3958 Monroeville Blvd. - Suite 101
Monroeville, PA 15146
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Chiropractic, forward-thinking, against-the-grain, alternative-minded, scientific, philanthropic, and common-sense quotations

"The doctor of the future will give no medicine but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, in diet and in the cause and prevention of disease."

--attributed to Thomas Edison

"As to disease, make a habit of two things - to help, or at least to do no harm."

--Hippocrates

Conventional Wisdom—Ideas that are generally accepted by the public and become so familiar that no one ever questions them.

--Coined by J. K. Galbraith

Zeitgeist—The general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era.  From the German Zeit (time) + Geist (spirit).

--Coined by Johann Gottfried Herder

“Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.”

--Samuel Johnson

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.  With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.  He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall.  Speak what you think now in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradicts every thing you said today.  —’Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’  -Is it so bad to be misunderstood?  Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh.  To be great is to be misunderstood.”

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The greater the philosopher, the harder it is for him to answer the questions of common people.”

--Henryk Sienkiewicz

“The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of truth—that the error and truth are simply opposite.  They are nothing of the sort.  What the world turns to, when it is cured of one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one.”

--H.L. Mencken

“Progress is what happens when impossibility yields to necessity.”

--Arnold Glasgow

“It has become appallingly clear that our technology has surpassed our humanity.”

--Albert Einstein

“What objectivity requires is not an ‘open mind’ but an active mind—a mind able and eagerly willing to examine ideas, and to examine them critically.”

--Ayn Rand

“This is the essence of discrimination:  Formulating opinions about others not based on their individual merits, but rather on their membership in a group with assumed characteristics.”

--Andrew, Philadelphia

“You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can’t get them across, your ideas won’t get you anywhere.”

--Lee Iacocca

"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.”

--Mark Twain

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”

--Aristotle

"He who has a ‘why’ to live can bear with almost any ‘how.’”

--Friedrich Nietzsche

"You have to find something that you love enough to be able to take risks, jump over the hurdles and break through the brick walls that are always going to be placed in front of you.  If you don’t have that kind of feeling for what it is you’re doing, you’ll stop at the first giant hurdle.”

--George Lucas

"To criticize, to destroy, is not difficult; any unskilled labourer knows how to drive his pick into the noble and finely-hewn stone of a cathedral.  To construct:  that is what requires the skill of a master.”

--St. Josemaria Escriva

"It is not the brains that matter most, but that which guides them—the character, the heart, the generous qualities, progressive ideas.”

--Fyodor Dostoyevsky

"Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”

--T. S. Eliot

"The art of progress is to preserve order amid change, and to preserve change amid order.  Life refuses to be embalmed alive.”

--Alfred North Whitehead

"The thinking of a genius does not proceed logically.  It leaps with great ellipses.  It pull knowledge from God knows where.”

--Dorothy Thompson

"The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress.”

--Charles Kettering

"People who get shocked easily should be shocked a little more often.”

--Mae West

"When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

--Sherlock Holmes

"A leader, once convinced that a particular course of action is the right one, must...be undaunted when the going gets tough.”

--Ronald Reagan

"Be uncompromising in doctrine and conduct.  But be yielding in manner.  A mace of tempered steel, wrapped in a quilted covering.  Be uncompromising, but don’t be obstinate.”

--St. Josemaria Escriva

"In all affairs it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.”

--Bertrand Russell

"A good man can be stupid and still be good.  But a bad man must have brains.”

--Maxim Gorky

"The best manner of avenging ourselves is by not resembling him who has injured us.”

--Jane Porter

"Ideas, as distinguished from events, are never unprecedented.”

--Hannah Arendt

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age 18.”

--Albert Einstein

"Those who cannot live fully often become destroyers of life.”

--Anais Nin

"In youth we feel richer for every new illusion; in maturer years, for every one we lose.”

--Anne Sophie Swetchine

"You can make your world so much larger simply by acknowledging everyone else’s.”

--Jeanne Marie Laskas

"Only he who can see the invisible can do the impossible.”

--Frank Gaines

"Do not attempt to do a thing unless you are sure of yourself; but do  not relinquish it simply because someone else is not sure of you.”

--Stewart E. White

"Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.”

--Jonathan Swift

"If we could give every individual the right amount of nourishment and exercise, no too little and not too much, we would have found the safest way to health.”

--Hippocrates

"To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.”

--Abraham Lincoln

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

--Edmund Burke

"Mistakes are the portals for discovery.”

--James Joyce

"Read, every day, something no one else is reading.  Think, every day, something no one else is thinking.  Do every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do.  It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity.”

--Christopher Morley

"Loosen up; you’re not going to convince ‘em anyway. Speeches aren’t about turning archenemies into cheering supporters. Presentations are mainly opportunities to reassure those who already agree with you that you’re a horse worth betting on.”

--Tom Peters

"All of the great achievers of the past have been visionary figures; they were men and women who projected into the future.  They thought of what could be, rather than what already was, and then they moved themselves into action, to bring these things into fruition."

--Bob Proctor

"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."

--George Bernard Shaw

"The addiction to the approval of others may be more life threatening, stress producing, and debilitating than drugs or booze.  Choose to accept responsibility to others, but not for their attitudes, opinions or behavior towards you.  If they like you, great.  If not, it’s not your problem."

--Bill Gove

"Learning is like rowing upstream; not to advance is to drop back."

--Chinese Proverb

"When I grow up, I think I'll be a great prophet. I'll speak profound truths, but no one will listen to me...."

--Linus Van Pelt

"The fellow who says he'll meet you halfway usually thinks he's standing on the dividing line."

--O.A. Battista

"He who is learned is not wise; He who is wise is not learned."

--Tao Te Ching

"During my 87 years I have witnessed a whole succession of technological revolutions. But none of them has done away with the need for character in the individual or the ability to think."

--Bernard M. Baruch

"Life has taught me that it is not for our faults that we are disliked and even hated, but for our qualities."

--Bernard Berenson

"He, who will not reason, is a bigot; he, who cannot, is a fool; and he, who dare not, is a slave."

--William Drummond

"Faith and doubt both are needed- not as antagonists, but working side by side- to take us around the unknown curve."

--Lillian Smith

"We fear something before we hate it. A child who fears noises becomes a man who hates noise."

--Cyril Connolly

"The truly fashionable are beyond fashion."

--Cecil Beaton

"The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there."

--L.P. Hartley

"It is astonishing what force, purity and wisdom it requires for a human being to keep clear of falsehoods."

--Margaret Fuller

"'One must compromise!' Compromise is a word found only in the vocabulary of those who have no will to fight - the lazy, the cunning, the cowardly - for they consider themselves defeated before they start."

--St. Josemaria Escriva

"Today's shocks are tomorrow's conventions."

--Carolyn Heilbrun

"How glorious it is- and also how painful- to be an exception."

--Alfred de Musset

"Always remember others may hate you, but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself."

--Richard M. Nixon

"If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference."

--Abraham Lincoln

"A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past; he is one who is prematurely disappointed in the future."

--Sydney J. Harris

"It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well."

--Rene Descartes

"Materialists and madmen never have doubts."

--G.K. Chesterton

"Men travel faster now, but I do not know if they go to better things."

--Willa Cather

"No artist is ahead of his time. He is his time. It is just that others are behind the time."

--Martha Graham

"Take from me the hope that I can change the future, and you will send me mad."

--Israel Zangwill

"It is indeed difficult to define just who the 'modern man' is, and what views he has to hold in order to be modern."

--Josiah Royce

"Uninterpreted truth is as useless as buried gold."

--Lytton Strachey

"Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called."

--John Stuart Mill

"More persons, on the whole, are humbugged by believing nothing, than by believing too much."

--P.T. Barnum

"Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people."

--Admiral Hyman G. Rickover

"The world fears a new experience more that it fears anything. Because a new experience displaces so many old experiences."

--D.H. Lawrence

"Be who you are and say what you feel 'cause people who mind don't matter, and people who matter don't mind."

--Theodor Seuss Geisel

"In the republic of mediocrity, genius is dangerous."

--Robert S. Ingersoll

"Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are."

--Bertholt Brecht

"No man has a right in America to treat any other man tolerantly, for tolerance is the assumption of superiority."

--Wendell Willkie

"We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them."

--Livy

"We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes which were, for the moment, unpopular."

--Edward R. Murrow

"The horse is too small, the jockey too big, the trainer too old, and I'm too dumb to know the difference."

--Charles Howard, Seabiscuit

"All that is human must be retrograde if it does not advance."

--Edward Gibbon

"Men simply don't think."

--Albert Schweitzer, M.D.

"Don't find a fault, find a remedy."

--Henry Ford

"Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict."

--William Ellery Channing

"There is a way to do it better -find it!."

--Thomas Edison

"The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice. It is conformity."

--Rollo May

"There is nothing more horrifying than stupidity in action"

--Adlai E. Stevenson

"If we knew where opinion ended and fact began, we should have discovered, I suppose, the absolute."

--Alec Waugh

"Opinion is that exercise of the human will which helps us to make a decision without information."

--John Erskine

"Choice is an illusion created between those with power and those without."

--Merovingian, The Matrix Reloaded

"People generally quarrel because they cannot argue."

--G.K. Chesterton

"What we really are matters more than what other people think of us."

--Jawaharial Nehru

"I am always ready to learn, but I do not always like being taught."

--Winston Churchill

"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."

--John Stuart Mill

"It is the tragedy of the world that no one knows what he doesn't know - and the less a mean knows, the more sure he is that he knows everything."

--Joyce Cary

"People who cannot recognize a palpable absurdity are very much in the way of civilization."

--Agnes Repplier

"The individual says, 'My crowd doesn't run that way.' I say, don't run with crowds."

--Robert Henri

"If we were to wake up some morning and find that everyone was the same race, creed, and color, we would find some other causes for prejudice by noon."

--George Aiken

"There is a great deal of difference in believing something still, and believing it again."

--W.H. Auden

"I dislike arguments of any kind. They are always vulgar, and often convincing."

--Oscar Wilde

"Sometimes we don't see certain things until we're ready to see them in a certain way."

--Fr. Brian Finn, Keeping the Faith

"Facts are not science - as the dictionary is not literature."

--Martin H. Fischer

"To oppose something is to maintain it."

--Ursula K. LeGuin

"The desire to take medicine is perhaps the greatest feature which distinguishes man from animals."

--Sir William Osler

"I am still learning."

--Michelangelo (at 87 years old)

"Aw, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent. Fourteen percent of all people know that."

--Homer Simpson

"Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of the few; and number not voices, but weigh them."

--Immanuel Kant

"Everything that can be counted doesn't necessarily count; everything that counts can't necessarily be counted."

--Albert Einstein

"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."

--Theodore Roosevelt

"Learning is not attained by chance. It must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence."

--Abigail Adams

"The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn."

--Alvin Toffler

"Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done and why. Then do it."

--Robert Heinlein

"The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."

--Justice Louis D. Brandeis

"To this day, no one has come up with a set of rules for originality. There aren't any."

--Les Paul

"Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young ."

--Henry Ford

"Let my name stand among those who are willing to bear ridicule and reproach for the truth's sake, and so earn some right to rejoice when the victory is won."

--Louisa May Alcott

"The principal goal of education is to create men who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done - men who are creative, inventive and discoverers."

--Jean Piaget

"People who say that it can't be done should not interrupt those of us who are doing it!"

--Unknown

"We have the power to choose and to exercise that power without giving control of it to situations. We cannot change anything but our own perspective and response, yet in that changing we change the world around us by becoming an instrument of insight and awareness."

--Gail Pursell Elliott

"One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny, and is likely to interfere with happiness in all kinds of ways."

--Bertrand Russell

"It is fatal as it is cowardly to blink at facts because they are not to our taste."

--John Tyndall

"The readings of history and anthropology in general give us no reason to believe that societies have built-in self-preservative systems. And therefore we can't say that man will be sensible enough not to destroy himself."

--Margaret Mead

"Men are more apt to be mistaken in their generalizations than in their particular observations."

--Niccolo Machiavelli

"Originality does not consist in saying what no one has ever said before, but in saying exactly what you think yourself."

--James Stephens

"The truth of who we are or the objective reality of situations may have little or nothing to do with what we may always be to someone else. Our memories are directed by our emotions rather than by objectivity."

--Gail Pursell Elliott

"Curiosity is one of the most permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect."

--Samuel Johnson

"The holy person  is one who has broken through self-deception and knows how much she doesn't know.  The point is to reach the far edge of understanding and to stand there in wonder."

--Thomas More

"They always talk who never think."

 

--Matthew Prior

 

"You probably wouldn't worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do."

 

--Olin Miller

 

"It takes a long time to understand nothing."

 

--Edward Dahlberg

 

"You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it ."

 

--G.K. Chesterton

 

"It isn't that they can't see the solution, it's that they can't see the problem."

 

--G.K. Chesterton

 

"Common sense is not so common."

 

--Voltaire

 

"I sit here all day trying to persuade people to do the things they ought to have sense enough to do without my persuading them... That's all the powers of the President amount to."

 

-- Harry S. Truman

 

"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."

 

-- Winston Churchill

 

"If we cannot heal in one way, we must learn to heal in another."

 

--Sherwin B. Nuland

 

"People are eternally divided into two classes, the believer, builder, and praiser, and the unbeliever,

destroyer and critic."

 

--John Ruskin

 

"Every man is wise when attacked by a mad dog; fewer when pursued by a mad woman; only the wisest survive when attacked by a mad notion."

 

--Robertson Davies

 

"Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable."

 

--Mark Twain

 

"All progress has resulted from people who took unpopular positions."

 

--Adlai E. Stevenson

 

"Take heed not to foster thy own judgment, for, without doubt, it will inebriate thee; as there is no difference between an intoxicated man and one full of his own opinion, and one is no more capable of reasoning than the other."

 

--St. Francis de Sales

"To escape criticism - do nothing, say nothing, be nothing."

 

--Elbert Hubbard

 

"Out of intense complexities, intense simplicities emerge."

 

--Winston Churchill

 

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I found it!) but 'That's funny.'"

 

--Isaac Asimov

 

"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."

 

--Napoleon Bonaparte

 

"It's no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. "

 

--Krishnamurti

 

"Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it."

 

--Mark Twain

 

"Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also."

 

--Carl Jung

 

"I did the research, compiled the facts, presented them in a coherent fashion.."

--Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius

 

"Them that don't know him won't like him and them that do, sometimes won't know how to take him.  He ain't wrong, he's just different, but his pride won't let him do things to make you think he's right."

 

--Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings

 

"Statistics are no substitute for judgment."

 

--Henry Clay

 

"No persons are more frequently wrong than those who will not admit they are wrong."

 

--Francois Duc de La Rochefoucauld

 

"It's kind of fun to do the impossible."

 

--Walt Disney

 

"What Dryden said was this, 'Great wits are oft to madness near allied'; and that is true. It is the pure promptitude of the intellect that is in peril of a breakdown.  Also people might remember of what sort of man Dryden was talking.  He was not talking of any unworldly visionary like Vaughan or George Herbert.  He was talking of a cynical man of the world, a skeptic, a diplomatist, a great practical politician.  Such men are indeed to madness near allied.  Their incessant calculation of their own brains and other people's brains is a dangerous trade.  It is always perilous to the mind to reckon up the mind."

 

--G.K. Chesterton

 

"It is not so much what you believe in that matters, as the way in which you believe it and proceed to translate that belief into action."

 

--Lin Yutang

 

"Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation.  Your character is what you really are,

while your reputation is merely what others think you are."

 

--John Wooden

 

"The very idea that there is another idea is something gained."

 

--Richard Jefferies

 

"The hardest part of gaining any new idea is sweeping out the false idea occupying that niche."

 

--Robert Heinlein

 

"The strongest are those who renounce their own times and become a living part of those yet to come.  The strongest and the rarest."

 

--Milovan Djilas

 

"Men may doubt what you say, but they will believe what you do."

 

--Lewis Cass

 

"Maturity begins when we're content to feel we're right about something without feeling the necessity to prove someone else wrong."

 

--Sydney J. Harris

 

"All truth goes through three steps:  First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed.  Finally, it is accepted as self-evident."

 

--Arthur Schopenhauer

 

"An invasion of armies can be resisted; an invasion of ideas cannot be resisted."

 

--Victor Hugo

 

"All we have to do is live this life with openness, imagination, and a sense of paradox and wonder.  Then it

will be spiritually alive...Only by allowing the fool his place will we find the wisdom and holiness we seek."

 

--Thomas More

 

"Why were we made so small, with such great heavens above our heads? Because He desired creatures that

would know wonder."

 

--Lubavitcher Rebbe

 

"The strongest are those who renounce their own times and become a living part of those yet to come.  The

strongest and the rarest."

 

--Milovan Djilas