Intellectual brilliance is no guarantee against being dead wrong.
David Fasold (contemp.) American ship
salvager, amateur archaeologist
Everything goes by the board:
honor, pride, decency... to get the book written. If a writer has to rob his
mother, he will not hesitate. The “Ode on a Grecian Urn” is worth any number of
old ladies.
William
Faulkner (1897-1962),
Writers At Work
(1958)
An artist is a creature
driven by demons. He doesn't know why they chose him and he's usually too busy
to wonder why. He is completely amoral in that he will rob, borrow, beg, or
steal from anybody and everybody to get the work done.
William Faulkner, Interview in Malcolm Cowley (1958). Writers at Work,
First Series
If I were reincarnated, I'd
want to come back a buzzard. Nothing hates him or envies him or wants him or
needs him. He is never bothered or in danger, and he can eat anything.
William Faulkner, Interview in Malcolm Cowley (1958). Writers at Work,
First Series
With every passing hour our solar system comes forty-three thousand miles
closer to globular cluster M13 in the constellation Hercules, and still there
are some misfits who continue to insist that there is no such thing as
progress.
Ransom K. Ferm
I have argued flying saucers with lots of people. I was interested in
this: they keep arguing that it is possible. And that's true. It is possible. They
do not appreciate that the problem is not to demonstrate whether it's possible
or not, but whether it's going on or not.
Richard Feynmann (1918-1988) American physicist
Scientists take it for granted that it is perfectly consistent to be
unsure -- that it is possible to live and *not* know. But I don't know whether
everyone realizes that this is true.
Richard Feynmann (1918-1988) American physicist
“So I know why people kill
themselves.”
“Okay.” Orley tried to be diffident. “Tell me why,
then.”
“They do it because there’s nowhere else to hide.”
Timothy Findley, Headhunter
A mother is not a person to
lean on, but a person to make leaning unnecessary.
Dorothy Fisher
The test of a
first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at
the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for
example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make
them otherwise.
(Referring to
Ernest Hemingway) He’s a great writer. If I didn’t think so I wouldn’t have
tried to kill him... I was the champ and when I read his stuff I knew he had
something. So I dropped a heavy glass skylight on his head at a drinking party.
But you can’t kill the guy. He’s not human.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
I fell in love
with her courage, her sincerity, and her flaming self- respect and it’s these
things I’d believe in even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions that
she wasn’t all she should be. I love her and that’s the beginning of
everything.
The kiss originated when the first male reptile licked the first female reptile, implying in a subtle, complimentary way that she was as succulent as the small reptile he had for dinner the night before.F. Scott Fitzgerald
I’m not at a fork in the road, I’m at an eggbeater in the road.
Thom Fitzgerald
You couldn’t get
a clue during the clue mating season in a field of horny clues if you smeared
your body with clue musk and did the clue mating dance.
Edward Flaherty
The one way of tolerating
existence is to lose oneself in literature as in a perpetual orgy.
Gustave Flaubert
It is only when you recognize that you CAN do what Hitler did that you
can consciously choose not to.
Joseph C. Fletcher (1905-1991) American
ethicist
Enlightened self-interest is a wonderful thing. Turning on the light can
be hard.
Peter Flom (contemp.) Belief-L (
Money can't buy happiness, but poverty can't buy anything.
Peter Flom (contemp.) Belief-L
(
It isn't what they say about you, it's what they whisper.
Errol Flynn
Heroes come in many forms. Some are more frightening than others.
Phil Foglio (b. 1957) American cartoonist Bill & Barry - The Heterodyne Boys!
(1987)
We are living in a new culture, one of responsibility dodgers and corner
cutters. Nobody cares if a thing is right or not. If you try to trace a poor
job or craftsmanship back, you will find, inevitably, that nobody did it.
Robert Fontaine
Anyone who says businessmen deal in facts, not fiction, has never read
old five-year projections.
Malcolm Forbes (1919-1990) American
billionaire
Education’s purpose is to
replace an empty mind with an open one.
Malcolm Forbes
(1919-1990) American billionaire
A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government
big enough to take from you everything you have.
Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)
If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend,
I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.
E. M. Forster (1879-1970) English
novelist, essayist, critic
Two Cheers for Democracy,
"What I Believe"
I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery
than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it.
Henry Emerson Fosdick (1878-1969) American clergyman, author, teacher
Jodie Foster
It makes no difference how deeply seated may be the
trouble, how hopeless the outlook, how muddled the tangle, how great the
mistake. A sufficient realization of love will dissolve it all.
Emmet Fox
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.
Anatole
The truth is that life is
delicious, horrible, charming, frightful, sweet, bitter, and that it is
everything.
Anatole
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 know and what you don’t.
Anatole
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor
to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
Anatole
I don't believe the war is
simply the work of politicians and capitalists. Oh no, the common man is
every bit as guilty; otherwise, people and nations would have rebelled long
ago! There's a destructive urge in people, the urge to rage, murder, and
kill. And until all of humanity, without exception, undergoes a
metamorphosis, wars will continue to be waged, and everything that has been carefully
built up, cultivated and grown will be cut down and destroyed, only to start
all over again!
Anne Frank
(1929-1945) German-Dutch Jewish diarist The Diary of a YoungGirl: the Definitive
Edition
I keep my ideals, because in spite of everything I still believe that
people are really good at heart.
Anne Frank (1929-1945)
German-Dutch Jewish diarist The Diary of a Young Girl (1952)
I become more and more
convinced people were never really all that homophobic to start with, mostly.
They thought they were supposed to be.
Congressman Barney Frank
HAWKINS: I've got it! I've got it! The pellet with the
poison's in the vessel with the pestle; the chalice from the palace has the
brew that is true! Right?
GRISELDA: Right. But there's been a change: they broke the
chalice from the palace!
HAWKINS: They *broke* the chalice from the palace?
GRISELDA: And replaced it with a flagon.
HAWKINS: A flagon...?
GRISELDA: With the figure of a dragon.
HAWKINS: Flagon with a dragon.
GRISELDA: Right.
HAWKINS: But did you put the pellet with the poison in the
vessel with the pestle?
GRISELDA: No! The pellet with the poison's in the flagon with
the dragon! The vessel with the pestle has the brew that is true!
HAWKINS: The pellet with the poison's in the flagon with the
dragon; the vessel with the pestle has the brew that is true.
GRISELDA: Just remember that.
Melvin Frank (1913-1988) American
screenwriter, director The Court Jester (with Norman Panama)
(1956)
Anyone can be passionate, but it takes real lovers to be silly.
Rose Franken (1925-1966) American
novelist and playwright
A clean desk is a sign of an empty mind.
Justice Felix
Frankfurter (1882-1965) US Supreme Court Justice; jurist and teacher
It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty
have frequently been forged ... [by] not very nice people.
Justice Felix
Frankfurter (1882-1965) US Supreme Court Justice; jurist and teacher
United States v. Rabinowitz, 339
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked
through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They
may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything
can be taken away from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to
choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own
way.
Victor Frankl (1905-1997) German-American psychologist, writer
Humor is another of the soul's weapons in the fight for
self-preservation. It is well known that humor more than anything else in the
human makeup, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any
situation, even if only for a few seconds.
Victor Frankl (1905-1997) German-American psychologist, writer
No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in
a similar situation he might not have done the same.
Victor Frankl (1905-1997) German-American psychologist, writer
Since
Victor Frankl (1905-1997) German-American psychologist, writer
What is to give light must endure burning.
Victor Frankl (1905-1997) German-American psychologist, writer
Many a man thinks he is buying pleasure, when he is really selling
himself to it.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American
statesman, scientist, philosopher
The U.S.
Constitution doesn’t guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to
catch up with it yourself.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American
statesman, scientist, philosopher
I am what I am
and that’s all that I am and if I’m supposed to be somebody else, why do I look
like me?
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American
statesman, scientist, philosopher
There is no kind of dishonesty into which otherwise good people more
easily and frequently fall than that of defrauding the government.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American
statesman, scientist, philosopher
Coincidences throw open a
skylight to a universe more mysterious and mischievous than we dare imagine.
They tune our ear to the sound of cosmic laughter.
Sylvia Fraser
The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder
of civilization.
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) Austrian
psychoanalyst and neurologist
He was a strong man, to be
sure, and brave in the way that the strong can afford to be brave.
C. S. Friedman Black Sun Rising
Babies are rational. So are cats. If you insist on reading the newspaper when you should be petting your cat, the cat solves the problem by lying down on the paper. I don't know if that tactic is the product of calculation or trial and error -- but it works.David D. Friedman, Hidden Order
I never run when it starts
raining. I just keep to my same leisurely pace and try to walk between the
drops. You get about equally wet either way, but if you run you look stupid. If
you walk you just look crazy. There's
more dignity in crazy, and it's also less strenuous.
Kinky Friedman
The scientific name for an animal that doesn't either run from or fight
its enemies is "lunch."
Michael Friedman
Immature love
says: “I love you because I need you.” Mature love says “I need you because I
love you.”
Erich Fromm
I am not confused, I'm just well mixed.
Robert Frost (1874-1963) American
poet
In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: It goes
on.
Robert Frost (1874-1963) American
poet
The best way out is always through.
Robert Frost (1874-1963) American
poet A Servant to Servants (1914)
Two roads
diverged in a wood, and I -; I took the one less traveled by; And that has made
all the difference.
Robert Frost (1874-1963) American
poet
Dancing is a vertical
expression of a horizontal desire.
Robert Frost (1874-1963) American
poet
I hold it to be
the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way.
Robert Frost (1874-1963) American
poet
Families break up when people take hints you don't intend and miss hints
you do intend.
Robert Frost (1874-1963) American
poet Writers at Work: Second Series, Interview with Richard Poirier
(1963)
I believe that
imagination is stronger than knowledge. I believe that dreams are more powerful
than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That laughter is the
only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death.
Robert Fulghum
And it is still
true, no matter how old you are, when you go out into the world, it is better
to hold hands and stick together.
Robert Fulghum
The line between
good and evil, hope and despair, does not divide the world between ‘us’ and
‘them’. Instead it runs down the middle of every one of us.
Robert Fulghum
I want to be 5 yrs.
old again. I want to laugh a lot & cry a lot. I want to be picked up &
rocked to sleep in someone’s arms, & carried up to bed just one more time.
I know what I really want for Christmas. I want my childhood back.
Robert Fulghum
When I’m working
on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the
problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it
is wrong.
Richard Buckminster Fuller
Heaven is a cheap purchase, whatever it cost.
Thomas Fuller (1654-1734) English
writer, physician Gnomologia
Americans are the only people
in the world known to me whose status anxiety prompts them to advertise their
college and university affiliations in the rear window of their automobiles.
Paul Fussell