Never
let your head hang down. Never give up and sit down and grieve. Find another
way. And don't pray when it rains if you don't pray when the sun shines.
Satchel Paige (1906-1982) American baseball player
If
there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my children may have peace.
Thomas Paine (1737-1809) American political philosopher and writer
These are the times that try men's souls...Tyranny, like
hell, is not easily conquered: yet we have this consolation with us, that the
harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.
Thomas Paine (1737-1809) American political philosopher and writer
When
we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not
hereditary.
Thomas Paine (1737-1809) American political philosopher and writer
He
that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from
oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will
reach to himself.
Thomas Paine (1737-1809) American political philosopher/writer "Dissertation on the First Principles
of Government" (1795)
“We are the
middle children of history, raised by television to believe that someday we’ll
be millionaires and movie stars and rock stars, but we won’t. And we’re just
learning this fact,”
Chuck Palahniuk
Fight Club
To stand here and
try to fix her life is just a big waste of time. People don’t want their lives
fixed. Nobody wants their problems solved. Their dramas. Their distractions.
Their stories
resolved. Their messes cleaned up. Because what would they have left? Just the
big scary unknown.
Chuck Palahniuk Survivor
Big Brother isn’t watching. He’s singing and
dancing. He’s pulling rabbits out of a hat. Big Brother’s busy holding your
attention every moment you’re awake. He’s making sure you’re always distracted.
He’s making sure you’re fully absorbed.
Chuck Palahniuk Lullaby
Experts in
ancient Greek culture say that people back then didn’t see their thoughts as
belonging to them. When ancient Greeks had a thought, it occurred to them as a
god or goddess giving an order. Apollo was telling them to be brave. Athena was
telling them to fall in love.
Now people hear a
commercial for sour cream potato chips and rush out to buy, but now they call
this free will.
At least the
ancient Greeks were being honest.
Chuck Palahniuk Lullaby
Those who can
laugh without cause have either found the true meaning of happiness or have
gone stark raving mad.
Norm Papernick
There was never a place for
her in the ranks of the terrible, slow army of the cautious. She ran ahead,
where there were no paths.
Dorothy Parker
How can
they tell?
Dorothy Parker , on the news that Calvin
Coolidge had died
I shall stay the
way I am because I do not give a damn.
Dorothy Parker
They sicken of
the calm, who know the storm.
Dorothy Parker
She looks like
something that would eat its young. (about Dame Edith Evans)
Dorothy Parker
The cure for
boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.
Dorothy Parker
If all the girls
who attended the Yale prom were laid end to end... I wouldn’t be a bit
surprised.
Dorothy Parker
All I say is, nobody has any business to go
around looking like a horse and behaving as if it were all right. You don’t
catch horses going around looking like people, do you?
Dorothy Parker
There’s a hell of
a distance between wisecracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is
simply calisthenics with words.
Dorothy Parker
Lots
of real creeps have self-respect. They just have a creepy version of it.
Robert Parker (b. 1932) American writer A
Savage Place (1981)
Maybe
the matter of understanding has been overrated. Maybe I don't have to
understand your situation to sympathize with it, to help you alter it, to be on
your side. I've never experienced starvation, either, but I'm opposed to it.
When I encounter it, I try to alleviate it. I sympathize with its victims. The
question of whether I understand it doesn't arise. … Maybe civilization is
possible, if at all, only because people can care about conditions they haven't
experienced.
Robert Parker (b. 1932) American writer
A Savage Place (1981)
The
thing about monsters is, you want to kill them until you meet them, and when
you meet them they don't seem monstrous, and killing them begins to seem
unkind.
Robert Parker (b. 1932) American writer
Crimson Joy (1988)
"The
truth will set you free," Paul said. His voice was angry.
"Not necessarily," I said. "But *pretend* sure
as hell doesn't do it."
Robert Parker (b. 1932) American writer
Pastime (1991)
I
hadn't smoked in ten or twelve years, but I wished then I'd had a cigarette
that I could have taken a final drag on and flipped still burning into the
river as I turned and walked away. Not smoking gains in the area of lung
cancer, but it loses badly in the realm of dramatic gestures.
Robert Parker (b. 1932) American writer The Judas Goat (1978)
If
all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the
world.
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) French scientist and philosopher
The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) French scientist and philosopher Pensees
The
heart has its reasons that reason knows nothing of.
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) French scientist and philosopher Love
and Hate
To him that waits
all things reveal themselves, provided that he has the courage not to deny, in
the darkness, what he has seen in the light.
Pacifists
would do well to study the Siegfried and Maginot Line, remembering that these
defenses were forced; that
George S.
Patton (1885-1945) American soldier
The
object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die
for his.
George S.
Patton (1885-1945) American soldier
This
isn't right. This isn't even wrong.
Wolfgang
Pauli (1900-1958) American physicist On a paper submitted by a
physicist colleague
BOSS:
I'm just doing my job, Luke. You gotta appreciate that.
LUKE: Calling it your job don't make it right, Boss.
Donn Pearce (contemp.) American writer, former convict Cool
Hand Luke (with Frank Pierson) (1967)
Evil
people hate the light because it reveals themselves to themselves. ... They
will destroy the light, the goodness, the love in order to avoid the pain of
self-awareness. ... [E]vil is laziness carried to its ultimate, extraordinary
extreme.
Dr. M. Scott
Peck (b. 1936) American writer,
behavioral scientist, philosopher
The Road Less Traveled (1978)
Right is right,
even if everyone is against it; and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it.
William Penn
The
ultimate test of a relationship is to disagree but hold hands.
Alexander
Penney
Many
people think that if you sing a song of peace, you have peace. What you have is
a concert.
Shimon Peres (b. 1923) Polish-Israeli politician
Sure,
opposites attract. But one person being a man and the other a woman is about
all the opposite most couples can handle.
Bob Perlman
Going
to church does not make you a Christian any more than going to the garage makes
you a car.
Heredity is what sets parents of a teenager wondering about
each other.
Our children are watching us
live, and what we are shouts louder than anything we can say.
Wilferd A. Peterson
A cat pours his body on the
floor like water. It is restful just to see him.
William Lyon "Billy" Phelps
Those who decide to use
leisure as a means of mental development, who love good music, good books, good
pictures, good plays, good company, good conversation -- what are they? They
are the happiest people in the world.
William Lyon
"Billy" Phelps
I
read somewhere that 77 per cent of all the mentally ill live in poverty.
Actually, I'm more intrigued by the 23 per cent who are apparently doing quite
well for themselves.
Emo Phillips (contemp.) American comedian at the Montreal Comedy Festival
Art
is not truth; art is the lie which makes us see the truth.
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) Spanish painter and sculptor
Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die
having left undone.
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) Spanish painter and sculptor
It is my misfortune - and
probably my delight - to use things as my passions tell me. What a miserable
fate for a painter who adores blondes to have to stop himself putting them into
a picture because they don't go with the basket of fruit! ... I put all the
things I like into my pictures. The things - so much the worse for them. They
just have to put up with it.
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
Spanish painter and sculptor
I paint objects as I think
them, not as I see them.
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
Spanish painter and sculptor
There are
painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot, but there are others who
with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into
the sun.
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) Spanish painter and sculptor
It’s not that you
can’t go home again. It’s that most people know better.
Daniel Pinkwater, Fish
Whistle
The
moment you open your mouth to say one thing about the nature of reality, you
automatically have a whole set of enemies who've already said reality is
something else.
Robert Pirsig (b. 1928) American philosopher, writer
The
world comes to us in an endless stream of puzzle pieces that we would like to
think all fit together somehow, but that in fact never do.
Robert Pirsig (b. 1928) American philosopher, writer
The
truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away, I'm looking for the
truth," and so it goes away. Puzzling.
Robert Pirsig (b. 1928) American philosopher, writer Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, ch. 1 (1974)
You
shouldn't speak until you know what you're talking about. That's why I get
uncomfortable with interviews. Reporters ask me what I feel
Brad Pitt (b. 1963) American actor
Time, interview (
A
new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making
them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new
generation grows up that is familiar with it.
Max Planck (1858-1947) German physicist
How would you like a job
where, if you make a mistake, a big red light goes on and 18,000 people boo?
Jacques Plante hockey goalie
There is so much
hurt in this game of searching for a mate, of testing, trying. And you realize
suddenly that you forgot it was a game, and turn away in tears.
Sylvia Plath
We
can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark. The real tragedy of life
is when men are afraid of the light.
Plato (c.428-347 BC) Greek philosopher
You
can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of
conversation.
Plato (c.428-347 BC) Greek philosopher
Grief
has limits, whereas apprehension has none. For we grieve only for what has
happened, but we fear all that possibly may happen.
Pliny the
Younger (c. 61-c. 113) Roman politician,
writer [Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus]
Self-discipline is when your conscience tells you to do
something and you don’t talk back.
Janet and Greta Podeleski
O God! can I not
save one from the pitiless wave? Is all that we see or seem but a dream within
a dream?
Edgar Allen Poe, A
Dream Within a Dream
Its not what I
had feared, but what I had not thought to fear.
Edgar Allan Poe
The most
overlooked advantage to owning a computer is that if they foul up there’s no
law against whacking them around a little.
Porterfield
Manners are a
sensitive awareness of the feelings of others. If you have that awareness, you
have good manners, no matter what fork you use.
Emily Post
Educators
may bring upon themselves unnecessary travail by taking a tactless and
unjustifiable position about the relation between scientific and religious
narratives. ... Profound but contradictory ideas may exist side by side, if
they are constructed from different materials and methods and have different
purposes. Each tells us something important about where we stand in the
universe, and it is foolish to insist that they must despise each other.
Neil Postman (b. 1931) American psychologist and pedagogue The
End of Education (1995)
A
sense of shame is not a bad moral compass. I remember how easy it was for my
mother to snap me back into line with a simple rebuke: 'I'm ashamed of you. You
embarrassed the family.' I would have preferred a beating to those words.
Colin Powell (b. 1937) American military leader, Secretary of State My
American Journey
History
balances the frustration of "how far we have to go" with the
satisfaction of "how far we have come." It teaches us tolerance for
the human shortcomings and imperfections which are not uniquely of our
generation, but of all time.
Justice Lewis
F. Powell, Jr. (1907-1998)
Setting
the AI reactions for a giant spiderbot is pretty easy... hate, hate, hate,
hate.
Steve Powers
Huh!
Priests! They're all the same. Always telling you you're going to live after
you're dead, but you just try it and see the look on their faces.
Terry
Pratchett (b. 1948) English writer
The
trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on
coming along and trying to put things in it.
Terry
Pratchett (b. 1948) English writer Diggers
Rincewind
rather enjoyed times like this. They convinced him that he wasn’t mad because,
if he was mad, that left no word at all to describe some of the people he met.
Terry
Pratchett (b. 1948) English writer Sourceror
A journalist has a rapist’s mentality. Get in there, get what
you want, get out again quick. An interview needn’t last more than fifteen
minutes. A good quote for the middle, a good quote for the end, and the rest
you make up back at the office.
Terry
Pratchett (b. 1948) English writer
If World War Three actually
happens, I want to be the one to say, as the mushroom cloud erupts, “Well, that
about wraps it up for this lifetime!” If you’ve got say something that’s a
great deal better than saying ‘Aaaaarrggghh!’
Terry
Pratchett (b. 1948) English writer
People
whose concept of ancient history is the first series of Star Trek may be
treated with patience, because it’s usually not their fault they were reduced
to getting their education from school.
Terry
Pratchett (b. 1948) English writer
Real
education happens when you pick up a fact here, and another fact there, and put
them together and get an insight.
Terry
Pratchett (b. 1948) English writer
Most modern fantasy just
rearranges the furniture in Tolkien’s attic.
Terry
Pratchett (b. 1948) English writer
Over
the centuries, mankind has tried many ways of combating the forces of evil...
prayer, fasting, good works and so on. Up until Doom, no one seemed to have
thought about the double-barrel shotgun. Eat leaden death, demon...
Terry Pratchett (b. 1948) English writer
You
can’t make people happy by law. If you said to a bunch of average people two
hundred years ago “Would you be happy in a world where medical care is widely
available, houses are clean, the world’s music and sights and foods can be
brought into your home at small cost, travelling even 100 miles is easy,
childbirth is generally not fatal to mother or child, you don’t have to die of
dental abcesses, and you don’t have to do what the squire tells you”, they’d
think you were talking about the New Jerusalem and say “yes”.
Terry
Pratchett (b. 1948) English writer
People needed to believe in gods, if only because it was so
difficult to believe in people.
Terry
Pratchett (b. 1948) English writer Pyramids
Inside every sane person there’s a madman struggling to get
out.
Terry
Pratchett (b. 1948) English writer The
Light Fantastic
Most
books on witchcraft will tell you witches work naked. This is because most
books on witchcraft were written by men.
Terry
Pratchett (b. 1948) English writer Good
Omens (with Neil Gaiman) (1990)
His philosophy
was a mixture of three famous schools -- the Cynics, the Stoics and the
Epicureans -- and summed up all three of them in his famous phrase, `You can’t
trust any bugger further than you can throw him, and there’s nothing you can do
about it, so let’s have a drink.’
Terry
Pratchett (b. 1948) English writer
Every dog is two
meals away from being a wolf.
Terry
Pratchett (b. 1948) English writer
A good bookshop
is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.
Terry
Pratchett (b. 1948) English writer
Build a man a
fire and you keep him warm for a day. Set a man on fire and you keep him warm
for the rest of his life.
Terry
Pratchett (b. 1948) English writer Jingo
"From
what I remember," replied
"And of course that's true," said the angel.
"Otherwise, what'd be the point?"
Terry
Pratchett (b. 1948) English writer Good
Omens (with Neil Gaiman) (1990)
"Perhaps
this isn't just a test of the world," said
"God does not play games with His loyal servants,"
said the Metatron, but in a worried tone of voice.
"Whooo-eee," said
Terry
Pratchett (b. 1948) English writer Good Omens (with Neil Gaiman) (1990)
...
God moves in extremely mysterious, not to say, circuitous ways. God does not
play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising,
which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players
(i.e., everybody), to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker
in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who
won't tell you the rules, and who *smiles all the time.*
Terry
Pratchett (b. 1948) English writer Good
Omens (with Neil Gaiman) (1990)
The
road to Hell is paved with good intentions. (This is not actually true. The
road to Hell is paved with frozen door-to-door salesmen. On weekends many of
the younger demons go ice-skating down it.)
Terry
Pratchett (b. 1948) English writer Good
Omens (with Neil Gaiman) (1990)
People
who used magic without knowing what they were doing usually came to a sticky
end. All over the entire room, sometimes.
Terry
Pratchett (b. 1948) English writer Moving
Pictures
Like
its politicians and its wars, society has the teenagers it deserves.
J. B.
Priestley (1894-1984) English author,
dramatist
The Hell Law says that Hell is reserved exclusively for them that believe in it. Further, the lowest Rung in Hell is reserved for them that believe in it on the supposition that they'll go there if they don't.The Principia Discordia The Gospel According to Fred, 3:1
FLAKFIZER:
Sorry, two's company, and three's an adult movie.
Pat Proft (b. 1947) American screenwriter Brain
Donors (1992)
Debt
is the slavery of the free.
Publilius
Syrus (d. 42 BC) Roman writer, philosopher
All children wear
the sign: ‘I want to be important NOW.’ Many of our juvenile delinquency
problems arise because nobody reads the sign.
Dan Pursuit
MICHAEL:
If anything in this life is certain, if history has taught us anything, it is
that you can kill anyone.
Mario Puzo (1920-1999) American novelist, screenwriter The
Godfather (screenplay with Francis Coppola) (1972)