Let’s face it — famous people have the best quotes. Whether you’re talking about a comedian with a staff of writers to prepare their quips or a politician or statesman with the power of government behind him, people with fame tend to be remembered and quoted more often than us regular folk. Here are the best quotes by famous people. Go ahead — use them. They’re celeb-tested and approved.
To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance. –Oscar Wilde
Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens. –Jimi Hendrix
A clever man commits no minor blunders. –Goethe
Argue for your limitations, and sure enough they’re yours. –Richard Bach
A witty saying proves nothing. –Voltaire (1694-1778)
Sleep is an excellent way of listening to an opera. –James Stephens (1882-1950)
The nice thing about being a celebrity is that if you bore people they think it’s their fault. –Henry Kissinger (1923-)
Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance. –Will Durant
I have often regretted my speech, never my silence. –Xenocrates (396-314 B.C.)
It was the experience of mystery even if mixed with fearthat engendered religion. –Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
If everything seems under control, you’re just not going fast enough. –Mario Andretti
I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are surethat is all that agnosticism means. –Clarence Darrow, Scopes trial, 1925.
Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal. –Henry Ford (1863-1947)
I’ll sleep when I’m dead. –Warren Zevon (1947-2003)
There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread. –Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)
When you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you. –Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
The instinct of nearly all societies is to lock up anybody who is truly free. First, society begins by trying to beat you up. If this fails, they try to poison you. If this fails too, they finish by loading honors on your head. –Jean Cocteau (1889-1963)
Everyone is a genius at least once a year; a real genius has his original ideas closer together. –Georg Lichtenberg (1742-1799)
Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it –Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
While we are postponing, life speeds by. –Seneca
Fill what’s empty, empty what’s full, and scratch where it itches. –the Duchess of Windsor, when asked what is the secret of a long and happy life
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. –Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)
Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die. –Mel Brooks
Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so. –Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
Wit is educated insolence. –Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you’ll be happy; if not, you’ll become a philosopher. –Socrates (470-399 B.C.)
Egotist: a person more interested in himself than in me. –Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
A narcissist is someone better looking than you are. –Gore Vidal
Wise men make proverbs, but fools repeat them. –Samuel Palmer (1805-80)
It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. –Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
The secret of success is to know something nobody else knows. –Aristotle Onassis (1906-1975)
Sometimes when reading Goethe I have the paralyzing suspicion that he is trying to be funny. –Guy Davenport
When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite. –Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has no heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains. –Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth. –Niels Bohr (1885-1962)
We all agree that your theory is crazy, but is it crazy enough? –Niels Bohr (1885-1962)
When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong. –Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983)
In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it’s the exact opposite. –Paul Dirac (1902-1984)
I would have made a good Pope. –Richard M. Nixon (1913-1994)
In any contest between power and patience, bet on patience. –W.B. Prescott
Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin. –John von Neumann (1903-1957)
The mistakes are all waiting to be made. –chessmaster Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower (1887-1956) on the game’s opening position
It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims. –Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one. –Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important. –Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
A little inaccuracy sometimes saves a ton of explanation. –H. H. Munro (Saki) (1870-1916)
Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler. –Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
What do you take me for, an idiot? –General Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970), when a journalist asked him if he was happy
I heard someone tried the monkeys-on-typewriters bit trying for the plays of W. Shakespeare, but all they got was the collected works of Francis Bacon. –Bill Hirst
Three o’clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do. –Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)
A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines. –Frank Lloyd Wright (1868-1959)
It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid. –George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
If you haven’t got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me. –Alice Roosevelt Longworth (1884-1980)
A man can’t be too careful in the choice of his enemies. –Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names. –John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)
Logic is in the eye of the logician. –Gloria Steinem
No one can earn a million dollars honestly. –William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925)
Everything has been figured out, except how to live. –Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)
Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech. –Martin Fraquhar Tupper
Thank you for sending me a copy of your bookI’ll waste no time reading it. –Moses Hadas (1900-1966)
From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it. –Groucho Marx (1895-1977)
It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating. –Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
When ideas fail, words come in very handy. –Goethe (1749-1832)
In the end, everything is a gag. –Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977)
The nice thing about egotists is that they don’t talk about other people. –Lucille S. Harper
You got to be careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there. –Yogi Berra
I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I have ever known. –Walt Disney (1901-1966)
He who hesitates is a damned fool. –Mae West (1892-1980)
Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater. –Gail Godwin
University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small. –Henry Kissinger (1923-)
The graveyards are full of indispensable men. –Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970)
You can pretend to be serious; you can’t pretend to be witty. –Sacha Guitry (1885-1957)