Humorous and Profound Quotations

            A few years ago, I heard someone say that it was a good idea to have a hobby.  At that time, not much different from now, I didn’t have extra money, so after thinking a while, I decided to start a quotation collection.  Back when I started this blog, I have a couple of posts full of quotations I had written down.  It has been a few months (along with cleaning up notes sitting under my desk) since then, so I figure its time to make a post of quotes I have collected.  As you will see, some are humorous, and some are profound, and occasionally one that I may not agree with, but its use of our language was memorable.  It reflects that I probably watch too much sports programming.

Death is the ultimate way to close your eyes to the truth.

            --Dr. Rex Beaber (said in an interview during the O. J. Simpson chase)

…as the master, so is the disciple; as the father, so the child.

            --St. John of the Cross

If a group of people is doing everything that a church is supposed to be doing, why not call it a church?

            --E. V. Brooks

I was so broke I couldn’t pay attention.

            --Robert Smith (ESPN football commentator, about his college days)

I am thinking, therefore, I exist.

--Rene Descartes (I only put this famous phrase in due to it is normally quoted with slightly similar words, possibly slightly different in nuance)

Study the past if you would divine the future.

            --Confucius

Vegas is built on the rule, while people chose the abherration.

--Dan LeBatard (probably the first time in history LeBatard has been quoted immediately after Confucius and Descartes)

If you are riding a horse across a river, don’t fall off and dance with it.

            --unknown

No ultimate truth is true unless we love it.

--John Middleton Murray (this is the irritating quote that is, in one sense, obviously untrue, but in another aspect, is)

The need for new projects is typical of creative people, whether they are entrepeneurs, independent contractors, or artists.  If you want to torture these people, make them do the same thing over and over again.

            --Nancy Anderson, “Work With Passion Midlife and Beyond,” p. 149

Luck is the residue of design.

            --Branch Rickey

Nietzsche is dead.

            --God

I freed Germany from the stupid and degrading fallacies of conscience and morality…we will train young people before whom the world will tremble.

            --Adolf Hitler (from a speech given at Auchwitz)

…expertise and ambition easily become demonic.

            --Richard Keyes

I gradually began to realize that the post-Enlightenment secular view that divides fact and meaning is itself a faith-held commitment, built on very dubious assumptions.  On the other hand, the foundations for Christian faith claims turned out to be much more solid than I had been led to believe at Harvard.

            --Richard Keyes, from his essay in “Finding God at Harvard”

I have always eaten for entertainment.

            --Brad Cummings, of The God Journey podcast, said as a joke.

But people also have the right not to know, and it is a more valuable one—the right not to have their divine souls stuffed with gossip, nonsense, and vain talk.

            --Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, from his 1978 commencement address to Harvard

I think people will reject me, so I tease and pull at people until I am proven right.

            --Anonymous

…inspiration is like a flock of birds.  Sometimes it’s a lovely thing to watch, and sometimes its an Alfred Hitchcock movie.

            --Tris Hussey

Woody Page-isms:

Read this, or you’ll be sorry.  On the other hand, you may be sorry, anyway.

You guys pair up in groups of three, and then line up in a circle.

I own a lot to my parents, especially my mother and father.

Predictions are difficult, especially about the future.

_______’s favorite color is argyle.