757) Predict the worst and you will be hailed as a sage.

Benjamin Franklin (attributed)
posted by Gilbert Payson [IQM] (4/21/95)

758) Suppressed panic turns him into a prick every time. It's what he does instead of running in circles screaming. A way of coping I suppose.

Lois McMaster Bujold
Mirror Dance (1994)
posted by Vickie Cooper [UAQ] (4/21/95)

759) [He is] one of those people who would be enormously improved by death.

Saki (H.H. Munro)
"The Feast of Nemesis" in
Beasts and Super-Beasts (1914) [ODQ]
posted by Michael Fuchs [IQM] (4/24/95)

760) It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.

Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
"Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar" in
Following the Equator (1897) [CQ]
posted by ballard [IQM] (4/24/95)

761) The greatest blessing of our democracy is freedom. In the last analysis, our only freedom is the freedom to discipline ourselves.

Bernard M. Baruch (widely attributed)
posted by ballard [IQM] (4/24/95)

762) There is more to life than increasing its speed.

Mohandas K. Gandhi (widely attributed)
posted by ballard [IQM] (4/24/95)

763) All men should strive to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.

James Thurber
"The Shore and the Sea" in
Further Fables for Our Time (1956) [WQ]
posted by ballard [IQM] (4/24/95)

764) The trouble with being in the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat.

Jane Wagner
for Lily Tomlin's act [WQ]
posted by ballard [IQM] (4/24/95)

765) Quality isn't a thing. It is an event.

Robert Pirsig (attributed)
posted by George Osner [IQM] (4/24/95)

766) So it is something of a homiletical commonplace to say that the outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where one question grew before.

Thorstein Veblen
"Evolution of the Scientific Point of View"
Lecture at the Kosmos Club, U. of California (5/4/1908)
University of California Chronicle (v.10 no.4, 1908)
posted by Don Fearn [IQM] (4/24/95)

767) The best measure of a man's honesty isn't his income tax return. It's the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.

Arthur C. Clarke (widely attributed)
posted by Deven Naniwadekar [IQM] (4/23/95)

768) Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.

Lord Chesterfield
Letters To His Son (1774) (11/1/1750) [B16]

769) The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

William James
The Principles of Psychology (1890) [B16]

770) Facts are ventriloquists' dummies. Sitting on a wise man's knee they made be made to utter words of wisdom; elsewhere, they say nothing, or talk nonsense, or indulge in sheer diabolism.

Aldous Huxley
Time Must Have A Stop (1944) [CQ]
spoken by the character "Bruno Rontini"

[Note: Cf. #286 Dick, #739 Huxley, #2338 Sowell]

771) The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

Edmund Burke (widely attributed) [B16]
quoted by Roger Rosenblatt in
"Teaching Johnny To Be Good" in
New York Times Magazine (4/30/95)

[Note: According to both Wikiquote and Bartlett's 16th, although this may be a paraphrase of some of Burke's ideas, after extensive searching it has been determined that neither the quote as given, nor any of the many variations on it, exist in Burke's writings. The Yale Book of Quotations gives the first citation as in the Washington Post (1/22/1950). <[YQ]]

Sources

[B16] - Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 16th edition (1993)
[CQ] - The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations (1993)
[ODQ] - The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 4th edition (1992)
[UAQ] - Usenet alt.quotations newsgroup
[IQM] - Internet Quotations mailing list
[WQ] - Wikiquote
[YQ] - The Yale Book of Quotations (2006)


Note: "3089/898" is the designation I've given to the project of posting all my collected quotes, excerpts and ideas (3089 of them) in the remaining days of the Bush administration (of which there were 898 left when I began).

As of today, there are 674 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.