R

The farce is finished. I go to seek a vast perhaps.
- Francois Rabelais

True friendship is never serene.
- Marie de Rabutin-Chantal

I base my fashion taste on what doesn’t itch.
- Gilda Radner

His zeal was hollow; his sermons were like students’ songs imperfectly recalled by a senile don.
- John Rae

The amount of effort put into a campaign by a worker expands in proportion to the personal benefits that he will derive from his party’s victory.
- Milton Rakove

The citizen is influenced by principle in direct proportion to his distance from the political situation.
- Milton Rakove

The best time for marriage will be towards thirty, for as the younger times are unfit, either to choose or to govern a wife and family, so, if thou stay long, thou shalt hardly see the education of thy children, who, being left to strangers, are in effect lost; and better were it to be unborn than ill-bred; for thereby thy posterity shall either perish or remain a shame to thy name.
- Sir Walter Raleigh

The difference between a rich man and a poor man is this: the former eats when he pleases, the latter when he can get it.
- Sir Walter Raleigh

Whosoever commands the sea commands the trade; whosoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the world, and, consequently the world itself.
- Sir Walter Raleigh

A man must first govern himself ere he be fit to govern a family, and his family ere he fit to bear the government in the commonwealth.
- Sir Walter Raliegh

The main thing is you and I should exist, and that we should be you and I. Apart from that let everything go as it likes. The best order of things to my way thinking, is the one I was meant to be part of, and to hell with the most perfect of worlds if I am not in it. I would rather exist, even as an impudent argufier, than not exist at all.
- Jean-Francois Rameau

Lack of skill dictates economy of style.
- Joey Ramone

He is a legend in his own mind.
- Ron Randall

Simplicity is the true test.
- Ron Randall

The way to a man’s heart is below his stomach.
- Ron Randall

You have no friends among the ambitious.
- Ron Randall

Never needlessly disturb a thing at rest.
- John Randolph

A living entity that regarded its means of survival as evil, would not survive. A plant that struggled to mangle its roots, a bird that fought to break its wings would not remain for long in the existence they affronted. But the history of man has been a struggle to deny and destroy his mind.
- Ayn Rand

So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of money?
- Ayn Rand

The right to vote is a *consequence*, not a primary cause, of a free social system -- and its value depends on the constitutional structure implementing and strictly delimiting the voters’ power; unlimited majority rule is an instance of the principle of tyranny.
- Ayn Rand

There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist.
- Ayn Rand

You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.
- Jeannette Rankin (1880-1973)

Giving a man space is like giving a dog a computer: the chances are he will not use it wisely.
- Bette-Jane Raphael

I had a clue once and didn’t like it much. I took it back and they gave me an attitude instead.
- Chris Rapier

I hate life, I hate death and everything in between just doesn’t interest me.
- Chris Rapier

One cannot play chess if one becomes aware of the pieces as living souls and of the fact that the Whites and the Blacks have more in common with each other than with the players. Suddenly one loses all interest in who will be champion.
- Anatol Rapoport

Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody thinks of complaining.
- Jeff Raskin, interviewed in Doctor Dobb’s Journal

A computer lets you make more mistakes faster then any other invention with the possible exceptions of handguns and Tequila
- Mitch Ratcliffe

In dealing with the press do yourself a favor. Stick with one of three responses: (a) I know and I can tell you. (b) I know and I can’t tell you. (c) I don’t know.
- Dan Rather

Imposition of Order = Escalation of Chaos.
- Lord Omar Khayaam Ravenhurst K.S.C.

Mister Order, he runs a very good pace But old Mother Chaos is winning the race.
- Lord Omar Khayaam Ravenhurst K.S.C.

Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a good carpenter to build one.
- Sam Rayburn

If you want to get along, go along.
- Sam Rayburn

Next to being shot at and missed, nothing is really quite as satisfying as an income tax refund.
- F. J. Raymond

He that uses many words for the explaining any subject, doth like the cuttlefish, hide himself for the most part in his own ink.
- Ray

The absent are like children, helpless to defend themselves.
- Charles Reade

When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.
- Charles Reade

A woman is like a tea bag--you can’t tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.
- Nancy Reagan

I believe that people would be alive today if there were a death penalty.
- Nancy Reagan

If you’ve seen one redwood, you’ve seen them all.
- Ronald Reagan

You can rot here without feeling it.
- John Rechy

First, you must know what the thing is, and then after learn the use of the same.
- Robert Recorde

If you stay in Beverly Hills too long you become a Mercedes.
- Robert Redford

In computer science, we stand on each other’s feet.
- Brian K. Reed

Her life was saved by rock and roll.
- Lou Reed

Sex is the mathematics urge sublimated.
- M. C. Reed

Hollywood is where if you don’t have happiness you send out for it.
- Rex Reed

A statesman is a successful politician who is dead.
- Thomas B. Reed

Let a man proclaim a new principle. Public sentiment will surely be on the other side.
- Thomas B. Reed

One, with God, is always a majority, but many a martyr has been burned at the stake while the votes were being counted.
- Thomas B. Reed

I’ve been to 127.0.0.1 before. That dude is into some sick shit.
- Tracy Reed

Virgule gazed across the vast, cold, steel expanse past his inquisitor to witness the full consequence of his previous decision - feral, withered children, in tattered, filthy garments, toiled mindlessly at his command in a single chamber which reeked of oil and burning animal flesh - his time had come to deliver the final instruction; "Yes! I would like fries with that."
- Ed Reffle

Canada Post doesn’t really charge 32 cents for a stamp. It’s 2 cents for postage and 30 cents for storage.
- Gerald Regan, Cabinet Minister

Hypotheses multiply so as to fill the gaps in factual knowledge concerning biological phenomena.
- James D. Regan

If there’s anything the Institute has too much of already, it’s concord and placidity. There’s no tension on the premises, no crackle in the air, no sense at all that there are mad geniuses lurking about. "I wish we had more crazy people here," Freeman Dyson has said. Just so.
- Ed Regis, "Who Got Einstein’s Office?"

Human beings, for all their pretensions, have a remarkable propensity for lending themselves to classification somewhere within neatly labelled categories. Even the outrageous exceptions may be classified as outrageous exceptions!
- W.J. Reichmann

In Washington, it’s dog eat dog. In academia, it’s exactly the opposite.
- Robert Reich, the Secretary of Labor

n theory, there is no difference between theory and practice; In practice, there is.
- Chuck Reid

Acting is not being emotional, but being able to express emotion.
- Kate Reid

Plato had slaves...George Washington had slaves... So, do I feel intrinsically better than these two men? Of course I do! They’re dead!
- Todd Andrew Reid

Email or post, it doesn’t matter to me. I’m not paying for the bandwidth. 
There it is: a summary of USENET in 14 words.
- Charlie Reiman and Jim Reid

Money is good for bribing yourself through the inconveniences of life.
- Gottfried Reinhardt

... Perhaps of even greater significance is the continuous and profound distrust of science and technology that the environmental movement displays. The environmental movement maintains that science and technology cannot be relied upon to build a safe atomic power plant, to produce a pesticide that is safe, or even bake a loaf of bread that is safe, if that loaf of bread contains chemical preservatives. When it comes to global warming, however, it turns out that there is one area in which the environmental movement displays the most breathtaking confidence in the reliability of science and technology, an area in which, until recently, no one -- even the staunchest supporters of science and technology -- had ever thought to assert very much confidence at all. The one thing, the environmental movement holds, that science and technology can do so well that we are entitled to have unlimited confidence in them, is FORECAST THE WEATHER! -- for the next one hundred years...
- George Reisman, "The Toxicity of Environmentalism"

I am not sincere, not even when I say I am not.
- Jules Renard (1864-1910)

I don’t know if God exists, but it would be better for His reputation if He didn’t.
- Jules Renard (1864-1910)

I find that when I do not think of myself I do not think at all.
- Jules Renard (1864-1910)

Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired.
- Jules Renard (1864-1910)

Look for the ridiculous in everything and you find it.
- Jules Renard (1864-1910)

Love is like an hourglass, with the heart filling up as the brain empties.
- Jules Renard (1864-1910)

The only man who is really free is the one who can turn down an invitation to dinner without giving any excuse.
- Jules Renard (1864-1910)

Be sure to keep busy, so the devil may always find you occupied.
- Flavius Vegetius Renatus

The agnostics prayer: O God, if there is a god, save my soul, if I have a soul
- Ernest Renan (1823-1890)

It is after you have lost your teeth that you can afford to buy steaks.
- Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)

Property in ideas is an insoluble contradiction. [He who complains of "theft" of his idea] complains that something has been stolen which he still possesses, and he wants back something which, if given to him a thousand times, would add nothing to his possession.
- H. Rentzsch, Geistiges Eigenthum, 1866.

A government is the only known vessel that leaks from the top.
- James Reston

I went to a Grateful Dead Concert and they played for SEVEN hours. Great song.
- Fred Reuss

Authoritarian socialism has failed almost everywhere, but you will find not a single Marxist who will say it has failed because it was wrong or impractical. He will say is has failed because nobody went far enough with it. So failure never proves that a myth is wrong.
- Jean-Francois Revel

I don’t meet competition, I crush it.
- Charles Revson

Excellence is never granted to man, but as the reward of labor. It argues, indeed, no small strength of mind to persevere in the habits of industry, without the pleasure of perceiving those advantages which, like the hands of a clock, whilst they make hourly approaches to their point, yet proceed so slowly as to escape observation.
- Sir Joshua Reynolds

All dogmas perish the thinking mind, especially ones you agree with.
- Adam Richardson

For years a secret shame destroyed my peace - I’d not read Eliot, Auden or MacNiece. But now I think a thought that brings me hope: Neither had Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Pope.
- Justin Richardson

While I am not a fan of corporal punishment, I am not a fan of his friends Major Nuisance or General Disturbance.
- Elaine Richards

The official state religion of France is Bureaucracy. They’ve replaced the Trinity with the Triplicate.
- David Richerby in The Other Place

In the beginning, there was nothing. And God said, ’Let there be Light.’ And there was still nothing, but you could see it.
- Mordecai Richler, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz

A man never discloses his own character so clearly as when he describes another’s.
- Jean Paul Richter

A timid person is frightened before a danger, a coward during the time, and a courageous person afterward.
- Jean Paul Richter

Ah! the youngest heart has the same waves within it as the oldest; but without the plummet which can measure the depths.
- Jean Paul Richter

Courage consists not in blindly overlooking danger, but in seeing it, and conquering it.
- Jean Paul Richter

How calmly may we commit ourselves to the hands of Him who bears up the world- of Him who has created, and who provides for the joy even of insects, as carefully as if He were their Father!
- Jean Paul Richter

I would rather dwell in the dim fog of superstition than in air rarified to nothing by the pump of unbelief; in which the panting breast expires, vainly and convulsively gasping for breath.
- Jean Paul Richter

Letters which are warmly sealed are ofter but coldly opened.
- Jean Paul Richter

Little joys refresh us constantly, like house-bread, and never bring disgust; and great ones, like sugar-bread, briefly, and then bring it.
- Jean Paul Richter

Pleasure soon exhausts us and itself also; but endeavor never does.
- Jean Paul Richter

Regularity is unity, unity is godlike, only the devil is unchangeable.
- Jean Paul Richter

Sorrow seems sent for out instruction, as we darken the cages of birds when we would teach them to sing.
- Jean Paul Richter

The last, best fruit which comes to perfection, even in the kindliest soul, is, tenderness toward the hard, forbearance toward the unforbearing, warmth of heart toward the cold, philanthropy toward the misanthropic.
- Jean Paul Richter

There are souls which fall from heaven like flowers, but ere they bloom are crushed under the foul tread of some brutal hoof.
- Jean Paul Richter

Time is the chrysalis of eternity.
- Jean Paul Richter

Why does the evening, does the night, put warmer love in our hearts? Is it the nightly pressure of helplessness? Or is it the exalting separation from the turmoils of life, that veiling of the world in which for the soul nothing there remains but souls? It is therefore that the letters in which the loved name stands written in our spirit appears like phosphorous writing by night, in fire, while by day, in their cloudy traces, they but smoke?
- Jean Paul Richter

The quality of the crate matters little. It is the quality of the man sitting in the crate that counts
- Baron von Richtofen, aka The Red Baron

Responsiblity is a unique concept. It can only reside and inhere in a single individual. You may share it with others, but your portion is not diminished. You may delegate it, but it is still with you. You may disclaim it, but you cannot divest yourself of it.
- Admiral Hyman Rickover

Banish Evil from the world? Nonsense! Encourage it, foster it, sponsor it. The world owes Evil a debt beyond imagination. Think! Without greed ambition falters. Without vanity art becomes idle musing. Without cruelty benevolence lapses to passivity. Superstition has shamed man into self-reliance and, without stupidity, where would be the savor of superior understanding?
- Magnus Ridolf

In all the many-colored worlds of the universe no single ethical code shows a universal force. I am convinced that virtue is but a reflection of good intent.
- Magnus Ridolf

Mystery is a word with no objective pertinence, merely describing the limitations of a mind. In fact, a mind may be classified by the order of the phenomena it considers mysterious.
- Magnus Ridolf

An inexorable upward movement leads administrators to higher salaries and narrower spans of control.
- David Riesman

The modern age has been characterized by a Promethean spirit, a restless energy that preys on speed records and shortcuts, unmindful of the past, uncaring of the future, existing only for the moment and the quick fix. The earthly rhythms that characterize a more pastoral way of life have been shunted aside to make room for the fast track of an urbanized existence. Lost in a sea of perpetual technological transition, modern man and woman find themselves increasingly alienated from the ecological choreography of the planet.
- Jeremy Rifkin

Incompetence tends to increase with the level of work performed. And, naturally, the individual’s staff needs will increase as his level of incompetence increases.
- Arthur J. Riggs

Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see each other whole against the sky.
- Rainer Rilke

Morality is the weakness of the mind.
- Arthur Rimbaud

Isn’t it amazing how a large number of evil morons can give the appearance of being a single evil genius?
- Mel Rimmer

There is a place for a decisive gamble where you know your enemy and can calculate the risks at least roughly; but to move at all against an unknown enemy is boldness in itself.
- Bel Riose

Steve Jobs has said that XWindows is brain-damaged and will disappear in two years. He got it half right.
- (reportedly) Dennis Ritchie

There are a lot of standards committees
- Dennis M. Ritchie referring to UNIX standards

A language that doesn’t have everything is actually easier to program in than some that do.
- Dennis M. Ritchie

C is quirky, flawed, and an enourmous success.
- Dennis M. Ritchie

The notion of a record is an obsolete remnant of the days of the 80-column card.
- Dennis M. Ritchie

The problem with X is that it’s overadequate
- Dennis M. Ritchie

Unix is simple, but it takes a genius to understand the simplicity.
- Dennis M. Ritchie

A bill has passed in the assembly that would require the licensing of computer programmers -- to protect the public interest, of course. Lord knows the number of times I’ve been accosted in pizza parlors, late at night, by renegade bands of unlicensed programmers. Well, now we’ll be able to control these low-lifes.
- John M. Ritter

A man can sleep around, no questions asked, but if a woman makes nineteen or twenty mistakes she’s a tramp.
- Joan Rivers

I caused my husband’s heart attack. In the middle of lovemaking I took the paper bag off my head. He dropped the Polaroid and keeled over and so did the hooker. It would have taken me half an hour to untie myself and call the paramedics, but fortunately the Great Dane could dial.
- Joan Rivers

I came here to say that I do not recognize anyone’s right to one minute of my life. Nor to any part of my energy. Nor to any achievement of mine. No matter who makes the claim, how large their number or how great their need.
- Howard Roark

...to emphasize the afterlife is to deny life. To concentrate on Heaven is to create hell. In their desperate longing to transcend the disorderliness, friction, and unpredictability that pesters life; in their desire for a fresh start in a tidy habitat, germ-free and secured by angels, religious multitudes are gambling the only life they may ever have on a dark horse in a race that has no finish line.
- Tom Robbins, "Skinny Legs and All", 1990, p. 305.

Actually, there _are_ two kinds of people in this world: those who believe there are two kinds of people in this world and those who are smart enough to know better.
- Tom Robbins, "Still Life With Woodpecker", p. 82

Hardly a pure science, history is closer to animal husbandry than it is to mathematics, in that it involves selective breeding. The principal difference between the husbandryman and the historian is that the former breeds sheep or cows or such, and the latter breeds (assumed) facts. The husbandryman uses his skills to enrich the future; the historian uses his to enrich the past. Both are usually up to their ankles in bullshit.
- Tom Robbins

Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature.
- Tom Robbins

If little else, the brain is an educational toy.
- Tom Robbins

When she was a small girl, Amanda hid a ticking clock in an old, rotten tree trunk. It drove woodpeckers crazy. Ignoring tasty bugs all around them, they just about beat their brains out trying to get at the clock. Years later, Amanda used the woodpecker experiment as a model for understanding capitalism, Communism, Christianity, and all other systems that traffic in future rewards rather than in present realities.
- Tom Robbins

How can you dream the impossible dream when you can’t get any sleep?
- Sam Robb

The main advantages of Haynes and Chilton manuals are that they cost $15, where the factory manuals cost $100 and up, and that they will tell you how to use two hammers, a block of wood, and a meerkat to replace "special tool no. 2-112-A"
- Matt Roberds in alt.sysadmin.recovery

It has been observed, probably correctly, that Saddam Hussein could run for Governor of .ok.us on the Communist Party ticket and win, provided that he had also coached a winning football team at .ou.edu .
- Matt Roberds

The Second Order Rule of Bureaucracy: The more directives you issue to solve a problem, the worse it gets.
- Jack Robertson

It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.
- televangelist Marion Pat Robertson, speaking of the Equal Rights Amendment

If Negro freedom is taken away, or that of any minority group, the freedom of all the people is taken away.
- Paul Robeson

When a Banker jumps out of a window, jump after him - that’s where the money is.
- Robespierre

Creative intelligence in its various forms and activities is what makes man.
- James Harvey Robinson

Most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do.
- James Harvey Robinson

We find it hard to believe that other people’s thoughts are as silly as our own.
- James Harvey Robinson

Typos in FINNEGANS WAKE? How could you tell?
- Kim Stanley Robinson

If a person who indulges in gluttony is a glutton, and a person who commits a felony is a felon, then God is an iron.
- Spider Robinson, "MindKiller"

...while I know many people who emphatically believe in reincarnation, I have never met or read one who could satisfactorily explain population growth.
- Spider Robinson

Librarians are like crack dealers when it comes to hooking small children.
- Spider Robinson

Hurting people is my business.
- Sugar Ray Robinson

I can’t see the point in the theatre. All that sex and violence. I get enough of that at home. Apart from the sex, of course.
- Tony Robinson as Baldrick in "Sense and Senility"

An honest election, under democracy, is an act of innocence which does not take place more than once in the history of a given nation.
- Jose Marie Gil Robles; speech in Madrid, 1933

Where desire writhed there stands a stone; the change was sudden and complete.
- Maggie Roche

One can almost picture a committee designing these system calls, afraid to adjourn without including every possible feature, lest someone accuse them of oversimplifying.
- Marc J. Rochkind, re SysV messaging primitives

I believe that the power to make money is a gift from God.
- John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937)

Never forget that the most powerful force on earth is love.
- Nelson Rockefeller (1908-1979) to Henry Kissinger

In order to invent the airplane you must have at least a thousand years’ experience dreaming of angels.
- Arnold Rockman

I’m driving my landrover through the dunes of ideas... rmmm! It’s cool, though. I’ve got a rollbar.
- T. Rockoff

Only a brave person is willing honestly to admit, and fearlessly to face, what a sincere and logical mind discovers.
- Rodan of Alexandria

The theory of NeXT’s success is a lot like the theory of creationism. Everyone claims to know and understand it, but no one can present a clear, realistic picture of how it’s supposed to work.
- Robert Rodgers

There’s nothing like a few good corpses to help along natural selection.
- Robert Rodgers

What’s big, noisy and has an IQ of 8?... Operation Rescue.
- Robert Rodgers

You misunderstand. I’m not a sexist, I’m a misogynist. I don’t have anything against any of the _other_ sexes, just women.
- Robert Rodgers

Matrimony is a processs by which a grocer acquired an account the florist had.
- Francis Rodman

The rate of hospital admissions responds the bed availability. Or, if we insist on installing more beds, they will tend to get filled.
- Dr. Milton Roemer

I didn’t think; I experimented.
- Wilhelm Roentgen

But then her face, So lovely, yet so arch, so full of mirth, the overflowings of an innocent heart.
- Rogers

Pleasure that comes unlooked for is thrice welcome.
- Rogers

The good are better made by ill, As odors crush’d are sweeter still.
- Rogers

Alexander Hamilton started the U. S. Treasury with nothing- and that was the closest our country has ever been to being even.
- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

An economist’s guess is liable to be as good as anybody else’s.
- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

Ancient Rome declined because it had a Senate; now what’s going to happen to us with both a Senate and a House?
- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

Baseball is a skilled game. It’s America’s game -- it, and high taxes.
- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

Being a hero is about the shortest-lived profession on earth.
- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

Diplomats are just as essential to starting a war as soldiers are for finishing it ... You take diplomacy out of war, and the thing would fall flat in a week.
- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.
- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

Government spending? I don’t know what it’s all about. I don’t know any more about this thing than an economist does, and, God knows, he doesn’t know much.
- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save.
- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

I belong to no organized party. I am a Democrat.
- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

I don’t care how poor and inefficient a country is; they like to run their own business. I know men that would make my wife a better husband than I am; but, darn it, I’m not going to give her to ’em.
- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.
- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

I see a good deal of talk from Washington about lowering taxes. I hope they do get ’em lowered down enough so people can afford to pay ’em.
- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

I see where we are starting to pay some attention to our neighbors to the south. We could never understand why Mexico wasn’t just crazy about us; for we have always had their good will, and oil and minerals, at heart.
- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

I was not a child prodigy, because a child prodigy is a child who knows as much when it is a child as it does when it grows up.
- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

If you make any money, the government shoves you in the creek once a year with it in your pockets, and all that don’t get wet you can keep.
- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

Instead of giving money to found colleges to promote learning, why don’t they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as good as the Prohibition one did, why, in five years we would have the smartest race of people on earth.
- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

Liberty doesn’t work as well in practice as it does in speeches.
- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

Money and women are the most sought after and the least known of any two things we have.
- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

Noah must have taken into the Ark two taxes, one male and one female. And did they multiply bountifully! Next to guinea pigs, taxes must have been the most prolific animals.
- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

Nothing you can’t spell will ever work.
- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

On account of us being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does.
- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

One-third of the people in the United States promote, while the other two-thirds provide.
- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

Our Constitution protects aliens, drunks, and U.S. senators.
- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

Parades should be classed as a nuisance and participants should be subject to a term in prison.
- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

People love high ideals, but they got to be about 33-percent plausible.
- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

Take the diplomacy out of war and the thing would fall flat in a week.
- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has. Even when you make a tax form out on the level, you don’t know when it’s through if you are a crook or a martyr.
- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

The man with the best job in the country is the vice-president. All he has to do is get up every morning and say, ’How is the president?’
- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

The more you observe politics, the more you’ve go to admit that each party is worse than the other.
- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

There is not a man in the country that can’t make a living for himself and his family. But he can’t make a living for them AND the government, too, the way his government is living. What the government has got to do is live as cheap as the people.
- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

There ought to be one day - just one - where there is open season on senators.
- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

There’s no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.
- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

Try to live your life so that you wouldn’t be afraid to sell the family parrot to the town gossip.
- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

What’s the matter with the world? Why, there ain’t but one thing wrong with every one of us- and that’s "selfishness."
- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

Why don’t somebody print the truth about our present economic condition? We spent years of wild buying on credit, everything under the sun, whether we needed it or not, and now we are having to pay for it, howling like a pet coon. This would be a great world to dance in if we didn’t have to pay the fiddler.
- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

You can’t say civilizations don’t advance...in every war they kill you in a new way.
- Will Rogers (1879-1935)

Isn’t humanity egocentric? Whenever we talk, we say, "Here’s my two cents worth," but we only offer "a penny for your thoughts."
- Ariel "The Rogue" Rogson

The NSA is now funding research not only in cryptography, but in all areas of advanced mathematics. If you’d like a circular describing these new research opportunities, just pick up your phone, call your mother, and ask for one.
- rogue@cs.neu.edu (Rogue Agent/SoD!)

Liberty! Liberty! how many crimes are committed in thy name.
- Madame Roland

Women who want equality must be prepared to give it and believe in it, and in order to do that it is not enough to state that you are as good as any man, but also it must be stated he is as good as you and both will be humans together.
- Anne Roiphe

If a man is happy in his work, exerting himself to the full extent of his capabilities, and enjoying it, I’d say he’s a success.
- William Romain

I am convinced that we can do to guns what we’ve done to drugs: create a multi-billion dollar underground market over which we have absolutely no control.
- George L. Roman

Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don’t need to be done.
- Andy Rooney

If dogs could talk, it would take a lot of the fun out of owning one.
- Andy Rooney

The average dog is a nicer person than the average person.
- Andy Rooney

We’ve sent a man to the moon, and that’s 29,000 miles away. The center of the Earth is only 4,000 miles away. You could drive that in a week, but for some reason nobody’s ever done it.
- Andy Rooney

I have one of those real old American built cars. The kind that just PUNCHES through accidents.
- Kevin Rooney

Get married early in the morning. That way, if it doesn’t work out, you haven’t wasted a whole day.
- Mickey Rooney

Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will, I think, recognize that the domination of education or of government by any one particular religious faith is never a happy arrangement for the people.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

Life was meant to be lived and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

Spiritual leadership should remain spiritual leadership and the temporal power should not become too important in any church.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

Those of us who believe in the right of any human being to belong to whatever church he sees fit, and to worship God in his own way, cannot be accused of prejudice when we do not want to see public education connected with religious control of the schools, which are paid for by taxpayers’ money.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who has never learned to walk.
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt

I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird, and not enough the bad luck of the early worm.
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt

It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Private enterprise is ceasing to be free enterprise.
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Private enterprise, indeed, became too private. It became privileged enterprise, not private enterprise.
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt

The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the contry demands bold, persistent experimentation.
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt

The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt

To some generations much is given. Of others much is expected. This generation has a rendezvous with destiny.
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt

We must reform if we would conserve.
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Do not hit at all if it can be avoided, but never hit softly.
- Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
- Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory or defeat.
- Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)

I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn’t inquire too closely into the case of the tenth. The most vicious cowboy has more moral principle than the average Indian.
- Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)

Order without liberty and liberty without order are equally destructive.
- Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)

The best executive is one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.
- Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena. Whose face is marred by dust, sweat and blood: who knows the enthusiasm, the great devotion, and spends himself in a worthy cause. Who at best if he wins knows the thrill of high achievement and if he fails at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls, who know neither victory nor defeat.
- Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)

The great virtue of my radicalism lies in the fact that I am perfectly ready, if necessary, to be radical on the conservative side.
- Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)

When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer ’Present’ or ’Not guilty.’
- Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)

I will not quarrel with a slight mistake, such as our nature’s frailty may excuse.
- Roscommon

The easiest way to find something lost around the house is to buy a replacement.
- Jack Rosenbaum

Death: The penultimate commercial transaction finalized by probate.
- Bernard Rosenberg

Free enterprise: A huge area of the American economy is still noticable to observers with peripheral vision after they subtract the public sector, conglomerates, federally supported agriculture, monopolies, duopolies, and oligopolies.
- Bernard Rosenberg

Honesty: the most important thing in life. Unless you really know how to fake it, you’ll never make it.
- Bernard Rosenberg

RADICAL: A person whose left hand does know what his other left hand is doing.
- Bernard Rosenberg

We who are about to die, are going to take one hell of a lot of the bastards with us.
- Karl Cullinane, "The Silver Crown" by Joel Rosenberg

Yea, though I walk through the valley of death I will fear no evil, for I am the meanest son of a bitch in the valley.
- Karl Cullinane, "The Silver Crown" by Joel Rosenberg

Man tends to root for the underdog, because he fears that he will find himself in that same position far too often.
- Michael S. Rosenberg

I’m a simple man. All I want is enough sleep for two normal men, enough whiskey for three, and enough women for four.
- Walter Slovotsky, "The Warrior Lives" by Joel Rosenberg

Miscellaneous is always the largest category.
- Walter Slovotsky, "The Warrior Lives" by Joel Rosenberg

There just isn’t any pleasing some people. The trick is to stop trying.
- Walter Slovotsky, "The Warrior Lives" by Joel Rosenberg

Never invest your money in anything that eats or needs painting.
- Billy Rose

I’m no different from anybody else with two arms, two legs and forty-two-hundred hits.
- Pete Rose

How wonderful opera would be if there were no singers.
- Gioacchino Rossini

Wagner has lovely moments but awful quarters of an hour.
- Gioacchino Rossini

Never characterize the importance of a statement in advance.
- Charles G. Ross

Jesus was a Jew, yes, but only on his mother’s side.
- Stanley Ralph Ross

Scheduled changes always mean cutbacks. Minor schedule adjustments always affect your bus.
- Steve Ross

Kill one man and you are a murderer. Kill millions and you are a conqueror. Kill all and you are a God.
- Jean Rostand

My pessimism extends to the point of even suspecting the sincerity of other pessimists.
- Jean Rostand

All technology expands the space, contracts the time, and destroys the working group.
- Eugene Rosenstock-Huessy

Can women imagine anything finer than to experience centuries and millennia with the beloved husband in a cozy home in reverent attention to the inner workings of creative motherhood?
- Curt Rosten, "The ABC’s of National Socialism," 1933

A conservative is one who admires radicals centuries after they’re dead.
- Leo C. Rosten

If you’re going to do something wrong, at least enjoy it.
- Leo C. Rosten

Machines certainly can solve problems, store information, correlate, and play games- but not with pleasure.
- Leo C. Rosten

Most men do not mature, they simply grow taller.
- Leo C. Rosten

1) A strong belief is more important than a few facts. 
2) The stronger the belief, the fewer the facts. 
3) The fewer the facts, the more people killed.
- Milton Rothman

Never have anything to do with an unlucky place, or an unlucky man. I have seen many clever men, very clever men, who had not shoes to their feet. I never act with them. Their advice sounds very well, but they cannot get on themselves; and if they cannot do good to themselves, how can they do good for me?
- Baron Rothschild

I am afraid of the worst, but I am not sure what that is.
- Abraham Rotstein

Social confusion has now reached a point at which the pursuit of immorality turns out to be more exhausting than compliance with the old moral codes.
- Denis de Rougemont

All that time is lost which might be better employed.
- Rousseau

He who is most slow in making a promise, is the most faithful in the performance of it.
- Rousseau

To write a good love-letter you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say, and end without knowing what you have written.
- Rousseau

No bounds his headlong, vast ambition knows.
- Rowe.

Age sits with decent grace upon his visage, and worthily becomes his silver locks; he bears the marks of many years well spent, of virtue truth well tried, and wise experience.
- Rowe

A bachelor never quite gets ove the idea that he is a thing of beauty and a boy forever.
- Helen Rowland (1876-1950)

A husband is what’s left of the lover once the nerve has been extracted.
- Helen Rowland (1876-1950)

Before marriage, a man declares that he would lay down his life to serve you; after marriage, he won’t even lay down his newspaper to talk to you.
- Helen Rowland (1876-1950)

It takes a woman twenty years to make a man of her son, and another woman twenty minutes to make a fool of him.
- Helen Rowland (1876-1950)

Marriage is a bargain, and somebody has to get the worst of the bargain.
- Helen Rowland (1876-1950)

To a woman the first kiss is just the end of the beginning but to a man it is the beginning of the end.
- Helen Rowland (1876-1950)

Just did poorly on my Operating Systems midterm. The last question (25% of the grade) was completely unintelligible. It was on semaphores but since I didn’t understand it let me use a history analogy. The question was the computer science equivalent of ’Write a 6-8 page essay on the communist regime in China.’ To which my analogous answer was ’It sucked.’
- Dave Roy

An unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys.
- Van Roy

When I was young, I used to have successes with women because I was young. Now I have successes with women because I am old. Middle age was the hardest part.
- Artur Rubinstein

Easiest Color to Solve on a Rubik’s Cube: Black. Simply remove all the little colored stickers on the cube, and each of side of the cube will now be the original color of the plastic underneath - black. According to the instructions, this means the puzzle is solved.
- Steve Rubenstein

Worst Month of 1981 for Downhill Skiing: August. The lines are the shortest, though.
- Steve Rubenstein

Worst Month of the Year: February. February has only 28 days in it, which means that if you rent an apartment, you are paying for three full days you don’t get. Try to avoid Februarys whenever possible.
- Steve Rubenstein

Worst Vegetable of the Year: The brussels sprout. This is also the worst vegetable of next year.
- Steve Rubenstein

Living in California adds ten years to a man’s life. And those extra ten years I’d like to spent in New York.
- Harry Ruby

In a crisis that forces a choice to be made among alternative courses of action, most people will choose the worst one possible.
- S. A. Rudin

My boyfriend and I broke up. He wanted to get married and I didn’t want him to.
- Rita Rudner

My husband and I are either going to buy a dog or have a child. We can’t decide whether to ruin our carpet or ruin our lives.
- Rita Rudner

The universe is made of stories, not atoms.
- Muriel Rukeyser

I never could believe that Providence had sent a few men into the world ready booted and spurred to ride, and millions ready saddled and bridled to be ridden.
- Richard Rumbold, on the scaffold

Don’t play President - you’re not. The Constitution provides for only one President. Don’t forget it and don’t be seen by others as not understanding that fact.
- Donald Rumsfeld

Don’t speak ill of your predecessors (or successors) - you did not walk in their shoes.
- Donald Rumsfeld

If someone with a rural accent says, "I don’t know anything about politics," zip up your pockets.
- Donald Rumsfeld

If you develop rules, never have more than ten.
- Donald Rumsfeld

If you try to please everybody, somebody is not going to like it.
- Donald Rumsfeld

Keep your sense of humor about your position.
- Donald Rumsfeld

Never say "The White House wants"- buildings don’t "want."
- Donald Rumsfeld

Read and listen for what is missing. Many advisors are quite capable of stating how to improve what has been proposed, or what’s wrong. Few seem capable of sensing what isn’t there.
- Donald Rumsfeld

When an idea is being pushed because it is "exciting," "new," or "innovative", beware. An exciting, new, innovative idea can also be foolish.
- Donald Rumsfeld

Where possible, preserve the President’s options- he will very likely need them.
- Donald Rumsfeld

With the press, it is safest to assume that there is no "off the record."
- Donald Rumsfeld

It takes everyone to make a happy day.
- Marcy Kay Rumsfeld

I long ago came to the conclusion that all life is six to five against.
- Damon Runyon

The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong- but that’s the way to bet.
- Damon Runyon

Nothing is ever done beautifullyu which is done in rivalship, nor nobly which is done in pride.
- Rushkin

It is only by labor that thought can be made healthy, and only by thought that labor can be made happy; and the two cannot be seperated with impunity.
- John Ruskin (1819-1900)

There is scarecely anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse, and sell a little more cheaply. The person who buys on price alone is this man’s lawful prey.
- John Ruskin (1819-1900)

What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), "Sceptical Essays", 1928

The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), "The Philosophy of Logical Atomism"

’Change’ is scientific, ’progress’ is ethical; change is indubitable, whereas progress is a matter of controversy.
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

...[I]t seems to be the fate of idealists to obtain what they have struggled for in a form which destroys their ideals.
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

All movements go too far.
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

Christ believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment.
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

Even in civilized mankind faint traces of monogamous instincts can be perceived.
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

Few people can be happy unless they hate someother person, nation or creed.
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

I’ve always thought respectable people scoundrels, and I look anxiously at my face every morning for signs of my becoming a scoundrel.
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

In America everybody is of the opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors, for, from the time of Jefferson onward, the doctrine that all men are equal applies only upwards, not downwards.
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

In all things it is a good idea to hang a question mark now and then on the things we have taken for granted.
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

Mankind has become so much one family that we cannot insure our own prosperity except by insuring that of everyone else. If you wish to be happy yourself, you must also resign yourself to seeing others also happy.
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do.
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

Mathematics gets its semblance of reality by never saying what it is talking about.
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

Mathematics, rightly viewed, posses not only truth, but supreme beauty -- a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture.
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education.
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

Most people would sooner die than think; in fact they do so.
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

Obscenity is what happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate.
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

Order, unity and continuity are human inventions just as truly as catalogues and encyclopedias.
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

Sin is geographical.
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists - that is why they invented hell.
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

There is much pleasure to be gained in useless knowledge.
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

There must be an ideal world, a sort of mathematician’s paradise where everything happens as it does in textbooks.
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

To teach men how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing philosophy can still do.
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

Whenever one finds oneself inclined to bitterness, it is a sign of emotional failure.
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn.
- David Russell

We live in a Newtonian world of Einsteinian physics ruled by Frankenstein logic.
- David Russell

If a thing cannot be fitted into something smaller than itself some dope will do it.
- Eric Frank Russell

The critical mass of any do-it-yourself explosive is never less than half a bucketful.
- Eric Frank Russell

Sanity calms, but madness is more interesting.
- John Russell

What IS a ’moderate Iranian’, anyway? Someone who takes hostages but doesn’t eat them?
- Mark Russell

Write-Protect Tab, n: A small sticker created to cover the unsightly notch carelessly left by disk manufacturers. The use of the tab creates an error message once in a while, but its aesthetic value far outweighs the momentary inconvenience.
- Robb Russon

Write-Protect Tab: A small sticker created to cover the unsightly notch carelessly left by disk manufacturers. The use of the tab creates an error message once in a while, but its aesthetic value far outweighs the momentary inconvenience.
- Robb Russon

All science is either Physics or stamp collecting
- Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937) in J. B. Birks "Rutherford at Manchester" (1962)

The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the ’social sciences’ is: some do, some don’t.
- Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937)

You should never bet against anything in science at odds of more than about 10-12 to 1.
- Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937)

Life always sucks. It’s just that sometimes that feels very good.
- Kevin Ryan

As if you could TELL time without injuring eternity.
- Matthew Ryan

However, never daunted, I will cope with adversity in my traditional manner ... sulking and nausea.
- Tom K. Ryan

I feel Clinton’s opposing the Vietnam War isn’t an issue, and I probably would have done the same. As far as Clinton supposedly cheating on his wife, what do people think he’s going to do? Be president of another country while he’s president of ours?
- Tom R., age 12, Woodstock, IL in the Chicago Tribune, 11/3/92.

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