Cool Quotes - F

A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.

Everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not to his own facts.

I never ponder counterfactuals.

Mistakes are often the stepping stones to utter failure.

In your code, never check for an error condition you don't know how to handle.

Restlessness is discontent—and discontent is the first necessity of progress. Show me a thoroughly satisfied man—and I will show you a failure.

I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure—which is: Try to please everybody.

The doctor can bury his mistakes, but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines.

[After an appendectomy and a devastating electoral loss, Churchill found himself] without an office, without a seat, without a party, and without an appendix.

Experience, n. A series of failures. Every failure teaches a man something, to wit, that he will probably fail again next time.

Our achievements speak for themselves. What we have to keep track of are our failures, discouragements and doubts. We tend to forget the past difficulties, the many false starts, and the painful groping. We see our past achievements as the end results of a clean forward thrust, and our present difficulties as signs of decline and decay.

Three failures denote uncommon strength. A weakling has not enough grit to fail thrice.

The most basic of conservative principles is that if you reward bad behavior you get more of it.

Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.

It is hard to fail; but is worse never to have tried to succeed.

A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks.

[Tests] are not unfair. Life is unfair and tests measure the results.

Those of little faith are of little hatred.

Failure of faith almost always arises from lack of humility. Pride destroys faith, and pride is the déformation professionnelle of the theologian.

"Do you cheat on your wife?" asked the psychiatrist.

"Who else?" answered the patient.

"Before we get married," said the young woman to her fiance, "I want to confess some affairs that I've had in the past."

"But you told me all about those a few weeks ago," her young man replied.

"Yes, darling," she explained, "but that was a few weeks ago."

Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.

Now when I bore people at a party, they think it's their fault.

In the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes.

Fame may last a minute, but infamy lasts a lifetime.

… the threat to the family posed by modern radical collectivism is in the long run no less grave, and far more stealthy and difficult to fight. Nor is it a theoretical or distant threat. It is real and imminent, especially in the America of the 1980s. I can sum it up in one sentence: the United States is in the process of establishing a social and legal system in which marriage has no legitimate status and the family no natural role.

If the family structure breaks down, you'll need the government welfare state to expand to take care of the women and children, and you'll need the police state to expand to take care of the young men.

African famine is not a visitation of fate. It is largely man-made, and the men who made it are largely Africans.

A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.

Recluse fanatics have few ideas or sentiments to communicate …

Goose pimples rose all over me, my hair stood on end, my eyes filled with tears of love and gratitude for this greatest of all conquerors of human misery and shame, and my breath came in little gasps. If I had not known that the Leader would have scorned such adulation, I might have fallen to my knees in unashamed worship, but instead I drew myself to attention, raised my arm in the eternal salute of the ancient Roman Legions and repeated the holy words, "Heil Hitler!"

Whenever the spirit of fanaticism, at once so credulous and so crafty, has insinuated itself into a noble mind, it insensibly corrodes the vital principles of virtue and veracity.

[Fanaticism] obliterates the feelings of humanity.

The farmer is the only man in our economy who buys everything at retail, sells everything he produces at wholesale, and pays the freight both ways.

Every generation laughs at the old fashions but religiously follows the new.

Art produces ugly things which frequently become beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time.

And by my grave you'd pray to have me back
So I could see how well you look in black.

Sweatpants are a sign of defeat.

When the stomach is full, it is easy to talk of fasting.

When asked why he did not become a father, Thales answered, "Because I am fond of children."

No man is responsible for his father. That was entirely his mother's affair.

If we had no faults we should not take so much pleasure in noting those of others.

Be to her virtues very kind. Be to her faults a little blind.

We confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no large ones.

Neglect mending a small Fault, and 'twill soon be a great one.

Never let your inferiors do you a favor. It will be extremely costly.

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

[It] was fear that was then making you a good citizen, which is never a lasting teacher of duty.

[The] sentiment of fear is nearly allied to that of hatred.

Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.

I'm saying, if something's scaring you out, don't run from it. Find out everything you can about it. Then it ain't the unknown anymore and it ain't scary … Or I guess it could be a shitload scarier. Mostly the former, though.

I just mean that every time you're uncomfortable and you get the option to sit something out, you sit it out. So all I was saying to you was: when your asshole gets tight, don't listen to your gut, 'cause you've filled it with shit.

When it's asshole-tightening time, that's when you see what people are made of. Or at least what their asshole is made of.

I was scared then, I'm not now. How long do you want me to be scared?

Every man is scared in his first battle. If he says he's not, he's a liar. Some men are cowards but they fight the same as the brave men or they get the hell slammed out of them watching men fight who are just as scared as they are. The real hero is the man who fights even though he is scared.

All men [in war] are frightened. The more intelligent they are, the more they are frightened. The courageous man is the man who forces himself, in spite of his fear, to carry on. Discipline, pride, self-respect, self-confidence, and the love of glory are attributes which will make a man courageous even when he is afraid.

Extreme fear can neither fight nor fly.

Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up.

Never fight fair with a stranger, boy. You'll never get out of the jungle that way.

The man who strikes first admits that his ideas have given out.

We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.

[If] a man consults whether he is to fight, when he has the power in his own hands, it is certain that his opinion is against fighting.

Have fun and don't screw with anyone bigger than you.

It's over, and can't be helped, and that's one consolation, as they always say in Turkey, when they cut the wrong man's head off.

Occasionally we passed grim and taciturn men, huddled from the wind under wide green umbrellas, working the waters with every conceivable device of piscatorial ingenuity, in the pursuit of bream, tench, gudgeon and other inedible creatures. What pleasure did they derive from this dank and unrewarding pastime? Was it, perhaps, the negative comfort of escaping from wives, mothers, girlfriends, into one of the last bastions of unreformed masculinity?

Fly fishing may be a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing I can only only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.

The land and the people and the flag—the land a continent, the people of every race, the flag a symbol of what humanity may aspire to when the wars are over and the barriers are down; to these each generation must be dedicated and consecrated anew, to defend with life itself, if need be, but, above all, in friendliness, in hope, in courage, to live for.

'Tis an old maxim in the schools,
That flattery's the food of fools—
Yet now and then your men of wit
Will condescend to take a bit.

Flattery is a foolish suicide; she destroys herself with her own hands.

[Flattery] adheres to power, and envy to superior merit.

You know the oxygen masks on airplanes? I don't think there's really any oxygen. They're just to muffler the screams.

The air [flying] is an extremely dangerous mistress. Once under the spell most lovers are faithful to the end, which is not always old age.

The follies which a man regrets most, in his life, are those which he didn't commit when had the opportunity.

… nobody really likes capers no matter what you do with them. Some people pretend to like capers, but the truth is that any dish that tastes good with capers in it, tastes even better with capers not in it.

I am an epicure; you are a gourmand; he has both feet in the trough.

The best number for a dinner party is two—myself and a damn good head waiter.

I don't even butter my bread. I consider that cooking.

[Cheese is] milk's leap toward immortality.

I will not eat oysters. I want my food dead—not sick, not wounded—dead.

Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.

It is hard to free fools from the chains they revere.

Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side? And ain't that a big enough majority for any town?

'Tis better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.

Who loves not wine, women, and song
Remains a fool his whole life long.

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

Never call a man a fool. Borrow from him.

The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.

Wise men store up knowledge,
but the mouth of a fool invites ruin.

A fool's lips bring him strife,
and his mouth invites a beating.

A learned fool is more foolish than an ignorant one.

Experience keeps a dear School, but Fools will learn in no other, and scarce in that.

It is Ill-Manners to silence a Fool, and Cruelty to let him go on.

The learned Fool writes his Nonsense in better Language than the unlearned; but still 'tis Nonsense.

Wise Men learn by other's harms; Fools by their own.

Most Fools think they are only ignorant.

Half Wits talk much but say little.

The World is full of fools and faint hearts; and yet every one has courage enough to bear the misfortunes, and wisdom enough to manage the Affairs of his neighbor.

Tricks and treachery are the Practice of Fools, that have not Wit enough to be honest.

Fools multiply folly.

The herd instinct among forecasters makes sheep look like independent thinkers.

Foreign aid is the transfer of wealth from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.

Tis easy to see, hard to foresee.

Dangers which are warded off by effective precaution and foresight are never even remembered.

Injuries may be forgiven, but not forgotten.

Fortune is fickle and soon asks back what he has given.

I never admired another's fortune so much that I became dissatisfied with my own.

The fortune of nations has often depended on accidents …

France though armed to the teeth is pacifist to the core.

If you destroy a free market, you create a black market.

Economists may not know much. But we know one thing very well: how to produce surpluses and shortages. Do you want a surplus? Have the government legislate a minimum price that is above the price that would otherwise prevail.… Do you want a shortage? Have the government legislate a maximum price that is below the price that would otherwise prevail.

We forbid any course that says we restrict free speech.

The American people, I am convinced, really detest free speech. At the slightest alarm they are ready and eager to put it down.

Some people's idea of free speech is that they are free to say what they like but if anyone says anything back, that is an outrage.

If people have to choose between freedom and sandwiches they will take sandwiches.

When the freedom they wished for most was the freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and never was free again.

The middle class prefers comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to the deathly inner consuming fire.

There can be no real freedom without the freedom to fail.

A nation may lose its liberties in a day, and not miss them for a century.

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.

Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery.

I believe that the heaviest blow ever dealt at liberty's head will be dealt by [the United States] in the ultimate failure of its example to the earth.

Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.

The average man doesn't want to be free. He wants to be safe.

It seems to me that society usually wins. There are, to be sure, free spirits in the world, but their freedom, in the last analysis, is not much greater than that of a canary in a cage. They may leap from perch to perch; they may bathe and guzzle at their will; they may flap their wings and sing. But they are still in the cage, and soon or late it conquers them.

We hear about constitutional rights, free speech and the free press. Every time I hear those words I say to myself, "That man is a Red, that man is a Communist." You never heard a real American talk in that manner.

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be.

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.

The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do.

To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.

When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.

[The] vain, inconstant, rebellious disposition of the people [of Armorica], was incompatible either with freedom or servitude.

[The] love of freedom, so often invigorated and disgraced by private ambition, was reduced, among the licentious Franks, to the contempt of order, and the desire of impunity.

Live free or die; death is not the worst of evils.

If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all.

If [the fact that people make poor decisions] is reason enough for the government to second-guess their decisions about dangerous activities such as smoking cigarettes and riding motorcycles, why on earth should the government let people make their own choices when it comes to such consequential matters as where to live, how much education to get, whom to marry, whether to have children, which job to take, or what religion to practice?

Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.

The thing to remember about freedom is that it's not given, it's taken.

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.

Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.

I am not a warrior, but who is? I have never learned to fight for my freedom. I was only good at enjoying it.

Freedom is the silence of the law.

I defy anybody to say what are the rights of a citizen, if they do not include the control of his own diet in relation to his own health.

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children's children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done.

Here we are, then, once more back at the old doctrine—Laissez faire. Let us translate it into blunt English, and it will read, Mind your own business. It is nothing but the doctrine of liberty. Let every man be happy in his own way.

Freedom is messy. In free societies, people will fall through the cracks—drink too much, eat too much, buy unaffordable homes, fail to make prudent provision for health care, and much else. But the price of being relieved of all those tiresome choices by a benign paternal government is far too high. Big Government is the small option: it's the guarantee of smaller freedom, smaller homes, smaller cars, smaller opportunities, smaller lives.

Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.

England's [Liberty] bell has fallen silent. Americans would do well to ensure that the crack in theirs grows no larger.

To live in freedom one must grow used to a life full of agitation, change, and danger.

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.

The French have a passion for revolution but an abhorrence of change.

The French drink to get loosened up for an event, to celebrate an event, and even to recover from an event.

In Paris, they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.

I prefer to travel on French ships because there is none of that 'women and children first' nonsense.

After eighty years' experience, his [Freud's] methods of therapy have proved, on the whole, costly failures, more suited to cosset the unhappy than cure the sick.

[A] friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

An open Foe may prove a curse; But a pretended friend is worse.

Be slow in choosing a Friend, slower in changing.

I have plague enough with my adversaries, therefore my brethren should not vex me.

Of my friends I am the only one I have left.

It's important to our friends to believe that we are unreservedly frank with them, and important to friendship that we are not.

In life it is difficult to say who do you the most mischief, enemies with the worst intentions, or friends with the best.

Don't tell your friends their social faults; they will cure the fault and never forgive you.

Do not use a hatchet to remove a fly from your friend's forehead.

Your friend is the man who knows all about you, and still likes you.

A man of active and resilient mind outwears his friendships just as certainly as he outwears his love affairs, his politics, and his epistemology.

A friend in need is a friend to be avoided.

Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.

George Bernard Shaw: Am reserving two tickets for you for my premiere. Come and bring a friend—if you have one.
Winston Churchill: Impossible to be present for the first performance. Will attend the second—if there is one.

Misfortune tests the sincerity of friendship.

Friendship cheers the faint and weary,
Makes the timid spirit brave,
Warns the erring, lights the dreary,
Smooths the passage to the grave.

Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.

If a man does not make new acquaintance as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man, Sir, should keep his friendship in constant repair.

For 'mid old friends, tried and true,
Once more we our youth renew.
But old friends, alas! may die;
New friends must their place supply.
Cherish friendship in your breast—
New is good, but old is best;
Make new friends, but keep the old;
Those are silver, these are gold.

He will always be a slave who does not know how to live upon a little.

Do not boast about tomorrow,
for you do not know what a day may bring forth.

[The] future belongs to those who show up for it.

A week ago, I had no idea what the future would bring, which, I guess, is always true of everyone all the time.

There's many a slip twixt cup and lip.

I have no fear of the future. Let us go forward into its mysteries, let us tear aside the veils which hide it from our eyes and let us move onward with confidence and courage