Admirer: “Herr Mozart, I'm thinking of writing symphonies. Can you give me any suggestions as to how to get started?”
Mozart: “A symphony is a very complex musical form. Perhaps you should begin with some simple Lieder and work your way up to a symphony.”
Admirer: “But Herr Mozart, you were writing symphonies when you were 8 years old.”
Mozart: “Yes, but I never asked anybody how.”

Wolfgang-Amadeus Mozart

Is sex dirty? Only when it's being done right.

Woody Allen, “Everything you Always Wanted to Know about Sex, but were Afraid to Ask”

You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.

Jeannette Rankin (first woman Member of Congress)

We Aquarians don't believe in astrology.

unknown

Fuller: “Do I understand the speaker thanks God for his ignorance?”
Audience member: “Well, yes, if you want to put it that way.”
Fuller: “Then you have a great deal to be thankful for.”

Chief Justice Melville Fuller, after the man ranted against university education and thanked God that he had never been corrupted by going to college

Life doesn't imitate art, it imitates bad television.

Woody Allen

If your plan is for one year plant rice. If your plan is for ten years plant trees. If your plan is for one hundred years educate children.

Confucius

Yes, I will always be sceptical of things that are not likely to be true. Now, Sophia Loren, that's a different matter.

James Randi

Often in error, but never in doubt.

Lev Landau

I wanted to be a painter, and I became Picasso.

Pablo Picasso

Education breeds confidence. Confidence breeds hope. Hope breeds peace.

Confucius

No one can think a thought for me in the way that no one can don my hat for me.

Wittgenstein

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars

Oscar Wilde

A woman is like a tea bag; you never know how strong it is until it's in hot water.

Eleanor Roosevelt

Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.

Mark Twain

The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it.

William Gibson

Generally speaking, books don't cause much harm. Except when you read them, that is. Then they cause all kinds of problems.

Pseudonymous Bosch, “The Name of This Book Is Secret”

I did not become a father because I am fond of children.

Thales of Milete

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.

Sir Winston Churchill

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.

Bertrand Russell

The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.

Mark Twain

Good artists copy, great artists steal.

Pablo Picasso

Anonymous singer: “You know, my dear, I insured my voice for fifty thousand dollars.”
Hopkins: “That's wonderful. And what did you do with the money?”

Miriam Hopkins

Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.

Dwight Eisenhower

Don't be so humble — you are not that great.

Golda Meir, to a visiting diplomat