Mark Twain

• A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain.
• A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.
• A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
• A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.
• A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.
• A man's character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation.
• A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read.
• A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds.
• A round man cannot be expected to fit in a square hole right away. He must have time to modify his shape.
• Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often.
• Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.
• Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.
• Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.
• All generalizations are false, including this one.
• All right, then, I'll go to hell.
• All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.
• Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
• Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.
• Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.
• Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today.
• As an example to others, and not that I care for moderation myself, it has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep, and never to refrain from smoking when awake.
• Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.
• Be careless in your dress if you will, but keep a tidy soul.
• Better a broken promise than none at all.
• Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written.
• But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?
• By trying we can easily endure adversity. Another man's, I mean.
• Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.
• Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.
• 'Classic.' A book which people praise and don't read.
• Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get.
• Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
• Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.
• Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain.
• Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.
• Don't let schooling interfere with your education.
• Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.
• Don't tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don't tell them where they know the fish.
• Drag your thoughts away from your troubles... by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it.
• Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.
• Everything has its limit - iron ore cannot be educated into gold.
• Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.
• Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.
• Familiarity breeds contempt - and children.
• Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.
• Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't.
• Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
• George Washington, as a boy, was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie.
• Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.
• Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I've done it thousands of times.
• Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.
• God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board.
• Golf is a good walk spoiled.
• Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.
• Grief can take care if itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.
• Honesty is the best policy - when there is money in it.
• Humor is mankind's greatest blessing.
• I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.
• I can live for two months on a good compliment.
• I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.
• I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
• I don't like to commit myself about heaven and hell - you see, I have friends in both places.
• I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting.
• I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.
• I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know.
• I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one.
• If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man but deteriorate the cat.
• If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.
• It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.
• It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.
• It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native criminal class except Congress.
• It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.
• It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.
• It is better to take what does not belong to you than to let it lie around neglected.
• 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.
• It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.
• It is easier to stay out than get out.
• It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions.
• It is not best that we should all think alike; it is a difference of opinion that makes horse races.
• It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
• It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.
• It's good sportsmanship to not pick up lost golf balls while they are still rolling.
• It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.
• It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.
• Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.
• Laws control the lesser man... Right conduct controls the greater one.
• Let us live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
• Let us make a special effort to stop communicating with each other, so we can have some conversation.
• Let us not be too particular; it is better to have old secondhand diamonds than none at all.
• Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.
• Lord save us all from a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms.
• Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it.
• Man - a creature made at the end of the week's work when God was tired.
• Man is the only animal that blushes - or needs to.
• Man will do many things to get himself loved, he will do all things to get himself envied.
• Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.
• Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins.
• My books are like water; those of the great geniuses are wine. (Fortunately) everybody drinks water.
• Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.
• Necessity is the mother of taking chances.
• Never put off till tomorrow what you can do day after tomorrow just as well.
• No sinner is ever saved after the first twenty minutes of a sermon.
• Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid.
• Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.
• Often it does seem a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat.
• One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.
• Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial "we."
• Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.
• Patriot: the person who can holler the loudest without knowing what he is hollering about.
• Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed.
• Prosperity is the best protector of principle.
• Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run.
• Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very"; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.
• The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.
• The Christian's Bible is a drug store. Its contents remain the same, but the medical practice changes.
• The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.
• The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.
• The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year.
• The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
• The lack of money is the root of all evil.
• The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little.
• The more things are forbidden, the more popular they become.
• The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it.
• The most interesting information comes from children, for they tell all they know and then stop.
• The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.
• The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.
• The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.
• The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.
• The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.
• The wit knows that his place is at the tail of a procession.
• There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things, and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded.
• There are lies, damned lies and statistics.
• There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one - keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy.
• There are several good protections against temptation, but the surest is cowardice.
• There are times when one would like to hang the whole human race, and finish the farce.
• There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist.
• Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered - either by themselves or by others.
• Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.
• To be good is noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.
• To refuse awards is another way of accepting them with more noise than is normal.
• Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing wrong with this, except that it ain't so.
• Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.
• Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.
• Water, taken in moderation, cannot hurt anybody.
• We have the best government that money can buy.
• What a good thing Adam had. When he said a good thing he knew nobody had said it before.
• What a wee little part of a person's life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself.
• What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin.
• When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.
• When angry, count to four; when very angry, swear.
• When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not.
• When in doubt tell the truth.
• When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet in his private heart no man much respects himself.
• When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain.
• When your friends begin to flatter you on how young you look, it's a sure sign you're getting old.
• Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
• Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.
• Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which before their union were not perceived to have any relation.
• Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.
• Work is a necessary evil to be avoided.
• Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.
• You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus

Albert Einstein

• Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction.
• Imagination is more important than knowledge.
• I want to know God's thoughts; the rest are details.
• The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.
• Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
• The only real valuable thing is intuition.
• A person starts to live when he can live outside himself.
• I am convinced that He (God) does not play dice.
• God is subtle but he is not malicious.
• Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.
• I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.
• Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.
• Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
• Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from weak minds.
• Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
• Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
• Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it.
• The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
• The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.
• God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically.
• The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.
• Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.
• Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.
• The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.
• We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
• Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school.
• The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.
• Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.
• Equations are more important to me, because politics is for the present, but an equation is something for eternity.
• If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.
• Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe.
• As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
• Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.
• I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
• In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep.
• The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there's no risk of accident for someone who's dead.
• No, this trick won't work...How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?
• My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.
• The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking...the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.
• Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.
• The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.
• A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeeded be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.
• The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.
• Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
• One had to cram all this stuff into one's mind for the examinations, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect on me that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year.
• ...one of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one's own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought.
• He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action. It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.
• A human being is a part of a whole, called by us _universe_, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
• Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.
• A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.
• A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?
• All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree.
• All these primary impulses, not easily described in words, are the springs of man's actions.
• An empty stomach is not a good political adviser.
• Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.
• Anyone who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.
• As far as I'm concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue.
• Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish.
• Everyone should be respected as an individual, but no one idolized.
• Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.
• Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.
• God always takes the simplest way.
• I am a deeply religious nonbeliever - this is a somewhat new kind of religion.
• I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best both for the body and the mind.
• I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation and is but a reflection of human frailty.
• I have just got a new theory of eternity.
• I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.
• I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.
• I used to go away for weeks in a state of confusion.
• If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.
• If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.
• If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?
• If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.
• If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
• Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions.
• In matters of truth and justice, there is no difference between large and small problems, for issues concerning the treatment of people are all the same.
• Information is not knowledge.
• Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
• Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.
• Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them.
• Isn't it strange that I who have written only unpopular books should be such a popular fellow?
• It gives me great pleasure indeed to see the stubbornness of an incorrigible nonconformist warmly acclaimed.
• It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.
• It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.
• It is strange to be known so universally and yet to be so lonely.
• It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.
• It should be possible to explain the laws of physics to a barmaid.
• It stands to the everlasting credit of science that by acting on the human mind it has overcome man's insecurity before himself and before nature.
• It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer.
• Joy in looking and comprehending is nature's most beautiful gift.
• Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.
• Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today's events.
• Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone.
• Most people say that is it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character.
• Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.
• No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.
• Occurrences in this domain are beyond the reach of exact prediction because of the variety of factors in operation, not because of any lack of order in nature.
• Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.
• Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master.
• People love chopping wood. In this activity one immediately sees results.
• Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.
• That deep emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.
• The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
• The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
• The environment is everything that isn't me.
• The faster you go, the shorter you are.
• The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.
• The grand aim of all science is to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms.
• The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.
• The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.
• The only source of knowledge is experience.
• The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.
• The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.
• The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.
• There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.
• There comes a time when the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge but can never prove how it got there.
• There is no logical way to the discovery of these elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance.
• To the Master's honor all must turn, each in its track, without a sound, forever tracing Newton's ground.
• True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.
• We cannot despair of humanity, since we ourselves are human beings.
• We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.
• When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking.
• When the solution is simple, God is answering.
• When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity.
• Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.
• You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.
• You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.

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