Words of Wisdom

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My favorite quotes are listed in this page, alphabetically ordered by their speaker. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

"For the sensation of pleasure belongs to the soul, and each man derives pleasure from what he is said to love: a lover of horses from horses, a lover of the theater from plays, and in the same way a lover of justice from just acts, and a lover of virtue in general from virtuous acts. In most men, pleasant acts conflict with one another because they are not pleasant by nature, but men who love what is noble derive pleasure from what is naturally pleasant. Actions which conform to virtue are naturally pleasant, and as a result, such actions are not only pleasant for those who love the noble but also pleasant in themselves. The life of such men has no further need of pleasure as an added attraction, but it contains pleasure within itself. We may even go so far as to state that the man who does not enjoy performing noble actions is not a good man at all. Nobody would call a man just who does not enjoy acting justly, nor generous who does not enjoy generous actions, and so on. If this is true, actions performed in conformity with virtue are in themselves pleasant." - from Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle

"Finally, we want all and everyone to be advised to reflect on the true ends of knowledge: not to seek it for amusement or for dispute, or to look down on others, or for profit or for fame or for power or any such inferior ends, but for the uses and benefits of life, and to improve and conduct it in charity. For the angels fell because of an appetite for power; and men fell because of an appetite for knowledge; but charity knows no bounds; and has never brought angel or man into danger." - from Instauratio magna (The Great Renewal) by Francis Bacon

"Knowing and doing are two different things." - Baloo in "TaleSpin"

"I've got a theory that if you give 100 percent all of the time, somehow things will work out in the end." - Larry Bird

"It means that you make your own fun." - Gary Chaar

"Why do a contest unless you believe you can win the whole thing?" - Valentina Chepiga

"Hey, that's just my opinion though, and I'm as entitled to it as you are to yours, even if yours is wrong and mine is right." - The Chicks Suck Guy

"When we gaze upward to the sky and contemplate the heavenly bodies, what can be so obvious and so manifest as that there must exist some power possessing transcendent intelligence by whom these things are ruled? Were it not so, how comes it that the words of Ennius carry conviction to all readers--

'Behold this dazzling vault of heaven, which all mankind as Jove invoke',

ay, and not only as Jove but as sovereign of the world, ruling all things with his nod, and as Ennius likewise says--

"A symptom of our age is the macho litany, uttered by both men and women, which proclaims that 'You can do anything you want to do.' Thanks to modern science, they're right--except for one small detail: Science can never improve our wisdom. In fact, it appears that the more power we have over our circumstances, the less willing we are to use it wisely." - Ronnie Coleman

"A gentleman in his dealings with the world has neither enmities nor affections; but wherever he sees Right he ranges himself besides it." - Confucius

"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination are omnipotent. The slogan press on has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race. No person was ever honored for what he received. Honor has been the reward for what he gave." - Calvin Coolidge

"It accords what what we know of the law impressed on matter by the Creator, that the creation and extinction of forms, like the birth and death of individuals should be the effect of secondary means. It is derogatory that the Creator of countless systems of worlds should have created each of the myriads of creeping parasites and worms which have swarmed each day of life on land and water on the globe." - Charles Darwin

"Just try, my dear. Courage is nothing more than cussed stubbornness." - Lamar Dodd

"Remember it? I still don't understand it! People seemed to like that one. People are dumb. They like anything." - from "Milk and Cheese #666" by Evan Dorkin

"There is no end, only addition." - T.S. Eliot

"It also follows that 'non-scientific' procedures cannot be pushed aside by argument. To say: 'the procedure you used is non-scientific, therefore we cannot trust your results and cannot give you money for research' assumes that 'science' is successful and that it is successful because it uses uniform procedures. The first part of the assertion ('science is always successful') is not true, if by 'science' we mean things done by scientists--there are lots of failures also. The second part--that successes are due to uniform procedures--is not true because there are no such procedures. Scientists are like architects who build buildings of different sizes and different shapes and who can be judged only after the event, i.e. only after they have finished their structure. It may stand up, it may fall down--nobody knows." - from Against Method by Paul Feyerabend

"Let's face it. Peanut butter and jelly is great. So is pizza. Mixing them together, well, is not recommended." - Darcy Fournier

"If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest." - Benjamin Franklin

"We dance around in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows." - "The Secret Sits" by Robert Frost

"Be the change you wish to see in the world." - Mohandas K. Gandhi

"I've always been a gym rat, the kind of bodybuilder who loves spending hours on end pumping iron. It's no big deal being in the gym all day, every day, because I enjoy hanging out with people who are willing to work hard for success." - Vickie Gates

"Common sense and truth doen't need
Either art or much display;
Why hunt high-sounding words indeed,
If you have something true to say?" - from Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe NEW!

"You have not done enough, you have never done enough, as long as it is still possible that you have something of value to contribute." - Dag Hammarskjold

"I never really dreamed of being champ but as I would go through life, I would think, if I ever get a chance at the title, I'm going to win that fight!" - Tommy Harrison

"And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst, They say unto him, 'Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou?' This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not. So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, 'Let him who is without sin cast the first stone at her'. And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground. And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. When Jesus had lifted up himself and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, 'Woman, where are those thine accusers? Hath no man condemned thee? She said, 'No man, Lord.' And Jesus said unto her, 'Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.' " - [The Gospel According To Saint] John 8:3-11

"Some men see things as they are, and say why, I dream of things that never were, and say why not." - Robert F. Kennedy

"Why can't we all just get along?" - Rodney King

"If there's no fun in it, there's no future in it." - Chris Laidlaw

"So [Jean-Marc-Gaspard] Itard came to see a great institution for the Deaf for what it really is, a society with a language of its own. He even imagined what society would have been like if it had developed so that men expressed their ideas and emotions by moving their limbs and faces rather than their tongues. In such a society, vision would be the main source of learning, and hearing and Deaf people would be perfectly on a par. Writing might have been invented sooner, he decided, for it is easier to imagine representing signs than drawing sounds. Once this was accomplished, mankind would have embarked just as promptly on the glorious career that written language made possible. Suppose everyone in that society were Deaf; apart from lacking a few ideas concerning sound, people there would be what speech and hearing have made them in our society. Man realizes his potentialities by dint of his genius, not by the suppleness of his organs." - from When the Mind Hears by Harlan Lane

"History as a whole, and the history of revolutions in particular, is always richer in content, more varied, more multiform, more lively and ingenious than is imagined by even the best parties, the most conscious vanguards of the most advanced classes." - from "Left-Wing Communism -- An Infantile Disorder" by Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov (Lenin)

"Therefore, exercise must be a lifelong health habit--like brushing your teeth or taking a shower--that can and should be sustained throughout life." - Benjamin Levin

"You know what I think that light was? It was payback time to the heroes of this country who made so many sacrifices while I was sucking up the good life and whining when it wasn't perfect. I have Marine Corps flags hanging in my gym, military flags, an American flag, and when I've needed strength, I've looked at those flags and thought, These soldiers have to fight in miserable places, eat out of cans, sleep outside, not bathing, just totally surviving, while I have access to all this equipment and can do anything I want in complete comfort. Something just clicked in my head, as if I owed those guys every breath I took, so that putting myself through this with more effort and accomplishment than I've ever known in my life was redemption, man." - Kevin Levrone

"We take action. We're not like those poor slobs that talk incessantly about how they're going to get lean or lose that belly or get a new job or take lessons and become the world's greatest conga dancer. That's great. Lose that belly, or don't lose that belly. Practice for thousands of hours until you become the best in the world at inking miniature floral patterns on rolls of toilet paper, or don't. We really don't care either way. But once in awhile, just do what the hell you say you're going to do." - T.C. "Atomic Dog" Luoma

"My work may not be great literature but people do enjoy it." - Martial

"Great news. I just found out that a girl that I like is a lesbian. Two for the price of one!" - Guillaume Mauffrey

"For my part I find no argument so compelling as this to show that the universe moves in obedience to a divine power and is indeed the manifestation of God, and did not come together at the dictation of chance. Yet this is what he would have us believe who first built the walls of the heavens from minute atoms and into these resolved them again, he held that from these atoms are formed the seas, the lands, and the stars in the sky, and the air by which in its vast space worlds are created and dissolved; and that all matter returns to its first origins and changes the shape of things. Who could believe that such massive structures have been created from tiny atoms without the operation of a divine will, and that the universe is the creature of a blind compact? If chance gave such a world to us, chance itself would govern it. Then why do we see the stars arise in regular succession and duly perform as at the world of command their appointed courses, none hurrying ahead, none left behind?" - from Astronomica (Astronomy) by Manilius

"It is wrong to presume that one has attained a complete understanding of a form just because he or she has finished learning the form. One must continue studying and analyzing the form because there is always more that can be learned. Furthermore, it is wrong to feel that one can do a form perfectly just because he or she has practiced long and hard. Perfection, whether in understanding or execution, is an ideal that can never be achieved but must always be pursued." - from Wushu Basic Training by Bow Sim Mark

"It's all so simple, but because this is the scientific age, people try to make everything as scientifically complicated as they can, just so they can sound smart. What cracks me up is that they'd rather read something on the Internet or listen to some pointy-headed geek in a white lab coat who's never been in a gym in his life tell them how to train, but where was the Internet and the pointy-headed geek when Sergio Oliva and Arnold Schwarzenegger were around? Those guys were freaks back then, but there was little written about training, no information superhighway and few bodybuilding instruction books out there. They just knew that, in order to be built the way they wanted to be built, they had to do crazy things to themselves, and one of those crazy things was to eat trainloads of red meat each day." - Mike Matarazzo

"I think it's because she's a teacher--always looking for ways to make something better than it is." - from Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

"Dying Metaphors
A newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image, while on the other hand a metaphor which is technically 'dead' (e.g., iron resolution) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally be used without loss of vividness. But in between these two classes there is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves. Examples are: Ring the changes on, take up the cudgels for, toe the line, ride roughshod over, stand shoulder to shoulder with, play into the hands of, no axe to grind, grist to the mill, fishing in troubled waters, rift within the lute, on the order of the day, Achilles' heel, swan song, hotbed. Many of these are used without knowledge of their meaning (what is a 'rift,' for instance?), and incompatible metaphors are frequently mixed, a sure sign that the writer is not interested in what he is saying. Some metaphors now current have been twisted out of their original meaning without those who use them even being aware of the fact. For example, toe the line is sometimes written tow the line. Another example is the hammer and the anvil, now always used with the implication that the anvil gets the worst of it. In real life it is always the anvil that breaks the hammer, never the other way about: A writer who stopped to think what he was saying would be aware of this, and would avoid perverting the original phrase." - from "Politics and the English Language" by George Orwell

"After you've trained for 10 or 12 years, you realize that no one knows your body better than you. It's good to consider advice, but when it comes right down to it, no one knows what's best for you but you. Listen to yourself, and rely on your own instincts." - Lee Priest

"All of us have two educations: one which we receive from others; another, and the most valuable, which we give ourselves." - John Randolph

"Words, Words, Words--they do not reach me." - from All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

"Why shouldn't art be pretty? There are enough unpleasant things in the world." - Pierre-Auguste Renior

"There's no better thing than working with something that you really own. I can have a beautiful racing car and somebody can steal it, but your body--your body is the only thing you really own." - Tony Roma

"I also hate squats, but I keep doing them because they're king. I do love the results." - Milos Sarcev

"The world as we know it is dominated by people who hear. And one can see merely by looking at the headlines in the papers that it is in a hell of a mess. There is hardly a thing to indicate that hearing people are doing a great job in managing the world we live in. In fact, there is a great deal in the papers that leads one to think that one might, if he had a choice, do better than to choose this world. It is safe to say that all the wars in the world were started by people who hear: 99 and 11/100ths of all the crimes are committed by people who hear; and the same is true of all the vehicular homicides. Truly, there is little to support the desirability of living in the world of the hearing.

If I have not provided sufficient indictments of hearing people, let me add the crowning touch--all the silly TV commercials are also written by people who hear!" - Frederick C. Schreiber

"There are some mornings when I cry and cry and mourn for myself. Some mornings, I'm so angry and bitter. But it doesn't last too long. Then I get up and say, 'I want to live...'" - Morrie Schwartz

"Doing bodybuilding to get in shape and to keep your body fit and strong makes sense. After all, if this method can produce Mr. Olympia winners, it can certainly do wonders for the majority of people whose goals are so much more modest. And if you're going to do something, why not do it in the best way possible. To people who say to me, 'I want to get fit and firm up, but don't want to get too big,' I say in reply, 'Do you go to your tennis pro and say you want to learn tennis but don't want to play well enough to qualify for Wimbledon? Would you tell a golf pro, 'Teach me golf, but don't make me as good as Tiger Woods?'

The fact is, most people don't have the genetics, the time, or the energy to create really massive, bodybuilding-type physiques. So if you are bringing less to the table, isn't it important to use the most efficient and effective means of developing your body possible? After all, who wants to waste time and effort exercising without results?" - from The New Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding by Arnold Schwarzenegger (with Bill Dobbins)

"Catholics, who are still trying to breed their way into some kind of unspoken population record book, are against non-rhythm birth control of any type. Of course, they also think there's a robed man on a cloud that gives a fuck when they stop eating pizza for 40 days of Lent." - Sean Reilly

"Death is a release from all suffering, a boundary beyond which our ills cannot pass--it restores us to that peaceful state in which we lay before we were born. If anyone pities the dead, he must also pity those who have not been born." - from Ad Marciam (To Marcia) by Seneca

"This above all--to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man." - from Hamlet by William Shakespeare

"It's funny because it's true." - Homer Simpson in "The Simpsons"

"Dying is no big deal. Living is the trick." - Red Smith

"If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" - Alexander Solzhenitsyn

"It was all part of football. I played rough. I won't deny it. I went out there to hit somebody. Hard! If the way I played hurt somebody's feelings, too bad." - Ed Sprinkle

"If a man loves the labor of his trade, apart from any question of success or fame, the gods have called him." - Robert Louis Stevenson

"I'm so in awe of gymnasts strength and skills that it bothers me to be picking apart the performance. 'Gee, after flipping three time through the air he stumbled when he landed? He sucks. That's gonna cost a tenth of a point.'" - John Halcyon Styn

"Sight can the signs of thought supply,
And with a look I hear." - George M. Teegarden

"All this happiness is freaking me out. One day all my dreams will come true. T-t-then what?" - Chris Titus in "Titus"

"'A time may come soon,' said he, 'when none will return. Then there will be need of valour without renown, for none shall remember the deeds that are done in the last defence of your homes. Yet the deeds will not be less valiant because they are unpraised.'" - from The Return of the King (third of three books of The Lord of the Rings) by J.R.R. Tolkien

"Never underestimate the heart of a champion." - Rudy Tomjanovich

"Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter." - Mark Twain

"Certain groups feel that the only way to heal the body is through prayer, ignoring the fact that God gave us the rationale and reason to create medicine. Instead, they let their children die of disease, and when they die, they say God decided it was their time. No He didn't, you dumb asses. He gave you antibiotics and vaccinations. Of course, it's obvious you don't use what God gave you, as you don't exercise your brains, either." - Chris Vanette

"Life is a perfect thing, but it's what people do with it that makes it meaningless." - Sergeant Major Williams (with thanks to Sammy Gray)

"We won. Basically every computer on Earth is now a Mac." - Steve Wozniak

"Writing is thinking on paper. Anyone who thinks clearly can write clearly, about anything at all." - from On Writing Well by William Zinsser

More will be added as soon as I find them. If you want to, send anything that I might like to me. Thanks!

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This page was created in December 31, 2000, and it was updated in July 23, 2002.

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