Quotations
Used in the 'WMail' Newsletter
and the Dateline Chamesa blog

Page Six, Part B

Alphabetical by Author
A thru C • D thru F • G thru J • K thru N • O thru R

on Page 6, Part A: S • T • U • • on this page: V • W • XYZ

Proverbs & Anonymous • Laws of Life

Books of Quotations Page

Working Minds Homepage
free monthly 'WMail' Philosophy Newsletter [2000-2007]
Index of All Issues

After WMail Issue #72 in October 2007, essays & quotations & news are being posted to the
Dateline Chamesa weblog

Authors V thru Z

Xicano playwright Luis Valdez
“No Statue of Liberty ever greeted our arrival in this country . . . we did not, in fact, come to the United States at all.
The United States came to us.”  {blog 10/2012}

screen idol Rudolph Valentino [1895-1926]
“Women are not in love with me but with the picture of me on the screen. I am merely the canvas
upon which the women paint their dreams.”  {blog 8/2011}

French poet Paul Valéry [1871-1945]
• • “That which has always been accepted by everyone, everywhere, is almost certain to be false.”  {Issue #36}
• • “The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.”  {blog 3/2008}
• • “The only way to let your dreams come true is to wake up.”  {blog 7/2011}
• • “Two dangers threaten the universe: order and disorder.”  {blog 11/2011}

Jonathan Valin
“One of [Reagan's] great gifts to America was the public rebirth of bigotry.”  {blog 9/2009}

writer Simon Van Booy
“Every moment is the paradox of now or never.”  {blog 5/2018}

advice columnist Abigail Van Buren
“If you want your children to turn out well, spend twice as much time with them,
and half as much money.”  {blog 6/2012}

Gerardus van der Leeuw [1890-1950]
“The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.”  {Issue #21}

S.S. Van Dine [1888-1939]
“This would be a cleaner, better world if mankind had been omitted from the scheme of things.”  {blog 6/2010}

Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh [1853-90]
• • “There may be a great fire in our soul, yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it,
and the passers-by see only a wisp of smoke.”  {Issue #39}
• • “Exaggerate the essential; leave the obvious vague.”  {blog 12/2008}
• • “I would rather die of passion than of boredom.”  {blog 8/2013}
• • “If you hear a voice within you say, 'You cannot paint', then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.”  {blog 4/2015}
• • “It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much,
and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done.”  {blog 8/2015}
• • “There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.”  {blog 3/2018}
• • “Normality is a paved road; it's comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow on it.”  {blog 3/2018 & 12/2023}
• • “For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.”  {blog 1/2023}
• • “I dream my painting and I paint my dream.”  {blog 3/2023}

U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland
U.S. Congressman [Dem MD-08 2003-2016], U.S. Senator since 2019
“If Paul Ryan was honest, he would have pointed to that debt clock and said, ‘We built that'.”  {blog 9/2012}

Hendrik Willem van Loon [1882-1944]
“Somewhere in the world there is an epigram for every dilemma.”  {blog 11/2008}

Joost van Steenis
“When nothing is tried nothing will happen.”  {blog 12/2009}

Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor & publisher of The Nation Magazine
“Cynicism . . . follows whenever malefactors of great wealth escape the
consequences of their deeds.”   {blog 9/2011}

Bill VanKeuren
“Happiness is a ukulele.”  {blog 11/2020}

Michael Vansickel of Pontiac, Illinois
“We are all fighting for our sanity in this crazy age of the disposable person.”  {blog 7/2011}

French filmmaker Agnès Varda [1928-2019]
“I fought for a radical cinema, and I continued all my life.”  {blog 6/2019}

columnist Bill Vaughn [1915-77]
• • “A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won't cross
the street to vote in a national election.”  {blog 12/2007}
• • “A real patriot is the fellow who gets a parking ticket and rejoices that the system works.”  {blog 10/2012}

Norman Vaughn [1905-2005]
“Dream big and dare to fail.”  {Issue #56}

David Veal
“For every action there is an equal, and opposite, government program.”  {blog 4/2011}

writer Michael Ventura
“After a while you realize that if you're a real writer, then, like all writers, you're finally
at the mercy of your readers. And giving yourself up to them, you just write.”  {blog 9/2008}

Amos Vernon
“Remember, if you don’t like it, you’re wrong.”  {blog 2/2016}

Gore Vidal [1925-2012]
• • “The Gas & Oil Junta (and) the Pentagon govern the United States.”  {Issue #26}
• • “[America] is a totally corrupt society.”  {Issue #37}  full article
• • “Advertising is the only art form [that] America invented and developed.”  {Issue #66}
• • “Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.”  {blog 1/2008}
• • “The great unmentionable evil at the center of our culture is monotheism.”  {blog 11/2008}
• • “What we have in this country is socialism for the rich and free enterprise for the poor.”  {blog 11/2009}
• • “A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.”  {blog 6/2012}
• • “The United States was founded by the brightest people in the country – and we haven't seen them since.”  {blog 9/2012}
• • “Democracy is supposed to give you the feeling of choice, like Painkiller X and Painkiller Y. But they're both just aspirin.”  {blog 9/2012}
• • “Never offend an enemy in a small way.”  {blog 3/2018}

Kora-lea Vidal
“When you stop treating people like a waste of time or a dollar sign, then you can begin to add real value to your life.”  {blog 10/2018}

revolutionary Francisco 'Pancho' Villa [1878-1923] of Mexico
“A woman who is unfaithful deserves to be shot.”  {blog 11/2017}

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa
“Take my country forward.”  {blog 3/2012}

Victor Villaseñor
“We need to lift up each other's spirit.”  {Issue #49}

children's author Judith Viorst
“Strength is the capacity to break a chocolate bar into four pieces with your bare hands – and then eat just one of the pieces.”  {blog 6/2016}

Ancient Roman poet Virgil [70 BCE-19 BCE]
• • “If you can't reach heaven, raise hell.” - in the epic poem "Aeneid"  {blog 3/2013}
• • “They are able because they think they are able.”  {blog 12/2013}

Stephen Vizinczey
“Strange as it may seem, no amount of learning can cure stupidity,
and formal education positively fortifies it.”  {Issue #36}

Tom Voccola of Idaho
“Thanks for being true to yourself. Someone has to do it.”  {blog 11/2012 & 2/2021}

feisty former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker [1927-2019]
“We’re in a hell of a mess in every direction. Respect for government, respect for the Supreme Court, respect for the president,
it’s all gone. Even respect for the Federal Reserve.”  {blog 12/2018}

French philosopher François-Marie Arouet dit Voltaire [1694-1778]
Voltaire Quotations Page at Working Minds

author Countess Elizabeth von Arnim [1866-1941]
• • “I hate authors. I wouldn't mind them so much if they didn't write books.”  {blog 9/2012}
• • “I'm so glad I didn't die on the various occasions I have earnestly wished I might, for I would have missed
a lot of lovely weather.”  {blog 3/2017}
• • “Home is the best place [to be] when life begins to wobble.”  {blog 7/2017}
• • “Walking is the perfect way of moving if you want to see into the life of things. It is one way of freedom.”  {blog 9/2017}

Otto von Bismarck [1815-98]
• • “Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied.”  {Issue #59}
• • “Vanity is a mortgage that must be deducted from the value of a man.”  {blog 4/2012}
• • “People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war, or before an election.”  {blog 9/2012}

rocket scientist Werner von Braun [1912-77]
• • “Basic research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.”  {blog 9/2012 & 8/2018}

novelist Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach [1830-1916]
“No one is so eager to gain new experience as he who doesn't know how to make use of the old ones.”  {blog 11/2012}

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe [1749-1832]
Goethe Quotations Page at Working Minds

naturalist Alexander von Humboldt [1769-1859]
• • “There are three stages of scientific discovery: first, people deny that it is true; then they deny that it is important;
finally, they credit the wrong person.”  {blog 9/2015}
• • “The most dangerous world view is the world view of those who have not viewed the world.”  {blog 4/2016}

Ludwig von Mises [1881-1973]
• • “It is not conclusive proof of a doctrine's correctness that its adversaries use the police, the hangman,
and violent mobs to fight it. But it is a proof of the fact that those taking recourse to violent oppression
are in their subconsciousness convinced of the untenability of their own doctrines.”  {Issue #21}
• • “In a battle between force and an idea, the latter always prevails.”  {Issue #36}
• • “Economics is too important to be left to the experts.”  {blog 3/2014}

Friedrich von Schlegel [1772-1829]
“An historian is a prophet in reverse.”  {blog 7/2012}

Erich von Stroheim [1885-1957]
“In Hollywood, you're as good as your last picture. If you didn't have one in production within the last
three months, you're forgotten, no matter what you have achieved [before] this.”  {blog 12/2011}

filmmaker Lars von Trier
“God may have had fun at creation, but he really didn't think things through.”  {blog 12/2011}

author Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. [1922-2007]
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Quotations Page at Working Minds
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Page at Spirit of America Bookstore

Dr. Mark Vonnegut as quoted by his son, Kurt
“We are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.”  {Issue #43}

columnist Marilyn vos Savant
• • “A true realist demands the impossible; a true idealist demands the impractical.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “To acquire knowledge one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe.”  {blog 11/2012 & 11/2022}
• • “Success is achieved by developing our strengths, not by eliminating our weaknesses.”  {blog 8/2014}

Ocean Vuong
“I thought gravity was a law, which meant it could be broken.” - in the poem “Theology”  {blog 7/2024}

Jane Wagner
• • “No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up.”  {Issue #36}
• • “I personally think [that] we developed language because of our deep inner need to complain.”  {Issue #65}

German composer Richard Wagner [1813-83]
“Joy is not in things - It is in us.”  {blog 1/2023}

John Wainwright [1921-95]
“There is no such thing as bravery, only degrees of fear.”  {blog 7/2012}

motivational speaker Dr. Denis Waitley
• • “There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or to accept the responsibility
for changing them.”  {blog 11/2014}
• • “Expect the best, plan for the worst, and prepare to be surprised.”  {blog 7/2018}

Tom Waits
“A gentleman is someone who can play the accordian, but doesn't.”  {blog 10/2012}

Wikimedia founder Jimmy Wales
“Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge.
That's what we're doing.” - in July 2004  {blog 1/2017}

Lech Walesa
“In the war of ideas, it's not enough just to be against something; you have to be for
something that is sound as well.”   {blog 12/2011}

actor Christopher Walken
“Always - even in a limo - wear your seatbelt.”  {blog 3/2013}

Adrian Walker, reporter at The Boston Globe
“As much as anything, Juneteenth is an observance of promises still waiting to be delivered.”  {blog 11/2020}

Pulitzer Prize-winner Alice Walker
• • “My activism pays the rent on being alive and being here on the planet.” (in 1989)  {blog 5/2009}
• • “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”  {blog 8/2012}
• • “The long-term accomodation that protects marriage and other such relationships is forgetfulness.”  {blog 11/2013}
• • “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking [that] they don't have any.”  {blog 4/2015}

pianist Cecil Walker
“I consider [my life] a private performance that will never be repeated.”  {Issue #57}

Joanne Walker
“The events that shape our lives can never be foretold, but only withstood and reckoned with for as long as we live.”  {blog 12/2019}

Larry Wall
“Information doesn't want to be free. Information wants to be valuable.”  {blog 6/2012}

author David Foster Wallace [1962-2008]
• • “The job that we’re here to do is to learn how to live in a way that we’re not terrified all the time.”   {blog 4/2011}
• • “No matter how smart you think you are, you are actually way less smart than that.”  {blog 12/2013}
• • “To be, in a word, unborable . . . It is the key to modern life. If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing
[that] you cannot accomplish.” — in "The Pale King" (2011)  {blog 9/2014}
• • “There is no such thing as not voting.”  {blog 7/2015}
• • “If you're more interested in what you're saying than the person listening to you,
[then] you're the definition of a boring person.”  {blog 9/2016}
• • “The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.”  {blog 10/2022}

Scottish philosopher William Wallace [1844-97]
“Every man dies. Not every man really lives.”  {blog 12/2023}

Robert Walpole, Earl of Orford [1676-1745]
“Nothing so much contributes to promote the public well-being as the exportation
of manufactured goods.”   {blog 12/2010}

Bill Walsh [1931-2007], coached the San Francisco 49ers football team
“Making judgments under severe stress is the most difficult thing there is. The more preparation you have prior
to the conflict, the more [that] you can do in a clinical situation, the better off you will be.”  {blog 4/2018}

Oregon blogger Paul Walters
“[Bear] in mind that Truth is hate to those that hate the Truth.”  {blog 2/2019}

ex-cop/author Joseph Wambaugh
“I'd rather tangle with a burglar than a television executive any day.”  {blog 5/2008}

Adrian Ward, on Facebook
“American democracy is stone cold dead.”  {blog 12/2017}

William Arthur Ward [1921–94]
• • “Adversity causes some men to break, others to break records.”  {Issue #60}
• • “The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.”  {blog 10/2010 & 4/2013}
• • “Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.”  {blog 6/2015}
• • “When we seek to discover the best in others, we somehow bring out the best in ourselves.”  {blog 8/2017}

artist Chris Ware
“I was taught in school that the American experiment was rooted in consensus and compromise. But internet algorithms
have put us at an uncompromising moment of nonconsensual reality.”  {blog 7/2022}

Kansas writer Eugene Fitch Ware [1841-1911]
• • “States are not great except as men may make them; men are not great, except they do and dare.”  {blog 3/2020}
• • “All glory comes from daring to begin.”  {blog 3/2020}

pop artist Andy Warhol [1928-87]
• • “If you can convince yourself that you look fabulous, you can save yourself the trouble of primping.”  {blog 12/2012}
• • “I am a deeply superficial person.”  {blog 8/2016}
• • “An artist is somebody who produces things that people don't need to have but that he – for some reason –
thinks [that] it would be a good idea to give them.”  {blog 10/2016}
• • “They always say [that] time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.”  {blog 7/2018}
• • “What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially
the same things as the poorest.”  {blog 2/2021}

Carolyn Warner
“Years ago, fairy tales all began with 'Once upon a time' . . . now we know [that] they all begin with, 'If I am elected'.”  {blog 12/2019}

Earl Warren [1891-1974]
Governor of California [1943-1953]; Chief Justice of the United States [1953-69]
“Everything I did in my life that was worthwhile I caught hell for.”  {blog 10/2008}

U.S Senator Elizabeth Warren
• • “We get what we fight for – so let’s get out there and fight.”  {blog 8/2015}
• • “When American voters say Congress is owned by big companies, this [so-called '21st Century Cures' Act] bill is exactly what they are talking
about. Now, we face a choice. Will this Congress say that yes, we're bought and paid for, or will we stand up and work for the American people?”
- in a 'barnburner' floor speech on 28 November 2016   {blog 11/2016}
• • “[Donald Trump's] lack of leadership is deadly.” - in August 2020  {blog 11/2020}

Charlie Warzel, staff writer at The Atlantic Magazine
“Social media is aging, not dying. I think that these [recent events] are just broad trends.” - in 2022 interview  {blog 11/2022}

Washington Post Editorial Board
• • “The Bush Administration's 2005 budget is a masterpiece of disengenuous blame-shifting, dishonest budgeting, and irresponsible governing.”
- February 2004  {Issue #41}
• • “Donald Trump is a unique threat to American democracy. He is unfit for the presidency and cannot be endorsed.
A Trump presidency would be dangerous for the nation and the world.” – on 22 July 2016  {blog 7/2016}
• • “The greatest threat facing the United States is its own President.” - in December 2018  {blog 12/2018}
• • article headline, 3/2020: “The next pandemic is coming. We’re not prepared for it.”  {blog 3/2020}

George Washington [1732-99]
first President of the United States, 1789-97
• • “The Government of the United States is not, in any sense,
founded on the Christian religion.” (1796)  {Issue #17}
Alternate source for above: Treaty of Tripoli, Article 11, which was unanimously ratified
by the U.S. Senate on 7 June 1797 and signed by President John Adams.
• • “If we must perish in the fight, Oh! Let us die like men.”  {Issue #25}
• • “Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.”  {Issue #65}
• • “The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens
unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.”  {blog 12/2007}
• • “[The United States] gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires
only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens.”
in a letter to the Jews of Newport, Rhode Island, in 1790  {blog 10/2010}
• • “Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds
than those that spring from any other cause.”  {blog 7/2013}
• • “To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.”  {blog 11/2015}
• • “Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.”  {blog 7/2018}
• • “A pack of jackasses led by a lion is superior to a pack of lions led by a jackass.”  {blog 3/2020}
• • “In proportion as the structure of government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.”
- in his 'Farewell Address', 1796  {blog 7/2021}
• • “Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!” - in 1779  {blog 1/2022}
• • “A free people ought not only be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status
of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government.”  {blog 4/2024}

Maurice L. Washington, Jr.
“Success with things is to think intelligently; success with people is to love whole-heartedly.”   {blog 4/2015}

independent filmmaker John Waters
• • “Being rich is not about how much money you have or how many homes you own. It's the freedom to buy any book [that] you want
without looking at the price and wondering if you can afford it.”  {blog 2/2021}
• • “Collect books, even if you don't plan on reading them right away. Nothing is more important than an unread library.”  {blog 5/2022}

U.S. Congresswoman Maxine Waters [b. 1938] of Los Angeles, California
“President Bush is incompetent.”  {Issue #62}

James D. Watson
“Knowledge liberates mankind from superstition.”  {Issue #55}

Lyall Watson [1939-2008]
“If the brain were so simple we could understand it, [then] we would be so simple [that] we couldn't.”  {blog 1/2008}

Maya Watson
“Learning is a gift. Even when pain is your teacher.”  {blog 2/2016}

Thomas J. Watson, Sr. [1874-1956], founder of I.B.M.
• • “The way to succeed is to double your failure rate.”  {blog 5/2010}
• • “The great accomplishments of man have resulted from the transmission of ideas of enthusiasm.”  {blog 9/2011}
• • “Nothing so conclusively proves a man's ability to lead others as what he does from day to day to lead himself.”  {blog 8/2017}

Thomas J. Watson, Jr. [1914-93], longtime CEO of I.B.M.
• • “If you don't genuinely like your customers, chances are [that] they won't buy.”  {blog 3/2017}
• • “To be successful, you have to have your heart in your business and your business in your heart.”  {blog 8/2017}

cartoonist Bill Watterson
• • “Life's disappointments are harder to take if you don't know any swear words.”  {blog 9/2016}
• • “The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us.”  {blog 7/2018}

Alan W. Watts [1915-73]
• • “My humanity [is] the only thing that makes me different from a machine . . .
the effort of will to take control of myself and change.”  {Issue #11}
• • “The secret of happiness lies in the ancient saying 'Become what you are'.”  {Issue #23}
• • “It is said that paradox is a Truth standing on its head to attract attention.”  {blog 1/2012}
• • “Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way.”  {blog 6/2016}
• • “To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do
you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.”  {blog 3/2017}
• • “We seldom realize, for example that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms
of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society.”  {blog 6/2017}
• • “I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.”  {blog 7/2017}
• • “Zen meditation is a trickily simple affair, for it consists only in watching everything that is happening, including your own thoughts & breathing,
without comment . . . you find that there is no self other than everything that is going on, both inside & outside the skin . . . The trick, which
cannot be forced, is to be in this state of consciousness all the time.” - in the article "Sound of Rain" in Playboy Magazine  {blog 8/2017}
• • “The more [that] you pursue permanence, the more [that] you feel the impermanence of things.”  {blog 1/2023}

actor John Wayne [1907-79]
• • “Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives
and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday.”
from his controversial 1971 Playboy Magazine interview, and carved onto his tombstone  {blog 7/2010}

• • “Life is hard; it's harder if you're stupid.”  {blog 9/2013}
• • “I won't be wronged. I won't be insulted. I won't be laid a hand on. I don't do these things to other people
and I require the same from them.”  – line spoken as John Bernard Books in the movie “The Shootist” [1976]  {blog 6/2015}

Henry Grady Weaver [1889-1949]
“There has never been but one revolution. It is the revolution against pagan fatalism – the revolution for human freedom.”
– in "The Mainspring of Human Progress" (1947)  {blog 11/2014}

U.S. Senator Jim Webb
“Andrew Jackson believed that you don't measure the health of a society
at the apex but at the base.”  {blog 7/2010}

Alan Webber, co-founder Fast Company Magazine
“When the going gets tough, the tough relax.”  {blog 11/2017}

Daniel Webster [1782-1852]
“There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern.
They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.”  {Issue #71}

Stephen H. Weentland of Houston, Texas
“The Bush administration has taken politics from the gutter into the sewers.”  {blog 10/2007}

Simone Weil [1909-43]
• • “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”  {blog 11/2012}
• • “Humility is attentive patience.”  {blog 1/2013}
• • “A beautiful woman looking at her image in the mirror may very well believe [that] the image is herself.
An ugly woman knows [that] it is not.”  {blog 3/2016}

Rick Weiland, founder of TakeItBack.org
“No longer satisfied with simply twisting the truth to convince you of their point of view, O.A.N.N. has become a mouthpiece
for Russian propaganda determined to convince everyone [that] there is no truth.”  {blog 5/2022}

Nobel Prize- winning physicist Steven Weinberg [1933-2021]
“With or without religion you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things.
But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”  {blog 3/2008 & 10/2022}

Terri Weiner
“It is the nature of emergencies to be inconvenient.”  {blog 6/2012}

Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein
“I always find that when I do something I like, from the heart, then it works.”  {blog 5/2013}

Jack Welch
• • “An organization's ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly,
is the ultimate competitive advantage.”  {blog 4/2008}
• • “Control your own destiny or someone else will.”  {blog 4/2015}
• • “No doubt, emotional intelligence is more rare than book smarts, but my experience says it is actually
more important in the making of a leader.”  {blog 1/2018}

cinema auteur Orson Welles [1915-85]
• • “Nobody gets justice. People only get good luck or bad luck.”  {Issue #36}
• • “Gluttony is not a secret vice.”  {blog 4/2009}
• • “A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet.”  {blog 9/2013}
• • “It is not my intention to repeat myself, but in my work there should certainly be references to what I have done in the past. Say
what you will, but 'The Trial' is the best film I ever made . . . I have never been so happy as when I made this film.”  {blog 7/2015}
• • “Artists do their best work when they're old or young. Middle age is the enemy of art.”  {blog 6/2016}
• • “Disappointments continue to affect my confidence – but never my resolve.” – in 1985  {blog 7/2016}
• • “The whole eloquence of cinema is achieved in the editing room.”  {blog 10/2018}

British author H.G. Wells [1866-1946]
• • “The future is a race, a race between education and catastrophe.”  {blog 2/2010}
• • “Our government is in our education.”  {blog 12/2011}
• • “Moral indignation is just jealousy with a halo around it.”  {blog 1/2012}
• • “When a man realizes his littleness, his greatness can appear.”  {blog 7/2012}
• • “The forceps of our minds are clumsy things and crush the truth a little in the course of taking hold of it.”  {blog 7/2013}
• • “We all have our time machines. Those that take us back are memories.
And those that carry us forward are dreams.”  {blog 8/2013}
• • “Affliction comes to us, not to make us sad but sober, not to make us sad but wise.”  {blog 8/2014}
• • “Human history is in essence a history of ideas.” – in 'The Outline of History' [1920]  {blog 3/2015}
• • “There is no way back into the past. The choice is the Universe – or nothing.”  {blog 6/2015}
• • “Roads? Where we're going we don't need roads.”  {blog 10/2016}
• • “Make men and women only sufficiently jealous or fearful or drunken or angry, and the hot red eyes of the cavemen
will glare out at us today.”  {blog 3/2023}

Henry Wells [1805-78]
“May we all remember [that] our lives are not measured by the number of years and days [that] we exist, but by what we
accomplish while we do live, and the good [that] we may render to our fellow man.” - in a speech at Yale  {blog 8/2018}

journalist Ida B. Wells [1862-1931]
“The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator to compare with the press.”  {blog 3/2016}

U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone [1944-2002] of Minnesota
• • “Stand up. Keep fighting.”  {Issue #29}
• • “The future belongs to those who are passionate and work hard.”  {blog 6/2008}
• • “Never separate the life you live from the words you speak.”  {blog 10/2010}
• • “We all do better when we all do better.”  {blog 2/2014}

Eudora Welty [1909-2001]
• • “Never think [that] you've seen the last of anything.”  {blog 6/2012}
• • “Insight doesn't happen on the click of the moment, like a lucky snapshot, but comes in its own time and
more slowly and from nowhere but within.”  {blog 9/2016}

German filmmaker Wim Wenders
“The greatest cinematic experience is the human face and it seems to me that silent films can teach us to read it anew.”  {blog 7/2021}

Samuel Wesley [1662-1735]
“Wit, perhaps, might find many interpretations, but wisdom none.”  {blog 1/2011}

entertainer Mae West [1893-1980]
• • “You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”  {blog 7/2012}
• • “Too much of a good thing can be wonderful.”  {blog 9/2016}
• • “Cultivate your curves – they may be dangerous but they won't be avoided.”  {blog 1/2017}

Dame Rebecca West [1892-1983]
“The trouble about man is twofold. He cannot learn truths which are too complicated; he forgets truths which are too simple.”   {blog 11/2013}

Robert Westbrook
“I hate how the white masters of the universe have squeezed and exploited every last square inch of earth for
every penny [that] they can get. There's nothing left, nothing [that] they haven't ruined.”  {blog 10/2007}

author Donald E. Westlake [1933-2008]
• • “I believe [that] my subject is bewilderment. But I could be wrong.”  {blog 3/2013}
• • “Life is a slow-motion avalanche, and none of us are steering.”  {blog 1/2014}
• • “Nobody gets everything in this life. You decide your priorities and you make your choices. I decided long ago
that any cake I had would be eaten.” — in "Two Much"  {blog 2/2014}

beat poet Philip Whalen [1923-2002]
“If you want something, hold out an empty hand. If you want a poem, find a blank page.”  {blog 6/2008}

Edith Wharton [1862-1937]
• • “If only we'd stop trying to be happy we'd have a pretty good time.”  {Issue #50}
• • “The only way to judge an artist is by his works.”  {Issue #71}
• • “Inkstands and teacups are never so full as when one upsets them.”  {blog 7/2008}
• • “The only way not to think about money is to have a great deal of it.”  {blog 6/2012 & 11/2017}
• • “There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.”  {blog 8/2012 & 4/2024}
• • “There are moments when a man’s imagination, so easily subdued to what it lives in, suddenly rises above its daily level
and surveys the long windings of destiny.”  {blog 5/2013}
• • “Genius is of small use to a woman who does not know how to do her hair.”  {blog 8/2017}
• • “I don't know if I should care for a man who made life easy; I should want someone who made it interesting.”  {blog 9/2017}
• • “In any really good subject, one has only to probe deep enough to come to tears.”  {blog 12/2017}
• • “She had no tolerance for scenes which were not of her own making.”  {blog 1/2018}
• • “Nothing is more perplexing to a man than the mental process of a woman who reasons her emotions.”  {blog 2/2018}
• • “It was easy enough to despise the world, but decidedly difficult to find any other habitable region.”  {blog 6/2018}
• • “Life is always either a tightrope or a feather bed. Give me the tightrope.”  {blog 2/2019 & 1/2022}
• • “An unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish
artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences.”  {blog 3/2023}

physicist John A. Wheeler [1911-2008]
“If you haven't found something strange during the day, it hasn't been much of a day.”  {blog 7/2013}

Townsend Whelen [1877-1961]
“No man is competent unless he can stalk alone and armed in the wilderness.”  {blog 10/2009}

painter James McNeill Whistler [1834-1903]
“An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.”  {blog 9/2008}

White Antelope [?-1864], chief of the Cheyenne
“Nothing lives long, only the earth and mountains.”  {blog 6/2008}

writer  E.B. White [1899-1985]
E.B. White Quotations Page at Working Minds
E.B. White Page at Spirit of America Bookstore

David White of Tennessee
“The American Civil War was just the point in time when the South was forced to learn what the North had figured out a century or so before.
Namely, that's it's cheaper to lease people than to own them.” - on Facebook 6/2021  {blog 7/2021}

Katharine White [1892-1977]
“The decrease in the number of mature persons in the world is a shocking indictment of our civilization.” (in 1938)  {blog 6/2010}

Ron White
“You can't fix stupid.”  {blog 10/2007}

Alfred North Whitehead, OM FRS [1861-1947]
• • “No one who achieves success does so without the help of others. The wise and confident acknowledge this help with gratitude.”  {blog 3/2018}
• • “Ideas won't keep; something must be done about them.”  {blog 10/2018}

Katharine Whitehorn
“The great rule is not to talk about money with people who have much more or much less than you.”  {blog 9/2008}

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island
“The sins of Citizens United are many, but the first is that the [cited basic] facts are bonkers.”  {blog 5/2016}

Walt Whitman [1819-92]
• • “Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons. It is to grow in the open air
and to eat and sleep with the earth.”  {Issue #43}
• • “Re-examine all that you have been told. Dismiss that which insults your soul.”  {blog 10/2010}
• • “Here or henceforward it is all the same to me, I accept Time absolutely.”  {blog 1/2011}
• • “Re-examine all that you have been told . . . dismiss that which insults your soul.”  {blog 6/2012}
• • “Keep your face always to the sunshine, and the shadows will fall behind you.”  {blog 7/2012}
• • “Be curious, not judgmental.”  {blog 3/2014}
• • “I am awake for the first time, and all else before me has been a mean sleep.”  {blog 3/2014}
• • “To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle, every cubic inch of space is a miracle.”  {blog 3/2016}
• • “Nothing external to me can have any power over me.”  {blog 7/2018}
• • “The road to wisdom is paved with excess. The mark of a true writer is their ability to mystify
the familiar and familiarize the strange.”  {blog 9/2018}

Leonard Wibberley [1915-83]
“Faith has wings but reason crawls and often in the wrong direction.”  {blog 11/2010}

mathematician & philosopher Norbert Wiener [1894-1964]
• • “Machines, though helpless by themselves, may be used by a human being or [by] a block of human beings to increase their control
over the rest of the human race.”  {blog 6/2019}
• • “Like the genie in the bottle, machines will in no way be obliged to make such decisions as we should have made . . .”  {blog 8/2019}
• • “To live effectively is to live with adequate information.”  {blog 8/2019}
• • “Information is information, not matter or energy.” - in "Cybernetics" [1948]  {blog 8/2019}
• • “We are going to have to understand evermore complex systems if we are to deal with the future. Without that
understanding there may be no future.”  {blog 5/2020}
• • “The more [that] we get out of the world the less we leave, and in the long run we shall have to pay our debts
at a time that may be very inconvenient for our own survival.”  {blog 2/2021}
• • “A cybernetic problem is always connected with the control of a dynamic system.”  {blog 10/2021}

Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel [1928-2016]
• • “Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself.”  {Issue #46}
• • “There should be a biblical commandment 'Thou shalt not hate'.”  {Issue #57}
• • “There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.”  {blog 9/2015}
• • “Always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”  {blog 12/2018}

poet Ella Wheeler Wilcox [1850-1919]
“Laugh, and the world laughs with you; Weep, and you weep alone.”  {blog 4/2014}

Irish playwright & author Oscar Wilde [1854-1900]
Oscar Wilde Quotations Page at Working Minds

movie director Billy Wilder [1906-2002]
• • “Anyone who doesn't believe in miracles isn't a realist.”  {blog 4/2010}
• • “The best director is the one you don't see.”  {blog 6/2010}
• • “I just made pictures I would've liked to see.”  {blog 6/2010}
• • “I was not a guy writing deep-dish revelations. If people see a picture of mine and then sit down
and talk about it for 15 minutes, that is a very fine reward, I think.”  {blog 7/2010}
• • “If you're going to tell people the truth, be funny or they'll kill you.”  {blog 10/2010}
• • “If there's anything I hate more than not being taken seriously, it's being taken too seriously.”  {blog 11/2010}
• • “A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant, and a bastard.”   {blog 12/2010}
• • “I have ten commandments. The first nine are, thou shalt not bore. The tenth is,
thou shalt have right of final cut.”  {blog 12/2010}

Laura Ingalls Wilder [1867-1957]
author of the "Little House On The Prairie" books
• • “The only stupid thing about words is the spelling of them.”  {blog 11/2014}
• • “The real things haven't changed. It is still best to be honest and truthful; to make the most of what we have;
to be happy with simple pleasures; and have courage when things go wrong.”  {blog 3/2015}
• • “The fact is that while there has been a good deal of discussion for and against women in business, farm women
have always been business women, and I have never heard a protest.”  {blog 4/2015}
• • “Home is the nicest word there is.”  {blog 5/2015}
• • “A good laugh overcomes more difficulties and dissipates more dark clouds than any other one thing.”  {blog 6/2015}
• • “We'd never get anything fixed to suit us if we waited for things to suit us before we started.”  {blog 8/2015}
• • “There's no great loss without some small gain.”  {blog 9/2015}
• • “There is no comfort anywhere for anyone who dreads to go home.” - in "Little Town On The Prairie" (1941 novel)  {blog 1/2017}

Thornton Wilder [1897-1975]
• • “We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.”  {blog 3/2012}
• • “Art is not only the desire to tell one's secret; it is the desire to tell it and [to] hide it at the same time.”  {blog 4/2013}
• • “We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.”  {blog 8/2014}
• • “Hope, like faith, is nothing if not courageous; it is nothing if it is not ridiculous.”  {blog 9/2015}

Robert Wilensky
“We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire
works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know [that] this is not true.”  {blog 9/2013}

Kaiser Wilhelm I [1797-1888]
“Give me a woman who loves beer and I'll conquer the world.”  {blog 4/2011}

Kaiser Wilhelm II [1859-1941]
“Morality is all right, but what about dividends?”  {blog 11/2008}

conservative columnist George Will
• • “Newt Gingrich embodies the vanity and rapacity that make modern Washington repulsive.”  {blog 12/2011}
• • “The most important four words in politics are 'up to a point'.”  {blog 4/2012}
• • “Football combines two of the worst things in American life. It is violence punctuated by committee meetings.”  {blog 10/2012}
• • “[Donald] Trump must be removed. So must his congressional enablers.” - in June 2020  {blog 11/2020}

romance novelist Beatriz Williams
“One can follow the sun, of course, but I have always thought that it is best to know some winter too, so that the summer,
when it arrives, is the more gratefully received.”  {blog 2/2019}

(the illusive) Bern Williams
• • “Sooner or later we all quote our mothers.”  {blog 8/2013}
• • “If a June night could talk, it would probably boast [that] it invented romance.”  {blog 7/2015}
• • “The average man will bristle if you say [that] his father was dishonest, but he will brag a little if he discovers
that his great-grandfather was a pirate.”  {blog 8/2015}

country music legend Hank Williams [1923-53]
“People don't write music. It's given to them.”  {blog 2/2016}

Jon K. Williams of Santa Barbara, California
“Under the new Republican lie factory [our country is becoming] an international pariah and a government
of the crooked, by the crooked, and for the crooked.”  {Issue #51}

Joy Williams
“We're all alone in a meaningless world.”  {blog 1/2017}

Rawsi Williams
“To do what nobody else will do, in a way that nobody else can do, in spite of all we go through – that is to be a nurse.”  {blog 3/2020}

actor-comedian Robin Williams [1951-2014]
• • “You're only given a little spark of madness. You mustn't lose it.”  {blog 12/2011}
• • “Music is God's little reminder that there's something besides us in the universe, a harmonic connection
between all living beings, everywhere, even the stars.”  {blog 4/2016}
• • “Cocaine is God's way of saying that you're making too much money.”  {blog 9/2016}

baseball legend Ted Williams [1918-2002]
• • “Don't ever let anyone monkey with your swing.”  {blog 9/2008}
• • “If you don't think too good, don't think too much.”  {blog 6/2012}

playwright Tennessee Williams [1911-83]
• • “When I stop working the rest of the day is posthumous. I'm only really alive when I'm writing.”  {blog 8/2009}
• • “There is a time for departure, even when there's no certain place to go.”  {blog 11/2010}
• • “For time is the longest distance between two places.”  {blog 8/2015}
• • “The truth is at the bottom of a bottomless well.” - in 'Suddenly Last Summer' (1959)  {blog 6/2016}
• • “What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh no, it's curved like a road through mountains.”
- in 'A Streetcar named Desire", 1947  {blog 5/2017}
• • “The object of art is to make eternal the desperately fleeting moment.”  {blog 7/2021}

William Appleman Williams [1921-90]
“Empire is the only way to honor avarice and morality, the only way to be good and wealthy.”  {blog 9/2009}

American poet Wm. Carlos Williams [1883-1963]
“Time is a storm in which we are all lost.”  {blog 10/2021}

Marianne Williamson
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our Light
not our Darkness, that most frightens us.”  {blog 11/2013}
~~ in her 1992 book "A Return To Love"; quote used by Nelson Mandela [1918-2013] in his 1994 inaugural address

Owen Williamson
“The class warfare that is being waged by the great rich against the greater majority is not just a slogan.
It is as heartless as terrorism, as real as death, and expanding in scope day by day.”  {blog 10/2007 & 9/2013}

actor Bruce Willis
“Modern religion is the end trail of modern mythology.”  {blog 8/2017}

computer programmer Simon Willison
“Distrust and verify”  {blog 7/2024}

Jeff Willmore, Landmark Forum Leader
“Transformation carries with it [a] kind of deep surprise. [Transformation] doesn’t merely change our outlook and actions, it uncovers
the structures of being and interpretation on which we are grounded. [Transformation] removes arbitrary views that limit and shape
what’s possible, and gives us hands-on access to who we are.”  {blog 9/2015}

columnist Earl Wilson [1907-87]
“Science may never come up with a better office communication system than the coffee break.”  {blog 2/2018}

critic Edmund Wilson [1895-1972]
“No two persons ever read the same book.”  {blog 9/2015}

biologist E. (Edward) O. Wilson
• • “The real problem of humanity is the following: We have paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions,
and god-like technology.”  {blog 8/2012}
• • “The ideal scientist thinks like a poet and works like a bookkeeper.”  {blog 8/2013}
• • “Language is not just a creation of humanity. It is humanity.”  {blog 12/2017}

Sir Henry Wilson
“Gentlemen, either you must govern or you must be governed.”  {Issue #34}

James Q. Wilson [1931-2012]
“In the long run, the public interest depends on private virtue.”  {blog 9/2018}

former Ambassador Joe Wilson [1949-2019]
“Bob Novak is a compulsive liar.” – November 2007  {blog 11/2007}

futurist Robert Anton Wilson [1932-2007]
“The totally convinced and the totally stupid have too much in common for the resemblance to be accidental.”  {blog 7/2017}

Woodrow Wilson [1856-1924]
28th President of the United States, 1913-21
• • “I would rather belong to a poor nation that was free than to a rich nation that had ceased
to be in love with liberty.” (inscribed on a plaque inside the base of the Statue of Liberty)  {blog 12/2007}
• • “The American Revolution was a beginning, not a consummation.”  {blog 8/2009}

Paul Zweig [1935-84]
“We live in exile from the best part of ourselves.”  {blog 8/2017}

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Quotation Links

Benjamin Franklin [1706-90] Quotations Page
Thomas Jefferson [1743-1826] Quotations Page
Ralph Waldo Emerson [1803-82] Quotations Page
Abraham Lincoln [1809-65] Quotations Page
Henry David Thoreau [1817-62] Quotations Page
Mark Twain [1835-1910] Quotations Page
Friedrich Nietzsche [1844-1900] Quotations Page
Oscar Wilde [1854-1900] Quotations Page
George Bernard Shaw [1856-1950] Quotations Page
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H.L. Mencken [1880-1956] Quotations Page
Wm. Faulkner [1897-1962] Quotations Page
Ernest Hemingway [1899-1961] Quotations Page
John Steinbeck [1902-68] Quotations Page
Eric Hoffer [1902-83] Quotations Page
Ayn Rand [1905-82] Quotations Page
Edward R. Murrow [1908-65] Quotations Page
Edward Abbey [1927-89] Quotations Page
Martin Luther King, Jr. [1929-68] Quotations Page
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