Selected Quotes

"Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country. "

--Washington D.C. Mayor Marion Barry

"This is not only not right, it's not even wrong! Das ist nicht nur nicht richtig, es ist nicht einmal falsch! "

--Wolfgang Pauli

"What you said was so confused that one could not tell whether it was nonsense or not. "

--Wolfgang Pauli

"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it. "

--Groucho Marx

"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it "

--Groucho Marx

"There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are. "

--W. Somerset Maugham

"Only a mediocre person is always at his best. "

--W. Somerset Maugham

"Love is what happens to men and women who don‘t know each other. "

--W. Somerset Maugham

"The great tragedy of life is not that men perish, but that they cease to love. "

--W. Somerset Maugham

"Prediction is very difficult, especially if it‘s about the future. "

--Anon, Origin unknown to me. Has been attributed to: Niels Bohr, Samuel Goldwyn, K. K. Steincke, Robert Storm Petersen, Yogi Berra, Mark Twain, Nostradamus and doubtless others

"I try never to write more clearly than I am able to think. "

--Niels Bohr

"Prediction is very difficult, especially if it‘s about the future. "

--Niels Bohr

"Some things have to be believed to be seen. "

--Ralph Hodgson

"To carry Coals to Newcastle, that is to do what was done before; or to busy one's self in a needless imployment "

--Thomas Fuller, The history of the worthies of England, 1661

"To carry Coals to Newcastle, that is to do what was done before; or to busy one‘s self in a needless imployment "

--Thomas Fuller, The history of the worthies of England, 1661

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth. "

--Umberto Eco

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth. "

--Umberto Eco

"He said 'You think so?', in such a manner as to imply he didn't. "

--Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum

"Poetry doesn't belong to those who write it, but to those who need it. "

--Mario Ruoppola (from Il Postino)

"Poetry belongs to those who need it. "

--Mario Ruoppola (from Il Postino)

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye "

--Miss Piggy

""F*** U" "

--Vice President Dick Cheney, eloquent retort on the US Senate floor when asked about favoring his former employer

"You know, Paul, Reagan proved deficits don‘t matter. "