“I think you’re the opposite of a paranoid. I think you go around with the insane delusion that people like you.”
Woody Allen, quoted as “Thought du jour” in Globe & Mail June 2, 2003 [and yes, we’re all feeling squeamish about Allen now but it’s still a good line].
“To be successful you must accept all challenges that come your way. You can’t just accept the ones you like.”
Mike Gafka, quoted by Jeff Hayden on Inc. online (www.inc.com/jeff-haden/top-350-inspiring-motivational-quotes-to-tweet-and-share.html
“The great difficulty is to get modern audiences to realize that you are preaching Christianity solely and simply because you happen to think it true; they always suppose you are preaching it because you like it or think it good for society or something of that sort.”
C.S. Lewis “Christian Apologetics” in The Grand Miracle
“Miss Management”
A tag applied by MP Deb Grey to Minister Jane Stewart over the Human Resources Development Canada scandal , quoted by Susan Riley in Ottawa Citizen November 21, 2004
“Other people’s heads are a wretched place to be the home of a man’s true happiness.”
Schopenhauer deploring the pursuit of fame in “Wisdom of Life,” quoted in Will Durant The Story of Philosophy
“Herodotus of Halicarnassus here displays his inquiry, so that human achievements may not become forgotten in time, and great and marvellous deeds – some displayed by Greeks, some by barbarians – may not be without their glory; and especially to show why the two peoples fought with each other.”
First sentence of Herodotus The Histories
“For the economist who drops homo economicus in favor of an open-ended utility function, no failure can be recognized. He cannot identify market failure, but neither can he identify government or political failure.”
James Buchanan, What Should Economists Do?
“He [the “mature man”] knows, with Carlyle, that there is no sense in vilifying the sun because it will not light our cigars. And perhaps, if we are clever enough to help it, the sun will do even that...”
Will Durant The Story of Philosophy [part of Durant’s critique of Schopenhauer’s excessive gloominess]