Statistics

He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts - for support rather than for illumination.
- Andrew Lang

Information is just signs and numbers, while knowledge involves their meaning. What we want is knowledge, but what we get is information.
- Heinz R. Pagels

I gather, young man, that you wish to be a Member of Parliament. The first lesson that you must learn is, when I call for statistics about the rate of infant mortality, what I want is proof that fewer babies died when I was Prime Minister than when anyone else was Prime Minister. That is a political statistic.
- Winston Churchill, 1874 - 1965

What culture lacks is the taste for anonymous, innumerable germination. Culture is smitten with counting and measuring; it feels out of place and uncomfortable with the innumerable; its efforts tend, on the contrary, to limit the numbers in all domains; it tries to count on its fingers.
- Jean Dubuffet, 1901 - 1985

There are two kinds of statistics, the kind you look up and the kind you make up.
- Rex Todhunter Stout, 1886 - 1975

Funny Marriage Quotes

Itz a friday evening.. so lighten up, njoy ;-)


Every man should get married some time; after all, happiness is not the only thing in life!!
--Anonymous

Bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that some men should be happier than others.
--Oscar Wilde

Don't marry for money; you can borrow it cheaper.
--Scottish Proverb

I don't worry about terrorism. I was married for two years.
--Sam Kinison

A psychiatrist is a person who will give you expensive answers that your wife will give you for free.
--Anonymous

Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn't, they'd be married too.
--H. L. Mencken

Men have a better time than women; for one thing, they marry later;for another thing, they die earlier.
--H. L. Mencken

"A man without a woman is like a fish without a bicycle."
- U2

Marriage is a three-ring circus:
engagement ring , wedding ring, suffering

When a newly married couple smiles, everyone knows why. When a ten-year married couple smiles, everyone wonders why.

Love is blind but marriage is an eye-opener.

When a man opens the door of his car for his wife, you can be sure of one thing: either the car is new or the wife.

Badd Teddy recently explained to me why he refuses to get to married. He says "the wedding rings look like minature handcuffs....."
--Anonymous

If your dog is barking at the back door and your wife yelling at the frontdoor, who do you let in first? The Dog of course...at least he'll shut up after u let him in!
--Anonymous

William Shakespeare

A surfeit of the sweetest things
the deepest loathing to the stomach brings.

Brevity is the soul of wit.

Everything that grows holds in perfection but a moment.

Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice.

Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot that it do singe yourself.

It is one thing to be tempted, another thing to fall.

Let them obey that know not how to rule.

Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds.

Niether a borrower nor a lender be.

Suit the action to the word, word to action.

Tempt not a desperate man.

There's small choice in rotten apples.
All from - William Shakespeare, 1564 - 1616

About: William Shakespeare is presumed to have been born at Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire, England on this day in 1564, and is known to have died on 23 Apr in 1616. In between, he wrote and played in a number of plays, most of which are still produced today, and is also known for a good bit of poetry. Along the way, he introduced more words into the English language than anyone else. His works have been translated into more languages than any other English author, and he is the most quoted author of all time. These are a dozen short bits of advice from the Bard of Avon.

J. Robert Oppenheimer

This is a world in which each of us, knowing his limitations, knowing the evils of superficiality and the terrors of fatigue, will have to cling to what is close to him, to what he knows, to what he can do, to his friends and his tradition and his love, lest he be dissolved in a universal confusion and know nothing and love nothing.

There must be no barriers for freedom of inquiry. There is no place for dogma in science. The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any asssertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors.

We knew the world could not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita: "I am became Death, the destroyers of worlds." I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.

As long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost and science can never regress.

The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true.
- All from J. Robert Oppenheimer, 1904 - 1967

About: Julius Robert Oppenheimer was born at New York City on 22 Apr in 1904. In school he took the math and science classes befitting his early genius, but he really thrived on languages. He was known to learn a language just to read a single book in the original language, and he once accepted a speaking assignment in the Netherlands that allowed only six weeks to learn the language before his presentation. He graduated from Harvard, but language was no barrier to getting his PhD in Germany before taking teaching positions at Berkeley and Cal Tech. He was tapped to head the Manhattan Project to build the first US atomic bombs, but like many of the brilliant characters involved, he chose to examine the ethics of creating such weapons. In the anti-communist furor of the early fifties, Oppenheimer was stripped of his security clearance, which ended his influence on science policy.

Elizabeth II

The upward course of a nation's history is due in the long run to the soundness of heart of its average men and women.

It's all to do with the training: you can do a lot if you're properly trained.

Let us not take ourselves too seriously. None of us has a monopoly on wisdom.

In remembering the appalling suffering of war on both sides, we recognise how precious is the peace we have built in Europe since 1945.

True patriotism doesn't exclude an understanding of the patriotism of others.

Like all the best families, we have our share of eccentricities, of impetuous and wayward youngsters, and of family disagreements.
- All from Elizabeth II

About: Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor was born at Mayfair, London on 21 Apr in 1926, the first daughter of Prince Albert, Duke of York and the Duchess of York, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon. Ten years later, her father became King George VI and she became heir to the throne. At age 16 she insisted on joining the war effort and was trained to drive and repair trucks. At the death of her father in February 1952 she became Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith, and Supreme Governor of the Church of England. She is now queen of sixteen nations with 128 million subjects. Monarchy is an absurd anachronism, but Elizabeth has been capable, hard working, and a credit to her throne and her nation. Long Live the Queen!

Television

If television encouraged us to work as much as it encourages us to do everything else, we could better afford to buy more of everything it advertises.
- Cullen Hightower

Television: A medium. So called because it is neither rare nor well done.
- Ernie Kovacs

I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set I go into the other room and read a book.
- Julius Henry "Groucho" Marx, 1890 - 1977

All television is educational television. The question is: what is it teaching?
- Nicholas Johnson

Why should people go out and pay money to see bad films when they can stay at home and see bad television for nothing?
- Samuel Goldwyn, 1882 - 1974

Seeing a murder on television can help work off one's antagonisms. And if you haven't any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some.
- Alfred Hitchcock, 1899 - 1980

Earthquakes

It takes an earthquake to remind us that we walk on the crust of an unfinished planet.
- Charles Kuralt, 1934 - 1997

There is something among men more capable of shaking despotic power than lightning, whirlwind, or earthquake; that is, the threatened indignation of the whole civilized world.
- Daniel Webster, 1782 - 1852

Life is at its best when it's shaken and stirred.
- F. Paul Facult

An earthquake achieves what the law promises but does not in practice maintain - the equality of all men.
- Ignazio Silone

You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.
- Jeannette Rankin, 1880 - 1973

Which would you rather have, a bursting planet or an earthquake here and there?
- John Joseph Lynch, SJ

Absence

It takes time for the absent to assume their true shape in our thoughts. After death they take on a firmer outline and then cease to change.
- Sidonie Gabrielle Claudine Colette, 1873 - 1954

Our hours in love have wings; in absence, crutches.
- Colley Cibber, 1671 - 1757

In the absence of touching and being touched, people of all ages can sicken and grow touch starved.
- Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of The Senses

Absence abates a moderate passion and intensifies a great one - as the wind blows out a candle but fans fire into flame.
- François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims

The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.
- Henry Alfred Kissinger

Absence of proof is not proof of absence.
- John Michael Crichton

Anatole France

An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't.

Chance is perhaps the pseudonym of God when he does not wish to sign his work.

It is by acts and not by ideas that people live.

Never lend books, for no one ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are books that other folk have lent to me.

Of all the ways of defining man, the worst is the one which makes him out to be a rational animal.
If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.
- All from Anatole France, 1844 - 1924

About: Jacques Anatole François Thibault was born at Paris on 16 Apr in 1844. The son of a bookseller, he learned to love reading early but found school difficult and failed his baccalaureate exams several times before getting his degree. His career centered around books, assisting his father in the store, editing, writing a little poetry, serving as librarian to the French senate, spent a little time in the army, and was a literary critic. He wrote a weekly column, stories, and his first novel was published in 1881 under the name Anatole France. His literary output had significant impact, as demonstrated when the Roman church listed him in the Index of Forbidden Works in 1920, and the Nobel Committee awarded him the prize for literature the next year.

Leonardo da Vinci

Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.

Iron rusts from disuse; water loses its purity from stagnation ... even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.

Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.

You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure, what you do not understand.

Stop sometimes and look into the stains of walls, or ashes of a fire, or clouds, or mud or like places - you may find marvelous ideas.

Art is never finished, only abandoned.
- All from Leonardo da Vinci, 1452 - 1519

About: Leonardo da Vinci was born at Anchiano, Italy on 15 Apr in 1452, the illegitimate son of Ser piero da Vinci. He was apprenticed to the artist Andrea del Verrocchio, but soon developed his own style which became the High Renaissance standard when Michaelangelo and Raphael adopted it twenty years later. His primary work was art, but his imaginative and inventive mind let him serve, at various times, as an inventor, scientist, engineer, architect, painter, sculptor, musician, mathematician, anatomist, astronomer, geologists, biologist, and philosopher. He wrote the first textbook of human anatomy and was the first to comprehend that the light of the moon was reflected sunlight. He flitted from one thought to another with great speed, finishing very little, the ultimate poster child for Attention Deficit Disorder, but he had a great insight and range.

Arnold Joseph Toynbee

Apathy can be overcome by enthusiasm, and enthusiasm can only be aroused by two things: first, an ideal, with takes the imagination by storm, and second, a definite intelligible plan for carrying that ideal into practice.

The human race's prospects of survival were considerably better when we were defenceless against tigers than they are today when we have become defenceless against ourselves.

The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play.

I don't believe a committee can write a book.... It can, oh, govern a country, perhaps, but I don't believe it can write a book.

Now civilizations, I believe, come to birth and proceed to grow by successfully responding to successive challenges. They break down and go to pieces if and when a challenge confronts them which they fail to meet.

America is a large friendly dog in a small room. Every time it wags its tail it knocks over a chair.
- All from Arnold Joseph Toynbee, 1889 - 1975

About: British historian Arnold Toynbee was born at London on 14 Apr in 1889. Not only a student of history, he helped make some of it, serving in the British Foreign Office through both world wars and attending both Paris peace conferences (1919 and 1946). His work covered the events of 26 civilizations throughout history, from which he was able to extract a number of observations on the human condition.

Thomas Jefferson

An association of men who will not quarrel with one another is a thing which has never yet existed, from the greatest confederacy of nations down to a town meeting or a vestry.

But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life; and thanks to a benevolent arrangement of things, the greater part of life is sunshine.

Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.

Do not bite the bait of pleasure till you know there is no hook beneath it.

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

No more good must be attempted than the people can bear.
- All from Thomas Jefferson, 1743 - 1826

About: Thomas Jefferson was born at Shadwell, in the hill country of Virginia, on 13 Apr in 1743. At a White House gathering of American Nobel laureates, Jack Kennedy remarked, "I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered at the White House - with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone." By far my favorite among the founding fathers, I could as easily have chosen to send a hundred of his quotes as this half dozen.

Talk

I worry about people who get born nowadays, because they get born into such tiny families, sometimes into no family at all. When you're the only pea in the pod, your parents are likely to get you confused with the Hope Diamond. And that encourages you to talk too much.
- Russell Baker

No man would listen to you talk if he didn't known it was his turn next.
- Edgar Watson Howe, 1853 - 1937

Confidence contributes more to conversation than wit.
- François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, 1613 - 1680

We talk on principle, but we act on interest.
- Walter Savage Landor, 1775 - 1864

The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, and thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, philosophy, and religion all in one.
- Eudora Welty, 1909 - 2001

I like a friend the better for having faults that one can talk about.
- William Hazlitt, 1778 - 1830

Maya Angelou

Courage is the most important of all virtues, because without it we can't practice any other virtue with consistency.

If one is lucky, a single fantasy can totally transform a million realities.

Men fear death, as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other.

Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.

The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind.

Nobody, but nobody, can make it out here alone.
- All from Maya Angelou

About: Maya Angelou was born at Saint Louis, Missouri on 4 Apr in 1928. Dr Angelou has been a poet, historian, author, actress, playwright, civil-rights activist, producer and director. She was the second poet to contribute original poetry to a US presidential inauguration, the author of eleven books, and the source of myriad trenchant and inspiring quotes.

Letters

Wanted: Young, skinny, wirey fellows not over 18. Must be expert riders willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred. Wages $25 per week.
- Pony Express Advertisement

A happy life is made up of little things: a gift sent, a letter written, a call made, a recommendation given, transportation provided, a cake made, a book lent, a check sent.
- Carol Holmes

Letter writing is the only device for combining solitude with good company.
- George Gordon Noel Byron, 1788 - 1824

We lay aside letters never to read them again, and at last we destroy them out of discretion, and so disappears the most beautiful, the most immediate breath of life, irrecoverable for ourselves and for others.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749 - 1832

A friendship can weather most things and thrive in thin soil - but it needs a little mulch of letters and phone calls and small silly presents every so often - just to save it from drying out completely.
- Pam Brown

Letters are venerable; and the telephone valiant, for the journey is a lonely one, and if bound together by notes and telephones we went in company, perhaps - who knows? - we might talk by the way.
- Virginia Woolf, 1882 - 1941