Quotes

Myth is the hidden part of every story, the buried part, the region that is still unexplored because there are as yet no words to enable us to get there. Myth is nourished by silence as well as by words.
— Italo Calvino

If you knew how much work went into it, you would not call it genius.
— Michelangelo

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser men so full of doubts.
— Bertrand Russell

You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.
— Ayn Rand

Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act.
— George Orwell

In the practice of tolerance, one’s enemy is the best teacher.
— Dalai Lama

You cannot resist loving another person when you really understand him or her.
— Thich Nhat Hanh

The secret to happiness is happiness itself!
— Thich Nhat Hanh

There are two types of people in this world, good and bad. The good sleep better, but the bad seem to enjoy the waking hours much more.
— Woody Allen

Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.
— Carl Jung

What nature leaves imperfect, the art perfects.
— Unknown alchemist

The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.
— Albert Einstein

Happiness is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.
— Henry David Thoreau

To think is easy. To act is hard. But the hardest thing in the world is to act in accordance with your thinking.
— Goethe

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.
— Carl Jung

We are formed by what we do. Ultimately, our actions make us or maim us. They change our lives. They shape our lives and mold our souls. How we live and what we do with our lives formulates our futures.
— Osho

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.
— Carl Gustav Jung

The whole concept of awards is silly. I cannot abide by the judgment of other people, because if you accept it when they say you deserve an award, then you have to accept it when they say you don’t.
— Woody Allen

You can’t make the same mistake twice, the second time you make it, it’s no longer a mistake, it’s a choice.
— Unknown

Enjoy when you can, and endure when you must.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.
— George Bernard Shaw

Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.
— Aristotle

The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.
— Carl Gustav Jung

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.
— Napoleon Bonaparte

I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart’s affections, and the truth of imagination.
— John Keats

Tolerance comes of age. I see no fault committed that I myself could not have committed at some time or other.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Habit rules the unreflecting herd.
— William Wordsworth

Always when judging
Who people are,
Remember to footnote
The words “So far.”
— Robert Brault

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!
— Upton Sinclair

I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.
— Walt Whitman

Advice is like snow; the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper it sinks into the mind.
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.
— Abraham Lincoln

Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve.
— Erich Fromm

All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.
— Karl Marx

Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.
— Napoleon Bonaparte

To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.
— Gustave Flaubert

Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.
— Martin Luther King

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.
— Albert Einstein

Knowledge is not a series of self consistent theories that converges towards an ideal view; it is rather an ever increasing ocean of mutually incompatible (and perhaps even incommensurable) alternatives, each single theory, each fairy tale, each myth.
— Paul Feyerabend

There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.
— Elie Wiesel

You come to love not by finding the perfect person, but by seeing an imperfect person perfectly.
— Sam Keen

Think globally, act locally.
— Unknown

When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.
— Jonathan Swift

A photograph is not created by a photographer. What they does is just to open a little window and capture it. The world then writes itself on the film. The act of the photographer is closer to reading than it is to writing. They are the readers of the world.
— Ferdinando Scianna

In historical events great men—so-called—are but labels serving to give a name to the event, and like labels they have the least possible connection with the event itself. Every action of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own free will, is in an historical sense not free at all, but in bondage to the whole course of previous history, and predestined from all eternity.
— Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.
— Plato

One sentence will suffice to describe modern man: he fornicated and he read newspapers.
— Albert Camus

America is the most grandiose experiment the world has seen, but, I am afraid, it is not going to be a success.
— Sigmund Freud

Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.
— Sigmund Freud

Never believe straight off in a man’s unhappiness. Ask him if he can still sleep. If the answer’s ‘yes’, all’s well. That is enough.
— Louis Ferdinand Celine

It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.
— Richard Feynman

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.
— Albert Camus

When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
— Mark Twain

The depth of your mythology is the extent of your effectiveness.
— John C. Maxwell

It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in argument.
— William G. McAdoo

What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself.
— Abraham Maslow

Conceit is God’s gift to little men.
— Harry S. Truman

A good scare is worth more to a man than good advice.
— Edgar Watson Howe

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed, in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a wide-spread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.
— Bertrand Russell

The only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless.
— Leo Tolstoy

There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.
— Ansel Adams

The average woman would rather have beauty than brains, because the average man can see better than he can think.
— Unknown

Death is for many of us the gate of hell; but we are inside on the way out, not outside on the way in.
— George Bernard Shaw

Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
— Susan Ertz

He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great.
— Herman Melville

Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for truth.
— Benjamin Disraeli

It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.
— Herman Melville

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
— William James

A man of true science uses but few hard words, and those only when none other will answer his purpose; whereas the smatterer in science . . . thinks that by mouthing hard words he proves that he understands hard things.
— Herman Melville

Luck has a peculiar habit of favouring those who don’t depend on it.
— Unknown

Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.
— Anais Nin

History is Philosophy teaching by examples.
— Thucydides

Humour is the instinct for taking pain playfully.
— Max Eastman

Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humour to console him for what he is.
— Francis Bacon

Any man who is not a communist at the age of twenty is a fool. Any man who is still a communist at the age of thirty is an even bigger fool.
— George Bernard Shaw

It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.
— Epictetus

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
— Albert Einstein

He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.
— George Bernard Shaw