"All progress is based upon universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income".

Samuel Butler, quoted in The Daily Telegraph

"Education is what's left when what has been learnt has been forgotten".

Psychologist B.F.Skinner, quoted in The Independent

"What is the point in growing old if you can't hound and persecute the young?".

Kenneth Clarke, quoted in The Times

"It just seems to me that the left hand don't know what the extreme left hand is doing".

Gordon Brown, on his left-wing rivals, quoted in The Independent on Sunday

"Learn from others mistakes. We don't have time to make them all ourselves".

Eleanor Roosevelt, quoted in The Huffington Post

"If at first you don't succeed, failure may be your style".

Quentin Crisp, quoted on CNN.com

"There is no such thing as fun for the whole family: there are no massage parlours with ice cream and free jewellery".

Jerry Seinfeld, quoted in the Denver Post

"Being famous is my job. When I leave the house I'm clocking in".

Noel Gallagher, quoted in The Times

"A radical is a man with both feet planted firmly in the air".

Franklin D. Roosevelt,, quoted in The Independent

"Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level".

Quentin Crisp, quoted on CNN

"Chess doesn't drive people mad, it keeps mad people sane".

Bill Hartston,
former British chess champion,
quoted in The Guardian

"Never eat more than you can lift ".

Miss Piggy,
quoted in The Times

"The trouble with life in the fast lane is that you get to the other end in an awful hurry".

John Jensen,
Danish Soccer Star,
quoted in Forbes

"It's worse than dog eat dog. It's dog doesn't return other dog's phone calls".

Woody Allen, on Hollywood,
quoted in The Spectator

"History is just one damn thing after another".

Arnold Toynbee,
quoted in The Guardian

"A newspaper is a device unable to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilisation".

George Bernard Shaw,
quoted in The Independent

"Youth might be wasted on the young but university is definitely wasted on students".

Ian Hollingshead,
quoted in The Daily Telegraph

"Fame is like watching someone ride past very fast on a horse. It looks exciting and you think: 'I want to do that' but the actual experience can be frightening or a substantial pain in the arse".

Grayson Perry,
quoted in The Observer

"Talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can see".

Arthur Schopenbauer,
quoted in The Boston Globe

"I support gay marriage because I believe they have the right to be just as miserable as the rest of us".

Kinky Friedman,
quoted in The Times

"If I'd asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse".

Henry Ford,
quoted in The Guardian

"Stupidity has a knack of getting its way".

Albert Camus,
quoted in the Daily Mail

"Does Magna Carta mean nothing to you? Did she die in vain?".

Tony Hancock,
quoted in The Independent

"Thanks to my devoted wife, without whose unquestioning faith and support this book was nevertheless written".

Rupert Morgan, a dedication in one of his novels,
quoted in The Guardian

"Winston has devoted the best years of his life to preparing his impromptu speeches".

F.E. Smith,
quoted in The Times

"If it weren't for the fact that the TV and the fridge are so far apart, some of us wouldn't get any exercise at all".

Joey Adams, comic,
quoted in the New York Post

"Man's feelings are always purest and most glowing in the hour of meeting and of farewell".

Jean Paul Richter, German writer,
quoted in The Independent

"Politics is an honest effort to misunderstand each other".

Robert Frost,
quoted in the Los Angeles Times

"Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm".

Winston Churchill,
quoted in The Daily Telegraph

"When asked what wine he liked, Diogenes replied:'That which belongs to another' ".

quoted in The Times

"Don't be afraid not to follow the herd - because where the herd's gone, the food is already eaten".

Bob Dylan,
quoted on OpenDemocracy.com

"Money will buy you a pretty good dog, but it won't buy you the wag of his tail".

Henry Wheeler Shaw,
quoted in The Times

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity".

The adage know as Hanlon's Razor,
cited in The Daily Telegraph

"What you have to remember is that civil servants use vagueness and ambiguity with razor-sharp precision.".

Senior Civil Servant,
quoted in letter to The Times

"Whenever I date a guy, I think:'Is this the man I want my children to spend their weekends with?".

Rita Radner, US comedian,
quoted in The Times

"If anyone tells me I'm fat, I say, "That's because everytime I make love to your wife, she gives me a biscuit".

Clement Freud,
on combating 'fat-ism' on Radio 4's Just a Minute

"It ain't what you don't know that gets you; it's the things you know that ain't so".

Mark Twain,
quoted in The Wall Street Journal

"I always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific".

Lilly Tomlin,
quoted in the Calgary Herald

"To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness".

Bertrand Russell,
quoted in The Independent

"I always invest in companies an idiot could run, because one day one will".

Warren Buffett,
quoted in The Mail on Sunday

"Men are always asking what women want in bed. The answer is breakfast".

Kathy Lette,
quoted in The Times

"The man who makes no mistakes usually does not make anything".

Theodore Roosevelt,
quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald

"An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell you more than he knows".

Dwight Eisenhower,
quoted in the Illawarra Mercury

"I needed a password eight characters long so I picked Snow White and the Seven Dwarves".

Nick Helm,
Most popular joke at the Edinburgh Fringe

"If the young are not initiated into the village, they will burn it down just to feel its warmth".

African Proverb,
quoted in The Observer

"The thankless task of drowning other people's kittens".

Cyril Connolly's definition of book reviewing,
quoted in The FT

"Nobody will ever win the battle of the sexes. There's just too much fraternising with the enemy".

Henry Kissinger,
quoted in the Illawarra Mercury

"I hate housework. You make the beds, you do the dishes and six months later you have to start all over again".

Joan Rivers,
quoted in The Independent

"I still have my feet on the ground, I just wear better shoes".

Oprah Winfrey,
quoted in the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel

"Other players are involved in tennis, but I'm committed. It's like ham and eggs. The chicken is involved; the pig is committed".

Martina Navratilova ,
quoted in The Times

"The real menace in dealing with a five-year-old is that in no time at all you begin to sound like a five-year-old".

Writer Jean Kerr ,
quoted on WashingtonPost.com

"The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues."

Elizabeth Taylor, quoted in the Guardian

"The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time"

W. Somerset Maughan, quoted in the Herald, Monterey County, Calif

"In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant".

Charles de Gaulle, quoted in the Montreal Gazette

"Success is a great deodorant. It takes away all your past smells".

Elizabeth Taylor, quoted in the Guardian

"Economists have predicted nine out of the last five recessions".

Old Joke, quoted in the Times

"The art of diplomacy is letting the other fellow have your own way".

Anonymous Indian
diplomat, quoted in the Times