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    Y. Yakigawa
    () Japanese University President (Kyoto University)
  1. My final warning to you is always pay for your own drinks. All the scandals in the world of politics today have their cause in the despicable habit of swallowing free drinks [1954]



  2. Chuck Yeager (Charles Elwood Yeager)
    (1923 - ) American test pilot, Air force General, and first pilot to break the sound barrier.
  3. If you want to grow old as a pilot, you've got to know when to push it, and when to back off.
  4. Never wait for trouble.
  5. Rules are made for people who aren't willing to make up their own.
  6. There is no kind of ultimate goal to do something twice as good as anyone else can. It's just to do the job as best you can. If it turns out good, fine. If it doesn't, that's the way it goes.
  7. You do what you can for as long as you can, and when you finally can't, you do the next best thing. You back up but you don't give up.
  8. There's no such thing as a natural-born pilot.
  9. The secret to my success was that somehow I always managed to live to fly another day.



  10. William Butler Yeats
    (1865-1939), Nobel Prize winning Irish dramatist, author and poet
    Poems by William Butler Yeats
  11. Out of our quarrels with others we make rhetoric. Out of our quarrels with ourselves we make poetry.
  12. Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.
  13. Evil comes to all us men of imagination wearing as its mask all the virtues.
  14. We poets would die of loneliness but for women, and we choose our men friends that we may have somebody to talk about women with. [1936]
  15. Education is not filling a bucket but lighting a fire.
  16. Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.
  17. Mysticism has been in the past and probably ever will be one of the great powers of the world, and it is bad scholarship to pretend the contrary. [1893]
  18. The mystical life is the centre of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write. I have always considered myself a voice of what I believe to be a greater renaissance: the revolt of the soul against the intellect.
  19. The worst thing about some men is that when they are not drunk they are sober.



  20. Boris Yeltsin (Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin )
    (1931 - 2007) Mayor of Moscow, first elected president of Russia, and prodigious consumer of Vodka.
  21. You can build a throne with bayonets, but you can't sit on it for long.
  22. A man must live like a great brilliant flame and burn as brightly as he can. In the end he burns out. But this is far better than a mean little flame.
  23. It is especially important to encourage unorthodox thinking when the situation is critical: At such moments every new word and fresh thought is more precious than gold. Indeed, people must not be deprived of the right to think their own thoughts.
  24. There are numerous bugbears in the profession of a politician. First, ordinary life suffers. Second, there are many temptations to ruin you and those around you. And I suppose third, and this is rarely discussed, people at the top generally have no friends.
  25. I cannot shift the blame for Chechnya, for the sorrow of numerous mothers and fathers. I made the decision, therefore I am responsible.
  26. We don't appreciate what we have until it's gone. Freedom is like that. It's like air. When you have it, you don't notice it.
  27. Russia must enter the new millennium with new politicians, with new faces, with new, smart, strong, energetic people. And we who have been in power for many years already, we must go.



  28. Yevgeny Yevtushenko (Yevgeny Aleksandrovich Yevtushenko)
    (1933 - ) Russian poet, dissident, director; close friend of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
  29. A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else can be only a footnote.
  30. Poetry is like a bird, it ignores all frontiers.
  31. In Russia all tyrants believe poets to be their worst enemies.
  32. In general, in poetry and literature, I am among those people who believe that too much is indispensable.
  33. I do not like poems that resemble hay compressed into a geometrically perfect cube. I like it when the hay, unkempt, uncombed, with dry berries mixed in it, thrown together gaily and freely, bounces along atop some truck—and more, if there are some lovely and healthy lasses atop the hay—and better yet if the branches catch at the hay, and some of it tumbles to the road.
  34. Everything I do, I do on the principle of Russian borscht. You can throw everything into it—beets, carrots, cabbage, onions, everything you want. What's important is the result, the taste of the borscht.



  35. Yoda
    (N/A) Fictional, mystical 'Jedi Master' of the Star Wars movies.
  36. Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try.



  37. Jane Hyatt Yolen
    (1939 - ) American author, editor.
  38. Wood may remain twenty years in the water but it is still not a fish. [from Sister Light, Sister Dark, 1988]
  39. Fish are not the best authority on water. [from Sister Light, Sister Dark, 1988]



  40. Chuck Yost (Charles Woodruff Yost)
    (1907-1981) American diplomat and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations
  41. A leader may symbolize and express what is best in people, like Pericles, or what is worst, like Hitler, but he cannot successfully express what is only in his heart and not in theirs.
  42. The real obstacles to an Arab - Israeli settlement are the myths long cherished and passionately held on both sides and the governments and leaders who perpetuate these myths. [1969]



  43. Andrew Young (Andrew Jackson Young, Jr.)
    (1932 - ) American Civil Rights leader, close friend of Dr. M.L. King, Georgia Congressional Representative, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Mayor of Atlanta
  44. No matter when the killing stops, there will still be some people left on each side who will have to learn to live together. [from A Way Out of No Way, 1994
  45. We are not here to do you any harm. We merely want to have a word of prayer at this place, where our ancestors were bought and sold as slaves, to ask God to help us end slavery in all its forms. [Speech at a march in St. Augustine, FL, 1964]
  46. It is a blessing to die for a cause, because you can so easily die for nothing.
  47. My hope for my children must be that they respond to the still, small voice of God in their own hearts.
  48. No one who's white thinks he's innocent. No one who's black thinks he's guilty.
  49. President Jimmy Carter was a citizen soldier. Ironically, he was considered weak because he didn't kill anybody and he didn't get anyone killed.



  50. Edward Young
    (1683 - 1765) English poet.
  51. Tomorrow is the day when idlers work, and fools reform.
  52. A friend is worth all hazards we can run.
  53. None think the great unhappy but the great.
  54. Be wise with speed;
    A fool at forty is a fool indeed.
  55. Wishing, of all employments, is the worst.
  56. Procrastination is the thief of time.
  57. All men think all men are mortal but themselves.
  58. Man wants little, nor that little long.
  59. By night an atheist half believes a God.
  60. Like our shadows,
    Our wishes lengthen as our sun declines.



  61. Margaret Young
    (1900 - 1969) American vaudville singer
  62. Often people attempt to live their lives backwards; they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want, so they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do, in order to have what you want.



  63. Whitney Young (Whitney Moore Young Jr.)
    (1921-1971) American Civil Rights leader and President of the National Urban League; recipient of the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom
  64. It is better to be prepared for an opportunity and not have one than to have an opportunity and not be prepared.
  65. I am not anxious to be the loudest voice or the most popular. But I would like to think that at a crucial moment, I was an effective voice of the voiceless, an effective hope of the hopeless.
  66. You can holler, protest, march, picket and demonstrate, but somebody must be able to sit in on the strategy conferences and plot a course. There must be strategistss, the researchers, the professionals to carry out the program. That's our role.
  67. Black Power simply means: Look at me, I'm here. I have dignity. I have pride. I have roots. I insist, I demand that I participate in those decisions that affect my life and the lives of my children. It means that I am somebody.
  68. Every man is our brother, and every man’s burden is our own. Where poverty exists, all are poorer. Where hate flourishes, all are corrupted. Where injustice reins, all are unequal.



  69. Evelle Younger (Evelle Jansen Younger)
    (1918-1989) FBI Agent, judge, and California Attorney General.
  70. An incompetent attorney can delay a trial for years or months. A competent attorney can delay one even longer. [1971]



  71. Henny Youngman (Henry Youngman)
    (1906-1998) British-born American humorist and sometimes violinist, who perfected and is known for the delivery of the 'one-liner'.
  72. Take my wife--please.
  73. I once wanted to become an atheist, but I gave up - they have no holidays.
  74. When God sneezed, I didn't know what to say.
  75. My wife is a light eater ... as soon as it's light, she starts to eat.
  76. The more I think of you the less I think of you.
  77. I looked high and low for you. I didn't look low enough.
  78. A doctor gave a man six months to live. The man couldn't pay his bill, so he gave him another six months.
  79. I take my wife everywhere, but she keeps finding her way back.
  80. I know a man who is a diamond cutter. He mows the lawn at Yankee Stadium.
  81. My wife wanted her face lifted. They couldn't do that. But for $80, they lowered her body.
  82. You have a ready wit. Let me know when it's ready.
  83. My wife was at the beauty shop for two hours, and that was only for the estimate.
  84. A bum came up to me saying, "I haven't tasted food all week." I told him, "Don't worry, it still tastes the same!"
  85. A man goes to a psychiatrist. The doctor says, "You're crazy" The man says, "I want a second opinion!" "Okay, you're ugly too!"
  86. My wife is the sweetest, most tolerant, most beautiful woman in the world. This is a paid political announcement.
  87. Some people bring happiness wherever they go. You bring happiness whenever you go.
  88. Look, I'm not going to engage in a battle of wits with you. I never attack anyone who is unarmed.
  89. The horse I bet on was so slow, the jockey kept a diary of the trip.
  90. My wife is an earth sign. I'm a water sign. Together we make mud.
  91. During the war an Italian girl saved my life. She hid me in her basement in Cleveland.
  92. I'd like to introduce you to some friends of mine. I want to break off with them.
  93. When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.
  94. The secret of a happy marriage remains a secret.



  95. Lin Yutang
    (1895 - 1976) Chinese author and inventor.
  96. It is not so much what you believe in that matters, as the way in which you believe it and proceed to translate that belief into action. [from The Importance of Living, 1937]
  97. In the West, the insane are so many that they are put in an asylum, in China the insane are so unusual that we worship them. [from The Importance of Living, 1937]
  98. What is patriotism but the love of the food one ate as a child?
  99. Of all the rights of women, the greatest is to be a mother.
  100. When the mirror meets with an ugly woman, when a rare ink-stone finds a vulgar owner, and when a good sword is in the hands of a common general, there is utterly nothing to be done about it. [from The Importance of Living, 1937]
  101. When there are too many policemen, there can be no liberty. When there are too many soldiers, there can be no peace. When there are too many lawyers, there can be no justice.
  102. When small men begin to cast big shadows, it means that the sun is about to set.
  103. The three great American vices seem to be efficiency, punctuality, and the desire for achievement and success. They are the things that make the Americans so unhappy and so nervous. [from The Importance of Living, 1937]
  104. One can learn such a lot and enjoy such a lot in seventy years, and three generations is a long, long time to see human follies and acquire human wisdom. Anyone who is wise and has lived long enough to witness the changes of fashion and morals and politics through the rise and fall of three generations should be perfectly satisfied to rise from his seat and go away saying, 'It was a good show,' when the curtain falls. [from The Importance of Living, 1937]
  105. If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live.

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