"Lucky is an excuse for losers."

-Nick Freitas ( From 'Pints with Aquinas' podcast. )

"Doing 90 percent of what is required is one of the biggest wastes because you have nothing to show for all your efforts. But doing 110 percent of what is expected is one of the smartest investments because it can pay off with a big reputation for just a little more effort."

-Thomas Sowell

"Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know."

-Michael Crichton ( 1942-2008 )

"An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy. “It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.” The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?” The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”"

-Anonymous ( Origin of the story can not be reliably sourced. )

"I do not believe that the solution to our problem is simply to elect the right people. The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing. Unless it is politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing, the right people will not do the right thing either, or it they try, they will shortly be out of office."

-Milton Friedman

"When I am weaker than you I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles"

-Frank Herbert

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."

-Eleanor Roosevelt ( Potentially apocryphal )

"Governments never learn. Only people learn."

-Milton Friedman

"A high IQ and low information is a dangerous combination."

-Thomas Sowell ( From an Interview with Peter Robinson concerning his book 'Social Justice Fallacies' )

"So, Lone Starr, now you see that evil will always triumph, because good is dumb."

-Dark Helmet ( From the movie Spaceballs )

"Intelligence is not a privilege, it's a gift. And you use it for the good of mankind."

-Otto Octavius ( From the movie Spiderman 2 )

"Heroes get remembered, but legends never die."

-Babe Ruth ( from the movie 'The Sandlot' )

"Luck often enough, will save a man, if his courage hold."

-Buliwyf ( From the movie ‘The 13th Warrior’ )

"When you vote, you are exercising political authority, you're using force. And force, my friends, is violence. The supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived."

-Jean Rasczak ( From the movie Starship Troopers )

"We didn’t crumble after 9/11. We didn’t falter after the Boston Marathon. But we’re America. Americans will never, ever stand down. We endure. We overcome. We own the finish line."

-Joe Biden

"Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment, because it will never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we've lived. After all Number One, we're only mortal."

-Jean-Luc Picard ( From the movie Star Trek : Generations )

"Individuals are the sum of their unique experiences, challenges, and accomplishments. What matters is not the barriers they face, but how they choose to confront them."

-Clarence Thomas ( From Supreme Court Opinion for No. 20–1199 )

"[K]nowledge is open-ended in the sense that no matter how much we know, this is as nothing compared with what we know that we do not know."

-Israel Kirzner ( from page 198 of Israel Kirzner’s 1984 paper “The Open-Endedness of Knowledge” )

"To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence."

-Mark Twain

"If you don't behave as you believe, you will end by believing as you behave."

-Fulton J. Sheen

"Actually, we have misdefined "hypocrisy." Hypocrisy is not the failure to practice what you preach but the failure to believe it. Hypocrisy is propaganda."

-Peter Kreeft

"When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years."

-Mark Twain

"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket."

-Eric Hoffer ( The Temper of Our Time )

"A hypocrite is not somebody who sometimes fails to live up to their standards. That's just being human. A hypocrite is somebody who tells everybody else not to do anything and thinks there is an exception for them."

-Matt Fradd ( From Pints with Acquinas Podcast )

"If Men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and the next place, oblige it to control itself."

-James Madison

"When a maniac is at the door, feuding brothers reconcile."

-Peter Kreeft

"One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane."

-Nikola Tesla ( "Radio Power Will Revolutionize the World" in Modern Mechanics and Inventions (July 1934) )

"No man is poor who has a Godly mother."

-Abraham Lincoln

"It's just human nature. Good things just happen, bad things are someone's fault."

-Seamus Coughlin

"... to say that the CIA and the KGB engage in similar practices is the equivalent of saying that the man who pushes an old lady into the path of a hurtling bus is not to be distinguished from the man who pushes an old lady out of the path of a hurtling bus: on the grounds that, after all, in both cases someone is pushing old ladies around."

-William F. Buckley, Jr.

"Associate yourself with Men of good Quality if you Esteem your own Reputation; for 'tis better to be alone than in bad Company."

-Anonymous ( From 'Rules of Civility & Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation', a school book of George Washington )

"If you don’t believe in the innate unreasonableness of human beings, just try raising children."

-Thomas Sowell ( From Barbarians inside the Gates and Other Controversial Essays )

"When you want to help people you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself you tell them what they want to hear."

-Thomas Sowell

"Nobody spends somebody else's money as carefully as he spends his own."

-Milton Friedman

"But it ain't about how hard ya hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward."

-Sylvester Stallone ( From the movie Rocky Balboa )

"You keep on playing and watch your money - you'll land on your feet."

-Del Paxton ( From the Movie 'That Thing You Do!' )

"It doesn’t matter how smart you are unless you stop and think."

-Thomas Sowell

"Some things are believed because they are demonstrably true. But many other things are believed simply because they have been asserted repeatedly—and repetition has been accepted as a substitute for evidence."

-Thomas Sowell

"I have never had much patience with…[those] always ready to explain why one cannot succeed. I have always had high regard for the man who could tell me how to succeed."

-Booker T. Washington

"Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds"

-Franklin D. Roosevelt

"If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn’t sit for a month."

-Theodore Roosevelt

"Any man worth his salt will stick up for what he believes right, but it takes a slightly better man to acknowledge instantly and without reservation that he is in error."

-Andrew Jackson

"It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit."

-Harry S. Truman

"Every accomplishment starts with the decision to try."

-John F. Kennedy

"History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of man."

-Blue Oyster Cult ( from the song 'Godzilla' )

"Nobody is equal to anybody. Even the same man is not equal to himself on different days."

-Thomas Sowell ( Is Reality Optional?: And Other Essays (ed. Hoover Inst Press, 1993) )

"The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups."

-Henry Hazlitt ( from the Book 'Economics in One Lesson' )

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

-Benjamin Franklin

"We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

-Martin Luther King Jr. ( Washington National Cathedral, March 31, 1968. )

"Sometimes I guess there just ain’t enough rocks."

-Forrest Gump ( From the movie Forrest Gump )

"[to God] I know, I know. We are Your chosen people. But, once in a while, can't You choose someone else?"

-Tevye ( from the film 'A Fiddler on the Roof' )

"In three words, I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life. It goes on."

-Robert Frost

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."

-Martin Luther King Jr. ( Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches )

"Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it."

-Henry David Thoreau

"I Can't Give You a Brain, But I Can Give You a Diploma."

-L. Frank Baum ( From 'The Wizard of Oz' )

"If you don’t like the weather in New England now, just wait a few minutes."

-Samuel Clemens ( AKA Mark Twain )

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work."

-Thomas Edison

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

-Theodore Roosevelt

"We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day."

-Edith Lovejoy Pierce

"I am a firm believer in the people. If Given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts, and beer."

-Abraham Lincoln ( Refrigerator Magnet )

"T’was the night before Christmas, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse."

-Clement Clarke Moore ( From the poem 'A Visit from St. Nicolas' )

"The fair is what comes to the county in July. Life isn't fair."

-Mike Pence ( Quoting his father )

"I don't like that man. I must get to know him better."

-Abraham Lincoln

"Growing old is mandatory, but growing up is optional!"

-Walt Disney

"You fall off the horse and you get back on."

-Bethany Hamilton

"If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else."

-Booker T. Washington

"I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him."

-Booker T. Washington

"The skyline of New York is a monument of a splendor that no pyramids or palaces will ever equal or approach."

-Ayn Rand

"Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world straight in the eye."

-Helen Keller

"Liberty and peace are living things. In each generation - if they are to be maintained -they must be guarded and vitalized anew."

-Franklin D. Roosevelt ( Address on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty, 1936 )

"Of all the characteristics needed for both a happy and morally decent life, none surpasses gratitude. Grateful people are happier, and grateful people are more morally decent."

-Dennis Prager

"He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose."

-Jim Elliott

"It's not the will to win that matters - everyone has that. It's the will to prepare to win that matters."

-Paul "Bear" Bryant

"Always stand on principle even if you stand alone."

-John Adams

"“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”"

-Ernest Hemingway ( The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway )

"The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best."

-Thomas Sowell ( Knowledge And Decisions by Thomas Sowell )

"You can't make old friends."

-Kenny Rogers ( From the song )

"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win."

-John F. Kennedy

"If we are not willing to fail we will never accomplish anything. All creative acts involve the risk of failure."

-Madeleine L'Engle

"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."

-Isaac Asimov ( Salvor Hardin, Foundation, by Isaac Asimov )

"There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs."

-Thomas Sowell ( A Conflict of Visions by Thomas Sowell )