Memorable quotes of the year 2006

I have at work one of these desktop calendars with a quote for each day. Over the past 12 months I have kept note of the ones that deserved to be remembered, and here they are:

“The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people” – Karl Marx

“In a completely sane world, madness is the only freedom!” – J. G. Ballard

“The only job where you start at the top is when digging a hole.”

“A bore is one who has the power of speech but not the capacity for conversation.” – Benjamin Disraeli

“All the things I really like to do are either illegal, immoral, or fattening.” – Alexander Woollcott.

“Minds are like parachutes. They only function when they are open.” – Sir James Dewar.

“Boss: the man who is early when you are late, and late when you are early.”

“Pay as you go: if you cannot pay, don’t go.”

“Even though quality cannot be defined, you know what quality is.”

“You don’t tell deliberate lies, but sometimes you have to be evasive.” – Margaret Thatcher

“Women are really much nicer than men: No wonder we like them.” – Sir Kingsley Amis

“You know everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.” – Will Rogers

“Keep smiling: people will wonder what you are up to.”

“Committee – a group of people who individually can do nothing, but as a group can decide nothing can be done.”

“Bad planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.”

“The most damaging phrase in the language is: ‘It’s always been done that way’.”

“You can’t say civilisation isn’t advancing: in every war they kill you in a new way.” – Will Rogers.

“War is too serious a matter to entrust to military men.” – Georges Braque.

“The male is a domestic animal which, if treated with firmness, can be trained to do most things.” – Jilly Cooper

“Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.” – Groucho Marx

“Just when you think you can make ends meet at last, somebody moves the ends.”

“A sale is not a sale until it has been paid for.”

“Today’s payslip has more deductions than a Sherlock Holmes novel.” – Raymond Cvikota.

“Meetings are indispensable, when you don’t want to do anything.”

“When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.” – Eric Hoffer.

“A man in love is incomplete until he has married. Then he’s finished.” Zsa Zsa Gabor

“Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.” G.K. Chesterton.

“A budget is a method of worrying before you spend, instead of afterwards.”

“The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums.” – G.K. Chesterton

“It’s only those who do nothing that make no mistakes, I suppose.” – Joseph Conrad.

“All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure.” – Mark Twain.

“Those are my principles. If you don’t like them, I have others.” Groucho Marx.

“Dying, dying… Dying is nothing. So start by living. It’s less fun and it lasts longer.” Jean Anouilh.

“Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.” Mark Twain.

“Good business is business with profits to both sides.”

“A camel is a horse designed by a committee.”

“The tragic or the humorous is a matter of perspective.”

“A psychiatrist is a man who goes to the Folies-Bergère and looks at the audience.” Rt. Revd Mervyn Stockwood.

“It’s better to be an optimist who is sometimes wrong than a pessimist who is always right.”

“We are all manufacturers: making good, making trouble and making excuses.”

“Progress everywhere today does seem to come so very heavily disguised as Chaos.” Joyce Grenfell.

“Happiness is not the absence of problems but the ability to deal with them.”

“A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining and wants it back the minute it begins to rain.” Mark Twain.

“A government is the only known vessel that leaks from the top.” – James Reston

“The English like eccentrics. They just don’t like them living next door.” – Julian Clary

“A perfectionist takes infinite pains and often gives them to other people.”

“Heredity is something you believe in if you have a bright child.”

“Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.” – Saul Alinsky.

“Hoping without planning is about as futile as waiting for a harvest without planting.”

“The curve that can set a lot of things straight is a smile.”

“Laugh and the world laughs with you. Snore and you snore alone.” – Anthony Burgess.

“You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer ‘YES’, without having asked a clear question.” – Albert Camus


Some classic ones in there. My favourite is "Keep smiling, people will wonder what you're up to."

What is YOUR favourite one, whether in this list or not?