If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can’t it get us out?
Will Rogers (1879-1935) American humorist
(Attributed)
MARTIN: I’m a parent. I haven’t got the luxury of principles.
Robert Rodat (b. 1953) American screenwriter
The Patriot (2000)
One man practicing sportsmanship is far better than fifty preaching it.
Knute Rockne (1888-1931) American football coach
(Attributed)
All along the untrodden paths of the future, I can see the footprints of an unseen hand.
Boyle Roche (1743-1807) Irish politician
Speech in the Irish Parliament
Good humor is a nice scream koan.
Spider Robinson (b. 1948) American-Canadian author
Callahan’s Legacy (1996)
As far as I can see, the biggest disadvantage to having a pregnant lady around the home is that it’s always your turn to get up.
Spider Robinson (b. 1948) American-Canadian author
Callahan’s Legacy (1996)
We should have been expecting it. You tangle with a foot-long Cockroach and live through it, naturally you have to expect a giant lizard with three tits to come along sooner or later.
Spider Robinson (b. 1948) American-Canadian author
Callahan’s Legacy (1996)
We are incredibly heedless in the formation of our beliefs, but find ourselves filled with an illicit passion for them when anyone proposes to rob us of their companionship.
James Harvey Robinson (1863-1936) American historian and educator
The Mind in the Making, Pt II, ch. 4, “Rationalizing” (1921)
Full text.
The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. 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.
Pat Robertson (1930-2023) American politician and televangelist
Fund-raising letter to Christian Coalition members in Iowa (1992-07)
The letter urged supporters to vote down Iowa's state Equal Rights Amendment (the referendum failed that November).
More discussion of this quotation:Frequently misattributed to his speech at the 1992 GOP Presidential Convention.
- Did Pat Robertson Say Feminism Encourages Women to "Kill Their Children"? | Snopes.com
- ROBERTSON LETTER ATTACKS FEMINISTS - The New York Times
- EQUAL RIGHTS INITIATIVE IN IOWA ATTACKED - The Washington Post
VILLAGE BOY 2: We’re ashamed to live here. Our fathers are cowards.
O’REILLY: Don’t you ever say that again about your fathers, because they are not cowards. You think I am brave because I carry a gun; well, your fathers are much braver because they carry responsibility, for you, your brothers, your sisters, and your mothers. And this responsibility is like a big rock that weighs a ton. It bends and it twists them until finally it buries them under the ground. And there’s nobody says they have to do this. They do it because they love you, and because they want to. I have never had this kind of courage. Running a farm, working like a mule every day with no guarantee anything will ever come of it. This is bravery.William Roberts (1913-1997) American screenwriter
The Magnificent Seven (1960)
CALVERA: If God hadn’t meant for them to be sheared, He wouldn’t have made them sheep.
William Roberts (1913-1997) American screenwriter
The Magnificent Seven (1960)
Destiny is as destiny does. If you believe you have no control, then you have no control.
Wess Roberts (b. 1946) American author, motivational speaker
(Attributed)
Suffering is not good for the soul, unless it teaches you to stop suffering.
Jane Roberts (1929-1984) American author
(Attributed)
Any man who selects a goal in life which can be fully achieved has already defined his own limitations.
Cavett Robert (1908-1997) American orator, lawyer
(Attributed)
We pay just as dearly for our triumphs as we do for our defeats. Go ahead and fail. But fail with wit, fail with grace, fail with style. A mediocre failure is as insufferable as a mediocre success. Embrace failure! Seek it out. Learn to love it. That may be the only way any of us will ever be free.
Tom Robbins (b. 1932) American novelist
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1976)
I didn’t claw my way to the top of the food chain just to eat leaves!
Michael Rivero (contemp.) American journalist, conspiracy theorist
(Attributed)
If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place.
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1963) German poet
Letters to a Young Poet, Letter 1 (17 Feb 1903)
trans. M. D. Herter Norton (1993)
For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1963) German poet
Letters to a Young Poet, Letter 7 (14 Mar 1904)
Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1963) German poet
Letters to a Young Poet, Letter 7 (14 Mar 1904)
The changes in your life aren’t always the ones you hoped for. But they can usually help you grow.
Pat Riley (b. 1945) American basketball coach
The Winner Within (1994)
If you are going to sin, sin against God, not the bureaucracy. God will forgive you but the bureaucracy won’t.
Hyman Rickover (1900-1986) US Navy Admiral
(Attributed)
Quoted in New York Times (3 Nov 1986).
Good ideas are not adopted automatically. They must be driven into practice with courageous patience.
Hyman Rickover (1900-1986) US Navy Admiral
(Attributed)
Courage is doing what you’re afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you’re scared.
Eddie Rickenbacker (1890-1973) American industrialist and aviator
(Attributed)
A timid person is frightened before a danger, a coward during the time, and a courageous person afterward.
Jean Paul Richter (1763-1825) German writer, art historian, philosopher, littérateur [Johann Paul Friedrich Richter; pseud. Jean Paul]
(Attributed)
(Source)
Quoted in Edward Parsons Day, Day's Collacon: an Encyclopaedia of Prose Quotations, "Danger" (1884), without citation.
Show me six lines written by the most honest man in the world, and I will find enough therein to hang him.
[Qu’on me donne six lignes de la main du plus honnête homme, j’y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre]
Cardinal Richelieu (1585-1642) French statesman and religious [Armand-Jean du Plessis]
Mirame (1641)
Funny how it always goes with love,
When you don’t look, you find.Tim Rice (b. 1944) British lyricist and author
“All Time High” (1983)
No matter what a man’s past may have been, his future is spotless.
John R. Rice (1895-1980) American evangelist, author
(Attributed)
If you have great talents, industry will improve them: if you have but moderate abilities, industry will supply their deficiency.
Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) British painter, critic
Speech to the Royal Academy, London (11 Dec 1769)
In the practice of art, as well as in morals, it is necessary to keep a watchful and jealous eye over ourselves; idleness, assuming the specious disguise of industry, will lull to sleep all suspicion of our want of an active exertion of strength. A provision of endless apparatus, a bustle of infinite enquiry and research, or even the mere mechanical labour of copying, may be employed, to evade and shuffle off real labour, — the real labour of thinking.
Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) British painter, critic
Speech to the Royal Academy, London (10 Dec 1784)
(Source)
Paraphrased over a long period of time (and still attributed to Reynolds) as: "There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking."
The lecture was later described as the Twelfth Discourse in a 1797 collection of Reynolds' works.
Often attributed to Thomas Edison. More information here.
But it’s a five o’clock world when the whistle blows,
No one owns a piece of my time.
And there’s a five o’clock me inside my clothes,
Thinkin’ that the world looks fine, yeah.Allen Reynolds (b. 1938) American music writer and producer
“Five O’clock World” (1965)
(as sung by the Vogues)
This is the devilish thing about foreign affairs: they are foreign and will not always conform to our whim.
James "Scotty" Reston (1909-1995) Scottish-American journalist and editor
New York Times (12 Jun 1968)
All politics is based on the indifference of the majority.
James "Scotty" Reston (1909-1995) Scottish-American journalist and editor
“New York: Rockefeller Comes Out of His Trance,” New York Times (12 Jun 1968)
(Source)
This is cited in multiple places to this 1968 op-ed, to which I don't have access. Reston also used the phrase in this 1972 op-ed.
Humor distorts nothing, and only false gods are laughed off their pedestals.
If I were to begin life again, I should want it as it was. I would only open my eyes a little more.
Jules Renard (1864-1910) French writer
Journal
Laziness: the habit of resting before fatigue sets in.
Jules Renard (1864-1910) French writer
Journal (May 1906) [tr. Bogan & Roget (1964)]
Also attributed to Mortimer Caplin.
Alt. trans.: "Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired."
Failure is not the only punishment for laziness; there is also the success of others.
Jules Renard (1864-1910) French writer
Journal (1898)
Look for the ridiculous in everything and you will find it.
Jules Renard (1864-1910) French writer
Journal (Feb 1890)
The absolute truth is the thing that makes people laugh.
Carl Reiner (1922-2020) American comedian, writer, producer
(Attributed)
He who seeks the truth must listen to his opponent.
Isaac Samuel Reggio (1784-1855) Austro-Italian Jewish scholar, rabbi
Torah and Philosophy
We do not accede to the suggestion that the constitutional protection for a free press applies only to the expression of ideas. The line between the informing and the entertaining is too elusive for the protection of that basic right. Everyone is familiar with instances of propaganda through fiction. What is one man’s amusement, teaches another’s doctrine.
Stanley Forman Reed (1884-1980) US Supreme Court Justice (1938-57)
Winters v. New York, 333 US 507, 510 (1948)
Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.
Ambrose Redmoon (1933-1996) American beatnik, writer, radical [b. James Neil Hollingworth; also Ambrose Redmon]
Gnosis, “No Peaceful Warriors!” (Fall 1991)
Note.
There is nowhere you can go and only be with people who are like you. Give it up.
Bernice Johnson Reagon (b. 1942) American song leader, composer, scholar, social activist
“Coalition Politics: Turning the Century,” presentation, West Coast Women’s Music Festival, Yosemite (1981)
(Source)
It is, in a way, an odd thing to honor those who died in defense of our country in wars far away. The imagination plays a trick. We see these soldiers in our mind as old and wise. We see them as something like the Founding Fathers, grave and gray-haired. But most of them were boys when they died, they gave up two lives — the one they were living and the one they would have lived. When they died, they gave up their chance to be husbands and fathers and grandfathers. They gave up their chance to be revered old men. They gave up everything for their county, for us. All we can do is remember.
Ronald Reagan (1911-2006) US President (1981-89), politician, actor
Remarks at Veteran’s Day ceremony, Arlington National Cemetery (11 Nov. 1985)
A jackass can kick a barn down, but it takes a carpenter to build one.
Sam Rayburn (1882-1961) American lawyer and politician
Remark before reporters (c. 1953)
Quoted in Dulaney and Phillips, Speak, Mister Speaker (1978)
A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history — with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila.
Mitch Ratcliffe (b. 1961) American technology journalist
Technology Review (Apr 1992)
Americans will put up with anything provided it doesn’t block traffic.
Dan Rather (b. 1931) American broadcast journalist
(Attributed)
The man who wastes today lamenting yesterday will waste tomorrow lamenting today.
Philip M. Raskin (1878-1944) American poet
(Attributed)
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.
Jef Raskin (1943-2005) American computer scientist, writer
“Human Interface Design: Jef Raskin Interview,” Doctor Dobb’s Journal (May 1986)
(Source)
You take people as far as they will go, not as far as you would like them to go.
Jeannette Rankin (1880-1973) American suffragist, politician
(1968)
You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.
Jeannette Rankin (1880-1973) American suffragist, politician
(Attributed)
We did not labor in suffrage just to bring the vote to women, but to allow women to express their opinions and become effective in government. Men and women are like right and left hands; it doesn’t make sense not to use both.
Jeannette Rankin (1880-1973) American suffragist, politician
(Attributed)
So you think that money is the root of all evil? Money is a tool of exchange, which can’t exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?
Ayn Rand (1905-1982) Russian-American writer, philosopher
Atlas Shrugged (Francisco d’Anconia) (1957)
There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist.
Ayn Rand (1905-1982) Russian-American writer, philosopher
The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution (1993)
Every man builds his world in his own image. He has the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice.
Ayn Rand (1905-1982) Russian-American writer, philosopher
Atlas Shrugged (1957)