Quotes That I Like
Ansel Adams
- “Sometimes I do get to places just when God’s ready to have somebody click the shutter.”
Woody Allen
- “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve immortality by not dying.””
Jonathan Alter
- “Logic can convince but only emotion can motivate.”
Anacharsis
- “Written laws are like spiders’ webs, and will, like them, only entangle and hold the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful will easily break through them.”
Maya Angelou
- “Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.”
Karen Armstrong
- “I say that religion isn’t about believing things. It’s ethical alchemy. It’s about behaving in a way that changes you, that gives you intimations of holiness and sacredness.”
Isaac Asimov
- “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of 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.’”
Peter Williams Atkins
- “Theologians typically focus on questions that they have invented for their own puzzlement. Some theologians are perplexed by the nature of life after death, a notion they have invented without a scrap of evidence.“
Bill Balance
- “When a man is in love or in debt, someone else has the advantage.“
Manoel de Barros
- “We need to look beyond this world. Reason confuses us.”
Marie-Helene Bertino
- ” If you are anything other than humbled in the presence of love, you are not in the presence of love.”
Leonardo Boff
- “The opposite of poverty is not wealth – it is justice.”
Ray Bradbury
- “If we listened to our intellect, we’d never have a love affair. We’d never have a friendship. We’d never go into business, because we are cynical. You’ve got to jump off the cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.”
- “When they give you lined paper, write the other way.”
- “Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in what cage.”
Buddha
- “Nothing is to be clung to as ‘I’, ‘me’, or ‘mine’.“
George Burns
- “I would rather be a failure doing something I love than a success doing something I hate.”
George Carlin
- “Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?“
Edgar Cayce
- “Be content, but not satisfied.“
G.K. Chesterton
- “There are two ways to get enough: one is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less.”
Maurice Chevalier
- “My own experience has taught me this: if you wait for the perfect moment when all is safe and assured it may never arrive. Mountains will not be climbed, races won or lasting happiness achieved.”
Winston Churchill
- “There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at without result.”
Roger Cohen
- “What we are dealing with here is the paltry harvest of captive minds. Such minds resort to conspiracy theory because it is the ultimate refuge of the powerless. If you cannot change your own life, it must be that some greater force controls the world.”
Norman Cole
- “If people concentrated on the REALLY important things in life…there would be a shortage of fishing poles !”
Kitty O’Neill Collins
- “Aging seems to be the only available way to live a long life.”
Clarence Darrow
- “I have always felt the doubt was the beginning of wisdom, and fear of God was the end of wisdom.”
Charles Darwin
- “A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.”
James Dean
- “Dream as if you’ll live forever, live as if you’ll die today.”
Phillip K. Dick
- “Many men talk like philosophers and live like fools.”
Frederick Douglass
- “If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle.”
- “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
Albert Einstein
- “The significant problems that we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.”
- “Only two things are infinite: The universe and human stupidity. And I am not so sure about the former.”
- “Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.”
- “People like you and I, though mortal of course like everyone else, do not grow old no matter how long we live…[We] never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born.” ~ in a letter to Otto Juliusburger
- “The true value of a human being is determined primary by the measure and sense in which he has attained liberation from the self.” from The World As I See It
- “The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish.”
- “I do not believe in a personal god and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.”
- “Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value.”
- “For us believing physicists, the distinction between past, present, and future is only an illusion, even if a stubborn one.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.”
- “[People] measure their esteem of each other by what each has, and not by what each is… Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.” from Self Reliance
Enzo
- “Understanding the truth is easy. Allowing oneself to experience it is often terribly difficult.“ from The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
Epicurus
- Is he [God] willing to prevent evil, but not able? then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? whence then is evil?“
Ben Franklin
- “We all are born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.“
- I guess I don’t so much mind being old, as I mind being fat and old.”
Sigmund Freud
- “Where questions of religion are concerned, people are guilty of every possible sort of dishonesty and intellectual misdemeanor.”
Robert Frost
- “I’m liberal. You, you aristocrat,
Won’t know exactly what I mean by that.
I mean so altruistically moral
I never take my own side in a quarrel.“
Mahatma Gandhi
- “God has no religion.”
- “One man cannot do right in one department of life whilst he is occupied in doing wrong in any other department. Life is one indivisible whole.”
- “Poverty is the worst form of violence.”
Sydney J. Harris
- “Being yourself is not remaining where you are, or being satisfied with what you are. It is a point of departure.”
Butch Hancock
- “Life in Lubbock, Texas, taught me two things. One is that God loves you and you’re going to burn in hell. The other is that sex is the most awful, dirty thing on the face of the earth and you should save it for someone you love.”
Nathan Hawthrone
- “It contributes greatly towards a man’s moral and intellectual health to be brought into habits of companionship with individuals unlike himself, who care little for his pursuits, and whose sphere and abilities he must go out of himself to appreciate. ” In The Scarlet Letter
Joe Henry
- “We’re really called not to dispel mystery but to abide it, to engage it.”
Sir Edmund Hillary
- “What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to enjoy life. That is what life means and what life is for.”
- “…if you set out on an adventure and you are absolutely convinced that you are going to be successful, why bother even starting.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes
- “A child’s education should begin at least one hundred years before he is born”
Thomas Jefferson
- “I am for freedom of religion, and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another.”
- “It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserves a republic in vigour. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution.”
- “I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”
Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go There You Are
- “Too often, our lives cease working because we cease working at life, because we are unwilling to take responsibility for things as they are, and to work with our difficulties.”
- “Parenting is a mirror that forces you to look at yourself. If you can learn from what you observe, you just might have a chance to keep growing yourself.”
Mauricio Kagel
- “Not all musicians believe in god but they all believe in Bach”
Garrison Keillor
- “A book is a gift that you can open again and again.”
Helen Keller
- “Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.”
John F. Kennedy
- “A child miseducated is a child lost”
Abraham Lincoln
- “I destroy my enemies when I make them my friends.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
- “The time is always right to do what is right.”
- “Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man’s sense of values and his objectivity.”
Rudyard Kipling
- ” No printed word, nor spoken plea can teach young minds what they should be.
Not all the books on all the shelves – but what the teachers are themselves. .”
Charles Kingsley
- “When all that we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about.”
Johann K. Lavater
- “Mistrust the man who finds everything good, the man who finds everything evil and still more the man who is indifferent to everything.”
D. H. Lawrence
- “Life is something to be spent, not to be saved.”
Jack Layton
- “My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.”
Hugh Leonard
- “There is only one immutable law in life — in a gentleman’s toilet, incoming traffic has the right of way.”
Sam Levenson
- “Lead us not into temptation. Just tell us where it is; we’ll find it.”
- “It’s so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and say the opposite.”
- “The reason grandparents and grandchildren get along so well is that they have a common enemy.”
Abraham Lincoln
- “The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.”
- “I destroy my enemies when I make them my friends.”
Lin-yutang
- “I have done my best, that is about all the philosophy of living that one needs.”
Charles Mackay
- “Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.”
Nelson Mandella
- “No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”
Mickey Mantle
- “If I knew I was going to live this long, I’d taken better care of myself.”
Cheech Marino as Romeo in Tin Cup
- “You can’t ask for advice about the woman you’re trying to hose FROM the woman you’re trying to hose.”
John Cougar Mellencamp
- “Oh yeah, life goes on. Long after the thrill of livin’ is gone. ”
H. L. Mencken
- “There is always an easy solution to every human problem — neat, plausible and wrong.”
Thomas Merton
- “Why do we have to spend our lives striving to be something we would never want to be, if only we knew what we wanted?”
Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan
- “You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.”
Martin Niemoller, German Protestant Pastor, 1892-1984
- “They came for the Communists, and I didn’t object – For I wasn’t a Communist;
They came for the Socialists, and I didn’t object – For I wasn’t a Socialist;
They came for the labor leaders, and I didn’t object – For I wasn’t a labor leader;
They came for the Jews, and I didn’t object -For I wasn’t a Jew;
Then they came for me – And there was no one left to object.”
Anais Nin
- “There are few humans beings who receive the truth complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, like a mosaic.”
Keith Olbermann
- “Comedians are the only ones paid to tell the truth in public discourse. Everybody else—politicians, news broadcasters, religious figures—we’re all paid to be oracles, when in fact we are like a good public-relations man. A good public-relations man keeps you away from the public, and if you have relations, he keeps that hidden.”
Rebecca Perkins
- “Three things are needed in a relationship — lust, love, and shared values.”
Kenneth Patchen
- “It’s always because we love that we are rebellious; it takes a great deal of love to give a damn one way or another what happens from now on: I still do.”
Tom Robbins
- “Deep down, all of us probably are aware that some kind of mystical evolution is our true task. Yet we suppress the notion with considerable force because to admit it is to admit that most of our political gyrations, religious dogmas, social ambitions and financial ploys are not merely counterproductive but trivial. Our mission is to jettison those pointless preoccupations and take on once again the primordial cargo of inexhaustible ecstasy. Or barring that, to turn out a good juicy cheeseburger and strong glass of beer.”
Will Rogers
- “There is nothing as stupid as an educated man, if you can get him off the thing he is educated in.”
- “If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can’t it get us out?”
Eleanor Roosevelt
- “Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.”
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
- “We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics.”
David S. Rush
- “Life is simply a series of problems and puzzles to be solved. Relish the game. Enjoy the challenge.”
- “If you do not have problems and puzzles to be solved, you are not living.”
- “Autumn is the time trees come out of the closet.”
Juanita C. Rush
- “It is one thing to grow old with a man, it would be quite another thing to marry an old man.”
Betrand Russell
- “Love at its fullest is an indissoluble combination of the two elements, delight and well-wishing.”
- “My first advice (on how not to grow old) would be to choose you ancestors carefully.”
- “Fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.”
- “It could be a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.”
- Life is, to many people, a rather long and tedious compromise between the ideal and the possible ”
- “Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.”
Diane Sawyer
- “A criticism is just a really bad way of making a request…so just make the request.”
Florida Scott-Maxwell
- “No matter how old a mother is, she watches her middle-aged children for signs of improvement.”
Jerry Seinfeld
- “Looking at cleavage is like looking at the sun. You don’t stare at it. It’s too risky. Ya get a sense of it and then you look away.”
William Shakespeare
- “Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin as self-neglecting.”
- “Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.”
George Bernard Shaw
- “If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea as well, and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.”
Socrates
- “Wisdom begins in wonder.”
John Steinbeck
- “…a sad soul can kill you quicker, far quicker, than a germ.”
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- “Social science affirms that woman’s place in society marks the level of civilization.”
Charles R. Swindoll
- “The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, the education, the money, than circumstances, than failure, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company… a church… a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past… we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. And so it is with you… we are in charge of our Attitudes.”
The Dalai Lama
- “My religion is kindness.”
Colm Tóibín
- “All my life when I have seen more than two men together I have seen foolishness and I have seen cruelty, but it is foolishness that I have noticed first.” ~ from Mary Magdalene discussing the disciples in his play “The Testament of Mary”
Mark Twain
- “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”
- “There ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.”
- “It is easy to quit smoking. I’ve done it hundreds of times.”
- “The easy confidence with which I know another man`s religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.”
- “Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”
Henry David Thoreau
- “Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me… We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium though which we look.. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.”
- “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.”
Unknown
- “Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement.”
- “Don’t place your mistakes on your head, their weight may crush you.Instead, place them under your feet and use them as a platform to view your horizons.”
- “Be careful of your words, for they become your thoughts. Be careful of your thoughts, for they become your actions. Be careful of your actions, for they become your character. Be careful of your character, for it becomes your destiny.”
- “Light travels faster than sound. That’s why some politicians appear bright until you hear them speak.”
Voltaire
- “The only way to comprehend what mathematicians mean by Infinity is to contemplate the extent of human stupidity.”
- “When it comes to money, everybody is of the same religion.”
Kurt Vonnegut
- “Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile!”
- “A psychiatrist could help. There is a good man in Albany.” Finnerty shook his head. ‘He’d pull me back into the center, and I want to stay close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.” He nodded, “Big, undreamed-of-things—the people on the edge see them first.”
- “One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us.”
- “I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.'”
- “Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.”
- “Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly; Man got to sit and wonder, ‘Why, why, why?’ Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land; Man got to tell himself he understand.”
- “There’s only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”
- “She was a fool, and so am I, and so is anyone who thinks he sees what God is doing.”
- . “Many people need desperately to receive this message: ‘I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.'”
- “There are plenty of good reasons for fighting, but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too.”
- “Since Alice had never received any religious instruction, and since she had led a blameless life, she never thought of her awful luck as being anything but accidents in a very busy place. Good for her.”
- “That is my principal objection to life, I think: It’s too easy, when alive, to make perfectly horrible mistakes.”
- “All persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental.”
- “So it goes.”
- “We must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
Tom Waits
- “We are buried beneath the weight of information, which is being confused with knowledge; quantity is being confused with abundance and wealth with happiness.”
- “Don’t you know there ain’t no devil, it’s just god when he’s drunk.”
John Wayne
- “Courage is being scared to death but saddling up anyway.”
- “A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do.”
- “If you don’t respect your elders, then I’ll just have to teach you to respect your betters.”
Oscar Wilde
- “There is no sin except stupidity.”
- “Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.”
- “I am not young enough to know everything.”
- “Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone elses opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”
- “Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious. “
Gerrand Winstanley
- “While men are gazing up to Heaven, imagining after a happiness, or fearing a Hell after they are dead, their eyes are put out, that they see not what is their birthright.”
Malcom X
- “Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.”
Frank Zappa
- “Take the Kama Sutra. How many people died from the Kama Sutra as opposed to the Bible? Who wins?”