Quotes F

Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools. -William Faulkner, novelist (1897-1962) [The Sound and the Fury, 1929]

Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go. -William Feather, 1888-18, American Writer, Businessman

That some good can be derived from every event is a better proposition than that everything happens for the best, which it assuredly does not. -James Kern Feibleman, philosopher and psychiatrist (1904-1987)

I used to think I was poor. Then they told me I wasn't poor, I was needy. Then they told me it was self-defeating to think of myself as needy. I was deprived. (Oh not deprived but rather underprivileged) Then they told me that underprivileged was overused. I was disadvantaged. I still don't have a dime. But I have a great vocabulary.-Jules Feiffer:

All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers... Each one owes infinitely more to the human race than to the particular country in which he was born. -Francois Fenelon, theologian and writer (1651-1715)

There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers. -Richard Feynman, physicist, Nobel laureate (1918-1988)

It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong. -Richard Feynman, physicist, Nobel laureate (1918-1988)

We cannot glimpse the essential life of a caged animal, only the shadow of [her] former beauty. -Julia Allen Field [Reflections on the Death of an Elephant]

Worth begets in base minds, envy; in great souls, emulation. -Henry Fielding, author (1707-1754)

I never vote for anyone; I always vote against. -W.C. Fields, comedian (1880-1946)

Bigness comes from doing many small things well. Individually, they are not very dramatic transactions. Together, though, they add up.~ Edward S. Finkelstein ~

Memory moderates prosperity, decreases adversity, controls youth and delights old age. -Lactantius Firmianus

Knowledge is a process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification. -Martin H. Fischer

There is no point at which you can say, 'Well, I'm successful now. I might as well take a nap.' -Carrie Fisher

Either you think -- or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you." -- F. Scott Fitzgerald

Creativity often consists of merely turning up what is already there. Did you know that right and left shoes were thought up only a little more than a century ago? -Bernice Fitz-Gibbon

Uncertainty and mystery are energies of life. Don't let them scare you unduly, for they keep boredom at bay and spark creativity. -R. I. Fitzhenry

A man is a critic when he cannot be an artist, in the same way that a man becomes an informer when he cannot be a soldier. -Gustave Flaubert

Poetry is a subject as precise as geometry. -Gustave Flaubert, novelist(1821-80)

It's splendid to be a great writer, to put men into the frying pan of your imagination and make them pop like chestnuts. -Gustave Flaubert, French novelist, letter, 1851

Be advised that all flatterers live at the expense of those who listen to them. -Jean de La Fontaine

It is only the farmer who faithfully plants seeds in the Spring, who reaps a harvest in the Autumn. - B. C. Forbes

Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one. -Malcolm S. Forbes

People who never get carried away should be. -- Malcolm Forbes

If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right. -Henry Ford

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason so few engage in it.-Henry Ford

Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal. -- Henry Ford

We want to live in the present, and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history we make today.- Henry Ford (1863-1947, American Industrialist, Founder of Ford Motor Company)

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 (1863-1947, American Industrialist, Founder of Ford Motor Company)

If money is your hope for independence, you will never have it. The only real security that a man can have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience and ability." — Henry Ford, 1863-1947, American Industrialist, Founder of Ford Motor Company

Always hold your head up, but be careful to keep your nose at a friendly level. -Max L. Forman

No horse gets anywhere until he is harnessed. No stream or gas drives anything until it is confined. No Niagara is ever turned into light and power until it is tunneled. No life ever grows great until it is focused, dedicated, disciplined. -Harry Emerson Fosdick

The fact that astronomies change while the stars abide is a true analogy of every realm of human life and thought, religion not least of all. No existent theology can be a final formulation of spiritual truth. -Harry Emerson Fosdick, preacher and author (1878-1969)

Life is like a library owned by an author. In it are a few books which he wrote himself, but most of them were written for him. -Harry Emerson Fosdick, preacher and author (1878-1969)

One of the strongest characteristics of genius is the power of lighting its own fire. -John W. Foster, clergyman (1770-1843)

Men are not against you; they are merely for themselves. -Gene Fowler

Night fell again. There was war to the south, but our sector was quiet. The battle was over. Our casualties were some thirteen thousand killed--thirteen thousand minds, memories, loves, sensations, worlds, universes--because the human mind is more a universe than the universe itself--and all for a few hundred yards of useless mud. -John Fowles [The Magus, 1965]

If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing. - Anatole France

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread. --Anatole France

Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another. -Anatole France, novelist, essayist, Nobel laureate(1844-1924)

One must never lose time in vainly regretting the past nor complaining against the changes which cause us discomfort, for change is the very essence of life. ~ Anatole France ~ (1844-1924, French Writer)

An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you know and what you don't. -Anatole France

Chance is perhaps the pseudonym of God when he does not wish to sign his work. -Anatole France, novelist, essayist, Nobel laureate (1844-1924)

Never lend books -- nobody ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are those which people have lent me. -Anatole France, novelist, essayist, Nobel laureate (1844-1924)

A person is never happy except at the price of some ignorance. -Anatole France, novelist, essayist, Nobel laureate (1844-1924)

The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.
-Anatole France, novelist, essayist, Nobel laureate (1844-1924)

It is human nature to think wisely and act in an absurd fashion. -Anatole France

Many of our fears are tissue paper thin, and a single courageous step would carry us clear through them. - Brendan Francis

I keep my ideals, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. -Anne Frank

Laziness may appear attractive, but work gives satisfaction. - Anne Frank

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world? -Anne Frank, Holocaust diarist (1929-1945)

No one has ever become poor by giving. -Anne Frank, Holocaust diarist (1929-1945)

Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human. - Viktor Frankl - 1905-, Austrian Psychiatrist, Writer, ''Man's Search for Meaning'

Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake. -Viktor Frankl, author, neurologist and psychiatrist, Holocaust survivor (1905-1997)

What is to give light must endure burning. -Viktor Frankl, author, neurologist and psychiatrist, Holocaust survivor (1905-1997)

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's own way. Viktor Frankl

No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same. -Viktor Frankl, author, neurologist and psychiatrist, Holocaust survivor (1905-1997)

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. -Viktor Frankl, author, neurologist and psychiatrist, Holocaust survivor (1905-1997)

Live as if you were living a second time, and as though you had acted wrongly the first time. -Viktor Frankl, author, neurologist and psychiatrist, Holocaust survivor (1905-1997)

Benjamin Franklin

Sigmund Freud, (1856-1939) neurologist, founder of psychoanalysis

Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral. -Paulo Freire, educator (1921-1997)

One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results. -Milton Friedman, economist, Novel laureate (1912- )

Modern man thinks he loses something - time - when he does not do things quickly. Yet he does not know what to do with the time he gains --- except kill it. -Erich Fromm

The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that man may become robots. -Erich Fromm

If I am what I have and if I lose what I have who then am I?-*Erich Fromm {1900-1980 American Psychologist}

Understanding a person does not mean condoning; it only means that one does not accuse him as if one were God or a judge placed above him. -Erich Fromm, psychoanalyst and author (1900-1980)

The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal. -Erich Fromm, psychoanalyst and author (1900-1980)

Television is an invention whereby you can be entertained in your living room by people you wouldn't have in your house. -David Frost

Robert Frost - 1875-1963, American Poet

Literature encourages tolerance - bigots and fanatics seldom have any use for the arts, because they're so preoccupied with their beliefs and actions that they can't see them also as possibilities. -Northrop Frye, writer(1912-1991)

Those who can, teach. Those who can't, do something far less important. -Shirley Frye

Love me or hate me, but spare me your indifference. -Libbie Fudim

If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire - then you got a problem. Everything else is inconvenience. -Robert Fulghum

We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody. -Buckminster Fuller

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." -- R. Buckminster Fuller

I look for what needs to be done.... After all, that's how the universe designs itself. -R. Buckminster Fuller, engineer, designer, and architect (1895-1983)

Nature is trying very hard to make us succeed, but nature does not depend on us. We are not the only experiment. -R. Buckminster Fuller, engineer, designer, and architect (1895-1983)

Everything you've learned in school as `obvious' becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the universe. There's not even a suggestion of a solid. There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines. -R. Buckminster Fuller, engineer, designer, and architect (1895-1983)

God, to me, it seems, is a verb, not a noun, proper or improper. -R. Buckminster Fuller, engineer, designer, and architect (1895-1983)

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. -R. Buckminster Fuller, engineer, designer, and architect (1895-1983)

A house is no home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body. -Sarah Margaret Fuller, author (1810-1850)

If you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it. -Margaret Fuller, author (1810-1850)

Contentment consisteth not in adding more fuel, but in taking away some fire. -Thomas Fuller (1608-1661)

Innovation is hard to schedule. - Dan Fylstra