All Quotes

"The greatest enjoyment possible to man was that which this philosophy promises its votaries—the pleasure of being always right, and always reasoning—without ever being bound to look at anything."

"The apparent rulers of the English nation are like the most imposing personages of a splendid procession: it is by them the mob are influenced; it is they whom the spectators cheer. The real rulers are secreted in second-rate carriages; no one cares for them or asks about them, but they are obeyed implicitly and unconsciously by reason of the splendour of those who eclipsed and preceded them."

"The great difficulty which history records is not that of the first step, but that of the second step. What is most evident is not the difficulty of getting a fixed law, but getting out of a fixed law; not of cementing (as upon a former occasion I phrased it) a cake of custom, but of breaking the cake of custom; not of making the first preservative habit, but of breaking through it, and reaching something better."

"Maternity," it has been said, "is a matter of fact, paternity is a matter of opinion."

"One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea."

"All the inducements of early society tend to foster immediate action; all its penalties fall on the man who pauses; the traditional wisdom of those times was never weary of inculcating that "delays are dangerous," and that the sluggish man — the man "who roasteth not that which he took in hunting" — will not prosper on the earth, and indeed will very soon perish out of it. And in consequence an inability to stay quiet, an irritable desire to act directly, is one of the most conspicuous failings of mankind."

"I wish the art of benefiting men had kept pace with the art of destroying them; for though war has become slow, philanthropy has remained hasty. The most melancholy of human reflections, perhaps, is that, on the whole, it is a question whether the, benevolence of mankind does most good or harm. Great good, no doubt, philanthropy does, but then it also does great evil. It augments so much vice, it multiplies so much suffering, it brings to life such great populations to suffer and to be vicious, that it is open to argument whether it be or be not an evil to the world, and this is entirely because excellent people fancy that they can do much by rapid action — that they will most benefit the world when they most relieve their own feelings; that as soon as an evil is seen "something" ought to be done to stay and prevent it."

"Most men of business think "Anyhow this system will probably last my time. It has gone on a long time, and is likely to go on still.""

"Credit means that a certain confidence is given, and a certain trust reposed. Is that trust justified? and is that confidence wise? These are the cardinal questions. To put it more simply credit is a set of promises to pay; will those promises be kept?"

"The less money lying idle the greater is the dividend."

"The best way for the bank or banks who have the custody of the bank reserve to deal with a drain arising from internal discredit, is to lend freely. The first instinct of everyone is the contrary. There being a large demand on a fund which you want to preserve, the most obvious way to preserve it is to hoard it—to get in as much as you can, and to let nothing go out which you can help. But every banker knows that this is not the way to diminish discredit. This discredit means, 'an opinion that you have not got any money,' and to dissipate that opinion, you must, if possible, show that you have money: you must employ it for the public benefit in order that the public may know that you have it."

"The owners of savings not finding, in adequate quantities, their usual kind of investments, rush into anything that promises speciously, and when they find that these specious investments can be disposed of at a high profit, they rush into them more and more. The first taste is for high interest, but that taste soon becomes secondary. There is a second appetite for large gains to be made by selling the principal which is to yield the interest. So long as such sales can be effected the mania continues; when it ceases to be possible to effect them, ruin begins."

"The name ‘London Banker’ had especially a charmed value. He was supposed to represent, and often did represent, a certain union of pecuniary sagacity and educated refinement which was scarcely to be found in any other part of society."

"To a great experience one thing is essential — an experiencing nature."

"The purse strings tie us to our kind."

"A highly developed moral nature joined to an undeveloped intellectual nature, an undeveloped artistic nature, and a very limited religious nature, is of necessity repulsive. It represents a bit of human nature — a good bit, of course, but a bit only — in disproportionate, unnatural and revolting prominence."

"The Ethiop gods have Ethiop lips, Bronze cheeks, and woolly hair; The Grecian gods are like the Greeks, As keen-eyed, cold and fair."

"A constitutional statesman is in general a man of common opinions and uncommon abilities."

"You may talk of the tyranny of Nero and Tiberius; but the real tyranny is the tyranny of your next-door neighbor... Public opinion is a permeating influence, and it exacts obedience to itself; it requires us to think other men's thoughts, to speak other men's words, to follow other men's habits."

"It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations."

"[Of Guizot] A Puritan born in France by mistake."

"In truth, poverty is an anomaly to rich people. It is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell."

"Every trouble in life is a joke compared to madness."

"Honor sinks where commerce long prevails."

"Such promises are only for the gulls that accept the ordinary. One who has touched excellence in his learning has no need of that kind of promise."

"A molehill man is a pseudo-busy executive who comes to work at 9 am and finds a molehill on his desk. He has until 5 pm to make this molehill into a mountain. An accomplished molehill man will often have his mountain finished even before lunch."

"A celebrity is a person who works hard all his life to become known, then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized"

"I'm a little hoarse tonight. I've been living in Chicago for the past two months, and you know how it is, yelling for help on the way home every night. Things are so tough in Chicago that at Easter time, for bunnies the little kids use porcupines."

"All the sincerity in Hollywood you could stuff in a flea's navel and still have room left to conceal eight caraway seeds and an agent's heart."

"A good comedian can say things funny and other guys just say funny things."

"Sullivan will be successful as long as other people have talent."

"What does Sullivan do? He points at people. Rub meat on actors and dogs will do the same thing."

"Imitation is the sincerest form of television."

"California's a wonderful place to live - if you happen to be an orange."

"I have just returned from Boston. It is the only thing to do if you find yourself up there."

"Jack Benny's idea of roughing it is to go two days without a manicure!""

"Cameo appearance in film BUCK BENNY RIDES AGAIN(1940)"

"Benny was born ignorant and he's been losing ground ever since. Who else would be low enough to sneak into a Studio Tour to save fifty cents?""

"Nothing happens by chance, my friend... No such thing as luck. A meaning behind every little thing, and such a meaning behind this. Part for you, part for me, we may not see it all real clear right now, but we will, before long."

"An old maxim says that a professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit."

"You have no birthday because you have always lived; you were never born, and never will die. You are not the child of the people you call mother and father, but their fellow-adventurer on a bright journey to understand the things that are."

"Fly free and happy beyond birthdays and across forever, and we'll meet now and then when we wish, in the midst of the one celebration that never can end."

"Not being known doesn't stop the truth from being true."

"If it's never our fault, we can't take responsibility for it. If we can't take responsibility for it, we'll always be its victim."

"For most gulls, it is not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight."

"Most gulls don’t bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flight — how to get from shore to food and back again."

"We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill."

"Jonathan Seagull discovered that boredom and fear and anger are the reasons that a gull’s life is so short, and with these gone from his thoughts, he lived a long fine life indeed."

"Tactility is the space of the interval; acoustic space is spherical and resonant."

"The pre-atomist multisensory void was an animate, pulsating, and moving vibrant interval, neither container nor contained, acoustic space penetrated by tactility."