let me fall prostrate!
- Colley Cibber

Who fears t’ offend takes the first step to please.
- Colley Cibber

Nihil tam absurde dici potest, quod non dicatur ab aliquo philosophorum. (Nothing is so absurd that it hasn’t been said by some philosopher.)
- Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC), "De Divinatione"

All the secrets we may be able to keep from any and every god and human being do not in the least absolve us from the obligation to refrain from whatever actions are greedy, unjust, sensual, or otherwise immoderate.
- Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC), "On Duties"

The national budget must be balanced. The public debt must be reduced; the arrogance of the authorities must be moderated and controlled. Payments to foreign governments must be reduced, if the nation doesn’t want to go bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.
- Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC), 55 BC

A person who lacks the means, within himself, to live a good and happy life will find any period of his existence wearisome.
- Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC)

A room without books is as a body without a soul.
- Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC)

An evil at its birth, is easily crushed, but it grows and strengthens by endurance.
- Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC)

Cultivation to the mind is as necessary as food to the body.
- Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC)

Economy is of itself a great revenue.
- Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC)

Friendship is the only thing in the world concerning the usefulness of which all mankind are agreed.
- Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC)

Hunger is the best seasoning for meat, and thirst for drink.
- Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC)

Liberty consists in the power of doing that which is permitted by law.
- Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC)

Men resemble the gods in nothing so much as in doing good to their fellow creatures.
- Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC)

My precept to all who build is, that the owner should be an ornament to the house, and not the house an ornament to the owner.
- Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC)

Salus populi suprema est lex. (The welfare of the people is the ultimate law.)
- Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC)

Silent leges inter arma. (Laws are silent among weapons)
- Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC)

The avarice of the old: it’s absurd to increase one’s luggage as one nears the journey’s end.
- Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC)

The contemplation of celestial things will make a man both speak and think more sublimely and magnificently when he descends to human affairs.
- Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC)

Then condemn what they do not understand.
- Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC)

To live long, it is necessary to live slowly.
- Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC)

What a time! What a civilization!
- Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC)

What is becoming is honest, and whatever is honest must always be becoming.
- Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC)

When you have no basis of argument, abuse the plaintiff.
- Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC)

Isn’t it strange that the same people that laugh at gypsy fortune tellers take economists seriously?
- Cincinnati Enquirer

He who has never envied the vegetable has missed the human drama.
- E.M. Cioran

Music is the refuge of souls ulcerated by happiness.
- E.M. Cioran

The Art of Love: knowing how to combine the temperment of a vampire with the discretion of an anemone.
- E.M. Cioran

The history of ideas is the history of the grudges of solitary men.
- E.M. Cioran

’Genetically’ we are nearly identical to fruit flies. On the other hand, as a species we write better string quartets.
- Rich Clancey

The purpose of satire is to strip off the veneer of comforting illusion and cozy half-truth. And our business, as I see it, is to put it back again.
- Michael Flanders

Envy is a weed that grows in all soils and climates, and is no less luxuriant in the country than in the court; is not confined to any rank of men or extent of fortune, but rages in the breasts of all degrees.
- Lord Clarendon

If we did not take great pains, and were not at great expense to corrupt our nature, our nature would never corrupt us.
- Lord Clarendon

It is not the quality of the meat, but the cheerfulness of the guests, that makes the feast.
- Lord Clarendon

"A few sums!" retorted Martens, with a trace of his old spirit. "A major navigational change, like the one needed to break us away from the comet and put us on an orbit to Earth, involves about a hundred thousand separate calculations. Even the computer needs several minutes for the job."
- Arthur C. Clarke, "Into The Comet"

Clarke’s First Law: When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. 
Clarke’s Second Law: The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible. 
Clarke’s Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
- Arthur C. Clarke, "Technology and the Future"

It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.
- Arthur C. Clarke

It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God-- but to create him.
- Arthur C. Clarke

Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.
- Arthur C. Clarke

The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them to the impossible.
- Arthur C. Clarke

There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum.
- Arthur C. Clarke

Los Angeles seems endlessly held between these extremes: of light and dark - of surface and depth. Of the promise, in brief, of a meaning always hovering on the edge of significance.
- Graham Clarke

God give me the strength to deal with stupid people.
- Tanda Clarke

The world began when I was born and the world is mine to win
- Badger Clark

Being in the army is like being in the Boy Scouts, except that the Boy Scouts have adult supervision.
- Blake Clark

The shortest distance between two points is through Hell.
- Brian Clark

Don’t put all your eggs in your pocket.
- Celestine Clark

The penalty for censoring what your children may be taught is children who are no brighter than you.
- Frank A. Clark, Register and Tribune Syndicate

Knowledge is the only instrument of production that is not subject to diminishing returns.
- J.M. Clark

No matter how often you trade dinner or other invitations with in-laws, you will lose a small fortune in the exchange. Corollary: Don’t try it; you cannot drink enough of your in-laws’ booze to get even before the liver fails.
- Jackson Clark

We can destroy ourselves by cynicism and disillusion, just as effectively as by bombs.
- Kenneth Clark

A right is not what someone gives you; it’s what no one can take from you.
- Ramsey Clark

There is no conflict between liberty and safety. We will have both or neither.
- Ramsey Clark

There are more horses’ backsides in the military service of the United States than there are horses.
- Robert J. Clark

Words with a ’k’ in them are funny. If it doesn’t have a ’k’, it’s not funny.
- Willie Clark

Der Krieg ist nichts als eine Fortsetzung des politischen Verkehrs mit Einmischung anderer Mittel. (War is nothing but the continuation of politics with a mixture of other means.)
- Karl von Clausewitz, Vom Kriege (On War)

Never underestimate the nature and quality of the enemy.
- Karl von Clausewitz

Here in the UK, the LINX is currently considering [a warning] to inform customers ... about the type of material that can be found on the Internet. At the latest meeting I suggested: "WARNING: May contain nuts!"
- Richard Clayton (richard@turnpike.com) Msg-ID: Sd4f.73b4@netfunny.com

The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they’re going to be when you kill them.
- William Clayton

I see music as the augmentation of a split second of time.
- Erin Cleary

It’s always darkest just before the lights go out.
- Alex Clark

If life were fair, Dan Quayle would be making a living asking ’Do you want fries with that?’
- John Cleese

Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.
- Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929)

There is no passion like that of a functionary for his function.
- Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929)

War is a series of catastrophes that results in a victory.
- Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929)

War is too important to leave to generals.
- Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929)

If you always tell the truth, you never have to remember what you said.
- Samuel Clemens

In order to make [a person] covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain.
- Samuel Clemens

Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.
- Samuel Clemens

Dammit, we’re all going to die, let’s die doing something *useful*!
- Hal Clement, on the danger of space exploration

Rich, be not exalted; poor, be not dejected.
- Cleobulus

The truly American sentiment recognizes the dignity of labour and the fact that honor lies in honest toil.
- Grover Cleveland

... so long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrranize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.
- Voltarine de Cleyre

For every credibility gap there is a gullibility fill.
- Richard Clopton

The man who has ceased to learn ought not to be allowed to wander around loose in these dangerous days.
- M. M. Coady

We talk about the American way, the British way. If we had any sense, we would know that there is no American way, no British way. There is only one way-- the scientific way that cuts across racial lines with international boundaries.
- M.M. Coady

The trouble with normal is it always gets worse.
- Bruce Cockburn

Never believe anything until it has been officially denied.
- Claud Cockburn (1904-1981)

A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled.
- Sir Barnett Cocks (ca. 1907)

I know that poetry is indispensable, but to what I could not say.
- Jean Cocteau (1889-1963)

Mirrors should reflect a little before throwing back images.
- Jean Cocteau (1889-1963)

We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don’t like.
- Jean Cocteau (1889-1963)

Have the courage to live. Anyone can die.
- Robert Cody

I’m not OK, you’re not OK, and that’s OK.
- William Sloane Coffin

Generally the theories we believe we call facts, and the facts we disbelieve we call theories.
- Felix Cohen

Truth is shorter than fiction.
- Irving Cohen

Imaginative literature in the service of rebellion, or satanism, quickly sinks into exhibitionism or obscurity. Imaginative literature as the expression of a deeply apprehended truth, poetry which interprets to a man the myth of his own age, can in the hands of Dante, of Shakespeare, of Cervantes, of Camoes and of Goethe, help to raise the level of a whole civilization.
- J.M. Cohen

What really matters is the name you succeed in imposing on the facts -not the facts themselves.
- Jerome Cohen

Courses of action which run only to be justified in terms of practicality ultimately prove destructive and impractical.
- Mark B. Cohen

Political power is as permanent as today’s newspaper. Ten years from now, few will know or care who the most powerful man in any state was today.
- Mark B. Cohen

Power attracts people but it cannot hold them.
- Mark B. Cohen

The best way to publicize a governmental or political action is to attempt to hide it.
- Mark B. Cohen

The more qualified candidates who are available, the more likely the compromise will be on the candidate whose main qualification is a non-threatening incompetence.
- Mark B. Cohen

There are many inside dopes in politics and government.
- Mark B. Cohen

Those who express random thoughts to legislative committees are often surprised and appalled to find themselves the instigators of law.
- Mark B. Cohen

Victory goes to the candidate with the most accumulated or contributed wealth who has the financial sources to convince the middle class and poor that he will be on their side.
- Mark B. Cohen

Wisdom is considered a sign of weakness by the powerful because a wise man can lead without power but only a powerful man can lead without wisdom.
- Mark B. Cohen

Science is a flickering light in our darkness, it is but the only one we have and woe to him who would put it out.
- Morris Cohen

I am against all hobbies. I have been against ever since I figured out that nothing I ever do is considered a hobby. All my life I have had to fill out forms that ask about hobbies. I always wanted to write down "reading", but reading is not a hobby. If you collect books, that is a hobby. If you actually read them, it is not. If you happen to watch a butterfly in a field, that is not a hobby. If you put a pin through its little heart, that is a hobby.
- Richard Cohen

In a restaurant with seats which are close to each other, one will always find the decibel level of the nearest conversation to be inversely proportional to the quality of the thought going into it.
- Stuart A. Cohn

Reason is the life of the law; nay the common law itself is nothing else but reason... The law which is the perfection of reason.
- Sir Edward Coke

They [corporations] cannot commit trespass nor be outlawed, nor excommunicated, for they have no souls.
- Sir Edward Coke

The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest amount of hissing.
- Jean Baptiste Colbert

Every improvement in communication makes the bore more terrible.
- Frank Moore Colby

I have found some of the best reasons I ever had for remaining at the bottom simply by looking at the men at the top.
- Frank Moore Colby

The point to remember is what the government gives it must first take away.
- John S. Coleman

A mother is a mother still, The holiest thing alive.
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Our own heart, and not other men’s opinions form our true honor.
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Poetry has been to me "its own exceeding great reward;" it has soothed my afflictions; it has multiplied and refined my enjoyments; it has endeared solitude; and it has given me the habit of wishing to discover the good and the beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me.
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Talent, lying in the understanding, is often inherent; genius, being the action of reason and imagination, rarely or never.
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

That only with propriety be styled refinement which, by strengthening the intellect, purifies the manners.
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The doing evil to avoid an evil cannot be good.
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The fancy is indeed no other than a mode of memory emancipated from the order of space and time.
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions-- the little soon forgotten charities of a kiss or smile, a kind look, a heartfelt compliment, and the countless infinitesimals of pleasurable and genial feeling.
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

There is one art of which man should be master- the art of reflection.
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

La vrai disette, c’est l’absence de livres. (Real poverty is lack of books.)
- Colette

To talk to a child, to fascinate him, is much more difficult than to win an electoral victory. But it is also much more satisfying.
- Colette

As the language of the face is universal, so ’tis very comprehensive; no laconism can reach it: ’tis the short hand of the mind, and crowds a great deal in a little room.
- Jeremy Collier

Atheism is the result of ignorance and pride; of strong sense and feeble reasons; of good eating and ill-living. It is the plague of society, the corrupter of manners, and the underminer of property.
- Jeremy Collier

Our journey toward the stars has progressed swiftly. In 1926 Robert H. Goddard launched the first liquid-propelled rocket, achieving an altitude of 41 feet. In 1962 John Glenn orbited the earth. In 1969, only 66 years after Orville Wright flew two feet off the ground for 12 seconds, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and I rocketed to the moon in Apollo 11.
- Michael Collins

A man who knows the world will not only make the most of everything he does know, but of many things that he does not know; and will gain more credit by his adroit mode of hiding his ignorance than the pendant by his awkward attempt to exhibit his erudition.
- Charles Caleb Colton

A public debt is a kind of anchor in the storm; but if the anchor be too heavy for the vessel, she will be sunk by that very weight which was intended for her preservation.
- Charles Caleb Colton

Applause is the spur of noble minds, the end and aim of weak ones.
- Charles Caleb Colton

As the dimensions of the tree are not always regulated by the size of the seed, so the consequences of things are not always proportionate to the apparent magnitude of those events that have produced them.
- Charles Caleb Colton

Be very slow to believe that you are wiser than all others; it is a fatal but common error. Where one has been saved by a true estimation of another’s weakness, thousands have been destroyed by false appreciation of their own strength.
- Charles Caleb Colton

Criticism is like champagne, nothing more execrable if bad, nothing more excellent if good; if meager, muddy vapid, and sour, both are fit only to engender colic and wind; but if rich, generous and sparkling, they improve the taste, expand the heart, and are worthy of being introduced at the symposium of the gods.
- Charles Caleb Colton

Drunkenness is the vice of a good constitution, or of a bad memory! of a constitution so treacherously good, that it never bends till it breaks; or of a memory that recollects the pleasures of getting drunk, but forgets the pains of getting sober.
- Charles Caleb Colton

Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.
- Charles Caleb Colton

He that will have no books but those that are scarce, evinces about as correct a taste in literature as he would do in friendship, who would have no friends but those whom all the rest of the world have sent to coventry.
- Charles Caleb Colton

I have somewhere seen it observed, that we should make the same use of a book that the bee does of a flower: she steals sweets from it, but does not harm it.
- Charles Caleb Colton

If you cannot inspire a woman with love of you, fill her above the brim with love of herself- all that runs over the brim will be yours.
- Charles Caleb Colton

If you want enemies, excel others; if you want friends let others excel you.
- Charles Caleb Colton

It is far more easy to acquire a fortune like a knave than to expend it like a gentleman.
- Charles Caleb Colton

Make the most of the day, by determining to spend it on two sort of acquaintances only- those by whom something may be got, and those from whom something may be learned.
- Charles Caleb Colton

Many books require no thought from those who read them, for a very simple reason- they made no such demand upon those who wrote them. Those works, therefore, are the most valuable that set our thinking faculties in the fullest operation.
- Charles Caleb Colton

Marriage is a feast where the grace is sometimes better than the feast.
- Charles Caleb Colton

Men are born with two eyes, but with one tongue, in order that they should see twice as much as they say.
- Charles Caleb Colton

Men will wrangle for religion; write for it; fight for it; die for it; anything but-live for it.
- Charles Caleb Colton

Never join with your friend when he abuses his horse or his wife, unless the one is about to be sold, and the other to be buried.
- Charles Caleb Colton

No company is far preferable to bad, because we are more apt to catch the vices of others than virtues, as disease is far more courageous than health.
- Charles Caleb Colton

Pedantry crams our heads with learned lumber, and takes out our brains to make room for it.
- Charles Caleb Colton

Speaking generally, no man appears great to his contemporaries, for the same reason that no man is great to his servants- both know too much of him.
- Charles Caleb Colton

Success seems to be that which forms the distinction between confidence and conceit. Nelson, when young was piqued at not being noticed in a certain paragraph of the newspapers, which detailed an action wherein he had assisted. "But never mind," said he, "I will one day have a gazette of my own."
- Charles Caleb Colton

That which we acquire with the most difficulty we retain the longest; as those who have earned a fortune are usually more careful with it than those who have inherited one.
- Charles Caleb Colton

The excesses of our youth are drafts upon our old age, payable with interest, about thirty years after date.
- Charles Caleb Colton

The gamester, if he die a martyr to his profession, is doubly ruined. He adds his soul to every other’s loss, and by the act of suicide, renounces earth to forfeit heaven.
- Charles Caleb Colton

The greatest genius is never so great as when is is chastised and subdued by the highest reason.
- Charles Caleb Colton

The intoxication of anger, like that of the grape, shows up to others, but hides us from ourselves, and we injure our own cause, in the opinion of the world, when we too passionately and eagerly defend it.
- Charles Caleb Colton

The profoundly wise do not declaim against superficial knowledge in others, as much as the profoundly ignorant.
- Charles Caleb Colton

The seeds of repentance are sown in youth by pleasure, but the harvest is reaped in age by plain.
- Charles Caleb Colton

There is this difference between happiness and wisdom; he that thinks himself the happiest man really is so; but he that thinks himself the wisest, is generally the greatest fool.
- Charles Caleb Colton

True friendship is like sound health, the value of it is seldom known until it be lost.
- Charles Caleb Colton

Vice stings us even in our pleasures, but virtue consoles us, even in our pains.
- Charles Caleb Colton

We ask advice, but we mean approbation.
- Charles Caleb Colton

We shall find that it is less difficult to hide a thousand guineas than one hole in your coat.
- Charles Caleb Colton

We should act with as much energy as those who expect everything from themselves; and we should pray with as much earnestness as those who expect everything from God.
- Charles Caleb Colton

Were we as eloquent as angels, yet should we please some men and some women much more by listening than by talking.
- Charles Caleb Colton

When articles rise the consumer is the first that suffers, and when they fall he is the last that gains.
- Charles Caleb Colton

You know what happens to people who fall asleep at their terminal? They lose their account!
- A very drunk AFSAdminType (who shall remain nameless) in Weh5201 one night.

Oh, you’re Eeyore! I know you, you’re a doof-head!
- Wallace Colyer

A lot of people I know believe in positive thinking, and so do I. I believe everything positively stinks.
- Lew Col

We may eventually come to realize that chastity is no more a virtue than malnutrition.
- Alex Comfort

People will accept your ideas much more readily if you tell them that Benjamin Franklin said it first.
- David H. Comins

No action is without side effects.
- Barry Commoner

The age of innocent faith in science and technology may be over. Every major advance in the technological competence of man has enforced revolutionary changes in the economic and political structure of society.
- Barry Commoner

There is no free lunch.
- Barry Commoner

Experience is a great advantage. The problem is that when you get the experience, you’re too damned old to do anything about it.
- Jimmy Connors

Each honest calling, each walk of life, has its own elite, its own aristocracy based on excellence of performance.
- James Bryant Conant

The job of satire is to frighten and enlighten.
- Richard Condon

Acquire new knowledge whilst thinking over the old, and you may become a teacher of others.
- Confucius

If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything.
- Confucius

Real knowledge is to know the extent of ones ignorance.
- Confucius

The wheel of fortune turns incessantly round, and who can say within himself, I shall today be uppermost.
- Confucius

They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.
- Confucius

Defer not till tomorrow to be wise, 
Tomorrow’s sun to thee may never rise.
- John Congreve

He that loses hope may part with anything.
- John Congreve

Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast, 
To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak. 
I’ve read that things inanimate have moved, 
And as with living souls have been inform’d 
By magic numbers and persuasive sound.
- John Congreve

The could neither of ’em speak for rage and so fell a sputtering at one another like two roasting apples.
- John Congreve

Time, place, and action may with pains be wrought, 
But Genius must be born; and can never be taught.
- John Congreve

Heav’n has no rage, 
like love to hatred turn’d, 
Nor Hell a fury, 
like a woman scorn’d.
- William Congreve (1670-1729)

Brontosaurus Principle: Organizations can grow faster than their brains can manage them in relation to their environment and to their own physiology: when this occurs, they are an endangered species.
- Thomas K. Connellan

You wanna know how to nail Capone? This is how you nail Capone: he pulls a knife you pull a gun, he puts on of yours in the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. THAT’S how you nail Capone.
- Sean Connery in "The Untouchables"

Hypocrisy is the vaseline of political intercourse.
- Billy Connolly on ABC’s "Head Of the Class"

There’s no such thing as bad weather - there’s only the wrong clothes!"
- Billy Connolly

As repressed sadists are supposed to become policemen or butchers so those with irrational fear of life become publishers.
- Cyril Connolly

The civilization of one epoch becomes the manure of the next.
- Cyril Connolly

There are many who dare not kill themselves for fear of what the neighbors will say.
- Cyril Connolly

What grape to keep its place in the sun, taught our ancestors to make wine?
- Cyril Connolly

Short term success with voters on any side of a given issue can be guaranteed by creating a long-term special study commission make up of at least three divergent interest groups.
- Ray Connolly

It is respectable to have no illusions - and safe - and profitable - and dull.
- Joseph Conrad

The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.
- Joseph Conrad

The discovery of America was the occasion of the greatest outburst of cruelty and reckless greed known in history.
- Joseph Conrad

Whenever one word or letter can change the entire meaning of a sentence, the probability of an error being made will be in direct proportion to the embarrassment it will cause.
- Bob Considine

I not only want a car that is built in accordance with the basic principles of physics and in light of an empirically verified, well-winnowed tradition of automobile design, but I also want it screwed together right.
- Edward W. Constant II, "The Social Locus of Technological Practice: Community, System, or Organization?"

Game is an ill you may with ease obtain, A sad oppression to be born with pain; And when you would the noisy clamor drown, You’ll find it hard to lay the burden down.
- Cooke

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.
- Rich Cook

Never send a letter requesting information to an editor unless you expect to receive a prolix letter in return.
- Robert Cook

The narrower the mind the broader the statement.
- Ted Cook

Changing a college curriculum is like moving a graveyard - you never know how many friends the dead have until you try to move them!
- Calvin Coolidge or Woodrow Wilson

No one ever listened himself out of a job.
- Calvin Coolidge

The most common commodity in this country is unrealized potential.
- Calvin Coolidge

When more and more people are thrown out of work, unemployment results.
- Calvin Coolidge

You don’t have to explain something you never said.
- Calvin Coolidge

The tendencies of democracies are, in all things, to mediocrity, since the tastes, knowledge and principles of the majority form the tribunal of appeal.
- James Fenimore Cooper

Predicting the future, as we all know, is risky. Predicting the evolution of new technology is downright hazardous.
- Leon Cooper

It is a faith (not always justified) of theoretical physics that if man proposes what is sufficiently elegant, nature, pleased and flattered, will say yes.
- Leon N. Cooper, "Introduction to the Meaning and Structure of Physics"

This is NP-complete, which, if you don’t recognize that, it’s something we in computer science use to frighten small children.
- Prof. Eric Cooper in 15-312.

Try to be like the turtle- at ease in your own shell.
- Bill Copeland

The world revolves around the sun, not your head.
- Copernicus

Listening to the Fifth Symphony of Ralph Vaughn Williams is like staring at a cow for forty-five minutes.
- Aaron Copland

I know a mother-in-law who sleeps with her glasses on, the better to see her son-in-law suffer in her dreams.
- Ernest Coquelin

Hereafter I’ll be able to understand everything, taking all on trust.
- Tristan Corbiere

All busses heading in the opposite direction drive off the face of the earth and never return.
- John Corcoran

All files, papers, memos, etc., that you save will never be needed until such time as they are disposed of, when they will become essential and indispensable.
- John Corcoran

Any bus that can be the wrong bus will be the wrong bus. All others are out of service or full.
- John Corcoran

Bus schedules are arranged so your bus will arrive at the transfer point precisely one minute after the connecting bus has left.
- John Corcoran

If you anticipate bus delays by leaving your house thirty minutes early, your bus will arrive as soon as you reach the bus stop or when you light up a cigarette, whichever comes first.
- John Corcoran

In any slide presentation, at least one slide will be upside down or backwards, or both.
- John Corcoran

The amount of time you have to wait for a bus is directly proportional to the inclemency of the weather.
- John Corcoran

The bus that left the stop just before you got there is your bus.
- John Corcoran

The last rush-hour express bus to your neighborhood leave five minutes before you get off work.
- John Corcoran

Television is more interesting than people. If it were not, we would have people standing in the corners of our rooms.
- Alan Corenk

Marriage is like a bank account. You put it in, you take it out, you lose interest.
- Professor Irwin Corey

I’ve always been taught that if you code an arbitrary limit, try to make it a power of two, or at least avoid powers of ten, so people think there’s a good technical reason for it.
- Peter Corlett

He who allows himself to be insulted, deserves to be.
- Pierre Corneille (1606-1684)

Didn’t I ever tell you? Bumbles Bounce!
- Yukon Cornelius.

Authority tends to assign jobs to those least able to do them.
- Richard C. Cornuelle

It is the guilt, not the scaffold, which constitutes the shame.
- Cornville

I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.
- Bill Cosby

The problem with protestantism is that it’s not quite silly enough to be rejected out of hand.
- R. Craig Coulter

The flush toilet is the basis of Western civilization.
- Alan Coult

When singleness is bliss, it’s folly to be wives.
- Bill Councelman

We may not be able to persuade Hindus that Jesus and not Vishnu should govern their spiritual horizon, nor Moslems that Lord Buddha is at the center of their spiritual universe, nor Hebrews that Mohammed is a major prohpet, nor Christians that Shinto best expresses their spiritual concerns, to say nothing of the fact that we may not be able to get Christians to agree among themselves about their relationship to God. But all will agree on a proposition that they possess profound spiritual resources. If, in addition, we can get them to accept the further proposition that whatever form the Deity may have in their own theology, the Deity is not only external, but internal and acts through them, and they themselves give proof or disproof of the Deity in what they do and think; if this further proposition can be accepted, then we come that much closer to a truly religious situation on earth.
- Norman Cousins, from his book Human Options

Capitalism in the United States has undergone profound modification, not just under the New Deal, but through a consensus that continued to grow after the New Deal. Government in the U. S. today is a senior partner in every business in the country.
- Norman Cousins

Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.
- Norman Cousins

I cannot affirm God if I fail to affirm man. Therefore, I affirm both. Without a belief in human unity I am hungry and incomplete. Human unity is the fulfillment of diversity. It is the harmony of opposites. It is a many-stranded texture, with color and depth.
- Norman Cousins

It is no longer correct to regard higher education solely as a privilege. It is a basic right in today’s world.
- Norman Cousins

People who develop the habit of thinking of themselves as world citizens are fulfilling the first requirement of sanity in our time.
- Norman Cousins

You can only govern men by serving them. The rule is without exception.
- Victor Cousin

The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance.
- Robert R. Coveyou

Your motivation? Your motivation is your pay packet on Friday. Now get on with it.
- Noel Coward (1899-1973) to an actor.

Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.
- Noel Coward (1899-1973)

People are wrong when they say that the opera isn’t what it used to be. It is what it used to be. That’s what’s wrong with it.
- Noel Coward (1899-1973)

Television is for appearing on - not for looking at.
- Noel Coward (1899-1973)

The higher the buildings, the lower the morals.
- Noel Coward (1899-1973)

But what is woman? -- only one of Nature’s more agreeable blunders.
- Hannah Cowley

Absence of occupation is not rest. A mind quite vacant is a mind distress’d.
- William Cowper

Beware of desperate steps!- the darkest day Live till to-morrow, will have passed away.
- William Cowper

Dream after dream ensures, and still they dream that they shall still succeed, and still are disappointed.
- William Cowper

Fate steals along with silent tread, Found oftenest in what least we dread; Frowns in the storm with angry brow, But in the sunshine strikes the blow.
- William Cowper

Freedom hath a thousand charms to show, That slaves howe’er contented never know.
- William Cowper

God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform; He plants His footsteps in the sea, And rides upon the storm.
- William Cowper

If the world like it not, so much the worse for them.
- William Cowper

To follow foolish precedents, and wink With both our eyes, is easier than to think.
- William Cowper

. . . I think Bergman would never have been celebrated as much had he made films in English because the language is so cynical. If you say "I’m full of fear," or "I’m full of pain," in an English movie, people fall out of the seats with laughter.
- Paul Cox

A cynic is just a man who found out when he was about ten that there wasn’t any Santa Claus, and he’s still upset.
- James Gould Cozzens (1903-1978)

Habit with him was all the test of truth; "It must be right: I’ve done it from my youth."
- George Crabbe

He lives by rule who lives himself to please.
- George Crabbe

What is a church? Our honest sexton tells, ’Tis a tall building, with a tower and bells.
- George Crabbe

He did not mean to be cruel. If anybody had called him so, he would have resented it extremely. He would have said that what he did was done entirely for the good of the country. But he was a man who had always been accustomed to consider himself first and foremost, believing that whatever he wanted was sure to be right, and therefore he ought to have it. So he tried to get it, and got it too, as people like him very often do. Whether they enjoy it when they have it is another question.
- Dinah Craik, "The Little Lame Prince"

I’d hate to think we’re seriously hampering the productivity of America. But, on the other hand, what the heck!
- Computer game magnate Les Crane, "Time"

The Golden Rule is of no use to you whatever unless you realize it is your move.
- Frank Crane

There are three ways to get something done: do it yourself, hire someone, or forbid your kids to do it.
- Monta Crane

A man said to the universe: "Sir, I exist!" "However," replied the universe, "The fact has not created in me a sense of obligation."
- Stephen Crane, "War Is Kind"

Memory is like an orgasm. It’s a lot better if you don’t have to fake it.
- Seymour Cray commenting on virtual memory

Parity is for farmers.
- Seymour Cray, when asked why he didn’t have parity in his machines.

I guess farmers buy a lot of computers.
- Seymour Cray, when asked why he put parity into his next generation of computers.

When fortune sends a stormy wind, Then show a brave and present mind; And when with too indulgent gales She swells too much, then furl thy sails.
- Creech

Fortunately, the responsibility for providing evidence is on the part of the person making the claim, not the critic. It is not the responsibility of UFO skeptics to prove that a UFO has never existed, nor is it the responsibility of paranormal-health-claims skeptics to prove that crystals or colored lights never healed anyone. The skeptic’s role is to point out claims that are not adequately supported by acceptable evidence and to provide plausible alternative explanations that are more in keeping with the accepted body of scientific evidence.
- Thomas L. Creed

The inability to benefit from feedback appears to be the primary cause of pseudoscience. Pseudoscientists retain their beliefs and ignore or distort contradictory evidence rather than modify or reject a flawed theory. Because of their strong biases, they seem to lack the self-correcting mechanisms scientists must employ in their work.
- Thomas L. Creed

The one real object of education is to have a man in the condition of continually asking questions.
- Bishop Mandell Creighton

For a person to live in a country, and to be ignorant of its history on almost every issue that comes up, means that he is really walking around in the dark all the time. I think that history can give you a sense of courage in a difficult and dark world. You can say to yourself: I at least know something about this world, I know how it got the way it is, I know where it’s possibly going, not certainly but possibly. I can stand up against the world.
- Donald Creighton

History is the record of an encounter between character and circumstance.
- Donald Creighton

Impatience dires the blood sooner than age or sorrow.
- Creon

If the automobile had followed the same development cycle as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside.
- Robert X. Cringely, InfoWorld

Decency...must be an even more exhausting state to maintain than its opposite. Those who succeed seem to need a stupefying amount of sleep.
- Quentin Crisp

Even holligans marry, though they know that marriage is but for a little while. It is alimony that is forever.
- Quentin Crisp

Fashion is what you adopt when you don’t know who you are.
- Quentin Crisp

For flavor, instant sex will never supercede the stuff you have to peel and cook.
- Quentin Crisp

If at first you don’t succeed, failure may be your style.
- Quentin Crisp

If you’re taking an essay exam on geography and the exam could be on any country in the world, study only one country, and know it well. Let’s say you choose China. When it comes time for the exam, and the question is, Write 1,000 words on Nigeria, you begin your essay, ’Nigeria is nothing like China...; and proceed to write everything you know about China.
- Quentin Crisp

Is not the whole world a vast house of assignation to which the filing system has been lost?
- Quentin Crisp

Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level.
- Quentin Crisp

Nothing in our culture, not even home computers, is more overrated than the epidermal felicity of two featherless bipeds in desperate congress.
- Quentin Crisp

One should always be wary of anyone who promises that their love will last longer than a weekend.
- Quentin Crisp

The English think incompetence is the same thing as sincerity.
- Quentin Crisp

The continued propinquity of another human being cramps the style after a time unless that person is somebody you think you love. Then the burden becomes intolerable at once.
- Quentin Crisp

The very purpose of existence is to reconcile the glowing opinion we hold of ourselves with the appalling things that other people think about us.
- Quentin Crisp

The young always have the same problem - how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their parents and copying one another.
- Quentin Crisp

To know all is not to forgive all. It is to despise everybody.
- Quentin Crisp

Philosophy removes from religion all reason for existing. As the science of the spirit, it looks upon religion as a phenomenon, a transitory historical fact, a psychic condition that can be surpassed.
- Benedetto Croce

We have rights, as individuals, to give as much of our own money as we please to charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of public money.
- David Crockett, Congressman 1827-35

I’ve found my niche. If you’re wondering why I’m not there, there was this little hole in the bottom...
- John Croll

There is one around here somewhere.
- John Croll

Does a man speak foolishly?-suffer him gladly, for you are wise. Does he speak erroneously?-stop such a man’s mouth with sound words that cannot be gainsaid. Does he speak truly?-rejoice in the truth.
- Oliver Cromwell

Gratitude is something of which none of us can give too much. For on the smiles, the thanks we give, our little gestures of appreciation, our neighbors build up their philosophy of life.
- A. J. Cronin

A day without a pun is a day without sunshine; there is gloom for improvement.
- John S. Crosbie

In the South of California has gathered the larges and most miscellaneous assortment of Messiahs, Sorcerers, Saints and Seers known to the history of aberrations.
- Farnsworth Crowder

Murphy’s Law never fails.
- Walter J. Crowell

What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
- Crowfoot’s last words (1890) (Blackfoot warrior and orator)

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
- Aleister Crowley

A fool, indeed, has great need of a title; it teaches men to call him Count and Duke, and to forget his proper name of Fool.
- Crowne

War destroys mem, but luxury mankind At once corrupts the body and the mind.
- Crown

Do not think what you want to think until you know what you ought to know.
- Crow’s Law

Most of our future lies ahead.
- Denny Crum, Louisville basketball coach

Some of these companies, like Oracle and WordPerfect are crazy about how many platforms they run on. We have a joke about whose product will be the first to run on a microwave.
- Paul Cubbage, Dataquest

We don’t know who discovered water, but we are certain it wasn’t a fish.
- John Culkin

Anything, no matter how bad, will sound good if played back at a very high speed for a short time.
- John Culshaw

If we in business cannot put the brakes on this creeping socialism, the free enterprise system will become a thing of the past.
- Barton A. Cummings

The only man, woman, or child who ever wrote a simple declarative sentence with seven grammatical errors is dead.
- e. e. cummings (1894-1962) on the death of Warren G. Harding, 1923

To be nobody-but-myself -- in a world that is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else -- means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.
- e. e. cummings

knowlege is a polite word for dead but unburied imagination....think twice before thinking.
- e.e. cummings

The price of seeking to force our beliefs on others is that someday they might force their beliefs on us.
- Mario Cuomo

Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.
- Marie Curie

There are, of course, several things in Ontario that are more dangerous than wolves. For instance, the step-ladder.
- J.W. Curran

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