Welcome to Russ Lombardo's Quotes Page

Here are some of my favorite quotes from famous people and also some from my friends who have said some pretty profound things over the years. 

Friends (and me)

1. "Did you ever notice that girls our age look old?" - David A.

2. Noticing girls walking I remarked that they are too young for my friend. To which he replied, "Those girls aren't too young for me; I may be too old for them, but they are not too young for me." - SS 

3. "There's a fine line between a good salesman and a confidence man." - Ron Warren 

4. The expensive car paradox -- "An expensive car does not guarantee that you will get beautiful women, but a bad car may guarantee that you don't get them." - Ralph P.

5. Observing a beautiful girl, I remarked "What are the odds that woman would go out with me?".  My friend replied "They are zero.". I said, "They can't be zero, they must be finite." He said "I round after four places". - Ralph P.

6. "In software engineering, we have a saying — if you want it bad, you'll get it bad." - Roger Lowe, et al

7. "For a man, a woman's suggestion is only a suggestion if you do it." - Stan B.

8. "Fifty percent of doctors finished in the bottom half of their class" - Aunt Maryann Schlickenmeyer

9. "No one can be a doormat unless he is willing to lie down." - Aunt Maryanne S.

10. "I find it amazing that petty people place such great importance on trivial matters." - Russ Lombardo (RLL) 

11. "Why is conformity valued above ingenuity?" - RLL 

12. "Sycophancy is not a skill." - RLL 

13. "I am a watch designer -- in a sea of time tellers." - RLL 

14. "Sometimes I wish I was smarter, most times I wish I was dumber." - RLL 

15. "In life it is important to remember that smart people are not that smart and dumb people are not that dumb." - RLL 

16. Delco Systems Operations - the F Troop of engineering.  - RLL

17. When engineering is in agreement, management is in denial.

1. “The dog is a gentleman; I hope to go to his heaven, not man's.” - Mark Twain

2. "Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living from it." - Albert Einstein

3. "The labeling of any engineering project with the epithet 'simple' is more often than not the result of the feeling of confidence that springs from inadequate comprehension of the problem."- SubG

4. "Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius." - by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), English author. The Valley of Fear, ch. 1 (1915).

5. "When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in conferderacy against him." - by Johnathan Swift "Thoughts of Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting" also quoted by John Kennedy O'Toole, American Author. A Confederacy of Dunces. (1987)

6. "Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." - Albert Einstein

7. "One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man." - Elbert Hubbard, author, editor, printer (1856-1915)

8. "We are all more average than we think." - Gorham Munson, American author and editor (1896-1969)

9. "Only the mediocre can always be at their best."- Tom Magliozzi

10. "When you finally understand the universe, it will not only be stranger than you imagine, it will be stranger than you can imagine." - Arthur C. Clarke 

11. "The great tragedy of science: The slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact." - by Thomas H. Huxley

12. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Clarke's Third Law

13. "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled" - Richard P. Feynman

14. Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics – popularized by Mark Twain 

15. "The one who never walks except where tracks are seen will never make discoveries." - Anonymous

16. 186,000 miles per second, it's not just a good idea — it's the law

17. "A good scientist is a person with original ideas. A good engineer is a person who makes a design that works with as few original ideas as possible. There are no prima donnas in engineering." - Freeman Dyson (b. 1923), British-born U.S. physicist, author. Disturbing the Universe, pt. 1, ch. 10 (1979).

18. "As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality." - Albert Einstein

19. “Years ago my mother used to say to me... She'd say 'In this world, Elwood, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant. Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant” from Harvey as spoken by Elwood P. Dowd quoting his mother.

20. "Why is the world so cruel?", "Because people live in it." - from Sam Spade in the Honest Thief caper

21. “If you don’t think too good, don’t think too much” – Ted Williams

22. “Physics is like sex.   Sure, it may give some practical results, but that’s not why we do it.” – Richard Feynman

23. "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." - Henry David Thoreau (1817-62), U.S. philosopher, author, naturalist. Walden, "Economy" (1854).

24. "Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?" "To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time." "The dog did nothing in the night-time." "That was the curious incident," remarked Sherlock Holmes. - by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "The Silver Blaze"

25. "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people" is attributed to H.L. Mencken, according to the Macmillan Dictionary of Quotations. However, in a work entitled Nice Guys Finish Seventh, the quote is cited as "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." According to Nice Guys Finish Seventh, there are varying versions of this quote. "The reason Mencken's citers have such wide latitude on this quotation is that it does not appear in his published works.... The closest Mencken comment on the record" appeared in a 1926 column, "No one in this world, so far as I know--and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me--has ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the American people." 

26.  Reality often astonishes theory.

 From the movie "Inherit the Wind"

1. "Can't you understand? That if you take a law like evolution and you make it a crime to teach it in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools? And tomorrow you may make it a crime to read about it. And soon you may ban books and newspapers. And then you may turn Catholic against Protestant, and Protestant against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the mind of man. If you can do one, you can do the other. Because fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy, and needs feeding. And soon, your Honor, with banners flying and with drums beating we'll be marching backward, BACKWARD, through the glorious ages of that Sixteenth Century when bigots burned the man who dared bring enlightenment and intelligence to the human mind!"

2. "It frightens me to imagine the state of learning in this world if everyone had your driving curiousity."

3. "Gentlemen, progress has never been a bargain.  You've got to pay for it.  Sometimes I think there's a man behind a counter who says 'All right, you can have a telephone; but you'll have to give up privacy and the charm of distance.  Madam, you may vote; but at a price; you lose the right to retreat behind a powder puff or a petticoat.  Mister, you may conquer the air; but the birds will lose their wonder and the clouds will smell of gasoline.'  Darwin moved us forward to a hilltop, where we can look back and see the way from the which we came.  But for this view, this insight, this knowledge, we must abandon our faith in the pleasant poetry of Genesis."

4. "He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind: and the fool shall be servant to the wise in heart."

Winston Churchill

1. "It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. . . . The quotations, when engraved upon the memory, give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more." 

2. "Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'

3. "If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons." 

4. "An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last."

5. "He is a modest little man who has a good deal to be modest about."

6. "I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals."

Yogi Berra

1.    "All pitchers are liars or crybabies."

2.    "A nickel ain't worth a dime anymore."Source: Baseball Digest (June 1987)

3.    "Baseball is ninety percent mental. The other half is physical."

4.    "Bill Dickeyis learning me his experience."

5.    "He hits from both sides of the plate. He's amphibious."

6.    "How can a you hit and think at the same time?"

7.    "I always thought that record would stand until it was broken."

8.    "I can see how he (Sandy Koufax) won twenty-five games. What I don't understand is how he lost five."

9.    "I don't know (if they were men or women fans running naked across the field). They had bags over their heads."

10.  "If people don't want to come out to the ballpark, how are you going to stop them?"

11.  "I'm a lucky guy and I'm happy to be with the Yankees. And I want to thank everyone for making this night necessary."

12.  "I'm not going to buy my kids an encyclopedia. Let them walk to school like I did."

13.  "In baseball, you don't know nothing."

14.  "I never blame myself when I'm not hitting. I just blame the bat and if it keeps up, I change bats. After all, if I know it isn't my fault that I'm not hitting, how can I get mad at myself?"

15.  "I never said most of the things I said."

16.  "It ain't the heat, it's the humility."

17.  "It gets late early out there."

18.  "I think Little League is wonderful. It keeps the kids out of the house."

19.  "It's like deja vu all over again."

20.  "I wish everybody had the drive he (Joe DiMaggio) had. He never did anything wrong on the field. I'd never seen him dive for a ball, everything was a chest-high catch, and he never walked off the field."

21.  "Little League baseball is a very good thing because it keeps the parents off the streets."Source: Catcher in the Wry (Bob Uecker)

22.  "Ninety percent of this game is half mental."Source: Sports Illustrated (May 14, 1979)

23.  "Nobody goes there anymore because it's too crowded."

24.  "So I'm ugly. I never saw anyone hit with his face."

25.  "Take it with a grin of salt."

26.  "It ain’t over ‘til it's over."

27.  "The towels were so thick there I could hardly close my suitcase."

28.  "You can observe a lot just by watching."

29.  "You should always go to other people's funerals, otherwise, they won't come to yours."

30.  "You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you are going because you might not get there."

31.  "We made too many wrong mistakes."

32.  "When you come to a fork in the road, take it."

33.  You better cut the pizza into four slices because I’m not hungry enough to eat six.

34.  The future ain’t what it used to be.

35.