"He who hesitates is sometimes saved."

James Thurber Journalism See all quotes by James Thurber →

React to this quote

More by James Thurber

“It is better to have loafed and lost, than never to have loafed at all.”

“All men kill the thing they hate, too, unless, of course, it kills them first.”

“The dog has got more fun out of Man than Man has got out of the dog, for the clearly demonstrable reason that Man is the more laughable of the two animals.”

“It's a naïve domestic Burgundy without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption.”

“Somebody has said that woman's place is in the wrong. That's fine. What the wrong needs is a woman's presence and a woman's touch. She is far better equipped than men to set it right.”

“With 60 staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and a definite hardening of the paragraphs.”

Resonant Thoughts

"During the last 100 years our people have been in a process of building up the country and the nation, of expansion, of getting additional Jews and additional settlements in order to expand the border…"

— Moshe Dayan

Politics1915–1981

#time

"The whole question of evolution seems less momentous than it did, because, unlike the Victorians, we do not feel that to be descended from animals is degrading to human dignity."

— George Orwell

performing arts1903–1950

#time

"In choosing between alternative actions, a person will choose that one for which, as perceived by him at the time, the value, V, of the result, multiplied by the probability, p, of getting the result,…"

— George C. Homans

Science1910–1989

#time

"You know in your hearts that at this moment — a moment that will define a generation — we cannot afford to keep doing what we've been doing. We owe our children a better future. We owe our country a b…"

— Barack Obama

Politics1961

#time