Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.
—John Kenneth Galbraith (American Economist)
The happiness of the wicked passes away like a torrent.
—Jean Racine (French Dramatist)
It is better to be happy for a moment and be burned up with beauty than to live a long time and be bored all the while.
—Don Marquis (American Humorist, Journalist)
The good need fear no law; it is his safety, and the bad man’s awe.
—Philip Massinger (English Playwright)
Some theories are good for nothing except to be argued about.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (German Philosopher, Physicist)
The degree of one’s emotion varies inversely with one’s knowledge of the facts—the less you know the hotter you get.
—Bertrand A. Russell (British Philosopher, Mathematician)
Historians give us the extraordinary events, and omit just what we want, the everyday life of each particular time and country.
—Richard Whately (English Philosopher, Theologian)
What impresses men is not mind, but the result of mind.
—Walter Bagehot (English Economist, Journalist)
The more sympathy you give, the less you need.
—Malcolm S. Forbes (American Publisher)
No man ever made an ill figure who understood his own talents, nor a good one, who mistook them.
—Jonathan Swift (Irish Satirist)
There is no mind, but various states of mind. The highest state embraces them all.
—Hans Taeger
It is loneliness that makes the loudest noise. This is as true of men as of dogs.
—Eric Hoffer (American Philosopher)
The laws of probability, so true in general, so fallacious in particular.
—Edward Gibbon (English Historian)