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Velleman's Law: Any interesting generalization you think of has already been named and posted online.
Velleman's Zero-th Corrolary: Including that one.
Velleman's N+1-th Corrolary: Yeah, that one too.

'What is there?' It can be answered, moreover, in a word — 'Everything' —and everyone will accept this answer as true.
—W.V.O. Quine

...and Dirac had a weird version of quantum theory in which every state had probability either plus two or minus two. Probability, as common sense defines it, is a number between zero and one expressing our degree of confidence that an event will happen. Probability one means that the event always happens; probability zero means that it never happens. In Dirac's Alice-in-Wonderland world, every state happens either more often than always or less often than never.
—Freeman Dyson, in the New York Review of Books.

God then put him to death for a hundred years, then resurrected him. He said, "How long have you stayed here?" He said, "I have been here a day, or part of the day."
—Al-Qur'an, 2:259

I am allowed to use plain English because everybody knows that I could use mathematical logic if I chose. Take the statement: "Some people marry their deceased wives' sisters." I can express this in language which only becomes intelligible after years of study, and this gives me freedom.
—Bertrand Russell

No-one is ever told any story but their own.
—Aslan

Give me a C-Major chord and I'll give you a thousand melodies.
—Marc Bolan

I don't want to sell my music. I'd like to give it away because where I got it, you didn't have to pay for it.
—Don Van Vliet

If I had known that I was going to influence that many guitarists, I probably would have practiced more.
—Ace Frehley

Chi Wen Tzu always thought three times before taking action. When the Master was told of this, he commented, "Twice is quite enough."
—Confucius, Analects V.20

Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.
—Alfred North Whitehead

An unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys.
—Van Roy's Law

there once was a man
from Corfu whose limericks
turned out like haiku
—Anonymous

I say...I SAY...That boy's about as sharp as bag full of wet mice.
—Foghorn Leghorn

If legend is to be believed, the first Ramones set consisted of I Don't Wanna Walk Around with You, I Don't Wanna be Learned, I Don't Wanna be Tamed and I Don't Wanna Go Down to the Basement. As Dee Dee observed, "We didn't write a positive song until Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue." —Clinton Heylin, From the Velvets to the Voidoids

We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about.
—Albert Einstein

I like being tied up. (Just during sex, of course. Not just randomly. That could get really annoying.)
—okcupid.com user, c. 2004

A famous basketball player once remarked, 'If basketball were illegal, I'd be in prison for life.' It's the same with novelists: they'd do what they do even if it were illegal, which, in comparison with basketball, it is.
—John Gardner

A gourmet who thinks of calories is like a tart who looks at her watch.
—James Beard

If only we'd stop trying to be happy we'd have a pretty good time.
—Edith Wharton

I buyed me a flock of sheep
I thought they were all-weather
For some of them they yielded fleece
And some they yielded feathers.
I think mine are the very best
For bringing me increase
For every full and change of the moon
They bear both lambs and geese.
—Traditional

The great roe is a mythological beast with the head of a lion and the body of a lion, though not the same lion.
—Woody Allen

Hildebrand Mind if we join you?
Trapper We were gonna join the nurses.
Hawkeye Yeah — we were gonna join them and make one big nurse.
—M*A*S*H, "Divided We Stand"

Pollard Catullus! Give me a thousand kisses, and then a hundred! Then another thousand, then a second hundred! — yes, Catullus is Jackson's sort of poet.
Jackson How does it go? Is it suitable for sending to Miss Liddell as my own work?
Pollard That depends on which Miss Liddell. Does she go dum-di-di?
Jackson I very much doubt it. She's the daughter of the dean of Christ Church.
Pollard You misunderstand. She has to scan with Lesbia. All Catullus's love poems are written to Lesbia, or about her. 'Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus...
Jackson I mean in English. Girls who kiss don't know Latin.
—Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love

This state has seceded from California and Oregon this Thursday, Nov. 27, 1941. Patriotic Jeffersonians intend to secede each Thursday until further notice.
—Jefferson Proclamation of Independence.

Note: All fantasy worlds are roughly square, i.e. the shape of the double page of a paperback.
—Ian McFayden, Not the Net

You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.
—Albert Einstein

It is loneliness that makes the loudest noise. This is true of men as of dogs.
—Eric Hoffer

"Then come and let's have a bit of dinner."
"Why do you ask me?"
"Not out of charity," I answered coolly. "I don't really care a twopenny damn if you starve or not."
His eyes lit up again.
"Come on, then," he said getting up. "I'd like a decent meal."
—Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence

William Roper So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
Sir Thomas More Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
William Roper Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!
Sir Thomas More Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?
—Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons

...a victim is strapped to a mesh bunk a mere foot above a bed of healthy bamboo plants whose woodlike tips have been sharpened. For the first eight hours he is fine, if jittery; then he starts turning into a colander, by degrees.
—Annie Dillard, The Atlantic Monthly, November 1973.

I met a girl in West Hollywood
And I ain't namin' names
But she really worked me over good
She was just like Jesse James.
She really worked me over good
She was a credit to her gender.
She put me through some changes, Lord,
Sort of like a Waring blender.
—Warren Zevon

George Grace, those are beautiful flowers. Where did they come from?
Gracie Don't you remember, George? You said that if I went to visit Clara Bagley in the hospital I should be sure to take her flowers. So, when she wasn't looking, I did.
—Burns and Allen

The message Mad had in general is, 'The media is lying to you, and we are part of the media.'
—Art Spiegelman

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