It is right to be contented with what we have, but never with what we are.
Sir James Mackintosh (1765-1832) Scottish administrator, jurist, philosopher
(Attributed)
TV is passive; computers are active. TV is just a really, really good screensaver.
William "Bill" Machrone (1946-2016) American technology columnist, editor
PC Week
I find that doing the will of God leaves me with no time for disputing about His plans — I do not say for thinking about them.
Many politicians are in the habit of laying down as self-evident the proposition that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. This maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim! If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in slavery, they may indeed wait forever.
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859) English writer and politician
“John Milton,” Edinburgh Review (Aug 1825)
(Source)
Hampden, on the other hand, was for vigorous and decisive measures. When he drew the sword, as Clarendon has well aid, he threw away the scabbard. He had shown that he knew better than any public man of his time how to value and how to practice moderation. He knew that the essence of war is violence, and that moderation in war is imbecility.
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859) English writer and politician
“John Hampden,” Essays Contributed to the Edinburgh Review, Vol. 1 (1843)
(Source)
Review of Lord Nugent, Some Memorials of John Hampden, His Party, and His Times (1831).
I am a confirmed believer in blessings in disguise. I prefer them undisguised when I myself happen to be the person blessed; in fact I can hardly recognize a blessing in disguise except when it is bestowed upon someone else.
There is a major disaster when a person allows some success to become a stopping place rather than a way station on to a larger goal. It often happens that an early success is a
greater moral hazard than an early failure.Halford E. Luccock (1885-1960) American theologian
(Attributed)
Ingenious fools too clever to be wise, though brilliant at inventing the most ingenious reasons for their fatuous beliefs. But, tiresome as intellectuals can be, even they are probably much less menacing and pernicious to the world than anti-intellectuals.
[C]ommunication [can be] more difficult than we may think. We are all serving life sentences of solitary confinement within our bodies; like prisoners, we have, as it were, to tap in awkward code to our fellow men in their neighboring cells.
Many worthy people, and many good books, with no doubt the best intentions, … have represented a life of sin as a life of pleasure; they have pictured virtue as self-sacrifice, austerity as religion. Even in everyday life we meet with worthy people who seem to think that whatever is pleasant must be wrong, that the true spirit of religion is crabbed, sour, and gloomy; that the bright, sunny, radiant nature which surrounds us is an evil and not a blessing,
The bestialities unleashed in Bosnia, Rwanda, and Chechnya provide evidence, if such be needed, that barbarism is just below the integument in all human societies, whatever their purported moral values or avowed religious persuasions.
Bernard Lown (1921-2021) Lithuanian-American cardiologist, inventor, Nobel Prize Laureate
Technology Review (18 Aug 1995)
This imputation of inconsistency is one to which every sound politician and every honest thinker must sooner or later subject himself. The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinions.
James Russell Lowell (1819-1891) American diplomat, essayist, poet
“Abraham Lincoln” (1864), My Study Windows (1871)
(Source)
It’s good to have money and the things that money can buy, but it’s good, too, to check up once in a while and make sure you haven’t lost the things money can’t buy.
George Horace Lorimer (1867-1937) American journalist, author, magazine editor
Old Gorgon Graham: More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son, ch. 12 (1903)
(Source)
Mistakes are part of the dues one pays for a full life.
Sophia Loren (b. 1934) Italian actress [Sofia Costanza Brigida Villani Scicolone]
(Attributed)
I’m furious about the Women’s Liberationists. They keep getting up on soapboxes and proclaiming that women are brighter than men. That’s true, but it should be kept very quiet or it ruins the whole racket.
Anita Loos (1893-1981) American screenwriter, dramatist, author
London Observer (30 Dec. 1973)
Men of genius are often dull and inert in society, as a blazing meteor, when it descends to earth, is only a stone.
We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
The Laws of Nature are just, but terrible. There is no weak mercy in them. Cause and consequence are inseparable and inevitable. The elements have no forbearance. The fire burns, the water drowns, the air consumes, the earth buries. And perhaps it would be well for our race if the punishment of crimes against the Laws of Man were as inevitable as the punishment of crimes against the Laws of Nature — were Man as unerring in his judgments as Nature.
If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) American poet
“Table Talk,” Drift-Wood (1857)
(Source)
More discussion of this quotation here: If We Could Read the Secret History of Our Enemies, We Should Find in Each Man’s Life Sorrow and Suffering Enough To Disarm All Hostility – Quote Investigator.
Since everything in life is but an experience perfect in being what it is, having nothing to do with good or bad, acceptance or rejection, one may well burst out in laughter.
Long Chen Pa (fl. 14th C.) Tibetan Dzogchen master
(Attributed)
Don’t loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club, and if you don’t get it you will nonetheless get something that looks remarkably like it.
Jack London (1876-1916) American novelist
“Getting into Print,” The Editor Magazine (1903)
Often misquoted as "You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club." Reprinted in J. Reeve, Practical Authorship (1905).
If you don’t play to win, why bother to keep score?
Adolph Rupp (1901-1977) American college basketball coach
Comment (11 Jun 1958)
Rupp frequently returned to this phrase, usually in response to someone quoting to him from Grantland Rice's "Alumnus Football" (paraphrased, "It doesn't matter whether you win or lose, but how you play the game").
Variations:
Rupp wasn't necessarily the originator of this thought. Clair Bee, another US college basketball coach, said during the CCNY Point Shaving Scandal that ended his career, "If the kids aren't playing for keeps, why keep score?" (20 Feb 1951).
- "If it doesn't matter who wins or loses, then what in the hell is that scoreboard doing up there?"
- "If it doesn't matter, then why does every school have a scoreboard? If it doesn't matter who wins why do 25,000 football fans follow a team 400 miles and sit in eight inches of snow to watch the game?" [Source]
- "If winning isn't so important, why do they keep score?" [Source]
Sometimes attributed to Vince Lombardi.
More discussion of this quotation: The Big Apple: “If winning isn’t important, why keep score?”
Possibly if a true estimate were made of the morality and religions of the world, we should find that the far greater part of mankind received even those opinions and ceremonies they would die for, rather from the fashions of their countries and the constant practice of those about them than from any conviction of their reasons.