The Cutting Garden Home Page

"They certainly give very strange names to diseases."
Plato

"Follow your inclinations with due regard to the policeman round the corner."
W. Somerset Maugham

Never corner anything meaner than you.
Old Farmer

"The truth of the matter is that you always know the right thing to do. The hard part is doing it."
General H. Norman Schwarzkopf

"The wages of sin are death, but the benefits include dental, major medical, two week paid vacation, pension fund, and stock options. Actually, taken as a package, it's a rather attractive deal."
Tim Mefford

"Ability is nothing without opportunity."
Napolean I

"Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it."
Ronald Reagan

"My doctor gave me two weeks to live. I hope they're in August."
Ronnie Shakes

"Courage is fear holding on a minute longer."
George Patton

"The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would hire them away."
Ronald Reagan

"People ask for criticism, but they only want praise."
W. Somerset Maugham

"Baseball is the only thing besides the paper clip that hasn't changed."
Bill Veeck

"[T]here is a terrific disadvantage not to have the abrasive quality of the press applied to you daily, to an administration, even though we never like it, and even though we wish they didn't write it, and even though we disapprove, there isn't any doubt that we could not do the job at all in a free society without a very, very active press."
John F Kennedy

"I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant."
Martin Luther King Jr.

"The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations."
David Friedman

"Every act of dishonesty has at least two victims: the one we think of as the victim, and the perpetrator as well. Each little dishonesty . . . makes another little rotten spot somewhere in the perpetrator's psyche."
Lesley Conger, in Adventures of an Ordinary Mind

"Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws."
Douglas Adams, in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

"To refuse awards is another way of accepting them with more noise than is normal."
Peter Ustinov

"Statistics: The only science that enables different experts using the same figures to draw different conclusions."
Esar Evan

"A low voter turnout is an indication of fewer people going to the polls."
J.Danforth Quayle

"Friendship is a sheltering tree"
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"You see a lot of smart guys with dumb women, but you hardly ever see a smart woman with a dumb guy."
Erica Jong

"Peace is such a precious jewel that I would give anything for it but truth."
Matthew Henry

"America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own."
John Quincy Adams

"Tradition is a guide and not a jailer."
W. Somerset Maugham

"We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run down."
Annuerin Bevan

Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one."
A. J. Liebling

"Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming Wow! What a Ride!"
Bill McKenna

"[Baseball] is a game to be savored, not gulped. There's time to discuss everything between pitches or between innings."
Bill Veeck

"If we aren't capable of being hurt we aren't capable of feeling joy."
Madeleine L'Engle

"It ain't bragging if you can do it."
Dizzy Dean

"I was . . . thinking what the state of flying has come to in this modern world and how little we, the mooing herd of cramped and inspected passengers, can do about it. It's the War on Terror, you know, so just shut up and be terrified."
Reg Henry, columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run down."
Annuerin Bevan

"If high heels were so wonderful, men would be wearing them."
Sue Grafton