America is a large friendly dog in a small room. Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a chair.

The human race's prospects of survival were considerably better when we were defenseless against the tigers than they are today, when we have become defenseless against ourselves.

—Arnold Toynbee

The only real struggle in the history of the world … is between the vested interest and social justice.

—Arnold Toynbee

It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself but at some more ambitious goal beyond it.

—Arnold Toynbee

Hope is the only bee that makes honey without flowers.

—Robert Green Ingersoll

Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.

—E. W. Dijkstra

It's a little like wrestling a gorilla. You don't quit when you're tired; you quit when the gorilla is tired.

—Robert Strauss

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.

—Christopher Hampton