I can't make any real claims that many of these are valid since I was not there when most of them were writen or spoken, but I have tried to valadate them as much as I can...

...we kiss. And it feels like we have shrugged off the world.
~Jim Shahin

"The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense."
     - Tom Clancy

"The President has kept all of the promises he intended to keep."
     - Clinton aide George Stephanopolous speaking on Larry King Live

"Why don't you write books people can read?"
     - Nora Joyce to her husband James (1882-1941)

"Always do right- this will gratify some and astonish the rest."
     - Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"Every day I get up and look through the Forbes list of the richest people in America. If I'm not there, I go to work."
     - Robert Orben

"A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines."
     - Frank Lloyd Wright (1868-1959)

"Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin."
     - John von Neumann (1903-1957)

"I would have made a good Pope."
     - Richard M. Nixon (1913-1994)

"When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong."
     - Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983)

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."
     - Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler."
     - Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity."
     - Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted."
     - Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
     - Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is."
     - Jan L.A. van de Snepscheut

Common sence is so rare, as to often be mistaken for genius."
George Bernard Shaw.

We have too many men of science, too few men of God. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount . . . . The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience.
Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living.
General Omar N. Bradley, Chief of Staff, United States Army
Boston, November 10th, 1948

Language exists to communicate whatever it can communicate. Some things it communicates so badly that we never attempt to communicate them by words if any other medium is available.
C.S. Lewis, Studies in Words

Language is a hack.
Eduard Hovy

"Man will never reach the moon regardless of all future scientific advances."
-- Dr. Lee DeForest, Inventor of TV

"There is no likehood man can ever tap the power of the atom."
-- Robert Millikan, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1923

"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."
-- Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949

"I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year."
-- The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957

"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible."
-- Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.

"Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools."
-- 1921 New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard's revolutionary rocket work.

"Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You're crazy."
-- Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859.

"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."
-- Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929.

"Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value."
-- Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre.

"Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction".
-- Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872

"The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon".
-- Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon, appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria 1873.

"The bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosive."
-- Admiral William Leahy, U.S. Atomic Bomb Project

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
-- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

"But what ... is it good for?"
-- Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.

"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
-- Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977

"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us."
-- Western Union internal memo, 1876.

"The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?"
-- David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s.

"The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C,' the idea must be feasible."
-- A Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service. (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)

"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?"
-- H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927.

"I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face and not Gary Cooper."
-- Gary Cooper on his decision not to take the leading role in "Gone With The Wind."

"A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides, the market research reports say America likes crispy cookies, not soft and chewy cookies like you make."
-- Response to Debbi Fields' idea of starting Mrs. Fields' Cookies.

"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out."
-- Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.

"If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can't do this."
-- Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3-M "Post-It" Notepads.

"So we went to Atari and said, 'Hey, we've got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we'll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we'll come work for you.' And they said, 'No.' So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, 'Hey, we don't need you. You haven't got through college yet.'"
-- Apple Computer Inc. founder Steve Jobs on attempts to get Atari and H-P interested in his and Steve Wozniak's personal computer.

"You want to have consistent and uniform muscle development across all of your muscles? It can't be done. It's just a fact of life.
You just have to accept inconsistent muscle development as an unalterable condition of weight training."
-- Response to Arthur Jones, who solved the "unsolvable" problem by inventing Nautilus.

"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
-- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899.

"640K ought to be enough for anybody."
-- Bill Gates, 1981

"We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it - and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again - and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore."
-- Mark Twain

"When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl."

"Her kisses left something to be desired -- the rest of her."

"Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing."

"Calvin: People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world.
Hobbes: Isn't your pants' zipper supposed to be in the front?"

God does not play dice. - Albert Einstein

Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one. - A.J. Liebling

"We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses." -Abraham Lincoln

Happiness is a selfish pursuit, whereas, joy is a gift from God! - Gary Barnum

"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt." -Abraham Lincoln

"In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." -Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)

"A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools." -Douglas Adams

Immature love says:"I love you because I need you." Mature love says:"I need you because I love you." -Erich Fromm, psychologist. The Art of Loving, ch2

On a tombstone: "I TOLD YOU I WAS SICK"

The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going to be when you kill them. William Clayton

The Lord's Prayer is 66 words, the Gettysburg Address is 286 words, there are 1,322 words in the Declaration of Independence, but government regulations on the sale of cabbage total 26,911 words.
 From an article on the growth of federal regulations in the Oct. 24th, 1994 issue of National Review

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.

"A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read."  -- Mark Twain

"Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute."  -- Albert Einstein

"What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say."  -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Bite the wax tadpole!"  -- "Coca-Cola" as originally translated into Chinese

"Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave."  -- ad slogan "Pepsi Comes Alive" as originally translated into Chinese"

"Beware programmers that carry hammers. Beware programmers that carry manuals.
Beware programmers that *write* manuals. And just beware of progammers in general."  -- Unknown

"When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible."
  --Harry Burns (Billy Crystal) "When Harry Met Sally..."

You only live once, but if you do it right...  Once is enough.

If God didn't want us to eat animals, why did he make them out of meat?

"If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probably explanation is that I was made for another world." (C.S. Lewis)

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone,  comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." -- Robert A. Heinlein

Football is a mistake. It combines the two worst elements of American life. Violence and committee meetings. -George Will

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.
~William Shakespeare

Love at the lips was touch
As sweet as I could bear;
And all at once that seemed to much;
I lived on air.
~Robert Frost

These are bagpipes. I understand the inventor of the bagpipes was inspired when he saw a man carrying an indignant, asthmatic pig under his arm. Unfortunately, the man-made sound never equalled the purity of the sound achieved by the pig.
Alfred Hitchcock