Hans Fallada
A rich man is never rich enough. ('The Iron Gustav')
Because they believe in heaven, they don’t want to fix anything on earth. (‘Alone in Berlin’)
Elizabeth Farrelli (Australian journalist)
Democracy is desire-based.
Cities are like marriages. Easy to stuff up. Hard to fix.
A dwelling is far more than a commodity. It's an extended Self.
The handbag is the keeping house of the female dreaming: an external uterus.
We routinely assume that nature should change to accommodate us - not vice versa.
Ethics and wellbeing are opposites.
Where ethics implies give-and-take, a relationship of exchange, wellbeing indicates increasing absorption into self.
When self-perfection becomes the goal, narcissism becomes the disease. Too much wellbeing makes us sick.
William Faulkner
Facts and truth really don't have much to do with each other.
When my horse is running good, I don't stop to give him sugar.
Federico Fellini
There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the infinite passion of life.
Edward Felsenthal
The global response to climate change is now the underlying framework for everything else that society debates.
Enrico Fermi
If I could remember the names of all these particles, I'd be a botanist.
You are the only monomaniac with several manias. (addressing Edward Teller)
Ludwig Feuerbach
Good authors are the conscience of humanity.
The more good books we have read the smaller becomes the circle of people we like.
Paul Feyerabend
Prayer may not be very efficient when compared to celestial mechanics, but it surely holds its own vis-à-vis some parts of economics.
Richard P. Feynman
Science is the culture of doubt.
What I cannot create, I do not understand.
Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.
Science is what we have learned about how to keep from fooling ourselves.
You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish.
Everything that living things do can be understood in terms of the jiggling and wiggling of atoms.
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.
W.C. Fields
A rich man is nothing but a poor man with money.
Once, during Prohibition, I was forced to live for days on nothing but food and water.
Werner Finck
Humour is the ability to laugh when you feel like crying.
A conference is a meeting where many enter but nothing much comes out of it.
John Firth (linguist)
You shall know a word by the company it keeps.
Carrie Fisher
I don't want life to imitate art. I want life to be art.
M.F.K.Fisher (Foodwriter)
Everything in moderation, including moderation.
M.H.Fischer
Minorities are the stars in the sky. Majorities are all the dark around them.
Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
The future? Like unwritten books and unborn children, you don't talk about it.
Ella Fitzgerald
Just don't give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don't think you can go wrong.
F.Scott Fitzgerald
Action is character.
Forgotten is forgiven.
I know myself, but that is all.
America is a willingness of the heart.
The rich are different from you and me.
Most of our lives end as a compromise. (‘The Rich Boy')
There are no second acts in American lives.
Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.
If you're strong enough, there are no precedents.
Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.
Intelligence is a mere instrument of circumstances. ('The Beautiful and Damned')
Great art is the contempt of a great man for small art.
If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures... ('The Great Gatsby')
There is no confusion like the confusion of a simple mind. ('The Great Gatsby')
Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues.
Speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again.
A big man has no time really to do anything but just sit and be big.
The world, as a rule, does not live on beaches and in country clubs.
All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.
A sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth. ('The Great Gatsby')
Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over.
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. ('The Great Gatsby')
His was a great sin who first invented consciousness. Let us lose it for a few hours. ('The diamond as big as the Ritz')
In the real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day. (‘The Crack-up')
Genius goes around the world in its youth incessantly apologizing for having large feet.
A great social success is a pretty girl who plays her cards as carefully as if she were plain.
No such thing as a man willing to be honest --that would be like a blind man willing to see.
An idea ran back and forward in his head like a blind man, knocking over the solid furniture.
Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.
I like people and I like them to like me, but I wear my heart where God put it -- on the inside.
At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide. ('Bernice bobs her hair')
Grown up, and that is a terribly hard thing to do. It is much easier to skip it and go from one childhood to another.
I'm a romantic - a sentimental person thinks things will last - a romantic person hopes against hope that they won't.
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
The easiest way to get a reputation is to go outside the fold, shout around for a few years as a violent atheist or a dangerous radical, and then crawl back to the shelter.
Life is essentially a cheat and its conditions are those of defeat... the redeeming things are not "happiness and pleasure" but the deeper satisfactions that come out of struggle.
Richard Flanagan
Love is two bodies with one soul.
There is only light at the beginning of things.
It's only our faith in illusions that makes life possible.
Virtue was vanity dressed up and waiting for applause.
Not all stories are about symbols, but all symbols are stories.
A happy man has no past, while an unhappy man has nothing else. (all above ‘The Narrow Road to the Deep South’)
As a species it is hope that propels us forward, as individuals it is hope that keeps us alive.
The world is kept alive only by heretics: the heretic Christ, the heretic Copernicus, the heretic Tolstoy.
The highest form of living is freedom: a man to be a man, a cloud to be a cloud, bamboo to be bamboo.
(‘The Narrow Road to the Deep North’)
Writing must be the rising note heard over the long silence of orthodoxy; the single, unsilenceable note that ascends.
Gustave Flaubert
Read in order to live.
Optimist is another word for fool.
Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.
Alexander Fleming
Do not wait for fortune to smile on you; prepare yourself with knowledge.
Ian Fleming
Luck was a servant and not a master.
At gambling, the deadly sin is to mistake bad play for bad luck. (both ‘Casino Royale’)
Marshal Ferdinand Foch (Ecole Superieure de Guerre 1911)
Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.
Kathleen Folbig
Hope destroys as much as enliven.
Ken Follett
Those who believe that Might is Right must always be mighty. (‘Eye of the Needle')
Mike Foley
The Labor tradition is to civilise capitalism, not to abolish it.
Henry Fonda
The best actors do not let the wheels show.
Jane Fonda
A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.
Getting fit is a political act: you are taking charge of your life.
When you can't remember why your're hurt - that's when you're healed.
You spend all your life trying to do something they put people in asylums for.
A man has every season while a woman has only the right to spring. That disgusts me.
Theodor Fontane
Love thrives on lovely trifles.
Once you are happy don't demand to be happier.
Margot Fonteyn
Take your work seriously, but never yourself.
Henry Ford
Don't find fault, find a remedy.
One who fears failure limits his activities.
Money is like an arm or leg: use it or lose it.
You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do.
Before anything else, getting ready is the secret of success.
A bore is a person who opens his mouth and puts his foot in.
An idealist is a person who helps other people to be prosperous.
Failure is only the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.
The farther we get away from the land, the greater our insecurity.
A business that makes nothing but money is a poor kind of business.
If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said 'faster horses'.
I believe God is managing affairs and that He doesn't need any advice from me.
Thinking is the hardest work there is, which probably the reason so few engage in it.
It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste.
Exercise is bunk. If you are healthy you don't need it. If you are sick you shouldn't take it.
I cannot discover that anyone knows enough to say definitely what is and what is not possible.
It doesn't matter to me if a man is from Harvard or Sing Sing. We hire the man, not his history.
Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.
He can who thinks he can, and he can't who thinks he can't. This is an inexorable, indisputable law.
It is not the employer who pays wages -- he only handles the money. It is the product that pays the wages.
We want to live in the present, and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history we make today.
When everything seems to be going against you, remember the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.
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.
E.M.Forster
I and my life must be where I live (‘Where Angels Fear to Tread')
A wife may be replaced; a mother never. (‘Howards End')
Looks have their influence upon character. (‘Howards End’)
It isn't size so much as the way things are arranged. (‘Howards End’)
Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice. (‘A Room with a View’)
It is difficult, as we get on in life, to resist the supernatural. (‘A Passage to India')
The healthy man only thinks of the word death, not of death itself. (‘Where Angels Fear to Tread')
We shall be judged by our intentions, not by our accomplishments. (‘Where Angels Fear to Tread')
The aims of battle and the fruits of conquest are never the same. (‘A Passage to India')
Money pads the edges of things. God help those who have none. (‘Howards End')
Why do people who have enough money try to get more money? (‘Howards End’)
The lowest abyss is not the absence of love, but the absence of coin. (‘Howards End')
Money is educational. It's far more educational than the things it buys. (‘Howards End’)
Life never gives us what we want at the moment that we consider appropriate.
(‘A Passage to India')
Independent thoughts are in nine cases out of ten the result of independent means. (‘Howards End')
Virtues of neatness, decision, obedience … they keep the soul from becoming sloppy. (‘Howards End’)
Our vanity is such that we hold our own characters immutable, and we are slow to acknowledge that they have changed, even for the better. (‘Where Angels Fear to Tread')
Richard Fortey ('Life-an unauthorised Biography')
Bones never lie.
No change without challenge.
Ugo Foscolo
Who has never suffered doesn't deserve any luck.
Charles de Foucauld
Passionate love is silent. Noisy words extinguish the inner fire.
Michael Foucault
Freedom of conscience entails more dangers than authority and despotism.
Anatole France
Until one has loved an animal a part of one's soul remains unawakened
Francisco Franco
I am responsible only to God and history.
Anne Frank
Whoever is happy will make others happy too.
I don't think of all the misery, but of all the beauty that still remains.
Bruno Frank
You never own people - you always have to win them anew.
Benjamin Franklin
Little strokes fell great oaks.
The things which hurt, instruct.
Well done is better than well said.
The cat in gloves catches no mice.
The doors of wisdom are never shut.
Necessity never made a good bargain.
He that lives upon hope will die fasting.
There never was a good war or a bad peace.
When you are finished changing you're finished.
When the well's dry we know the worth of water.
Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
They that will not be counselled, cannot be helped.
Write your injuries in dust, your benefits in marble.
He that lies down with dogs shall rise up with fleas.
Genius is nothing but a greater aptitude for patience.
The way to see by Faith is to shut the eye of Reason.
He who falls in love with himself will have no rivals.
He who waits upon a fortune is never sure of a dinner.
Love your enemies, because they will tell you your faults.
Beware of little expenses. A small leak will sink a great ship.
Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.
We are all born ignorant. But one must work hard to remain stupid.
The only thing that is more expensive than education is ignorance.
Tell me and I forget - teach me and I remember - involve me and I learn.
Glass, china and reputations are easily cracked and never mended well.
For age and want save while you may, no morning sun lasts a whole day.
Hide not your talents. They were made for use. What's a sundial in the shade.
The more money a man has, the more he wants. Instead of filling a vacuum it creates one.
Lost time is never found again; and what we call time enough always proves little enough.
Moderate your desire of victory over your adversary, and be pleased with the one over yourself.
They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Vital religion has always suffered when orthodoxy is more regarded than virtue. And the scripture assures me that at the last day we shall not be examined by what we thought, but what we did....
Jonathan Franzen ("The Twentyseventh City")
Every arrival is a departure.
It was spring. The old was new.
History lives or dies in buildings.
Landscape recapitulates personality.
Frederick the Great
Diplomacy without arms is like music without instruments.
Sigmund Freud
Anatomy is destiny.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Dreams are the royal road to the unconscious.
Out of your vulnerabilities will come your strength.
We are never so defenceless against suffering as when we love.
The unconscious is much more moral than the conscious will admit.
The mind is like an iceberg, it floats with one-seventh of its bulk above water.
Religion is an illusion, and it derives its strength from its readiness to fit in with our instinctual wishful impulses.
A man should not strive to eliminate his complexes, but to get into accord with them; they are legitimately what directs his conduct in the world.
The great question that has never been answered and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is: What does a woman want?
Just as a cautious businessman avoids investing all his capital in one enterprise, so wisdom would probably admonish us also not to anticipate all our happiness from one quarter alone.
Devout believers are safeguarded in a high degree against the risk of certain neurotic illnesses; their acceptance of the universal neurosis spares them the task of constructing a personal one.
Josh Frydenberg (Australian Treasurer)
God only created a few perfect heads, and the rest He put hair on.
L.Friedman
Fox News is to journalism what the Mafia is to capitalism.... same basic genre, but a morally corrupt perversion of the real thing.
Milton Friedman
The power to do good is also the power to do harm.
Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change.
History suggests that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition.
Max Frisch
Being honest means being alone.
Jealousy: afraid of the comparison.
Technology is the trick of so arranging the world that we do not need to experience it.
It's exactly the disappointing stories, which have no proper ending and consequently no proper meaning, that sound true to life.
Gerd Fröbe
The first thing you lose when trying to lose weight, is your happy mood.
Erich Fromm
Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties.
Robert Frost
To be social is to be forgiving.
Hell is a half-filled auditorium.
I had a lovers quarrel with the world.
Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.
To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.
Now that I am old, my teachers are the young.
Pressed into service means pressed out of shape.
Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.
Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.
Time and tide wait for no man, but time always stands still for a woman!
In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life. It goes on.
I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way.
Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.
There are few sorrows, however poignant, in which a good income is of no avail.
Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee, and I'll forgive Thy great big ones on me.
The world is full of willing people: some willing to work, others willing to let them.
Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favour.
And nothing to look backward to with pride, and nothing to look forward to with hope.
Two roads diverge in a wood, and I took the one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference.
Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.
By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be a boss and work twelve hours a day.
A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes a fool of him in twenty minutes.
Athol Fugard
(Life is) about the capacity to grow towards the sun in spite of what is in your path.
R.Buckminster Fuller
Gold and silver from the dead turn often into lead.
Nature is trying very hard to make us succeed, but nature does not depend on us. We are not the only experiment.
If the success or failure of this planet, and of human beings, depended on how I am and what I do: how would I be? What would I do?
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.
What usually happens in the educational process is that the faculties are dulled, overloaded,stuffed and paralysed so that by the time most people are mature they have lost their innate capabilities.
Joseph Furphy ("Such is Life")
Unemployed at last!