Quotes about Life, Death, and everything in between

Quotes

Over the years I’ve come across a lot a mem­o­rable quotes on many dif­fer­ent top­ics. This is my hum­ble col­lec­tions, sort­ed into cat­e­gories accord­ing to my own idea. Take a minute to read through this list. I’m cer­tain you’ll find some­thing of val­ue here.
— Sti­jn Vogels

  1. Cre­ativ­i­ty & Life
  2. Pol­i­tics & Lead­er­ship
  3. Soci­ety & Class
  4. Reli­gion & Death
  5. War & Con­flict
  6. Love
  7. Sti­jn Vogels
  8. Unsort­ed Quotes

Creativity & Life

Children painting
Paint­ing is a great way for chil­dren to express them­selves.
  1. Do one thing every day that scares you. (Eleanor Roo­sevelt)
  2. Life is either a dar­ing adven­ture or noth­ing. (Helen Keller)
  3. Dream as if you’ll live for­ev­er. Live as if you’ll die today. (James Dean)
  4. To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most peo­ple exist, that is all. (Oscar Wilde)
  5. We can eas­i­ly for­give a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light. (Pla­to)
  6. You must be the change you want to see in the world. (Mahat­ma Gand­hi)
  7. You are the sto­ry­teller of your own life, and you can cre­ate your own leg­end or not. (Isabel Allende)
  8. A year from now you may wish you had start­ed today. (Karen Lamb)
  9. Two men looked out through prison bars… One saw mud, the oth­er stars.
  10. Only put off until tomor­row what you are will­ing to die hav­ing left undone. (Picas­so)
  11. Prim­i­tive life is very com­mon and intel­li­gent life is fair­ly rare. Some would say it has yet to occur on Earth. (Stephen Hawk­ing)
  12. What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail? (Robert Schuller)
  13. Great minds dis­cuss ideas, aver­age minds dis­cuss events, small minds dis­cuss peo­ple. (Admi­ral Hyman G. Rick­over)
  14. Sim­plic­i­ty is the ulti­mate sophis­ti­ca­tion. (Leonar­do da Vin­ci)
  15. A goal with­out a plan is just a wish. (Antoine de Saint-Exu­pery)
  16. Don’t wor­ry baby. There should be sun­shine after rain and love after pain. (Anony­mous)
  17. Twen­ty years from now you will be more dis­ap­point­ed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bow­lines. Sail away from the safe har­bour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Dis­cov­er. (Mark Twain)
  18. Be Who You Are and Say What You Feel Because Those Who Mind Don’t Mat­ter and Those Who Mat­ter Don’t Mind. (Dr. Seuss, orig­i­nal­ly by Bernard Baruch)
  19. For bil­lions of years, since the out­set of time, every sin­gle one of your ances­tors sur­vived, every sin­gle per­son on your mom’s and dad’s side suc­cess­ful­ly looked after and passed onto you life. (Anony­mous)
  20. Take wrong turns. Talk to strangers. Open unmarked doors. And if you see a group of peo­ple in a field, go find out what they’re doing. Do things with­out always know­ing how they’ll turn out. (XKCD 267)
  21. A jour­ney of a thou­sand miles begins with a sin­gle step. (Laozi)
  22. From a uni­ver­sal stand­point, there are always big­ger and bet­ter things to wor­ry about. (Albert Ein­stein)
  23. You have to take the good with the bad, smile with the sad.
    Love what you’ve got, and remem­ber what you had.
    Learn to for­give, but nev­er for­get.
    Learn from your mis­takes, but nev­er regret.
    Peo­ple change, things go wrong.
    Just remem­ber life goes on.
  24. We know what we are, but not what we may be. (William Shake­speare)
  25. What gets us into trou­ble is not what we don’t know. It’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so. (Mark Twain)
  26. Luck is prepa­ra­tion meet­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty. (Adam Lyons)
  27. Any intel­li­gent fool can make things bet­ter, more com­plex, and more vio­lent. It takes a touch of genius, and a lot of courage to move in the oppo­site direc­tion. (Albert Ein­stein)
  28. The past is his­to­ry. The future is a mys­tery. This moment is a gift. That’s why this moment is called the present. Enjoy it. (Allan John­son)
  29. Suc­cess has many fathers, but fail­ure is an orphan. (Anony­mous)
  30. You can live to be a hun­dred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hun­dred. (Woody Allen)
  31. If you want to trav­el fast, trav­el alone. If you want to trav­el far, trav­el togeth­er. (Africa proverb)
  32. The man is the head [of the fam­i­ly], but the woman is the neck. And she can turn the head any way she wants. (My Big Fat Greek Wed­ding)
  33. Most homes val­ued at over $250,000 have a library. That should tell us some­thing. (Jim Rohn)
  34. To climb steep hills requires a slow pace at first. (William Shake­speare)
  35. The young do not know enough to be pru­dent, and there­fore they attempt the impos­si­ble, and achieve it, gen­er­a­tion after gen­er­a­tion. (Pearl S. Buck)
  36. You can tell more about a per­son by what he says about oth­ers than you can by what oth­ers say about him. (Anony­mous)
  37. Minds are like para­chutes — they only func­tion when open. (Thomas Dewar)
  38. Try not to become a man of suc­cess but a man of val­ue. (Albert Ein­stein)
  39. The only way of find­ing the lim­its of the pos­si­ble is by going beyond them into the impos­si­ble. (Arthur C. Clarke)
  40. A sin­gle con­ver­sa­tion with a wise man is bet­ter than ten years of study. (Chi­nese proverb)
  41. We do not learn; and what we call learn­ing is only a process of rec­ol­lec­tion. (Pla­to)
  42. The secret to cre­ativ­i­ty is know­ing how to hide your sources. (Albert Ein­stein)
  43. In order to suc­ceed, your desire for suc­cess should be greater than your fear of fail­ure. (Bill Cos­by)
  44. When peo­ple see some things as beau­ti­ful, oth­er things become ugly. When peo­ple see some things as good, oth­er things become bad. (Laozi)
  45. Vision is the art of see­ing what is invis­i­ble to oth­ers. (Jonathan Swift)
  46. When faced with two choic­es sim­ply toss a coin. It works not because it set­tles the ques­tion for you, but because in that brief moment when the coin is in the air, you sud­den­ly know what you are hop­ing for.
  47. If you love two peo­ple at the same time, choose the sec­ond one, because if you real­ly loved the first one you wouldn’t have fall­en for the sec­ond. (John­ny Depp)
  48. In the pur­suit of knowl­edge, some­thing is added every day. In the pur­suit of enlight­en­ment, some­thing is dropped every day. (Laozi)
  49. Do not regret grow­ing old­er. It is a priv­i­lege denied to many. (Anony­mous)
  50. Though my soul may set in dark­ness, it will rise in per­fect light. I have loved the stars too fond­ly to be fear­ful of the night. (Sarah Williams)
  51. If I have seen fur­ther it is by stand­ing on the shoul­ders of giants. (Isaac New­ton)
  52. Life is not a jour­ney to the grave with the inten­tion of arriv­ing safe­ly in a pret­ty and well-pre­served body, but rather to skid in side­ways, thor­ough­ly used up, total­ly worn out, cham­pagne in one hand … straw­ber­ries in the oth­er and scream­ing: “Woo Hoo! What a ride!” (Mavis Leyr­er)
  53. If you can’t explain it sim­ply, you don’t under­stand it well enough. (Albert Ein­stein)
  54. Qui­et peo­ple have the loud­est minds. (Stephen Hawk­ing)
  55. We don’t know where we get our ideas from. What we do know is that we do not get them from our lap­tops. (John Cleese)
  56. Every­body is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its abil­i­ty to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believ­ing that it is stu­pid. (Albert Ein­stein)
  57. I am thank­ful to all those who said “no” to me. It is because of them I did it myself. (Albert Ein­stein)
  58. Give your chil­dren enough mon­ey to do some­thing, but not enough to do noth­ing. (Anony­mous)
  59. The worst part about being old is remem­ber­ing you were young. (Alvin Straight)
  60. Peo­ple are very open-mind­ed about new things — as long as they’re exact­ly like the old ones. (Charles Ket­ter­ing)
  61. We are what we fre­quent­ly do. (Aris­to­tle)
  62. Life is what hap­pens when you’re busy mak­ing oth­er plans. (John Lennon)
  63. ‘Tis bet­ter to have loved and lost than nev­er to have loved at all. (Alfred, Lord Ten­nyson)
  64. No one remem­bers the nights they got enough sleep. (Det­je Schoon­jans) 1Nie­mand denkt ooit terug aan de nacht­en die zij ges­lapen heeft, wel aan de dagen die zij geleefd heeft.
  65. You can’t always get what you want. But if you try some­time, you just might find you get what you need. (The Rolling Stones)
  66. I’ve learned that peo­ple will for­get what you said, peo­ple will for­get what you did, but peo­ple will nev­er for­get how you made them feel. (Maya Angelou)
  67. The best things in life are worth wait­ing for, fight­ing for, believ­ing in, and just nev­er let­ting go of.
  68. Life is not mea­sured by the breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath.
  69. The most suc­cess­ful men in the end are those whose suc­cess is the result of steady accre­tion… It is the man who care­ful­ly advances step by step, with his mind becom­ing wider and wider — and pro­gres­sive­ly bet­ter able to grasp any theme or sit­u­a­tion — per­se­ver­ing in what he knows to be prac­ti­cal, and con­cen­trat­ing his thought upon it, who is bound to suc­ceed in the great­est degree. (Alexan­der Gra­ham Bell)
  70. Suc­cess is the abil­i­ty to go from fail­ure to fail­ure with­out los­ing your enthu­si­asm. (Win­ston Churchill)
  71. The dif­fer­ence between a suc­cess­ful per­son and oth­ers is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowl­edge, but rather in a lack of will. (Vin­cent T. Lom­bar­di)
  72. Char­ac­ter is like a tree and rep­u­ta­tion like its shad­ow. The shad­ow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing. (Abra­ham Lin­coln)
  73. To the world, you may be just one per­son; but to one per­son, you may be the world. (Josephine Billings)
  74. All that we are is a result of what we have thought. (Bud­dha)
  75. Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day pass­es, a new day arrives. The impor­tant thing is to make it mean­ing­ful: a mean­ing­ful friend — or a mean­ing­ful day. (Dalai Lama)
  76. Choose a job you love, and you will nev­er have to work a day in your life. (Con­fu­cious)
  77. Intel­lec­tu­al growth should com­mence at birth and cease only at death. (Albert Ein­stein)
  78. Life is ours to be spent, not to be saved. (D.H. Lawrence)
  79. Life isn’t about find­ing your­self. Life is about cre­at­ing your­self. (George Bernard Shaw)
  80. A women is like a tea bag. You only find out how strong she is when she gets into hot water. (Eleonor Roo­sevelt)
  81. It is impos­si­ble to live with­out fail­ing at some­thing, unless you live so cau­tious­ly that you might as well not lived at all. In which case, you’ve failed by default. (J. K. Rowl­ing)
  82. I have nev­er met a man so igno­rant that I couldn’t learn some­thing from him. (Galileo Galilei)
  83. Curios­i­ty about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great cre­ative peo­ple. (Leo Bur­nett)
  84. Love whole­heart­ed­ly, be sur­prised, give thanks and praise then you will dis­cov­er the full­ness of your life. (David Steindl-Rast)
  85. Fin­ish each day before you begin the next, and inter­pose a sol­id wall of sleep between the two. This you can­not do with­out tem­per­ance. (Ralph Wal­do Emer­son)
  86. Breathe in expe­ri­ence, breathe out poet­ry. (Muriel Rukeyser)
  87. Don’t wish it were eas­i­er, wish you were bet­ter. (Jim Rohn)
  88. If you love life, don’t waste time, for time is what life is made up of. (Bruce Lee)
  89. What­ev­er is done for love always occurs beyond good and evil. (Friedrich Niet­zsche)
  90. Learn to get in touch with the silence with­in your­self and know that every­thing in this life has a pur­pose. (Elis­a­beth Kubler-Ross)
  91. We accept the love we think we deserve. (Stephen Chbosky)
  92. Beau­ti­ful young peo­ple are acci­dents of nature, but beau­ti­ful old peo­ple are works of art. (Eleanor Roo­sevelt)
  93. Life was most­ly made up of things you couldn’t con­trol, full of sur­pris­es, and they weren’t always good. Life wasn’t what you made it. You were what life made you. (Sara Zarr)
  94. Soul meets soul on lovers’ lips. (Per­cy Bysshe Shel­ley)
  95. A kiss that speaks vol­umes is rarely a first edi­tion. (Clare Whit­ing)
  96. Kiss­ing is a means of get­ting two peo­ple so close togeth­er that they can’t see any­thing wrong with each oth­er. (Rene Yasenek)
  97. A kiss is a love­ly trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become super­flu­ous. (Ingrid Bergman)
  98. Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none. (William Shake­speare)
  99. If every word I said could make you laugh I’d talk for­ev­er. (Anony­mous)
  100. If you go on vaca­tion for one week, you’ll come back to two weeks of work. If you go on vaca­tion for two weeks, you’ll come back to four weeks of work. If you go on vaca­tion for three weeks, peo­ple seem to fig­ure it out for them­selves. (Paul Orfalea)
  101. A man with­out a goal is like a ship with­out a rud­der. (Thomas Car­lyle)
  102. There is prop­er­ly no his­to­ry; only biog­ra­phy. (Ralph Wal­do Emer­son)
  103. Hap­pi­ness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in har­mo­ny. (Mahat­ma Gand­hi)
  104. Life is real­ly sim­ple, but men insist on mak­ing it com­pli­cat­ed. (Con­fu­cius)
  105. Do not spoil what you have by desir­ing what you have not; but remem­ber that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for. (Epi­cu­rus)
  106. It is not the years in your life, but the life in your years that counts. (Adlai Steven­son)
  107. Don’t wor­ry about the future. Or wor­ry, but know that wor­ry­ing is as effec­tive as try­ing to solve an alge­bra equa­tion by chew­ing bub­ble gum. (Mary Schmich)
  108. We are face to face with our des­tiny and we must meet it with high and res­olute courage. For us is the life of action, of stren­u­ous per­for­mance of duty; let us live in the har­ness, striv­ing might­i­ly; let us rather run the risk of wear­ing out than rust­ing out. (Theodore Roo­sevelt)
  109. If you can’t han­dle me at my worst, then you don’t deserve me at my best. (Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe)
  110. It’s after­wards you real­ize that the feel­ing of hap­pi­ness you had with a man didn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly prove that you loved him. (Mar­guerite Duras)
  111. L’amour c’est comme le vent, ça ce voit pas, ça ce sent. 2Telkens wan­neer ik dit lees dan ver­schi­jnt er echt zo’n gigan­tis­che glim­lach op mijn gezicht. :D
  112. To love some­one is to see a mir­a­cle invis­i­ble to oth­ers. (Fran­cois Mau­ri­ac)
  113. When the heart speaks, the mind finds it inde­cent to object. (Milan Kun­dera)
  114. One thing life has taught me: if you are inter­est­ed, you nev­er have to look for new inter­ests. They come to you. When you are gen­uine­ly inter­est­ed in one thing, it will always lead to some­thing else. (Eleanor Roo­sevelt)
  115. Pover­ty of goods is eas­i­ly cured; pover­ty of the mind is irrepara­ble. (Michel Eyquem De Mon­taigne)
  116. Lan­guage is one of the fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples of human under­stand­ing. It is the way we inter­act with each oth­er and how we grasp the world we live in.
  117. Intel­li­gence is the abil­i­ty to avoid doing work, yet get­ting the work done. (Linus Tor­valds)
  118. Seduce my mind and you can have my body. Find my soul and I’m yours for­ev­er. (Anony­mous)
  119. A man can be beau­ti­ful phys­i­cal­ly, men­tal­ly, or per­son­al­i­ty wise. True beau­ty, though, is in the spir­it. A gen­uine man who under­stands right and wrong, with a strong sense of self is beau­ti­ful. A man who can be com­pas­sion­ate and car­ing, but firm and wise. Some­one who can do the right thing no mat­ter who’s around to see it. Even if the deed is unseen and unrec­og­nized. That is a beau­ti­ful man.
  120. One today is worth two tomor­rows. (Ben­jamin Franklin)
  121. When women go wrong, men go right after them. (Mae West)
  122. I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the dark­ness for it shows me the stars. (Og Mandi­no)
  123. Qui bene agit, bene agi­tur. 3Wie goed doet, goed ont­moet.
  124. Women are made to be loved, not under­stood. (Oscar Wilde)
  125. The old­er I get, the greater pow­er I seem to have to help the world; I am like a snow­ball — the fur­ther I am rolled, the more I gain. (Susan B. Antho­ny)
  126. The hap­pi­ness of your life depends upon the qual­i­ty of your thoughts. (Mar­cus Aure­lius)
  127. If a clut­tered desk is a sign of a clut­tered mind, of what, then, is an emp­ty desk a sign? (Albert Ein­stein) 4I don’t real­ly agree with Einstein’s the­sis that an emp­ty desks indi­cates an ‘emp­ty mind’. It may also rep­re­sent an organ­ised desk, belong­ing to an organ­ised and effi­cient mind.
  128. The two most impor­tant days in your life are the day you are born, and the day you find out why. (Mark Twain)
  129. Self­ish­ness not liv­ing your life as you wish. It is ask­ing oth­ers to live their lives as you wish. (Oscar Wilde)
  130. Have noth­ing in your house that you do not know to be use­ful, or believe to be beau­ti­ful. (William Mor­ris)
  131. If human­ism were right in declar­ing that man is born only to be hap­py, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evi­dent­ly must be of a more spir­i­tu­al nature. It can­not be unre­strained enjoy­ment of every­day life. It can­not be the search for the best ways to obtain mate­r­i­al goods and then cheer­ful­ly get the most of them. It has to be the ful­fill­ment of a per­ma­nent, earnest duty so that one’s life jour­ney may become an expe­ri­ence of moral growth, so that one may leave life a bet­ter human being than one start­ed it. (Alek­san­dr Solz­jen­it­syn)
  132. If only we could take “soul­fies” with our cell phones, per­haps we might love each oth­er for what’s on the inside, too. (Shakieb Orgun­wall)
  133. Aris­to­tle once said that wis­dom (the abil­i­ty to make good deci­sions) is a com­bi­na­tion of expe­ri­ence plus reflec­tion. The more time that you take to think about your expe­ri­ences, the more vital lessons you will gain from them. (Bri­an Tra­cy)
  134. What­ev­er the mind of man can con­ceive and believe, it can achieve. (Napoleon Hill)
  135. You can nev­er cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore. (Christo­pher Colum­bus)
  136. The two most impor­tant days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why. (Mark Twain)
  137. Life shrinks or expands in pro­por­tion to one’s courage. (Anais Nin)
  138. The only lim­it to our real­iza­tion of tomor­row will be our doubts of today. (Franklin D. Roo­sevelt)
  139. Feel­ing grat­i­tude and not express­ing it is like wrap­ping a present and not giv­ing it. (William Arthur Ward)
  140. Either write some­thing worth read­ing or do some­thing worth writ­ing. (Ben­jamin Franklin)
  141. If you want to live a hap­py life, tie it to a goal, not to peo­ple or things. (Albert Ein­stein)
  142. All the prob­lems of the world could be set­tled eas­i­ly if men were only will­ing to think. (Thomas J. Wat­son)
  143. The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up. (Paul Valery)
  144. Begin chal­leng­ing your own assump­tions. Your assump­tions are your win­dows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won’t come in. (Alan Alda)
  145. If we did all the things we are capa­ble of, we would lit­er­al­ly aston­ish our­selves. (Thomas Edi­son)
  146. I don’t wait for moods. You accom­plish noth­ing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work. (Pearl Buck)
  147. So great has been the endurance, so incred­i­ble the achieve­ment that, as long as the sun keeps a set course in heav­en, it would be fool­ish to despair of the human race. (Ernest Wood­ward)
  148. If you can dream it, you can do it. Always remem­ber this whole thing was start­ed by a mouse. (Walt Dis­ney)
  149. There is no pas­sion to be found play­ing small, in set­tling for a life that is less than the one you are capa­ble of liv­ing. (Nel­son Man­dela)
  150. Start by doing what’s nec­es­sary; then do what’s pos­si­ble; and sud­den­ly you are doing the impos­si­ble. (St. Fran­cis of Assisi)
  151. Obsta­cles can­not crush me. Every obsta­cle yields to stern resolve. (Leonar­do da Vin­ci)
  152. Today I will do what oth­ers won’t, so tomor­row I can accom­plish what oth­ers can’t. (Jer­ry Rice)
  153. Char­ac­ter con­sists of what you do on the third and fourth tries. (James Mich­en­er)
  154. The most delight­ful sur­prise in life is to sud­den­ly rec­og­nize your own worth. (Maxwell Maltz)
  155. Com­fort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and then becomes a host, then a mas­ter. And then it becomes a tamer, and with a hook and whip it makes pup­pets of your larg­er desires. (Kahlil Gibran)
  156. Kind words do not cost much. They nev­er blis­ter the tongue or lips. They make oth­er peo­ple good-natured. They also pro­duce their own image on men’s souls, and a beau­ti­ful image it is. (Blaise Pas­cal)
  157. Have noth­ing in your house that you do not know to be use­ful or believe to be beau­ti­ful. (Williams Mor­ris)
  158. Either write some­thing worth read­ing or do some­thing worth writ­ing. (Ben­jamin Franklin)
  159. As our island of knowl­edge grows, so does the shore of our igno­rance. (John Wheel­er)
  160. Inno­va­tion often is the jux­ta­po­si­tion of two things that have not been com­bined before. (Mar­tin Lind­strom)
  161. A prob­lem well stat­ed is a prob­lem half-solved. (Charles Ket­ter­ing)
  162. Suc­cess is get­ting what you want, hap­pi­ness is want­i­ng what you get. (W. P. Kin­sel­la)
  163. The only place where suc­cess come before work is in the dic­tio­nary. (Vidal Sas­soon)
  164. To thine own self be true, and then it must fol­low, as the night the day, thou canst not be false to any man. (William Shake­speare)
  165. A man who dares to waste an hour of time has not dis­cov­ered the val­ue of his life. (Charles Dar­win)
  166. Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of cre­ative altru­ism or in the dark­ness of destruc­tive self­ish­ness. (Mar­tin Luther King, Jr.)
  167. First for­get inspi­ra­tion. Habit is more depend­able. Habit will sus­tain you whether you’re inspired or not. Habit is per­sis­tence in prac­tice. (Octavia But­ler)
  168. When you do as every­one else does, don’t be sur­prised when you get what every­one else gets. (Peter Kauf­man)
  169. There is noth­ing quite so use­less as doing with great effi­cien­cy some­thing that should not be done at all. (Peter Druck­er)
  170. Before you speak, let your words pass through three gates: At the first gate, ask your­self “Is is true?” At the sec­ond gate ask, “Is it nec­es­sary?” At the third gate ask, “Is it kind?” (Rumi)
  171. We do not see things the way they are, we see them as we are. (Anaïs Nin)
  172. No sub­ject is ter­ri­ble if the sto­ry is true, if the prose is clean and hon­est, and if it affirms courage and grace under pres­sure. (Ernest Hem­ing­way)
  173. Nev­er give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accom­plish it. The time will pass any­way. (Earl Nightin­gale)
  174. Ded­i­cat­ing one­self to a great cause, tak­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty and gain­ing self-knowl­edge is the essence of being human. […] A preda­to­ry capitalist’s truest ene­my and humanity’s great­est ally is the self-edu­cat­ed indi­vid­ual who has read, under­stood, delays their grat­i­fi­ca­tion and walks around with their eyes wide open. (Four Horse­men)
  175. It is the mark of an edu­cat­ed mind to be able to enter­tain a thought with­out accept­ing it. (Aris­to­tle)
  176. Have no fear of per­fec­tion — you’ll nev­er reach it. (Sal­vador Dali)
  177. You can’t use up cre­ativ­i­ty. The more you use, the more you have. (Maya Angelou)
  178. The pub­lic is more famil­iar with bad design than good design. It is, in effect, con­di­tioned to pre­fer bad design, because that is what it lives with. The new becomes threat­en­ing, the old reas­sur­ing. (Paul Rand)
  179. Every fact of sci­ence was once damned. Every inven­tion was con­sid­ered impos­si­ble. Every dis­cov­ery was a ner­vous shock to some ortho­doxy. Every artis­tic inno­va­tion was denounced as fraud and fol­ly. We would own no more, know no more, and be no more than the first ape­like hominids if it were not for the rebel­lious, the recal­ci­trant, and the intran­si­gent. (Robert Anton Wil­son)
  180. A stu­pid deci­sion that works out well becomes a bril­liant deci­sion in hind­sight. (Daniel Kah­ne­man)
  181. All men dream, but not equal­ly. Those who dream by night in the dusty recess­es of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was van­i­ty: but the dream­ers of the day are dan­ger­ous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them pos­si­ble. (T. E. Lawrence)
  182. Strive not to be a suc­cess, but rather to be of val­ue. (Albert Ein­stein)
  183. Life isn’t about get­ting and hav­ing, it’s about giv­ing and being. (Kevin Kruse)
  184. Cer­tain things catch your eye, but pur­sue only those that cap­ture the heart. (Ancient Indi­an Proverb)
  185. There are no traf­fic jams along the extra mile. (Roger Staubach)
  186. Noth­ing is impos­si­ble, the word itself says, “I’m pos­si­ble!” (Audrey Hep­burn)
  187. Ideas exist like fish. If you sit qui­et­ly like you’re fish­ing, you will catch ideas. The real beau­ti­ful big ideas swim deep down there, so you have to be very qui­et and wait for them to come along. (David Lynch)
  188. Have no fear of per­fec­tion. You will nev­er reach it. (Sal­vador Dali)
  189. Yes­ter­day I was clever, so I want­ed to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am chang­ing myself. (Rumi)
  190. If a man has a lot to do, noth­ing is more pre­cious than time. (Quin­tus Ser­to­rius)
  191. You do not rise to the lev­el of your goals. You fall to the lev­els of your sys­tems. (James Clear)
  192. I am a cit­i­zen of the world, and every­one in the world is relat­ed to me. (Kaniyan Pun­gun­dra­nar)
  193. Art is nev­er fin­ished, only aban­doned. (Leonar­do da Vin­ci)

Politics & Leadership

Napoleon Bonaparte
Napoleon Bona­parte (1769–1821)
  1. A leader is a deal­er in hope. (Napoleon)
  2. All this will not be fin­ished in the first one hun­dred days. Nor will it be fin­ished in the first one thou­sand days, nor in the life of this Admin­is­tra­tion, nor even per­haps in our life­time on this plan­et. But let us begin. (John F. Kennedy)
  3. The only thing nec­es­sary for the tri­umph of evil, is for good men to do noth­ing. (Edmund Burke)
  4. The fly sat upon the axle-tree of the char­i­ot wheel and said, “What a dust do I raise!” (Aesop)
  5. It is easy to be brave from a safe dis­tance. (Aesop)
  6. We hang the pet­ty thieves and appoint the great ones to pub­lic office. (Aesop)
  7. In our every delib­er­a­tion, we must con­sid­er the impact of our deci­sions on the next sev­en gen­er­a­tions. (Great Law of the Iro­quois)
  8. There is a tide in the affairs of men. (Julius Cae­sar)
  9. The truth is trea­son in the Empire of Lies. (Ron Paul)
  10. One should not focus on the dif­fer­ences between peo­ple but look for com­mon­al­i­ty and sim­i­lar­i­ty. (Theodore Levitt)
  11. The best minds are not in gov­ern­ment. If any were, busi­ness would steal them away. (Ronald Rea­gan)
  12. Super­fi­cial goals lead to super­fi­cial results. (Atti­la the Hun)
  13. Crit­i­cism may not be agree­able, but it is nec­es­sary. It ful­fils the same func­tion as pain in the human body. It calls atten­tion to an unhealthy state of things. (Win­ston Churchill)
  14. Hon­or is doing the right thing, even when nobody is look­ing. (Anony­mous)
  15. If a man is to shed the light of the Sun upon oth­er men, he must first of all have it with­in him­self. (Romain Rol­land)
  16. Civ­il dis­obe­di­ence, that’s not our prob­lem. Our prob­lem is that peo­ple are obe­di­ent all over the world in the face of pover­ty and star­va­tion and stu­pid­i­ty, and war, and cru­el­ty. Our prob­lem is that peo­ple are obe­di­ent while the jails are full of pet­ty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are run­ning the coun­try. That’s our prob­lem. (Howard Zinn)
  17. Man is free at the instant he wants to be. (Voltaire)
  18. Great ideas alter the pow­er bal­ance in rela­tion­ships. That’s why great ideas are ini­tial­ly resist­ed. (Hugh MacLeod)
  19. Peo­ple ask the dif­fer­ence between a leader and a boss. The leader works in the open, and the boss in covert. (Theodore Roo­sevelt)
  20. A leader is best when peo­ple bare­ly know he exists, when his work is done, his aim ful­filled, they will say: we did it our­selves. (Laozi)
  21. If I advance, fol­low me! If I retreat, kill me! If I die, avenge me! (Fran­cois De La Rochefou­cauld)
  22. No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all him­self, or to get all the cred­it for doing it. (Andrew Carnegie)
  23. A group becomes a team when all mem­bers are sure enough of them­selves and their con­tri­bu­tions to praise the skill of oth­ers. (Nor­man Shi­dle)
  24. Lead­ers aren’t born, they are made. And they are made just like any­thing else, through hard work. (Vince Lom­bar­di)
  25. He who has nev­er learned to obey can­not be a good com­man­der. (Aris­tote­les)
  26. A good objec­tive of lead­er­ship is to help those who are doing poor­ly to do well and to help those who are doing well to do even bet­ter. (Jim Rohn)
  27. Those who are too smart to engage in pol­i­tics are pun­ished by being gov­erned by those who are dumb­er. (Pla­to)
  28. Anti-intel­lec­tu­al­ism has been a con­stant thread wind­ing its way through our polit­i­cal and cul­tur­al life, nur­tured by the false notion that democ­ra­cy means that ‘my igno­rance is just as good as your knowl­edge. (Isaac Asi­mov)
  29. Nev­er play with the feel­ings of oth­ers. You may win the game, but lose the per­son. (William Shake­speare)
  30. The weak can nev­er for­give. For­give­ness is the attribute of the strong. (Gand­hi)
  31. It is very easy to defeat some­one, but it is very hard to win some­one. (Abdul Kalaam)
  32. The man of wis­dom is nev­er of two minds; the man of benev­o­lence nev­er wor­ries; the man of courage is nev­er afraid. (Con­fu­cius)
  33. I’m afraid we have become a nation of plod­ders, who feel that all prob­lems can be found in books and that the answers are on a cer­tain page. (Clarence Lin­der)
  34. The supe­ri­or man is the prov­i­dence of the infe­ri­or. He is the eyes for the blind, strength for the weak, and a shield for the defence­less. (Robert Green Inger­soll)
  35. The temp­ta­tion to form pre­ma­ture the­o­ries upon insuf­fi­cient data is the bane of our pro­fes­sion. (Sher­lock Holmes)
  36. If you are nev­er scared, embar­rassed, or hurt, it means you nev­er take chances. (Julia Soul)
  37. If one is strong be also mer­ci­ful, so that one’s neigh­bours may respect one rather than fear one. (Chilon of Spar­ta)
  38. None of us is as smart as all of us. (Erich Schmidt)
  39. The best thing to give to your ene­my is for­give­ness; to an oppo­nent, tol­er­ance; to a friend, your heart; to your child, a good exam­ple; to a father, def­er­ence; to your moth­er, con­duct that will make her proud of you; to your­self, respect; to all men, char­i­ty. (Fran­cis Mait­land Bal­four)
  40. Try not to become a man of suc­cess. Rather become a man of val­ue. (Albert Ein­stein)
  41. Most of us, swim­ming against the tides of trou­ble the world knows noth­ing about, need only a bit of praise or encour­age­ment — and we will make the goal. (Jerome P. Fleish­man)
  42. The way for a young man to rise is to improve him­self in every way he can, nev­er sus­pect­ing that any­body wish­es to hin­der him. (Abra­ham Lin­coln)
  43. When wealth is lost, noth­ing is lost; when health is lost, some­thing is lost; when char­ac­ter is lost, all is lost. (Bil­ly Gra­ham)
  44. You can’t help some­one get up a hill with­out get­ting clos­er to the top your­self. (H. Nor­man Schwarzkopf)
  45. He who reigns with­in him­self and rules his pas­sions, desires, and fears is more than a king. (John Mil­ton)
  46. You are who you are in the dark­ness. (Bird­slug)
  47. Three-fourths of the peo­ple you will ever meet are hun­ger­ing and thirst­ing for sym­pa­thy. Give it to them, and they will love you. (Carnegie)
  48. Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive. Because what the world needs is peo­ple who have come alive. (Howard Thur­man)
  49. He who fails to plan, plans to fail. (Win­ston Churchill)
  50. When your ene­my is doing some­thing wrong, do not inter­rupt him. (Napoleon)
  51. Auden­tis For­tu­na iuvat. For­tune favours the bold. (Pub­lius Ter­en­tius Afer)
  52. Jour­nal­ism is print­ing what some­one else does not want print­ed. Every­thing else is pub­lic rela­tions. (George Orwell)
  53. The most com­mon way peo­ple give up their pow­er is by think­ing they don’t have any. (Alice Walk­er)
  54. Cir­cum­stances do not make the man; they mere­ly reveal him­self to him­self. (Epicte­tus)
  55. Respon­si­bil­i­ties grav­i­tate to the per­son who can shoul­der them; pow­er flows to the man who knows how. (Elbert Hub­bard)
  56. The price of great­ness is respon­si­bil­i­ty. (Win­ston Churchill)
  57. Accept the chal­lenges so that you may feel the exhil­a­ra­tion of vic­to­ry. (George Pat­ton)
  58. Strength does not come from phys­i­cal capac­i­ty. It comes from indomitable will. (Mahat­ma Gand­hi)
  59. Peo­ple do not decide to become extra­or­di­nary. They decide to accom­plish extra­or­di­nary things. (Sir Edmund Hilary)
  60. There is noth­ing noble in being supe­ri­or to your fel­low man; true nobil­i­ty is being supe­ri­or to your for­mer self. (Ernest Hem­ing­way)
  61. The dry­ing up a sin­gle tear has more of hon­est fame than shed­ding seas of gore. 5In het dro­gen van een enkele traan ligt meer roem en eerlijke eer, dan in het vergi­eten van zeeën bloed. (Lord George Byron)
  62. The pro is the per­son who has all the has­sles, obsta­cles, and dis­ap­point­ing frus­tra­tions that every­one else has. yet con­tin­ues to per­sist, does the job, and makes it look easy. (David Coop­er)
  63. A good plan is like a road map: It shows the final des­ti­na­tion and usu­al­ly the best way to get there. (H. Stan­ley Judd)
  64. Wis­dom is know­ing what to do; virtue is doing it. (David Jor­dan)
  65. It’s bet­ter to look ahead and pre­pare than to look back and regret. (Jac­ki Joyn­er-Kersee)
  66. In the realm of ideas every­thing depends on enthu­si­asm… in the real world all rests on per­se­ver­ance. (Johann Wolf­gang von Goethe)
  67. I am grate­ful for all of my prob­lems. After each one was over­come, I became stronger and more able to meet those that were still to come. I grew in all my dif­fi­cul­ties. (J.C. Pen­ney)
  68. Few men dur­ing their life­time come any­where near exhaust­ing the resources dwelling with­in them. There are deep wells of strength that are nev­er used. (Richard Byrd)
  69. Expe­ri­ence tells you what to do; con­fi­dence allows you to do it. (Stan Smith)
  70. If you want to get the best out of a per­son you must look for the best that is in him. (Bernard Hal­dane)
  71. Suc­cess is wak­ing up in the morn­ing and bound­ing out of bed because there’s some­thing out there that you love to do, that you believe in, that you’re good at — some­thing that’s big­ger than you are, and you can hard­ly wait to get at it again. (Whit Hobbs)
  72. The moment you com­mit and quit hold­ing back, all sorts of unfore­seen inci­dents, meet­ings and mate­r­i­al assis­tance, will rise up to help you. The sim­ple act of com­mit­ment is a pow­er­ful mag­net for help. (Napoleon Hill)
  73. In a moment of deci­sion the best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is noth­ing. (Theodore Roo­sevelt)
  74. Noth­ing great will ever be achieved with­out great men, and men are great only if they are deter­mined to be so. (Charles de Gaulle)
  75. The wis­est mind has some­thing yet to learn. (George San­tayana)
  76. The supe­ri­or man blames him­self. The infe­ri­or man blames oth­ers. (Don Shu­la)
  77. Don’t let a mad world tell you that suc­cess is any­thing oth­er than a suc­cess­ful present moment. (Eck­hart Tolle)
  78. What is impor­tant is sel­dom urgent and what is urgent is sel­dom impor­tant. (Dwight D. Eisen­how­er)
  79. You don’t need more time, you just need to decide. (Seth Godin)
  80. To waste one’s own time is fool­ish — to waste oth­ers’ is steal­ing. (?)
  81. Be a yard­stick of qual­i­ty. Some peo­ple aren’t used to an envi­ron­ment where excel­lence is expect­ed. (Steve Jobs)
  82. Rules are for the guid­ance of wise men and the obe­di­ence of fools. (Dou­glas Bad­er)
  83. What is need­ed is a real­i­sa­tion that pow­er with­out love is reck­less and abu­sive, and love with­out pow­er is sen­ti­men­tal and anaemic. Pow­er at its best is love imple­ment­ing the demands of jus­tice, and jus­tice at its best is pow­er cor­rect­ing every­thing that stands against love. (Mar­tin Luther King, Jr.)
  84. A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way. (John C. Maxwell)
  85. We are now faced with the fact that tomor­row is today. We are con­front­ed with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfold­ing conun­drum of life and his­to­ry there is such a thin as being too late. Pro­cras­ti­na­tion is still the thief of time… We must move past inde­ci­sion to Action. (Mar­tin Luther King Jr.)
  86. Bet­ter to trip with the feet than with the tongue. (Zeno)
  87. Every­thing is always impos­si­ble until some­one does it. (Nel­son Man­dela)
  88. The most com­mon way peo­ple give up their pow­er is by think­ing they don’t have any. (Alice Walk­er)
  89. There is only one way to avoid crit­i­cism: do noth­ing, say noth­ing, and be noth­ing. (Aris­to­tle)
  90. First, have a def­i­nite, clear prac­ti­cal ide­al; a goal, an objec­tive. Sec­ond, have the nec­es­sary means to achieve your ends; wis­dom, mon­ey, mate­ri­als, and meth­ods. Third, adjust all your means to that end. (Aris­to­tle)
  91. The ques­tion isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me. (Ayn Rand)
  92. The trou­ble with the world is that the stu­pid are cock­sure and the intel­li­gent are full of doubt. (Bertrand Rus­sell)
  93. More peo­ple wor­ship the ris­ing than the set­ting sun. (Gnaeus Pom­peius Mag­nus)

Society & Class

Migrant Mother, by Dorothea Lange
Migrant Moth­er (1936), by Dorothea Lange
  1. That which has been is what will be; that which is done is what will be done, and there is noth­ing new under the sun. Is there any­thing of which it may be said, “See, this is new”? It has already been in ancient times before us. (Eccle­si­astes 1:9–11) 6Wat er gebeurd is, zal weer gebeuren en wat er gedaan is, zal weer gedaan wor­den; er is niets nieuws onder de zon. Men zegt wel: “Kijk, dat is iets nieuws.” Maar dan blijkt dat het vroeger ook al was. Nie­mand denkt meer aan de mensen die voor ons geleefd hebben en ook aan de mensen die na ons komen, zal lat­er nie­mand meer denken. (Predik­er 1:9–11)
  2. Twee boeren eis­ten dezelfde koe op. Ter­wi­jl de ene boer aan de horens trok en de andere aan de staart werd de koe gemolken door een advo­caat. (Hebreeuws gezegde)
  3. When you philo­soph­i­cal­ly oppose an entire pow­er elite, you can­not help but sound like a con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist. Social pow­er is by nature a con­spir­a­cy. (Tom N.)
  4. Dis­obe­di­ence is the true foun­da­tion of lib­er­ty. The obe­di­ent must be slaves. (Hen­ry David Thore­au)
  5. We know that com­mu­ni­ca­tion is a prob­lem, but the com­pa­ny is not going to dis­cuss it with the employ­ees. (Dil­bert)
  6. Video games don’t affect kids. If Pac-Man had affect­ed us as kids, we’d all be run­ning around in dark­ened rooms, munch­ing mag­ic pills and lis­ten­ing to repet­i­tive elec­tron­ic music. (Nin­ten­do CEO)
  7. Bet­ter free­dom with dan­ger than peace with slav­ery. In oth­er words: It is bet­ter to live with fear than in chains. 7Malo per­icu­losam lib­er­tatem quam qui­etum servi­tium. (The Pala­tine of Posen, father of the King of Poland and Duke of Lor­raine)
  8. We should try to cre­ate the soci­ety we would want if we didn’t know in advance who we’d be. (Paul Krug­man, inspired by John Rawls)
  9. Half of writ­ing his­to­ry is hid­ing the truth. (Seren­i­ty)
  10. When sci­ence dis­cov­ers the cen­tre of the uni­verse a lot of peo­ple will be dis­ap­point­ed to find they are not it. (Bernard Bai­ly)
  11. The 2 time­less dri­vers that under­pin the behav­iour of every gen­er­a­tion: the need to belong and the need to be sig­nif­i­cant.
  12. The lim­its of my lan­guage mean the lim­its of my world. (Wittgen­stein)
  13. The things you take for grant­ed some­one else is pray­ing for. (Anony­mous)
  14. I am not an Athen­ian or a Greek, but a cit­i­zen of the world. (Socrates)
  15. I am almost ashamed to be liv­ing in such peace while all the rest strug­gle and suf­fer. (Albert Ein­stein)
  16. No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the con­ti­nent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promon­to­ry were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death dimin­ish­es me, because I am involved in mankind, and there­fore nev­er send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee. (John Donne, 1572–1631)
  17. The prob­lem of human­i­ty is the fol­low­ing: we have palae­olith­ic emo­tions, medieval insti­tu­tions, and God-like tech­nol­o­gy. (E. O. Wil­son)
  18. Our entire much-praised tech­no­log­i­cal progress, and civil­i­sa­tion gen­er­al­ly, could be com­pared to an axe in the hand of a patho­log­i­cal crim­i­nal. (Albert Ein­stein)
  19. A tru­ly rich man is one whose chil­dren run into his arms when his hands are emp­ty. (Unknown)
  20. True peace is not mere­ly the absence of ten­sion; it is the pres­ence of jus­tice. (Mar­tin Luther King Jr.)

Religion & Death

Elysian fields or Elysium
Ely­si­um, or: the Elysian fields
  1. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread, but there are many more dying for a lit­tle love. (Moth­er Tere­sa)
  2. The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A Death! What’s that, a bonus? I think the life cycle is all back­wards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you’re too young, you get a gold watch, you go to work. You work forty years until you’re young enough to enjoy your retire­ment. You do drugs, alco­hol, you par­ty, you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no respon­si­bil­i­ties, you become a lit­tle baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last nine months float­ing… and you fin­ish off as an orgasm. (George Car­lin)
  3. Truth, in its strug­gles for recog­ni­tion, pass­es through four dis­tinct stages. First, we say it is damnable, dan­ger­ous, dis­or­der­ly, and will sure­ly dis­rupt soci­ety. Sec­ond, we declare it is hereti­cal, infi­del­ic and con­trary to the Bible. Third, we say it is real­ly a mat­ter of no impor­tance either one way or the oth­er. Fourth, we aver that we have always upheld it and believed it. (Elbert Hub­bard)
  4. Those who can make you believe absur­di­ties can make you com­mit atroc­i­ties. (Voltaire)
  5. My coun­try is the world, and my reli­gion is to do good. (Thomas Paine)
  6. Time is a great teacher, but unfor­tu­nate­ly, it kills all its pupils. (Louis Hec­tor Berlioz)
  7. Once the game is over, the King and the Pawn go back in the same box. (Ital­ian Proverb)
  8. I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some think­ing, feel­ing, remem­ber­ing part of me will con­tin­ue. But much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and world­wide cul­tur­al tra­di­tions that assert an after­life, I know of noth­ing to sug­gest that it is more than wish­ful think­ing. The world is so exquis­ite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no rea­son to deceive our­selves with pret­ty sto­ries for which there’s lit­tle good evi­dence. Far bet­ter it seems to me, in our vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, is to look death in the eye and to be grate­ful every day for the brief but mag­nif­i­cent oppor­tu­ni­ty that life pro­vides. (Carl Sagan)
  9. Which is it, is man one of God’s blun­ders or is God one of man’s? (Niet­zsche)
  10. Reli­gion is what keeps the poor from mur­der­ing the rich. (Napoleon)
  11. The ink of the schol­ar is holi­er than the blood of the mar­tyr. (Prophet Muham­mad)
  12. I like your Christ; I do not like your Chris­tians. Your Chris­tians are so unlike your Christ. (Mohan­das Gand­hi)
  13. Light­hous­es are more help­ful then church­es. (Ben­jamin Franklin)
  14. The fact that a believ­er is hap­pi­er than a scep­tic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunk­en man is hap­pi­er than a sober one. (George Bernard Shaw)
  15. Moral­i­ty is doing what is right regard­less of what you are told. Reli­gion is doing what you are told, regard­less of what is right. (J. Ander­son Thom­son) 8From his book Why We Believe in God(s): A Con­cise Guide to the Sci­ence of Faith (2011).
  16. It is always dark­est just before the day dawneth. (Thomas Fuller, 1650)
  17. Every­thing will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end. (Anony­mous)
  18. More than an end to war, we want an end to the begin­nings of all wars. (Franklin D. Roo­sevelt)
  19. Mur­der is always a mis­take. One should nev­er do any­thing that one can­not talk about after din­ner. (Oscar Wilde)
  20. Als je niet meer hebt waar je van houdt, hou dan vast wat je nog hebt. (Anony­mous)
  21. Hell is emp­ty and all the dev­ils are here. (William Shake­speare)
  22. We the unwill­ing, led by the unqual­i­fied, to kill the unfor­tu­nate, die for the ungrate­ful. (Nam 71–72)
  23. The world breaks every­one and after­ward many are strong in the bro­ken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gen­tle and the very brave impar­tial­ly. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no spe­cial hur­ry. (Ernest Hem­ing­way)
  24. Reli­gion. It’s giv­en peo­ple hope in a world torn apart by reli­gion. (Jon Stew­art)
  25. The world was not big enough for Alexan­der the Great, but a cof­fin was. (Juve­nal)
  26. When one door of hap­pi­ness clos­es, anoth­er opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us. (Helen Keller)
  27. Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that mat­ter. (Mar­tin Luther King Jr.)
  28. It’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years. (Abra­ham Lin­coln)
  29. The plant of “tol­er­ance” is bit­ter, but the fruits that bear from the plant would be sweet and soft. (Got­thold Ephraim Less­ing)

War & Conflict

Kim Phuc, by Nick Ut
Kim Phuc (1972), by Nick Ut dur­ing the Viet­nam War
  1. An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind. (Gand­hi)
  2. When the pow­er of love over­comes the love of pow­er the world will know peace. (Jimi Hen­drix)
  3. War is always the choice of the cho­sen who will not have to fight. (Paul D. Hew­son, aka Bono)
  4. Ter­ror is the poor man’s war, war is the rich man’s ter­ror. Ulti­mate­ly, all wars will end either in anni­hi­la­tion or at the nego­ti­at­ing table. (#)
  5. A ter­ror­ist is some­one who has a bomb but can’t afford an air force. (William Blum)
  6. Because I do it with one small ship, I am called a ter­ror­ist (pirate?). You do it with a whole fleet and are called an emper­or. (St. Augus­tine)
  7. Kill a man, and you are an assas­sin. Kill mil­lions of men, and you are a con­queror. Kill every­one, and you are a god. (Jean Ros­tand)
  8. Dis­obe­di­ence, in the eyes of any­one who has read his­to­ry, is man’s orig­i­nal virtue. It is through dis­obe­di­ence that progress has been made, through dis­obe­di­ence and through rebel­lion. (Oscar Wilde)
  9. Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is rep­re­sent­ed not as a war but as an act of self-defence against a homi­ci­dal mani­ac. (George Orwell)
  10. The com­pul­sion to do good is an innate Amer­i­can trait. Only North Amer­i­cans seem to believe that they always should, may, and actu­al­ly can choose some­body with whom to share their bless­ings. Ulti­mate­ly this atti­tude leads to bomb­ing peo­ple into the accep­tance of gifts. (Ivan Illich)
  11. Vio­lence is the last refuge of the incom­pe­tent. (Isaac Asi­mov)
  12. Where one burns books, one will, in the end, burn peo­ple. (Hein­rich Heine)
  13. The world suf­fers not because of the vio­lence of bad peo­ple, but because of the silence of good peo­ple. (Napoleon)
  14. The old­est and strongest emo­tion of mankind is fear. And the old­est and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. (H.P. Love­craft)
  15. Every­thing that irri­tates us about oth­ers can lead us to a bet­ter under­stand­ing of our­selves. (Carl Jung)
  16. There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and sta­tis­tics. (Ben­jamin Dis­raeli)
  17. He that would make his own lib­er­ty secure must guard even his ene­my from oppres­sion; for if he vio­lates this duty he estab­lish­es a prece­dent that will reach to him­self. (Thomas Paine)
  18. A lie told often enough becomes the truth. (Lenin)
  19. He harms him­self who does harm to anoth­er, and the evil plan is most harm­ful to the plan­ner. (Hes­iod)
  20. The fur­ther a soci­ety drifts from truth the more it will hate those who speak it. (George Orwell)
  21. The only real mis­take is the one from which we learn noth­ing. (Hen­ry Ford)
  22. Peo­ple were cre­at­ed to be loved.
    Things were cre­at­ed to be used.
    The rea­son why the world is in chaos,
    is because things are being loved,
    and peo­ple are being used. (Anony­mous)
  23. The best revenge is mas­sive suc­cess. (Frank Sina­tra)
  24. In the con­fronta­tion between the stream and the rock, the stream always wins, not through strength but by per­se­ver­ance. (H. Jack­son Brown)
  25. Do not go gen­tle into that good night,
    Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
    Rage, rage against the dying of the light. (Dylan Thomas)
  26. Now is the envy of all of the dead. (World of Tomor­row)
  27. A nation that con­tin­ues year after year to spend more mon­ey on mil­i­tary defense than on pro­grams of social uplift is approach­ing spir­i­tu­al death. (Mar­tin Luther King, Jr.)
  28. The best revenge is not to be like that.  (Mar­cus Aure­lius)
  29. Only the dead have seen the end of war. (George San­tayana)

Love

  1. To love means to open our­selves to the neg­a­tive as well as the pos­i­tive — to grief, sor­row, and dis­ap­point­ment as well as to joy, ful­fil­ment, and an inten­si­ty of con­scious­ness we did not know was pos­si­ble before. (Rol­lo May)
  2. Love is like a friend­ship caught on fire. In the begin­ning a flame, very pret­ty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flick­er­ing. As love grows old­er, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burn­ing and unquench­able. (Bruce Lee)
  3. A lov­ing per­son lives in a lov­ing world. A hos­tile per­son lives in a hos­tile world. Every­one you meet is your mir­ror. (Ken Keyes)
  4. You may not under­stand my words, but if you look into my eyes you can lis­ten with your heart. (Unknown)
  5. I’ll nev­er know, and nei­ther will you, of the life you don’t choose. We’ll only know that what­ev­er that sis­ter life was, it was impor­tant and beau­ti­ful and not ours. It was the ghost ship that didn’t car­ry us. There’s noth­ing to do but salute it from the shore. (Cheryl Strayed)
  6. You don’t love because: you love despite; not for the virtues, but despite the faults. (William Faulkn­er)
  7. Kussen is het eerste teere spel,
    Waar we ’t grove lev­en mee begroeten;
    Kussen is het aller­lest vaar­wel
    Van de men­schen als ze ster­ven moeten.
    (Alice Nahon, uit: Op zachte vooizekens, 1923)

Stijn Vogels

  1. Seek noth­ing and you will find every­thing.
  2. Find­ing plea­sure in the small­er things is one of the greater joys in life.
  3. Great minds don’t sleep. They dream.
  4. Waste is haste.
  5. The best method for find­ing uni­ver­sal truths is to keep ask­ing “why?”.
  6. The great­est gift you can give some­one is your time.
  7. What you want is not always what you need.
  8. If a fail hap­pens on Twit­ter, does the whale care? #
  9. Hap­pi­ness is more than the absence of unhap­pi­ness.
  10. Dan­ger fills me with anger, and anger fills me with the ener­gy to respond.
  11. L’amour c’est un pays qui se trou­ve sur aucune carte.
  12. The biggest les­son in life is let­ting go. (9–10 Feb 2015)
  13. Time is pre­cious. I don’t want to waste yours. (11 Feb 2015)
  14. Love your ene­my, for they make you a stronger per­son. (13 Feb 2015)
  15. Inac­tion is tor­ture for the ambi­tious man. (18–19 Mar 2015)
  16. From life, death is born. Thus from death comes life.
    From war, peace is born. Thus from peace comes war. (28 Mar 2015)
  17. It is eas­i­er to be igno­rant than intel­li­gent, since igno­rance requires no effort. (30 May 2017)
  18. Zin­nen zeggen zacht welke woor­den zijn bedacht. (10 juli 2020)

Unsorted Quotes

  1. Zo voorzichtig alsof zij een win­terse stroom over­steken,
    zo aarze­lend alsof zij de rod­del van alle buren vrezen,
    zo inge­to­gen alsof zij slechts op bezoek zijn,
    ont­dooiend als smeltend ijs, massief als een ruw blok,
    diep en wei­ds als een vallei,
    ondoorzichtig als troebel water.
    Troe­bel­heid wordt geklaard door bezink­ing,
    wat rust wordt opge­won­den door beroer­ing.
    (Lao Tse, Tao Te King)
  2. In the end, you’ll know which peo­ple real­ly love you. They’re the ones who see you for who you are and, no mat­ter what, always find a way to be at your side. (Randy K. Mil­hol­land, Some­thing Pos­i­tive Com­ic, 08–23-05)
  3. Myths are pub­lic dreams; dreams are pri­vate myths. (Philip K. Dick)
  4. I must learn to be con­tent with being hap­pi­er than I deserve. (Jane Austen)