Cool Quotes - O

When you get there [Oakland], there isn't any there there.

The trouble with Oakland is that when you get there it's there!

The best way to keep one's word is not to give it.

A General Officer who will invariably assume the responsibility for failure, whether he deserves it or not, and invariably give the credit for success to others, whether they deserve it or not, will achieve outstanding success.

I want a house that has got over all its troubles; I don't want to spend the rest of my life bringing up a young and inexperienced house.

Grandchildren don't make a man feel old; it's the knowledge that he's married to a grandmother.

Who knows whether in retirement I shall be tempted to the last infirmity of mundane minds, which is to write a book.

The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.

If I'd known I was going to live so long, I'd have taken better care of myself.

A man is only as old as the woman he feels.

"Next year? Peter, at my age I don't even buy green bananas."

When death comes near the old find that age is no longer burdensome.

When our vices quit us we flatter ourselves with the belief that it is we who quit them.

My only fear is that I may live too long. This would be a subject of dread to me.

It is not the end of joy that makes old age so sad, but the end of hope.

It is the common calamity of old age, to lose whatever might have rendered it desirable.

Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

[But] age, the common enemy of mankind, has laid his hand upon you; would that it had fallen upon some other, and that you were still young.

I am able to say that while I am not ruggedly well, I am not ill enough to excite an undertaker.

It takes some little time to accept and realize the fact that while you have been growing old, your friends have not been standing still, in that matter.

… at the wrong end of life …

All would live long, but none would be old.

Everybody my age should be issued with a 2 lb fresh salmon. If you see someone young, beautiful and happy, you should slap them as hard as you can with it.

Old age, by blanching the seat of reason, may cut off the fear of death even in a once imaginative mind, or it may, on the other hand, undermine fortitude, softening the will.

Because he spills his seed on the ground.

How wonderful opera would be if there were no singers.

No good opera plot can be sensible … People do not sing when they are feeling sensible.

He who says what he likes shall hear what he does not like.

Public opinion is a compound of folly, weakness, prejudice, wrong feeling, right feeling, obstinacy, and newspaper paragraphs.

Too often we … enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.

You've no idea what a poor opinion I have of myself—and how little I deserve it.

Absurdity, n. A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.

Opinion is ultimately determined by the feelings, and not by the intellect.

Opinions are the cheapest commodities in the world.

We think very few people sensible, except those who are of our opinion.

The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.

What the historian Elie Kedourie called "the Chatham House Version"—that toxic amalgam of smugness, moral relativism, and cherished feelings of guilt about the achievements of Western civilization—everywhere nurtured the catechism of established opinion.

You probably wouldn't worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do.

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn't wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine.

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.

What is more mortifying than to feel that you have missed the plum for want of courage to shake the tree?

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

Delay not; swift the flight of fortune's greatest favours.

It is doubtful if the oppressed ever fight for freedom. They fight for pride and power—power to oppress others. The oppressed want above all to imitate their oppressors; they want to retaliate.

In [Nazi] Germany, they came first for the Communists,
And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist;
And then they came for the trade unionists,
And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist;
And then they came for the Jews,
And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew;
And then … they came for me …
And by that time there was no one left to speak up.

The optimist proclaims we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true.

If one truly has lost hope, one would not be on hand to say so.

He who despairs over an event is a coward, but he who holds hopes for the human condition is a fool.

There exists in human nature a strong propensity to depreciate the advantages, and to magnify the evils, of the present times.

What fresh hell is this?

The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised.

He can best be described as one of those orators who, before they get up, do not know what they are going to say; when they are speaking, do not know what they are saying; and when they have sat down, do not know what they have said.

The object of oratory is not truth but persuasion.

They talk most who have the least to say.

The thoughtless are rarely wordless.

What a good thing Adam had—when he said a good thing, he knew nobody had said it before.

There is nothing new under the sun.

Your manuscript is both good and original; but the parts that are good are not original, and the parts that are original are not good.

My guess is that well over 80 percent of the human race goes through life without having a single original thought.