“The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.”

H. L. Mencken
US editor (1880 – 1956)

Popularity: 61%

“Ask yourself: Have you been kind today? Make kindness your daily modus operandi and change your world.”

Annie Lennox

Popularity: 62%

“Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn’t have to do it himself.”

A. H. Weiler (1909 – 2002)

Popularity: 65%

“Most advances in science come when a person for one reason or another is forced to change fields.”

Peter Borden

Popularity: 100%

“Machines take me by surprise with great frequency.”

Alan Turing
English logician & mathematician (1912 – 1954)

Popularity: 85%

“The word ‘meaningful’ when used today is nearly always meaningless.”
Paul Johnson

Popularity: 78%

“The two most common elements in the universe are Hydrogen and stupidity.”

Harlan Ellison
US science fiction author & screenwriter (1934 – )

Popularity: 49%

“I have enjoyed greatly the second blooming that comes when you finish the life of the emotions and of personal relations; and suddenly find – at the age of fifty, say – that a whole new life has opened before you, filled with things you can think about, study, or read about…It is as if a fresh sap of ideas and thoughts was rising in you.”

Agatha Christie, An Autobiography, 1977
English mystery author (1890 – 1976)

Popularity: 53%

“Liberty without learning is always in peril; learning without liberty is always in vain.”

John F. Kennedy
35th president of US 1961-1963 (1917 – 1963)

Popularity: 50%

“There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by.”

Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

Popularity: 48%

“In archaeology you uncover the unknown. In diplomacy you cover the known.”

Thomas Pickering
US diplomat (1931 – )

Popularity: 83%

“Beware so long as you live, of judging people by appearances.”

La Fontaine

Popularity: 72%

“A camel is a horse designed by a committee”

Sir Alec Issigonis

Popularity: 47%

“We learn and grow and are transformed not so much by what we do but by why and how we do it.”

Sharon Salzberg, O Magazine, The Power of Intention, January 2004

Popularity: 61%

“People ask for criticism, but they only want praise.”

W. Somerset Maugham
English dramatist & novelist (1874 – 1965)

Popularity: 51%

“You don’t need to win every medal to be successful.”

Jason Fried, Signal Vs. Noise

Popularity: 49%

“A fact is a simple statement that everyone believes. It is innocent, unless found guilty. A hypothesis is a novel suggestion that no one wants to believe. It is guilty, until found effective.”

Edward Teller
US (Hungarian-born) physicist (1908 – 2003)

Popularity: 30%

“I have found that if you love life, life will love you back.”

Arthur Rubinstein
US (Polish-born) composer & pianist (1886 – 1982)

Popularity: 34%

“Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.”

Paul Valery, Tel Quel 2 (1943)
French critic & poet (1871 – 1945)

Popularity: 4%

“Humor is also a way of saying something serious.”

T. S. Eliot
British (US-born) critic, dramatist & poet (1888 – 1965)

Popularity: 51%

“One of the most obvious facts about grownups to a child is that they have forgotten what it is like to be a child.”

Randall Jarrell
US author & poet (1914 – 1965)

Popularity: 41%

“Creativity is not the finding of a thing, but the making something out of it after it is found.”

James Russell Lowell
US diplomat, essayist, & poet (1819 – 1891)

Popularity: 40%