Quotes

• Anger is a symptom, a way of cloaking and expressing feelings too awful to experience directly -- hurt, bitterness, grief and, most of all, fear. (Joan Rivers)
• Anger is not only inevitable, it is necessary. Its absence means indifference, the most disastrous of all human failings. (Arthur Ponsonby)
• Anger is only one letter short of danger.
• Any statement that begins: "There are two sides to every question..."
  ignores the third side, which is usually the correct one.
• Anyone can become angry - that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not easy. (Aristotle)
• Balancing your anger balances your life.
• Before you give someone a piece of your mind, make sure you can get by with what is left.
• The best manner of avenging ourselves is by not resembling him who has injured us. (Jane Porter)
• The best remedy for a short temper is a long walk. (Jacqueline Schiff)
• The best way to win an argument is to being by being right. (Jill Ruckelshaus)
• Beware the fury of a patient man. (John Dryden)
• By the time you have lined up the third person on your side, the first two will have wandered off somewhere.
• Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.
• The difficult part in an argument is not to defend one's opinion, but rather to know it. (André Maurois)
• Envy among other ingredients has a mixture of the love of justice in it. We are more angry at undeserved than at deserved good-fortune. (William Hazlitt)
• Ever notice how the people who tell you to calm down are the ones who got you mad in the first place.
• Every man has a right to his opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts. (Bernard M. Baruch)
• For every minute you are angry, you lose sixty seconds of happiness. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
• Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate. (Thomas Jones)
• A good listener tries to understand thoroughly what the other person is saying. In the end he may disagree sharply, but before he disagrees, he wants to know exactly what it is he is disagreeing with. (Kenneth A. Wells)
• A grouch escapes so many little annoyances that it almost pays to be one. (Kin Hubbard)
• Guilt is anger directed at ourselves. (Peter McWilliams)
• Have a nice day...somewhere else.
• He that complies against his will is of his own opinion still. (Samuel Butler)
• I can argue with anybody - I always lose, but I can argue with anybody. (Raymond Kirklin)
• I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.
• I have never in my life learned anything from any man who agreed with me. (Dudley Field Malone)
• I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with a lot of pleasure. (Clarence Darrow)
• I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain. (James Baldwin)
• I yell because I care!
• If malice or envy were tangible and had a shape, it would be the shape of a boomerang. (Charley Reese)
• If someone betrays you once, it's his fault; if he betrays you twice, it's your fault.
• If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow. (Chinese Proverb)
• If you can't answer a man's argument, all is not lost; you can still call him vile names.
• I'm feeling argumentative...please contradict me.
• In an argument, the best weapon to hold is your tongue.
• It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it. (Joseph Joubert)
• It is difficult to win an argument when your opponent is unencumbered with a knowledge of the facts. (Dr. Nordstrom)
• It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend. (William Blake)
• It is human nature to hate the man whom you have hurt. (Tacitus)
• It's easy to be an angel when nobody ruffles your feathers.
• Kind words can be short and easy to speak but their echoes are truly endless. (Mother Theresa)
• Kindness is more important than wisdom, and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom. (Theodore Isaac, Rubin)
• Listen closely to your enemies. They tell you your faults.
• Listening to both sides of a story will convince you that there is more to a story than two sides. (Frank Tyger)
• Many people lose their tempers merely from seeing you keep yours. (Frank Moore Colby)
• Most people are willing to meet each other halfway, the trouble is, most people are pretty poor judges of distance.
• Never argue with a fool...people watching might not be able to tell the difference.
• Never argue with an idiot.
   They drag you down to their level then beat you with experience.
• Never kick a man while he is down...he may get up. (Farmers Almanac)
• No man can think clearly when his fists are clenched. (George Nathan)
• No matter what side of an argument you're on there are always some people on your side that you wish were on the other side.
• Not the fastest horse can catch a word spoken in anger. (Chinese Proverb)
• One often contradicts an opinion when what is uncongenial is really the tone in which it was conveyed. (Friedrich Nietzsche)
• The only person who listens to both sides of an argument is the woman next door.
• The only substitute for good manners is fast reflexes.
• Pay attention to your enemies, for they are the first to discover your mistakes. (Antisthenes)
• People generally quarrel because they cannot argue. (Gilbert K. Chesterton)
• Please don't mistake my endurance for hospitality!
• Probably the best remedy for anger is delay.
• Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die. (Malachy McCourt)
• Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance of justice. Injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged. (Joseph Joubert)
• Silence is argument carried out by other means. (Richard Flecknoe)
• Silence is golden, but shouting is fun.
• Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute. (Josh Billings)
• Silence will save me from being wrong (and foolish), but it will also deprive me of the possibility of being right. (Igor Stravinsky)
• A single fact can spoil a good argument.
• Some people are like Slinkies...not really good for anything, but you still can't help but smile when you see one tumble down the stairs.
• Some people owe their lives to the fact that murder is illegal.
• Sometimes the best way to convince someone he is wrong is to let him have his way. (Red O'Donnell)
• Sometimes when I'm angry I have the right to be angry, but that doesn't give me the right to be cruel.
• Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret. (Ambrose Bierce)
• Swearing was invented as a compromise between running away and fighting. (Peter Finley Dunne)
• Tenderness and kindness are not signs of weakness and despair but manifestations of strength and resolution. (Kahil Gibran)
• To observe people in conflict is a necessary part of a child's education. It helps him to understand and accept his own occasional hostilities and to realize that differing opinions need not imply an absence of love. (Milton R. Sapirstein)
• Spiteful words hurt your feelings but silence breaks your heart.
• To speak of "mere words" is much like speaking of "mere dynamite". (C.J. Ducasse)
• A truth that's told with bad intent
  Beats all the lies you can invent. (William Blake)
• Usually when people are sad, they don't do anything. They just cry over their condition. But when they get angry, they bring about change. (Malcolm X)
• We often give our enemies the means of our own destruction. (Aesop)
• We should always remember that cutting remarks have a way of leaving scars.
• We think of revenge as 'getting even.' But why would you want to be 'even' with a jerk?
• When I disagree with a rational man, I let reality be our final arbiter; if I am right, he will learn; if I am wrong, I will; one of us will win, but both will profit. (Ayn Rand)
• When one will not quarrel, two cannot. (Dadi Janki)
• When we are in the supermarket and someone rams our ankle with a shopping cart then apologizes for doing so, why do we say 'Its all right'? It isn't all right, so why don't we say, 'That hurt, you idiot'?
• The world needs anger. The world often continues to allow evil because it isn't angry enough. (Bede Jarrett)
• The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity. (George Bernard Shaw)
• You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.
• You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
• You don't get harmony when everybody sings the same note. (Doug Floyd)

The World's Worst Questions

(Jane Goodsell)

Will you promise not to get mad if I tell you something?
Do you have statistics to back up that statement?
You don't honestly expect me to believe that, do you?
Haven't you any sense of humor?
You don't remember me, do you?
Have I kept you waiting?
Now what's the matter?
You asleep?
So what?
When are you going to grow up?

The Value of Enemies

There is something positive to be gained by acknowledging one's enemies. Like all God's creatures, enemies have a purpose in the world. They offer a criticism of one's conduct (albeit unsought) that is not always provided by friends. They also encourage self-esteem. How would we know the magnitude of our own worth without someone so worthless attacking it? (Roger Rosenblatt)