"The future is certain.  It is only the past that is unpredictable."

-- Soviet joke on the issue of Stalin's 5 year plan

"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance."

-- Drayton Bird

"That most delicious of all privileges - spending other people's money."

-- John Randolph

"Modern society, that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world which he has called up by his spells."

-- Karl Marx, Communist Manifesto

"If a thing can be said, it can be said simply."

-- Ludwig Wittgenstein

"I am a firm believer in people.  If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis.  The great point is to bring them the real facts."

-- Abraham Lincoln

"Every battle is won and lost before it is fought."

-- Sun Tzu, The Art of War

"I have found no greater satisfaction than achieving success through honest dealing and strict adherence to the view that, for you to gain, those you deal with should gain as well."

-- Alan Greenspan

"Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't."

-- Erica Jong

"When somebody offers you a gift horse, prize its mouth open and take a damn close look."

-- Anon

"I consider myself not so much the greatest of modern artists, but the only one.

-- Salvador Dali

"Love and cooking require that you take great risks."

-- The Dalai Lama

"France is coddled with illusions.  Economic decline is the brutal, hard, undeniable reality.  We are consuming the leftovers of past prosperity."

-- Jean Peyrlevade, formerly head of Credit Lyonnais, 2012

"It is not the voice that commands the story; it is the ear."

-- Marco Polo

"During battle you should not overuse one weapon."

-- Miyamoto Musashi

"Dealing with people is probably the biggest problem you face, especially if you are in business."

-- Dale Carnegie