These are just some miscellaneous quotes I like for one reason or another. Sometimes I don't even agree with the quote, but it makes me think, so therefore I like it.

Please contact me if I've misattributed a quote.

Living

There is ... only a single categorical imperative and it is this: Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law!
— Immanual Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, Chapter I (1797)

Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
— Mark Twain

I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another human, nor ask another human to live for mine.
— Ayn Rand

So act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end withal, never as a means only.
— Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason (1788)

Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform.
— Mark Twain

Science

Once you have flown, you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward; for there you have been, there you long to return.
— Leonardo Da Vinci

You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.
— Albert Einstein

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
— Arthur C. Clarke

Ethics

Boredom is a vital problem for the moralist, since at least half of the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.
— Bertrand Russell

Theology

Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God, because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blind faith.
— Thomas Jefferson, in letter to nephew Peter Carr (Aug 10, 1785)

A man said to the Universe: "Sir, I exist!"
"However," replied the Universe, "the fact has not created in me a sense of obligation."
— Stephen Crane

Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a great crystal river. Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to the twigs and rocks of the river bottom, for clinging was their way of life, and resisting the current what each had learned from birth. But one creature said at last, "I trust that the current knows where it is going. I shall let go, and let it take me where it will. Clinging, I shall die of boredom."
 
The other creatures laughed and said, "Fool! Let go, and that current you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed across the rocks, and you will die quicker than boredom!"
 
But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go, and at once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks. Yet, in time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current lifted him free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more.
 
And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger, cried, "See a miracle! A creature like ourselves, yet he flies! See the Messiah, come to save us all!" And the one carried in the current said, "I am no more Messiah than you. The river delight to lift us free, if only we dare let go. Our true work is this voyage, this adventure.
 
But they cried the more, "Saviour!" all the while clinging to the rocks, making legends of a Saviour.
— Richard Bach, Illusions

In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot ... they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer engine for their purpose.
— Thomas Jefferson, in letter to Horatio Spafford (Mar 17, 1814)

I cannot conceive otherwise than that He, the Infinite Father, expects or requires no worship or praise from us, but that He is even infinitely above it.
— Benjamin Franklin, Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion (Nov 20, 1728)

Of all religions, Christianity is without doubt the one that should inspire tolerance most, although, up to now, the Christians have been the most intolerant of all Men.
— Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary "Tolerance" (1764)

I believe in the fundamental Truth of all the great religions of the world. I believe that they are all God-given ...
 
I came to the conclusion long ago ... that all religions were true, and also that all had some error in them.
— Mohandes Gandhi, Harijan (Feb 16, 1934)

Environment

Consider the man on horseback, and I have been a man on horseback for most of my life. Well, mostly he is a good man, but there is a change in him as soon as he mounts. Every man on horseback is an arrogant man, however gentle he may be on foot. The man in the automobile is one thousand times as dangerous. I tell you, it will engender absolute selfishness in mankind if the driving of automobiles becomes common. It will breed violence on a scale never seen before. It will mark the end of the family as we know it, the three or four generations living happily in one home. It will destroy the sense of neighborhood and the true sense of Nation. It will create giantized cankers of cities, false opulence of suburbs, ruinized countryside, and unhealthy conglomerations of specialized farming and manufacturing. It will make every man a tyrant.
— R. A. Lafferty (late 19th century)

Society

It has indeed been a trying hour for the Republic; but I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war.
— Abraham Lincoln, letter to William F. Elkins (Nov 21, 1864)

The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.
— Theodore Roosevelt

God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion [the Shay Rebellion].
 
What country before, ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that his people preserve the spirit of resistance. Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two.
 
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is their natural manure.
— Thomas Jefferson, letter to Colonel William S. Smith (1787)

Freedom and Censorship

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
— Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania (1759)

The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders... All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the peacemakers for ... exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.
— Herman Goering at the Nuremberg Trials

Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it.
— Abraham Lincoln

It is always to be taken for granted, that those who oppose an equality of rights never mean the exclusion should take place on themselves.
— Thomas Paine

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
— Misattributed to, but generally in line with the thinking of Voltaire

Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself.
— Potter Stewart

Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.
— Heinrich Heine

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.
— Mark Twain

The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate for a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers, and be capable of reading them.
— Thomas Jefferson, letter to Colonel Edward Carrington (Jan 16, 1787)

Knowledge, Wisdom, and Ignorance

...I know that the terror exists. I know the kind of terror it is. You can't conceive of that kind. Listen, what's the most horrible experience you can imagine? To me—it's being left, unarmed, in a sealed cell with a drooling beast of prey or a maniac who's had some disease that's eaten his brain out. You'd have nothing then but your voice—your voice and your thought. You'd scream to that creature why it should not touch you, you'd have the most eloquent words, the unanswerable words, you'd become the vessel of absolute truth. And you'd see living eyes watching you and you'd know that the thing can't hear you, that it can't be reached, not reached, not in any way, yet it's breathing and moving there before you with a purpose of its own. That's horror. Well, that's what's hanging over the world, prowling somewhere through mankind, the same thing, something closed, mindless, utterly wanton, but something with an aim and a cunning of its own. I don't think I am a coward, but I am afraid of it. And that's all I know—only that it exists. I don't know its purpose, I don't know its nature.
— Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

I wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence. There's a knob called "brightness", but it doesn't work.
— Gallagher

A book is a mirror: If an ass peers into it, you can't expect an apostle to look out.
— George Lichtenberg

Perhaps an editor might begin a reformation in some such way as this. Divide his paper into four chapters, heading the 1st, Truths. 2d, Probabilities. 3d, Possibilities. 4th, Lies. The first chapter would be very short.
— Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Norvell (Jun 11, 1807)

Witty/Silly

Blessed are the cracked, for they shall let in the light.
— J.C.

There was a young lady from Hyde
Who ate a green apple and died.
     While her lover lamented
     The apple fermented
And made cider inside her inside.
— Unknown (from Unix fortune program)

Well, I would—if they realized that we—again if—if we led them back to that stalemate only because our retaliatory power, our seconds, or strike at them after our first strike, would be so destructive they they couldn't afford it, that would hold them off.
— President Ronald Reagan, on the MX missile

A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.
— W. H. Auden

Good news is just life's way of keeping you off balance.
— Unknown

Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the drug store, but that's just peanuts to space.
— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

There are very few personal problems that cannot be solved through a suitable application of high explosives.
— Unknown

What the hell, go ahead and put all your eggs in one basket.
— Judy Jablonski

Bullwinkle: You just leave that to my pal. He's the brains of the outfit.
General: What does that make you?
Bullwinkle: What else? An executive...
— Jay Ward

Spark's Sixth Rule for Managers:
If a subordinate asks you a pertinent question, look at him as if he had lost his senses. When he looks down, paraphrase the question back at him.
— Unknown

FLASH! Intelligence of mankind decreasing. Details at ... uh, when the little hand is on the ....
— Unknown

Misc.

...that is the great fallacy: the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful.
— Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon (1932)

War itself, provided it is conducted with order and a sacred respect for the rights of civilians, has something sublime about it. ... On the other hand, a prolonged peace favors the predominance of a more commercial spirit, and with it a debasing self-interest, cowardice, and effeminancy and tends to degrade the character of the nation.
— Immanual Kant, Elements of Ethics

Go and try to disprove death. Death will disprove you.
— Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons, Ch. 24 (1862)

What we call progress is the exchange of one nuisance for another.
— Havelock Ellis

Men are so constituted that every one undertakes what he sees another successful in, whether he has aptitude for it or not.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Don't put off for tomorrow what you can do today, because if you enjoy it today you can do it again tomorrow.
— James A. Michener

The optimum committee has no members.
— Norman Augustine

Temet nosce (know thyself)
— Thales

History is but the register of human crimes and misfortunes.
— Voltaire, L'Ingénu (1767)

To call women the weaker sex is a libel; it is man's injustice to woman. If by strength is meant brute strength, then indeed, is woman less brute than man. If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man's superior. Has she not greater intuition, is she not more self-sacrificing, has she not greater powers of endurance, has she not greater courage? Without her, man would not be. If non-violence is the law of our being, the future is with women.
— Mohandes Gandhi, Young India (Apr 10, 1930)