The Quotations Archive currently contains 1744 quotations.

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I drink no more than a sponge.

-- Francis Rabelais, Works. Book i. Chap. v.

Remember your dreams.

-- Maryanne Radmacher-Herhey

I base my fashion sense on what doesn't itch.

-- Gilda Radner

Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive.

-- Ayn Rand

Time is at once the most valuable and most perishable of all our possessions.

-- John Randolph

Giving a man space is like giving a dog a computer: the chances are he will not use it wisely.

-- Bette-Jane Raphael

Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody thinks of complaining.

-- Jeff Raskin

The whole point of getting things done is knowing what to leave undone.

-- Lady Stella Reading

I know I'm not in government anymore. In fact I'm out of work.

-- Ronald Reagan, Former U.S. President, on a speaking tour of Japan, 1989

Trust, but verify.

-- Ronald Reagan

Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.

-- Ronald Reagan, Saturday Evening Post, 1965

Sex is the mathematics urge sublimated.

-- M. C. Reed

Love is an attempt to change a piece of the dream-world into reality.

-- Theodor Reik

I don't know if God exists, but it would be better for His reputation if He didn't.

-- Jules Renard

When one find's oneself in a hole of one's own making, it is a good time to examine the quality of the workmanship.

-- John Renmerde

A kitten is chiefly remarkable for rushing about like mad at nothing whatever, and generally stopping before it gets there.

-- Agnes Repplier

We cannot really love anybody with whom we never laugh.

-- Agnes Repplier

A government is the only known vessel that leaks from the top.

-- James Reston

Being in therapy is great. I spend an hour just talking about myself. It's kinda like being the guy on a date.

-- Caroline Rhea

Love is like the measles. The older you get it, the worse the attack.

-- Mary Roberts Rhinehart

The truth is, laughter always sounds more perfect than weeping. Laughter flows in a violent riff and is effortlessly melodic. Weeping is often fought, choked, half strangled, or surrendered to with humiliation.

-- Anne Rice, Taltos

If you are going to sin, sin against God, not the bureaucracy. God will forgive you but the bureaucracy won't.

-- Hyman Rickover

At the bottom no one in life can help anyone else in life; this one experiences over and over in every conflict and every perplexity: that one is alone. That isn't as bad as it may first appear; and again it is the best thing in life that each should have everything in himself; his fate, his future, his whole expanse and world.

-- Rainer Maria Rilke

Do not assume that she who seeks to comfort you now, lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. Her life may also have much sadness and difficulty, that remains far beyond yours. Were it otherwise, she would never have been able to find these words.

-- Rainer Maria Rilke

For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of our tasks; the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.

-- Rainer Maria Rilke

If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not a poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place.

-- Rainer Maria Rilke

Live your questions now, and perhaps even without knowing it, you will live along some distant day into your answers.

-- Rainer Maria Rilke

Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see each other whole against the sky.

-- Rainer Maria Rilke

This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love; the more they give, the more they possess.

-- Rainer Maria Rilke

We see the brightness of a new page where everything yet can happen.

-- Rainer Maria Rilke, Book of Hours

Less and grayer hair.

-- Cal Ripkin Jr., baseball player, describing how he has changed over the course of his consecutive games record

The streets are safe in Philadelphia. It's only the people who make them unsafe.

-- Frank Rizzo, ex-police chief and mayor of Philadelphia

Laundry increases exponentially in the number of children.

-- Miriam Robbins

Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business.

-- Tom Robbins

Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature.

-- Tom Robbins

If little else, the brain is an educational toy.

-- Tom Robbins

It was the greatest of the imperfect ventriloquist acts: when his lips moved, her body sang.

-- Tom Robbins

Politics is for people who have a passion for changing life but lack a passion for living it.

-- Tom Robbins

The bottom line is that (a) people are never perfect, but love can be, (b) that is the one and only way that the mediocre and vile can be transformed, and (c) doing that makes it that. We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love.

-- Tom Robbins

There are many things worth living for, there are a few things worth dying for, but there is nothing worth killing for.

-- Tom Robbins

To be or not to be isn't the question. The question is how to prolong being.

-- Tom Robbins

Using words to describe magic is like using a screwdriver to cut roast beef.

-- Tom Robbins

We're our own dragons as well as our own heroes, and we have to rescue ourselves from ourselves.

-- Tom Robbins

I believe in nothing, everything is sacred.
I believe in everything, nothing is sacred.

-- Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

To achieve the impossible, it is precisely the unthinkable that must be thought.

-- Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

Of the seven dwarves, only Dopey had a shaven face. This should tell us something about the custom of shaving.

-- Tom Robbins, Skinny Legs and All

What is politics, after all, but the compulsion to preside over property and make other peoples' decisions for them?

-- Tom Robbins, Skinny Legs and All

It's never too late to have a happy childhood.

-- Tom Robbins, Still Life With Woodpecker

Why yes -- a bulletproof vest.

-- James Rodges, murderer, on his final request before the firing squad

I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don't need.

-- Francois-Auguste Rodin, when asked how he managed to make his remarkable statues

It doesn't much signify whom one marries, for one is sure to find out next morning it was someone else.

-- Rogers

Propel, propel, propel your craft softly down liquid solution. Ecstatically, ecstatically, ecstatically, ecstatically, Existence is simply illusion.

-- Fred Rogers, parody of "Row, row, row your boat" on his television show, "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood."

Grad school is the snooze button on the clock-radio of life.

-- John Rogers, comedian (who holds a graduate degree in physics)

Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.

-- Will Rogers

I guess the only way to stop divorce is to stop marriage.

-- Will Rogers

I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!

-- Will Rogers

See what will happen if you don't stop biting your fingernails?

-- Will Rogers, to his niece on seeing the Venus de Milo

The man with the best job in the country is the Vice President. All he has to do is get up every morning and say, "How's the President?"

-- Will Rogers

There ought to be one day - just one - when there is open season on senators.

-- Will Rogers

This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.

-- Will Rogers

We are all here for a spell; get all the good laughs you can.

-- Will Rogers

You can't say civilization isn't advancing: in every war they kill you in a new way.

-- Will Rogers

Before marriage, a man will lie awake all night thinking about something you said; after marriage, he'll fall asleep before you finish saying it.

-- Helen Roland

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.

-- Eleanor Roosevelt

Women are like tea bags; put them in hot water and they get stronger.

-- Eleanor Roosevelt

The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.

-- Franklin D. Roosevelt

Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell 'em, "Certainly, I can!" Then get busy and find out how to do it.

-- Theodore Roosevelt

To write a good love letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say, and to finish without knowing what you have written.

-- Jean Jacques Rousseau

A husband is what's left of the lover after the nerve has been extracted.

-- Helen Rowland

In olden times, sacrifices were made at the altar, a practice which is still very much practiced.

-- Helen Rowland

When a girl marries, she exchanges the attentions of many men for the inattention of one.

-- Helen Rowland

When you see what some girls marry, you realize how they must hate to work for a living.

-- Helen Rowland

I think men who have a pierced ear are better prepared for marriage. They've experienced pain and bought jewelry.

-- Rita Rudner

Most turkeys taste better the day after; my mother's tasted better the day before.

-- Rita Rudner

Whenever I date a guy, I think, is this the man I want my children to spend their weekends with?

-- Rita Rudner

It may be that the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong -- but that is the way to bet.

-- Damon Runyan

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

-- Bertrand Russell

It is because modern education is so seldom inspired by a great hope that it so seldom achieves great results. The wish to preserve the past rather that the hope of creating the future dominates the minds of those who control the teaching of the young.

-- Bertrand Russell

Mathematics, rightly viewed, posses not only truth, but supreme beauty -- a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture.

-- Bertrand Russell

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.

-- Bertrand Russell

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.

-- Bertrand Russell

The Republicans have a new healthcare proposal: Just say NO to illness!

-- Mark Russell

The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage.

-- Mark Russell

The only thing you will ever be able to say in the so-called 'social' sciences is: "some do, some don't."

-- Ernest Rutherford

We haven't the money, so we've got to think.

-- Lord Rutherford

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.

-- Voltaire