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The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. - Bertrand Russell

For every complex problem there is a simple solution. And it's always wrong. - H.L. Mencken

In the end, we will not hear the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends - Martin Luther King Jr.

Take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. --Elie Wiesel, accepting the Nobel Peace Prize

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out -- because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out -- because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out -- because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me -- and there was no one left to speak for me. --Attributed to Pastor Martin Niemoller

In matters of conscience, the law of majority has no place. --Mohandas K. Gandhi

It is your karma to fight evil. It doesn't matter if the people that evil is being committed against don't fight back. It doesn't matter if the entire world choses to look the other way. Always remember this. You don't live with the consequences of other people's karma. You live with the consequences of your own (Said to Shiva by his uncle (The Secret of the Nagas by Amish)

Whenever you have truth it must be given with love, or the message and the messenger will be rejected. -- Mahatma Gandhi

The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed -- Steve Biko

It is easier to lead men to combat, stirring up their passion, than to restrain them and direct them toward the patient labours of peace.- Andre Gide

War is exciting for those who have no experience of it - Erasmus

"Logic can convince but only emotion can motivate." -- Jonathan Alter:

There is no greater sign of a general decay of virtue in a nation, than a want of zeal in its inhabitants for the good of their country - Joseph Addison

"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results." - Winston Churchill

Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t. -- Erica Jong

“Let us command the moment to remain.” -- Winston Churchill

I’d prefer to be right than consistent. --- Winston Churchill

Don't sacrifice what you wish for most for what you wish for now --- Curtis Martin (NFL running back)

"You are only dead when the last person who knows you dies." --- gypsy saying

Whatever we understand and enjoy in human products instantly becomes ours, wherever they might have their origin. Let me feel with unalloyed gladness that all the great glories of man are mine - Rabindranath Tagore

You got to love to be able to play - Louis Armstrong

Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion. – GeorFriedrich Hegel

We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing. – George Bernard Shaw

I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody. - Bill Cosby

All you need is a little courage... - Charlie Chaplin in "Limelight"

Freedom is what you do with what has been done to you - Jean-Paul Sartre

I passionately hate the idea of being with it, I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time. Orson Welles

It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into. - Jonathan Swift

The only people who become disillusioned are people who have illusions. -Saul Alinsky

Upton Sinclair wrote: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence. -Robert Frost

Aldous Huxley's indictment, "Most of one's life... is one prolonged effort to prevent thinking."

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe. —Albert Einstein

Barbara Tuchman's advice concerning research: "One must stop before one has finished. Otherwise, one will never stop and never finish."

All our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike-and yet it is the most precious thing we have.- Albert Einstein

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great. -Mark Twain

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness -- Mark Twain.

You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency? --- Mr.Welch's rhetorical question to Senator J.McCarthy at the McCarthy hearings.

Neither genius, fame, nor love show the greatness of the soul. Only kindness can do that. -Jean Baptiste Henri Lacordaire

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear. ~Ambrose Redmoon

Don’t cry over things that can’t cry over you. --- M.Dowd, who attributed it to her mother (the quote was in the context of teaching her daughter that materialism and narcissism can only smother life.)

Absorb what is useful, Discard what is not, Add what is uniquely your own. --- Bruce Lee

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much of life. So aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something. -Thoreau

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- G.B.Shaw

There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart's desire. The other is to get it.-- G.B.Shaw

Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.-- Mark Twain

Only presidents, editors and people with tapeworm have the right to use the editorial ‘we.’

Life is complicated but not uninteresting. --- Jerzy Newman (from the preface of Peter Guttorp's book "Stochastic modeling of sceintific data.")

Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve-- G.B.Shaw

We shall not cease from exploration And at the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know it for the first time - T.S.Elliot

Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries. And yet it is the greatest of our miseries. -- Blaise Pascal

In the long run, we are all dead - M.Keynes (Corollary: In the short run, we have to eat.)

No profit grows where is no pleasure ta’en; In brief, sir, study what you most affect. -- William Shakespeare (from “The Taming of the Shrew“)

Without assumptions there can be no conclusions - John Tukey

The best thing about being a statistician,'' John Tukey once told a colleague, ``is that you get to play in everyone's backyard.''

Far better an approximate answer to the right question, which is often vague, than an exact answer to the wrong question, which can always be made precise. John Tukey

"If we torture data long enough, it will confess "--- (in the context of multiple testing/data snooping issues) an unattributed quote in Olofsson's book on Probability, Statistics and Stochastic Processes.

Quotes (include some remarkably pessimistic/cynical ones!) by Alfred Nobel

• "Contentment is the only real wealth"
• "Justice is to be found only in the imagination"
• "The truthful man is usuall defeated by the liar"
• "Hope is nature's veil for hiding truth's nakedness"

All models are wrong, but some are useful - George Box (My favorite quote by a statistician, though it applies much more generally.)