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108 John F. Kennedy quotes

written by quotegal71

John Fitzgerald Kennedy often referred to by his initials JFK, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination in 1963.

He was the youngest person to assume the presidency by election and the youngest president at the end of his tenure.

Kennedy served at the height of the Cold War, and the majority of his foreign policy concerned communist states such as the Soviet Union and Cuba. A Democrat, Kennedy represented Massachusetts in both houses of the U.S. Congress prior to his presidency.

List of quotes

The very word ‘secrecy’ is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings.

Politics is like football; if you see daylight, go through the hole.

Israel was not created in order to disappear – Israel will endure and flourish. It is the child of hope and the home of the brave. It can neither be broken by adversity nor demoralized by success. It carries the shield of democracy and it honors the sword of freedom.

Once you say you’re going to settle for second, that’s what happens to you in life.

Our growing softness, our increasing lack of physical fitness, is a menace to our security.

Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.

Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man. And man can be a s big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.

Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education. The human mind is our fundamental resource.

No one has been barred on account of his race from fighting or dying for America, there are no white or colored signs on the foxholes or graveyards of battle.

Physical fitness is not only one of the most important keys to a healthy body, it is the basis of dynamic and creative intellectual activity.

My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.

Sure it’s a big job; but I don’t know anyone who can do it better than I can.

The basic problems facing the world today are not susceptible to a military solution.

The best road to progress is freedom’s road.

The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission.

The courage of life is often a less dramatic spectacle than the courage of a final moment; but it is no less a magnificent mixture of triumph and tragedy.

The goal of education is the advancement of knowledge and the dissemination of truth.

Peace is a daily, a weekly, a monthly process, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers, quietly building new structures.

Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future.

It is an unfortunate fact that we can secure peace only by preparing for war.

It might be said now that I have the best of both worlds. A Harvard education and a Yale degree.

Khrushchev reminds me of the tiger hunter who has picked a place on the wall to hang the tiger’s skin long before he has caught the tiger. This tiger has other ideas.

Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.

Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths, and encourage the arts and commerce.

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

Now we have a problem in making our power credible, and Vietnam is the place.

Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.

The human mind is our fundamental resource.

Man is still the most extraordinary computer of all.

Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind.

Modern cynics and skeptics… see no harm in paying those to whom they entrust the minds of their children a smaller wage than is paid to those to whom they entrust the care of their plumbing.

Mothers all want their sons to grow up to be president, but they don’t want them to become politicians in the process.

My brother Bob doesn’t want to be in government – he promised Dad he’d go straight.

My father always told me that all businessmen were sons of bitches, but I never believed it till now.

Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans – born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace.

We must use time as a tool, not as a couch.

Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.

War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.

Washington is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.

We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch – we are going back from whence we came.

We believe that if men have the talent to invent new machines that put men out of work, they have the talent to put those men back to work.

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.

We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world or to make it the last.

To state the facts frankly is not to despair the future nor indict the past. The prudent heir takes careful inventory of his legacies and gives a faithful accounting to those whom he owes an obligation of trust.

We prefer world law in the age of self-determination to world war in the age of mass extermination.

We stand today on the edge of a new frontier – the frontier of the 1960’s – a frontier of unknown opportunities and perils – a frontier of unfulfilled hopes and threats.

We would like to live as we once lived, but history will not permit it.

When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.

When we got into office, the thing that surprised me most was to find that things were just as bad as we’d been saying they were.

When written in Chinese, the word “crisis” is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.

We cannot expect that all nations will adopt like systems, for conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.

The world knows that America will never start a war. This generation of Americans has had enough of war and hate… we want to build a world of peace where the weak are secure and the strong are just.

Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one’s own beliefs. Rather it condemns the oppression or persecution of others.

The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all.

The path we have chosen for the present is full of hazards, as all paths are. The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission.

The pay is good and I can walk to work.

The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were.

The tax on capital gains directly affects investment decisions, the mobility and flow of risk capital… the ease or difficulty experienced by new ventures in obtaining capital, and thereby the strength and potential for growth in the economy.

The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.

The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty, and all forms of human life.

Too often we… enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.

There are many people in the world who really don’t understand-or say they don’t-what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin!

There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction.

There is always inequality in life. Some men are killed in a war and some men are wounded and some men never leave the country. Life is unfair.

Things do not happen. Things are made to happen.

Those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly.

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

The greater our knowledge increases the more our ignorance unfolds.

The United States has to move very fast to even stand still.

All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin. And therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words “Ich bin ein Berliner!”

For time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.

Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.

Domestic policy can only defeat us; foreign policy can kill us.

Do you realize the responsibility I carry? I’m the only person standing between Richard Nixon and the White House.

Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men.

Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.

Communism has never come to power in a country that was not disrupted by war or corruption, or both.

Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.

And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.

As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.

A young man who does not have what it takes to perform military service is not likely to have what it takes to make a living. Today’s military rejects include tomorrow’s hard-core unemployed.

A nation which has forgotten the quality of courage which in the past has been brought to public life is not as likely to insist upon or regard that quality in its chosen leaders today – and in fact we have forgotten.

A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.

A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on.

A child miseducated is a child lost.

In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility – I welcome it.

Unconditional war can no longer lead to unconditional victory. It can no longer serve to settle disputes… can no longer be of concern to great powers alone.

Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.

I think ‘Hail to the Chief’ has a nice ring to it.

America has tossed its cap over the wall of space.

Geography has made us neighbors. History has made us friends. Economics has made us partners, and necessity has made us allies. Those whom God has so joined together, let no man put asunder.

If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.

If anyone is crazy enough to want to kill a president of the United States, he can do it. All he must be prepared to do is give his life for the president’s.

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

I’m an idealist without illusions.

I’m always rather nervous about how you talk about women who are active in politics, whether they want to be talked about as women or as politicians.

I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered at the White House – with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.

If we cannot now end our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.

I look forward to a great future for America – a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose.

I just received the following wire from my generous Daddy; Dear Jack, Don’t buy a single vote more than is necessary. I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay for a landslide.

I hope that no American will waste his franchise and throw away his vote by voting either for me or against me solely on account of my religious affiliation. It is not relevant.

I don’t think the intelligence reports are all that hot. Some days I get more out of the New York Times.

I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris, and I have enjoyed it.

I am sorry to say that there is too much point to the wisecrack that life is extinct on other planets because their scientists were more advanced than ours.

In a very real sense, it will not be one man going to the moon it will be an entire nation. For all of us must work to put him there.

I am not the Catholic candidate for President. I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for President, who happens also to be a Catholic.

History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. To try to hold fast is to be swept aside.

28 January 2023 0 comment

Presidents

45 Jimmy Carter quotes

written by quotegal71

James Earl Carter Jr. is an American retired politician who served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981.

A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the 76th governor of Georgia from 1971 to 1975 and as a Georgia state senator from 1963 to 1967.

Since leaving office, Carter has remained engaged in political and social projects, receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his humanitarian work.

List of quotes

We must adjust to changing times and still hold to unchanging principles.

America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense human rights invented America.

Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. People have the right to expect that these wants will be provided for by this wisdom.

For this generation, ours, life is nuclear survival, liberty is human rights, the pursuit of happiness is a planet whose resources are devoted to the physical and spiritual nourishment of its inhabitants.

Globalization, as defined by rich people like us, is a very nice thing… you are talking about the Internet, you are talking about cell phones, you are talking about computers. This doesn’t affect two-thirds of the people of the world.

We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.

The best way to enhance freedom in other lands is to demonstrate here that our democratic system is worthy of emulation.

The experience of democracy is like the experience of life itself-always changing, infinite in its variety, sometimes turbulent and all the more valuable for having been tested by adversity.

There should be an honest attempt at the reconciliation of differences before resorting to combat.

To deal with individual human needs at the everyday level can be noble sometimes.

Unless both sides win, no agreement can be permanent.

War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.

We cannot be both the world’s leading champion of peace and the world’s leading supplier of the weapons of war.

We become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams.

We should live our lives as though Christ were coming this afternoon.

Sadat was a great and good man, and his most bitter and dangerous enemies were people who were obsessed with hatred for his peaceful goals.

What has happened at Guantanamo Bay… does not represent the will of the American people. I’m embarrassed about it, I think its wrong. I think it does give terrorists an unwarranted excuse to use the despicable means to hurt innocent people.

Whatever starts in California unfortunately has an inclination to spread.

You can do what you have to do, and sometimes you can do it even better than you think you can.

You can not divorce religious belief and public service. I’ve never detected any conflict between God’s will and my political duty. If you violate one, you violate the other.

You can’t divorce religious belief and public service I’ve never detected any conflict between God’s will and my political duty. If you violate one, you violate the other.

You just have to have a simple faith.

Aggression unopposed becomes a contagious disease.

We must make it clear that a platform of ‘I hate gay men and women’ is not a way to become president of the United States.

In this outward and physical ceremony we attest once again to the inner and spiritual strength of our Nation. As my high school teacher, Miss Julia Coleman, used to say: ‘We must adjust to changing times and still hold to unchanging principles.’

I hate to see complacency prevail in our lives when it’s so directly contrary to the teaching of Christ.

I have often wanted to drown my troubles, but I can’t get my wife to go swimming.

I look forward to these confrontations with the press to kind of balance up the nice and pleasant things that come to me as president.

I say to you quite frankly that the time for racial discrimination is over.

I think what’s going on in Guantanamo Bay and other places is a disgrace to the U.S.A. I wouldn’t say it’s the cause of terrorism, but it has given impetus and excuses to potential terrorists to lash out at our country and justify their despicable acts.

I thought then, and I think now, that the invasion of Iraq was unnecessary and unjust. And I think the premises on which it was launched were false.

I’ve looked on many women with lust. I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times. God knows I will do this and forgives me.

The awareness that health is dependent upon habits that we control makes us the first generation in history that to a large extent determines its own destiny.

If you’re totally illiterate and living on one dollar a day, the benefits of globalization never come to you.

Testing oneself is best when done alone.

It is difficult for the common good to prevail against the intense concentration of those who have a special interest, especially if the decisions are made behind locked doors.

It is good to realize that if love and peace can prevail on earth, and if we can teach our children to honor nature’s gifts, the joys and beauties of the outdoors will be here forever.

It’s not necessary to fear the prospect of failure but to be determined not to fail.

Like music and art, love of nature is a common language that can transcend political or social boundaries.

My decision to register women confirms what is already obvious throughout our society-that women are now providing all types of skills in every profession. The military should be no exception.

People make a big fuss over you when you’re President. But I’m very serious about doing everything I can to make sure that it doesn’t go to my head.

Republicans are men of narrow vision, who are afraid of the future.

Human rights is the soul of our foreign policy, because human rights is the very soul of our sense of nationhood.

If you fear making anyone mad, then you ultimately probe for the lowest common denominator of human achievement.

At the Carter Center we work with victims of oppression, and we give support to human rights heroes.

27 January 2023 0 comment

Presidents

91 Richard Nixon Quotes

written by quotegal71

Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was the 36th vice president from 1953 to 1961 under President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

His five years in the White House saw the reduction of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, détente with the Soviet Union and China, the first manned Moon landings, and the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency and Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Nixon’s second term ended early when he became the only president to resign from office, as a result of the Watergate scandal.

List of quotes

By the time you get dressed, drive out there, play 18 holes and come home, you’ve blown seven hours. There are better things you can do with your time.

I can take it. The tougher it gets, the cooler I get.

I can see clearly now… that I was wrong in not acting more decisively and more forthrightly in dealing with Watergate.

I brought myself down. I impeached myself by resigning.

I believe in the battle-whether it’s the battle of a campaign or the battle of this office, which is a continuing battle.

I am not a crook.

Finishing second in the Olympics gets you silver. Finishing second in politics gets you oblivion.

Don’t get the impression that you arouse my anger. You see, one can only be angry with those he respects.

Defeat doesn’t finish a man, quit does. A man is not finished when he’s defeated. He’s finished when he quits.

Castro couldn’t even go to the bathroom unless the Soviet Union put the nickel in the toilet.

As this long and difficult war ends, I would like to address a few special words to the American people: Your steadfastness in supporting our insistence on peace with honor has made peace with honor possible.

Any lady who is first lady likes being first lady. I don’t care what they say, they like it.

Any change is resisted because bureaucrats have a vested interest in the chaos in which they exist.

Americans admire a people who can scratch a desert and produce a garden. The Israelis have shown qualities that Americans identify with: guts, patriotism, idealism, a passion for freedom. I have seen it. I know. I believe that.

Always remember that others may hate you but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.

A public man must never forget that he loses his usefulness when he as an individual, rather than his policy, becomes the issue.

A man is not finished when he is defeated. He is finished when he quits.

I don’t know anything that builds the will to win better than competitive sports.

The mark of a true politician is that he is never at a loss for words because he is always half-expecting to be asked to make a speech.

Certainly in the next 50 years we shall see a woman president, perhaps sooner than you think. A woman can and should be able to do any political job that a man can do.

The American people are entitled to see the president and to hear his views directly, and not to see him only through the press.

The press is the enemy.

The presidency has many problems, but boredom is the least of them.

The more you stay in this kind of job, the more you realize that a public figure, a major public figure, is a lonely man.

The memory of that scene for me is like a frame of film forever frozen at that moment: the red carpet, the green lawn, the white house, the leaden sky. The new president and his first lady.

The greatest honor history can bestow is that of peacemaker.

The man who is aware of himself is henceforward independent; and he is never bored, and life is only too short, and he is steeped through and through with a profound yet temperate happiness.

Politics would be a helluva good business if it weren’t for the goddamned people.

The Cold War isn’t thawing; it is burning with a deadly heat. Communism isn’t sleeping; it is, as always, plotting, scheming, working, fighting.

Those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.

Tell them to send everything that can fly.

Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest men in national government too.

Solutions are not the answer.

Scrubbing floors and emptying bedpans has as much dignity as the Presidency.

Remember, always give your best. Never get discouraged. Never be petty. Always remember, others may hate you. But those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.

President Johnson and I have a lot in common. We were both born in small towns and we’re both fortunate in the fact that we think we married above ourselves.

The finest steel has to go through the hottest fire.

Well, I screwed it up real good, didn’t I?

I don’t think that a leader can control, to any great extent, his destiny. Very seldom can he step in and change the situation if the forces of history are running in another direction.

You’ve got to learn to survive a defeat. That’s when you develop character.

You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.

You must pursue this investigation of Watergate even if it leads to the president. I’m innocent. You’ve got to believe I’m innocent. If you don’t, take my job.

You must never be satisfied with losing. You must get angry, terribly angry, about losing. But the mark of the good loser is that he takes his anger out on himself and not his victorious opponents or on his teammates.

When the President does it, that means that it’s not illegal.

There are some people, you know, they think the way to be a big man is to shout and stomp and raise hell-and then nothing ever really happens. I’m not like that I never shoot blanks.

What starts the process, really, are laughs and slights and snubs when you are a kid. If your anger is deep enough and strong enough, you learn that you can change those attitudes by excellence, personal gut performance.

There will be no whitewash in the White House.

We must always remember that America is a great nation today not because of what government did for people but because of what people did for themselves and for one another.

We do not learn by inference and deduction and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy.

Watergate had become the center of the media’s universe, and during the remaining year of my presidency the media tried to force everything else to revolve around it.

Unless a president can protect the privacy of the advice he gets, he cannot get the advice he needs.

Under the doctrine of separation of powers, the manner in which the president personally exercises his assigned executive powers is not subject to questioning by another branch of government.

Tonight – to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans – I ask for your support.

Voters quickly forget what a man says.

When I retire I’m going to spend my evenings by the fireplace going through those boxes. There are things in there that ought to be burned.

I’m glad I’m not Brezhnev. Being the Russian leader in the Kremlin. You never know if someone’s tape recording what you say.

If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black and the white notes together.

If you take no risks, you will suffer no defeats. But if you take no risks, you win no victories.

We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another – until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices.

I gave ’em a sword. And they stuck it in, and they twisted it with relish. And I guess if I had been in their position, I’d have done the same thing.

If I were to make public these tapes, containing blunt and candid remarks on many different subjects, the confidentiality of the office of the president would always be suspect.

If an individual wants to be a leader and isn’t controversial, that means he never stood for anything.

In the long term we can hope that religion will change the nature of man and reduce conflict. But history is not encouraging in this respect. The bloodiest wars in history have been religious wars.

I’ve analyzed the best I can… and I have not found an impeachable offense, and therefore resignation is not an acceptable course.

If you think the United States has stood still, who built the largest shopping center in the world?

I wish I could give you a lot of advice, based on my experience of winning political debates. But I don’t have that experience. My only experience is at losing them.

I reject the cynical view that politics is a dirty business.

I played by the rules of politics as I found them.

I let the American people down.

I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is opposed to every instinct in my body. But as president I must put the interests of America first Therefore, I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow.

I have impeached myself by resigning.

People react to fear, not love; they don’t teach that in Sunday School, but it’s true.

I’ve never canceled a subscription to a newspaper because of bad cartoons or editorials. If that were the case, I wouldn’t have any newspapers or magazines to read.

My strong point, if I have a strong point, is performance. I always do more than I say. I always produce more than I promise.

People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook. I earned everything I’ve got.

Our chief justices have probably had more profound and lasting influence on their times and on the direction of the nation than most presidents.

Only if you have been in the deepest valley, can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain.

Once you get into this great stream of history, you can’t get out.

No event in American history is more misunderstood than the Vietnam War. It was misreported then, and it is misremembered now.

If we take the route of the permanent handout, the American character will itself be impoverished.

Never let your head hang down. Never give up and sit down and grieve. Find another way. And don’t pray when it rains if you don’t pray when the sun shines.

In the television age, the key distinction is between the candidate who can speak poetry and the one who can only speak prose.

My own view is that taping of conversations for historical purposes was a bad decision on the part of all the presidents. I don’t think Kennedy should have done it. I don’t think Johnson should have done it, and I don’t think we should have done it.

My concern today is not with the length of a person’s hair but with his conduct.

Life isn’t meant to be easy. It’s hard to take being on the top – or on the bottom. I guess I’m something of a fatalist. You have to have a sense of history, I think, to survive some of these things… Life is one crisis after another.

Let us move from the era of confrontation to the era of negotiation.

Let us begin by committing ourselves to the truth to see it like it is, and tell it like it is, to find the truth, to speak the truth, and to live the truth.

It’s a piece of cake until you get to the top. You find you can’t stop playing the game the way you’ve always played it.

It is necessary for me to establish a winner image. Therefore, I have to beat somebody.

It I talked about Watergate, I was described as struggling to free myself from the morass. If I did not talk about Watergate, I was accused of being out of touch with reality.

Never say no when a client asks for something, even if it is the moon. You can always try, and anyhow there is plenty of time afterwards to explain that it was not possible.

27 January 2023 0 comment

Philosophers

217 Friedrich Nietzsche quotes

written by quotegal71

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a German philosopher, prose poet, cultural critic, philologist, and composer whose work has exerted a profound influence on contemporary philosophy.

He began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy. He became the youngest person ever to hold the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel in 1869 at the age of 24.

Nietzsche resigned in 1879 due to health problems that plagued him most of his life; he completed much of his core writing in the following decade

List of quotes

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.

The best author will be the one who is ashamed to become a writer.

Love is not consolation. It is light.

Love matches, so called, have illusion for their father and need for their mother.

Madness is rare in individuals – but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule.

Many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory it too good.

Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen, few in pursuit of the goal.

Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species.

If a woman possesses manly virtues one should run away from her; and if she does not possess them she runs away from herself.

Judgments, value judgments concerning life, for or against, can in the last resort never be true: they possess value only as symptoms, they come into consideration only as symptoms – in themselves such judgments are stupidities.

The future influences the present just as much as the past.

The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.

The doer alone learneth.

The desire to annoy no one, to harm no one, can equally well be the sign of a just as of an anxious disposition.

The demand to be loved is the greatest of all arrogant presumptions.

The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.

Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual.

The lie is a condition of life.

In praise there is more obtrusiveness than in blame.

In the consciousness of the truth he has perceived, man now sees everywhere only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence and loathing seizes him.

In the course of history, men come to see that iron necessity is neither iron nor necessary.

In the last analysis, even the best man is evil: in the last analysis, even the best woman is bad.

Insanity in individuals is something rare – but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.

Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?

Love is blind; friendship closes its eyes.

It is always consoling to think of suicide: in that way one gets through many a bad night.

The bad gains respect through imitation, the good loses it especially in art.

It is good to express a thing twice right at the outset and so to give it a right foot and also a left one. Truth can surely stand on one leg, but with two it will be able to walk and get around.

It is impossible to suffer without making someone pay for it; every complaint already contains revenge.

It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.

It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.

It is not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, that the lover of knowledge is reluctant to step into its waters.

It is the most sensual men who need to flee women and torment their bodies.

It says nothing against the ripeness of a spirit that it has a few worms.

Is man one of God’s blunders? Or is God one of man’s blunders?

One should die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly.

The best weapon against an enemy is another enemy.

On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow.

Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it is even becoming mob.

One has to pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while one is still alive.

One may sometimes tell a lie, but the grimace that accompanies it tells the truth.

One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.

Nothing is beautiful, only man: on this piece of naivete rests all aesthetics, it is the first truth of aesthetics. Let us immediately add its second: nothing is ugly but degenerate man – the domain of aesthetic judgment is therewith defined.

One ought to hold on to one’s heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too.

Nothing has been purchased more dearly than the little bit of reason and sense of freedom which now constitutes our pride.

Our treasure lies in the beehive of our knowledge. We are perpetually on the way thither, being by nature winged insects and honey gatherers of the mind.

Our vanity is hardest to wound precisely when our pride has just been wounded.

People who have given us their complete confidence believe that they have a right to ours. The inference is false, a gift confers no rights.

Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.

Plato was a bore.

Regarding life, the wisest men of all ages have judged alike: it is worthless.

Rejoicing in our joy, not suffering over our suffering, makes someone a friend.

One often contradicts an opinion when what is uncongenial is really the tone in which it was conveyed.

In music the passions enjoy themselves.

The aphorism in which I am the first master among Germans, are the forms of “eternity”; my ambition is to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book – what everyone else does not say in a book.

The abdomen is the reason why man does not readily take himself to be a god.

The “kingdom of Heaven” is a condition of the heart – not something that comes “upon the earth” or “after death.”

That which does not kill us makes us stronger.

Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.

Success has always been a great liar.

Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood.

Some are made modest by great praise, others insolent.

Shared joys make a friend, not shared sufferings.

Sleeping is no mean art: for its sake one must stay awake all day.

I do not know what the spirit of a philosopher could more wish to be than a good dancer. For the dance is his ideal, also his fine art, finally also the only kind of piety he knows, his “divine service.”

Mystical explanations are thought to be deep; the truth is that they are not even shallow.

Necessity is not an established fact, but an interpretation.

No one lies so boldly as the man who is indignant.

Not necessity, not desire – no, the love of power is the demon of men. Let them have everything – health, food, a place to live, entertainment – they are and remain unhappy and low-spirited: for the demon waits and waits and will be satisfied.

Not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, does the enlightened man dislike to wade into its waters.

Stupid as a man, say the women: cowardly as a woman, say the men. Stupidity in a woman is unwomanly.

And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.

All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth come only from the senses.

Before the effect one believes in different causes than one does after the effect.

At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid.

Art raises its head where creeds relax.

Art is the proper task of life.

Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest.

Blessed are the forgetful: for they get the better even of their blunders.

Anyone who has declared someone else to be an idiot, a bad apple, is annoyed when it turns out in the end that he isn’t.

Character is determined more by the lack of certain experiences than by those one has had.

And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.

An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.

Although the most acute judges of the witches and even the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt of witchery, the guilt nevertheless was non-existent. It is thus with all guilt.

All truth is simple… is that not doubly a lie?

All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.

All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.

I still live, I still think: I still have to live, for I still have to think.

Arrogance on the part of the meritorious is even more offensive to us than the arrogance of those without merit: for merit itself is offensive.

Existence really is an imperfect tense that never becomes a present.

Genteel women suppose that those things do not really exist about which it is impossible to talk in polite company.

For the woman, the man is a means: the end is always the child.

For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication.

Fear is the mother of morality.

Fanatics are picturesque, mankind would rather see gestures than listen to reasons.

Faith: not wanting to know what is true.

Behind all their personal vanity, women themselves always have an impersonal contempt for woman.

Experience, as a desire for experience, does not come off. We must not study ourselves while having an experience.

Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent.

‘Evil men have no songs.’ How is it that the Russians have songs?

Every man is a creative cause of what happens, a primum mobile with an original movement.

Every church is a stone on the grave of a god-man: it does not want him to rise up again under any circumstances.

Egoism is the very essence of a noble soul.

Does wisdom perhaps appear on the earth as a raven which is inspired by the smell of carrion?

Do whatever you will, but first be such as are able to will.

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

Extreme positions are not succeeded by moderate ones, but by contrary extreme positions.

If there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to condemn.

All sciences are now under the obligation to prepare the ground for the future task of the philosopher, which is to solve the problem of value, to determine the true hierarchy of values.

He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.

Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.

I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage.

I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.

Glance into the world just as though time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you.

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.

I would believe only in a God that knows how to Dance.

The most common lie is that which one lies to himself; lying to others is relatively an exception.

If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.

Idleness is the parent of psychology.

In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play.

In everything one thing is impossible: rationality.

In heaven, all the interesting people are missing.

In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.

I love those who do not know how to live for today.

A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.

After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands.

Admiration for a quality or an art can be so strong that it deters us from striving to possess it.

A woman may very well form a friendship with a man, but for this to endure, it must be assisted by a little physical antipathy.

A subject for a great poet would be God’s boredom after the seventh day of creation.

A pair of powerful spectacles has sometimes sufficed to cure a person in love.

A great value of antiquity lies in the fact that its writings are the only ones that modern men still read with exactness.

He who laughs best today, will also laughs last.

A friend should be a master at guessing and keeping still: you must not want to see everything.

In large states public education will always be mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually bad.

Go up close to your friend, but do not go over to him! We should also respect the enemy in our friend.

God is a thought who makes crooked all that is straight.

Great indebtedness does not make men grateful, but vengeful; and if a little charity is not forgotten, it turns into a gnawing worm.

He that humbleth himself wishes to be exalted.

He who cannot give anything away cannot feel anything either.

The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?

A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.

What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself in man.

We hear only those questions for which we are in a position to find answers.

When one has a great deal to put into it a day has a hundred pockets.

When one does away with oneself one does the most estimable thing possible: one thereby almost deserves to live.

When marrying, ask yourself this question: Do you believe that you will be able to converse well with this person into your old age? Everything else in marriage is transitory.

When art dresses in worn-out material it is most easily recognized as art.

When a hundred men stand together, each of them loses his mind and gets another one.

Whatever is done for love always occurs beyond good and evil.

When one has not had a good father, one must create one.

The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it.

When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

What does not destroy me, makes me stronger.

What do you regard as most humane? To spare someone shame.

What do I care about the purring of one who cannot love, like the cat?

What can everyone do? Praise and blame. This is human virtue, this is human madness.

We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.

We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us.

We love life, not because we are used to living but because we are used to loving.

What? You seek something? You wish to multiply yourself tenfold, a hundredfold? You seek followers? Seek zeros!

Whoever has witnessed another’s ideal becomes his inexorable judge and as it were his evil conscience.

The press, the machine, the railway, the telegraph are premises whose thousand-year conclusion no one has yet dared to draw.

You say it is the good cause that hallows even war? I say unto you: it is the good war that hallows any cause.

You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.

You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.

Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us; nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth.

Women are considered deep – why? Because one can never discover any bottom to them. Women are not even shallow.

Woman was God’s second mistake.

When one has finished building one’s house, one suddenly realizes that in the process one has learned something that one really needed to know in the worst way – before one began.

Wit is the epitaph of an emotion.

What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.

Whoever has provoked men to rage against him has always gained a party in his favor, too.

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

Whoever feels predestined to see and not to believe will find all believers too noisy and pushy: he guards against them.

Whoever does not have a good father should procure one.

Whoever despises himself nonetheless respects himself as one who despises.

Whoever battles with monsters had better see that it does not turn him into a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called ‘Ego’.

Without music, life would be a mistake.

There are people who want to make men’s lives more difficult for no other reason than the chance it provides them afterwards to offer their prescription for alleviating life; their Christianity, for instance.

There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.

There is in general good reason to suppose that in several respects the gods could all benefit from instruction by us human beings. We humans are – more humane.

There are slavish souls who carry their appreciation for favors done them so far that they strangle themselves with the rope of gratitude.

There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.

There cannot be a God because if there were one, I could not believe that I was not He.

There are various eyes. Even the Sphinx has eyes: and as a result there are various truths, and as a result there is no truth.

There is not enough love and goodness in the world to permit giving any of it away to imaginary beings.

What then in the last resort are the truths of mankind? They are the irrefutable errors of mankind.

There is an innocence in admiration; it is found in those to whom it has never yet occurred that they, too, might be admired some day.

There are no moral phenomena at all, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena.

There are no facts, only interpretations.

There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths.

There are horrible people who, instead of solving a problem, tangle it up and make it harder to solve for anyone who wants to deal with it. Whoever does not know how to hit the nail on the head should be asked not to hit it at all.

The world itself is the will to power – and nothing else! And you yourself are the will to power – and nothing else!

The word “Christianity” is already a misunderstanding – in reality there has been only one Christian, and he died on the Cross.

The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.

We have art in order not to die of the truth.

To forget one’s purpose is the commonest form of stupidity.

We do not hate as long as we still attach a lesser value, but only when we attach an equal or a greater value.

War has always been the grand sagacity of every spirit which has grown too inward and too profound; its curative power lies even in the wounds one receives.

Undeserved praise causes more pangs of conscience later than undeserved blame, but probably only for this reason, that our power of judgment are more completely exposed by being over praised than by being unjustly underestimated.

Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity.

Today I love myself as I love my god: who could charge me with a sin today? I know only sins against my god; but who knows my god?

To use the same words is not a sufficient guarantee of understanding; one must use the same words for the same genus of inward experience; ultimately one must have one’s experiences in common.

There is a rollicking kindness that looks like malice.

To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.

There is not enough religion in the world even to destroy religion.

This is the hardest of all: to close the open hand out of love, and keep modest as a giver.

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.

These people abstain, it is true: but the bitch Sensuality glares enviously out of all they do.

To be ashamed of one’s immorality: that is a step on the staircase at whose end one is also ashamed of one’s morality.

This is what is hardest: to close the open hand because one loves.

Those who cannot understand how to put their thoughts on ice should not enter into the heat of debate.

Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings – always darker, emptier and simpler.

There is nothing we like to communicate to others as much as the seal of secrecy together with what lies under it.

27 January 2023 0 comment

Philosophers

142 great aristotle quotes

written by quotegal71

Aristotle was an Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath.

His writings cover a broad range of subjects including physics, biology, zoology, metaphysics, logic, ethics, aesthetics, poetry, drama, music, rhetoric, psychology, linguistics, economics, politics, meteorology, geology, and government.

As the founder of the Peripatetic school of philosophy in the Lyceum in Athens, he began the wider Aristotelian tradition that followed, which set the groundwork for the development of modern science.

List of quotes

The law is reason, free from passion.

The best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake.

The beginning of reform is not so much to equalize property as to train the noble sort of natures not to desire more, and to prevent the lower from getting more.

The end of labor is to gain leisure.

The energy of the mind is the essence of life.

The generality of men are naturally apt to be swayed by fear rather than reverence, and to refrain from evil rather because of the punishment that it brings than because of its own foulness.

The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead.

The gods too are fond of a joke.

The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances.

The most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control, and outnumbers both of the other classes.

The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.

The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.

The one exclusive sign of thorough knowledge is the power of teaching.

The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.

The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons.

Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.

Of all the varieties of virtues, liberalism is the most beloved.

Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.

The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.

Perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are good, and alike in excellence; for these wish well alike to each other qua good, and they are good in themselves.

No one would choose a friendless existence on condition of having all the other things in the world.

Piety requires us to honor truth above our friends.

Personal beauty is a greater recommendation than any letter of reference.

Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.

Politicians also have no leisure, because they are always aiming at something beyond political life itself, power and glory, or happiness.

Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.

Quality is not an act, it is a habit.

Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.

Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility but through greatness of mind.

Temperance is a mean with regard to pleasures.

Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth.

Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit.

What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do.

We make war that we may live in peace.

We must no more ask whether the soul and body are one than ask whether the wax and the figure impressed on it are one.

We praise a man who feels angry on the right grounds and against the right persons and also in the right manner at the right moment and for the right length of time.

Well begun is half done.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition to virtue and the performance of virtuous actions.

To run away from trouble is a form of cowardice and, while it is true that the suicide braves death, he does it not for some noble object but to escape some ill.

Wit is educated insolence.

Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.

You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.

Youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope.

Happiness depends upon ourselves.

No one loves the man whom he fears.

What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.

There is no great genius without a mixture of madness.

The soul never thinks without a picture.

The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.

The virtue of justice consists in moderation, as regulated by wisdom.

The whole is more than the sum of its parts.

The wise man does not expose himself needlessly to danger, since there are few things for which he cares sufficiently; but he is willing, in great crises, to give even his life – knowing that under certain conditions it is not worthwhile to live.

We become just by performing just action, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave action.

The young are permanently in a state resembling intoxication.

The secret to humor is surprise.

There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.

Therefore, the good of man must be the end of the science of politics.

Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach.

Those who educate children well are more to be honored than they who produce them; for these only gave them life, those the art of living well.

Those who excel in virtue have the best right of all to rebel, but then they are of all men the least inclined to do so.

Thou wilt find rest from vain fancies if thou doest every act in life as though it were thy last.

The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.

Excellence, then, is a state concerned with choice, lying in a mean, relative to us, this being determined by reason and in the way in which the man of practical wisdom would determine it.

Democracy arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.

Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.

Different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means, and so make for themselves different modes of life and forms of government.

Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in deserving them.

Education is an ornament in prosperity and a refuge in adversity.

Education is the best provision for old age.

Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered.

A friend to all is a friend to none.

Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.

Character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion.

Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil.

For as the eyes of bats are to the blaze of day, so is the reason in our soul to the things which are by nature most evident of all.

For one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy.

For though we love both the truth and our friends, piety requires us to honor the truth first.

Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies.

Friendship is essentially a partnership.

No notice is taken of a little evil, but when it increases it strikes the eye.

Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.

A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.

He who hath many friends hath none.

Bashfulness is an ornament to youth, but a reproach to old age.

Bad men are full of repentance.

At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.

Anybody can become angry – that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way – that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.

All virtue is summed up in dealing justly.

All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.

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

All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.

Courage is a mean with regard to fear and confidence.

A true friend is one soul in two bodies.

A tragedy is a representation of an action that is whole and complete and of a certain magnitude. A whole is what has a beginning and middle and end.

A sense is what has the power of receiving into itself the sensible forms of things without the matter, in the way in which a piece of wax takes on the impress of a signet-ring without the iron or gold.

A great city is not to be confounded with a populous one.

Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms.

Bring your desires down to your present means. Increase them only when your increased means permit.

Change in all things is sweet.

He who can be, and therefore is, another’s, and he who participates in reason enough to apprehend, but not to have, is a slave by nature.

All men by nature desire knowledge.

Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form but with regard to their mode of life.

Good habits formed at youth make all the difference.

It is not once nor twice but times without number that the same ideas make their appearance in the world.

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims.

Jealousy is both reasonable and belongs to reasonable men, while envy is base and belongs to the base, for the one makes himself get good things by jealousy, while the other does not allow his neighbour to have them through envy.

Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.

Man is by nature a political animal.

It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.

Men are swayed more by fear than by reverence.

It is clearly better that property should be private, but the use of it common; and the special business of the legislator is to create in men this benevolent disposition.

Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.

Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.

Most people would rather give than get affection.

Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own.

My best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake.

Nature does nothing in vain.

No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.

No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness.

Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting in a particular way.

If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in government to the utmost.

A constitution is the arrangement of magistracies in a state.

He who is to be a good ruler must have first been ruled.

He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.

Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.

Homer has taught all other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.

Hope is a waking dream.

Hope is the dream of a waking man.

It is just that we should be grateful, not only to those with whose views we may agree, but also to those who have expressed more superficial views; for these also contributed something, by developing before us the powers of thought.

I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.

If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is nature’s way.

In a democracy the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme.

In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.

In making a speech one must study three points: first, the means of producing persuasion; second, the language; third the proper arrangement of the various parts of the speech.

In nine cases out of ten, a woman had better show more affection than she feels.

In poverty and other misfortunes of life, true friends are a sure refuge. The young they keep out of mischief; to the old they are a comfort and aid in their weakness, and those in the prime of life they incite to noble deeds.

Inferiors revolt in order that they may be equal, and equals that they may be superior. Such is the state of mind which creates revolutions.

It is best to rise from life as from a banquet, neither thirsty nor drunken.

I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self.

27 January 2023 0 comment

Comedians

31 Robin Williams Quotes

written by quotegal71

Robin Williams was an American actor and comedian. Known for his improvisational skills^[1]^[2] and the wide variety of characters he created on the spur of the moment and portrayed on film, in dramas and comedies alike,^[3]^[4] he is regarded as one of the greatest comedians of all time.

Williams began performing stand-up comedy in San Francisco and Los Angeles during the mid-1970s and rose to fame playing the alien Mork in the ABC sitcom Mork & Mindy (1978–1982).^[9] After his first leading film role in Popeye (1980), he starred in several critically and commercially successful films, including The World According to Garp (1982), Moscow on the Hudson (1984), Good Morning, Vietnam (1987), Dead Poets Society (1989), Awakenings (1990), The Fisher King (1991), Patch Adams (1998), One Hour Photo (2002), and World’s Greatest Dad (2009).

He also starred in box office successes such as Hook (1991), Aladdin (1992), Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), Jumanji (1995), The Birdcage (1996), Good Will Hunting (1997), and the Night at the Museum trilogy (2006–2014).

He was nominated for four Academy Awards, winning Best Supporting Actor for Good Will Hunting. He also received two Primetime Emmy Awards, six Golden Globe Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and five Grammy Awards.

List of quotes

Do you think God gets stoned? I think so… look at the platypus.

Ah, yes, divorce… from the Latin word meaning to rip out a man’s genitals through his wallet.

Carpe per diem – seize the check.

Cricket is basically baseball on valium.

Gentiles are people who eat mayonnaise for no reason.

The Statue of Liberty is no longer saying, ‘Give me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses.’ She’s got a baseball bat and yelling, ‘You want a piece of me?’

You’re only given a little spark of madness. You mustn’t lose it.

You’ll notice that Nancy Reagan never drinks water when Ronnie speaks.

Why do they call it rush hour when nothing moves?

When you look at Prince Charles, don’t you think that someone in the Royal family knew someone in the Royal family?

When the media ask George W. Bush a question, he answers, ‘Can I use a lifeline?’

When in doubt, go for the dick joke.

What’s right is what’s left if you do everything else wrong.

We’ve had cloning in the South for years. It’s called cousins.

Comedy is acting out optimism.

We had gay burglars the other night. They broke in and rearranged the furniture.

I believe Ronald Reagan can make this country what it once was… a large Arctic region covered with ice.

The Second Amendment says we have the right to bear arms, not to bear artillery.

The Russians love Brooke Shields because her eyebrows remind them of Leonid Brezhnev.

If women ran the world we wouldn’t have wars, just intense negotiations every 28 days.

I like my wine like my women – ready to pass out.

We have a president for whom English is a second language. He’s like ‘We have to get rid of dictators,’ but he’s pretty much one himself.

If it’s the Psychic Network why do they need a phone number?

I’m sorry, if you were right, I’d agree with you.

Never pick a fight with an ugly person, they’ve got nothing to lose.

No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world.

People say satire is dead. It’s not dead; it’s alive and living in the White House.

Reality is just a crutch for people who can’t cope with drugs.

Reality: What a concept!

See, the problem is that God gives men a brain and a penis, and only enough blood to run one at a time.

Spring is nature’s way of saying, “Let’s party!”

27 January 2023 0 comment

Comedians

37 David Letterman Quotes

written by quotegal71

David Letterman is an American television host, comedian, writer, and producer. He hosted late-night television talk shows for 33 years, beginning with February 1, 1982, debut of Late Night with David Letterman on NBC and ending with the May 20, 2015, broadcast of Late Show with David Letterman on CBS.

In total, Letterman hosted 6,080 episodes of Late Night and Late Show, surpassing his friend and mentor Johnny Carson as the longest-serving late-night talk show host in American television history. In 1996, Letterman was ranked 45th on TV Guide‘s 50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time.

In 2002, The Late Show with David Letterman was ranked seventh on TV Guide’s 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time.

List of quotes

The White House is giving George W. Bush intelligence briefings. You know, some of these jokes just write themselves.

The weather here is gorgeous. It’s mild and feels like it’s in the eighties. The hot dog vendors got confused because of the weather and thought it was spring, so they accidentally changed the hot dog water in their carts.

The big debate right now is if Saddam is alive or dead. He’s dead, then he’s alive, then dead, then alive. It’s just confusing. Today they showed videotape, and Saddam was speaking at his own funeral.

President Bush says he needs a month off to unwind. Unwind? When the hell does this guy wind?

President Bush has said that he does not need approval from the UN to wage war, and I’m thinking, well, hell, he didn’t need the approval of the American voters to become president, either.

The worst tempered people I have ever met were those who knew that they were wrong.

People say New Yorkers can’t get along. Not true. I saw two New Yorkers, complete strangers, sharing a cab. One guy took the tires and the radio; the other guy took the engine.

We have defeated Saddam Hussein and Iraq. The good news is Iraq is ours, and the bad news is Iraq is ours.

President Bush has been silent on Schwarzenegger. Of course, he can’t pronounce Schwarzenegger.

There is no off position on the genius switch.

There’s no business like show business, but there are several businesses like accounting.

No one knows if Saddam is still alive. They keep showing old footage of him on TV saying that it’s live. You know, it’s like the same thing we do with Dick Cheney.

USA Today has come out with a new survey – apparently, three out of every four people make up 75% of the population.

It’s so warm now, and Thanksgiving came so early – is it just me, or does it not really feel like Ramadan?

We inadvertently bombed the Chinese Embassy. But Clinton now is working very hard. He has sent a letter of apology to the Chinese. And, he’s also given them a gift certificate for future nuclear secrets.

We make a lot of fun at President Clinton’s expense. But this transition is going to be tough because it’s been 25 years since this guy has gotten laid in the private sector.

Wherever we’ve travelled in this great land of ours, we’ve found that people everywhere are about 90% water.

Traffic signals in New York are just rough guidelines.

I cannot sing, dance or act; what else would I be but a talk show host.

A lot of folks are still demanding more evidence before they actually consider Iraq a threat. For example, France wants more evidence. And you know I’m thinking, the last time France wanted more evidence they rolled right through Paris with the German flag.

Congratulations are in order for Woody Allen – he and Soon Yi have a brand new baby daughter. It’s all part of Woody’s plan to grow his own wives.

Dick Cheney said he was running again. He said his health was fine, ‘I’ve got a doctor with me 24 hours a day.’ Yeah, that’s always the sign of a man in good health, isn’t it?

Don’t forget it’s daylight savings time. You spring forward, then you fall back. It’s like Robert Downey Jr. getting out of bed.

Experts say that Iraq may have nuclear weapons. That’s bad news – they may have a nuclear bomb. Now the good news is that they have to drop it with a camel.

Fall is my favorite season in Los Angeles, watching the birds change color and fall from the trees.

New York now leads the world’s great cities in the number of people around whom you shouldn’t make a sudden move.

Here’s a little known fact – Arnold is the first body builder to run for governor since Janet Reno.

Next in importance to having a good aim is to recognize when to pull the trigger.

I had no idea this thing was televised. Boy, is my face red.

I know these jokes aren’t great, ladies and gentlemen, see this is the problem you run into when you’re between impeachments.

Iraq’s elite Republican Guard is doing so badly they’re changing their name to the Democratic Guard.

It’s official, Arnold said he will enter the race for governor. At least that’s what everybody thinks he said.

Last night the United States dropped four 2,000 pound bombs on Saddam Hussein. I don’t know anything about explosives, but, my God, do those things even need to explode?

Yesterday Senator John Kerry changed his mind and now supports the ban on gay marriages. I’m telling you this guy has more positions than Paris Hilton.

New York… when civilization falls apart, remember, we were way ahead of you.

For the love of God, folks, don’t try this at home.

I’m just trying to make a smudge on the collective unconscious.

27 January 2023 0 comment

Comedians

54 quotes from the great George Carlin

written by quotegal71

George Carlin was an American comedian, actor, author, and social critic.

Regarded as one of the most important and influential stand-up comedians of all time, he was dubbed “the dean of counterculture comedians”. He was known for his black comedy and reflections on politics, the English language, psychology, religion, and taboo subjects.

The first of Carlin’s 14 stand-up comedy specials for HBO was filmed in 1977, and broadcast as George Carlin at USC. From the late 1980s onwards, his routines focused on sociocultural criticism of American society. He often commented on American political issues and satirized American culture. In 2008, he was posthumously awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. In 2004, he placed second on Comedy Central’s list of top 10 American comedians.

In 2017, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him second (behind Richard Pryor) on its list of the 50 best stand-up comedians of all time

Processed By eBay with ImageMagick, z1.1.0. ||B2

List of quotes

If you can’t beat them, arrange to have them beaten.

Just cause you got the monkey off your back doesn’t mean the circus has left town.

In comic strips, the person on the left always speaks first.

If we could just find out who’s in charge, we could kill him.

If it’s true that our species is alone in the universe, then I’d have to say the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little.

I’m not concerned about all hell breaking loose, but that a PART of hell will break loose… it’ll be much harder to detect.

I’m completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.

I’m always relieved when someone is delivering a eulogy and I realize I’m listening to it.

I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, “Where’s the self-help section?” She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.

I was thinking about how people seem to read the Bible a whole lot more as they get older; then it dawned on me – they’re cramming for their final exam.

I think people should be allowed to do anything they want. We haven’t tried that for a while. Maybe this time it’ll work.

I think it would be interesting if old people got anti-Alzheimer’s disease where they slowly began to recover other people’s lost memories.

I recently went to a new doctor and noticed he was located in something called the Professional Building. I felt better right away.

I have as much authority as the Pope, I just don’t have as many people who believe it.

“I am” is reportedly the shortest sentence in the English language. Could it be that “I do” is the longest sentence?

I would never want to be a member of a group whose symbol was a guy nailed to two pieces of wood.

Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.

You know an odd feeling? Sitting on the toilet eating a chocolate candy bar.

Well, if crime fighters fight crime and fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight? They never mention that part to us, do they?

There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls.

There’s no present. There’s only the immediate future and the recent past.

Think off-center.

Weather forecast for tonight: dark.

What does it mean to pre-board? Do you get on before you get on?

When someone is impatient and says, “I haven’t got all day,” I always wonder, How can that be? How can you not have all day?

When Thomas Edison worked late into the night on the electric light, he had to do it by gas lamp or candle. I’m sure it made the work seem that much more urgent.

When you’re born you get a ticket to the freak show. When you’re born in America, you get a front row seat.

The reason I talk to myself is that I’m the only one whose answers I accept.

You know the good part about all those executions in Texas? Fewer Texans.

When you step on the brakes your life is in your foot’s hands.

Not only do I not know what’s going on, I wouldn’t know what to do about it if I did.

The very existence of flame-throwers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I’m just not close enough to get the job done.

Most people work just hard enough not to get fired and get paid just enough money not to quit.

The status quo sucks.

One can never know for sure what a deserted area looks like.

One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor.

People who say they don’t care what people think are usually desperate to have people think they don’t care what people think.

Religion is just mind control.

Some people see things that are and ask, Why? Some people dream of things that never were and ask, Why not? Some people have to go to work and don’t have time for all that.

Standing ovations have become far too commonplace. What we need are ovations where the audience members all punch and kick one another.

The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live.

The other night I ate at a real nice family restaurant. Every table had an argument going.

May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house.

Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity.

Atheism is a non-prophet organization.

By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth.

Death is caused by swallowing small amounts of saliva over a long period of time.

Don’t sweat the petty things and don’t pet the sweaty things.

Always do whatever’s next.

Electricity is really just organized lightning.

Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck.

At a formal dinner party, the person nearest death should always be seated closest to the bathroom.

Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?

Dusting is a good example of the futility of trying to put things right. As soon as you dust, the fact of your next dusting has already been established.

27 January 2023 0 comment

Events

57 New Years Day quotes

written by quotegal71

title	author
First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.	F. Scott Fitzgerald
I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re doing something.	Neil Gaiman
Let our New Year’s resolution be this: we will be there for one another as fellow members of humanity, in the finest sense of the word.	Goran Persson
Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come, whispering, ‘It will be happier.’	Alfred Lord Tennyson
Celebrate what you want to see more of.	Tom Peters
If you asked me for my New Year Resolution, it would be to find out who I am.	Cyril Cusack
Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.	Ralph Waldo Emerson
The new year stands before us, like a chapter in a book, waiting to be written. We can help write that story by setting goals.	Melody Beattie
And now we welcome the new year. Full of things that have never been.	Rainer Maria Rilke
Take a leap of faith and begin this wondrous new year by believing. Believe in yourself. And believe that there is a loving Source – a Sower of Dreams – just waiting to be asked to help you make your dreams come true.	Sarah Ban Breathnach
Strange to see how a good dinner and feasting reconciles everybody.	Samuel Pepys
Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.	Benjamin Franklin
At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.	W. Somerset Maugham
New Year’s Resolution: To tolerate fools more gladly, provided this does not encourage them to take up more of my time.	James Agate
Character is the ability to carry out a good resolution long after the excitement of the moment has passed.	Cavett Robert
Resolution One: I will live for God. Resolution Two: If no one else does, I still will.	Jonathan Edwards
Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right.	Oprah Winfrey
Accept what people offer. Drink their milkshakes. Take their love.	Wally Lamb
All of us every single year, we’re a different person. I don’t think we’re the same person all our lives.	Steven Spielberg
I know. I’m lazy. But I made myself a New Years resolution that I would write myself something really special. Which means I have ’til December, right?	Catherine O’Hara
Year’s end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us.	Hal Borland
I had a New Year’s kiss once. But it was like, ‘Let’s start the year off together,’ and then we wound up breaking up the night after!	Joe Jonas
My New Year’s resolution is to stick to a good workout plan that will keep me healthy and happy.	James Lafferty
Every time you tear a leaf off a calendar, you present a new place for new ideas and progress.	Charles Kettering
New Year’s Day. A fresh start. A new chapter in life waiting to be written. New questions to be asked, embraced, and loved. Answers to be discovered and then lived in this transformative year of delight and self-discovery. Today carve out a quiet interlude for yourself in which to dream, pen in hand. Only dreams give birth to change.	Sarah Ban Breathnach
New Year’s Day is every man’s birthday.	Charles Lamb
The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.	Gilbert K. Chesterton
I think in terms of the day’s resolutions, not the years’.	Henry Moore
A year from now, you’re gonna weigh more or less than what you do right now.	Phil McGraw
To be an ideal guest, stay at home.	E. W. Howe
If you are young and you drink a great deal it will spoil your health, slow your mind, make you fat – in other words, turn you into an adult.	P. J. O’Rourke
My New Year’s Resolution List usually starts with the desire to lose between ten and three thousand pounds.	Nia Vardalos
Deep breaths are very helpful at shallow parties.	Barbara Walters
Your success and happiness lies in you. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.	Helen Keller
Dick Clark will be truly missed. We will carry on his legacy every New Year’s Eve.	Fergie
I’ve had some lovely extraordinary experiences on New Year’s Eve.	Debbie Harry
What I like to drink most is wine that belongs to others.	Diogenes
I don’t even drink! I can’t stand the taste of alcohol. Every New Year’s Eve I try one drink and every time it makes me feel sick. So I don’t touch booze – I’m always the designated driver.	Kim Kardashian
Make New Year’s goals. Dig within, and discover what you would like to have happen in your life this year. This helps you do your part. It is an affirmation that you’re interested in fully living life in the year to come.	Melody Beattie
What is there more kindly than the feeling between host and guest?	Aeschylus
Going to a party, for me, is as much a learning experience as, you know, sitting in a lecture.	Natalie Portman
Sometimes too much to drink is barely enough.	Mark Twain
Good parties create a temporary youthfulness.	Mason Cooley
Each age has deemed the new-born year the fittest time for festal cheer.	Walter Scott
I doubt if you can have a truly wild party without liquor.	Carl Sandburg
If you want an interesting party sometime, combine cocktails and a fresh box of crayons for everyone.	Robert Fulghum
I have no way of knowing how people really feel, but the vast majority of those I meet couldn’t be nicer. Every once in a while someone barks at me. My New Year’s resolution is not to bark back.	Tucker Carlson
Ring out the false, ring in the true.	Alfred Lord Tennyson
And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief, and the year smiles as it draws near its death.	William Cullen Bryant
I never worry about being driven to drink; I just worry about being driven home.	W. C. Fields
My parents used to throw great New Year’s Eve parties. They invited such an eclectic mix of showbiz people. All those cool people were always hanging out at our apartment.	Ben Stiller
Come, gentlemen, I hope we shall drink down all unkindness.	William Shakespeare
Those who gave thee a body, furnished it with weakness; but He who gave thee Soul, armed thee with resolution. Employ it, and thou art wise; be wise and thou art happy.	Akhenaton
I like to go to parties where I know everyone. How are you going to have fun with people you don’t know?	Mary-Kate Olsen
Dinner was made for eating, not for talking.	William Makepeace Thackeray
To have the kind of year you want to have, something has to happen that you can’t explain why it happened. Something has to happen that you can’t coach.	Bobby Bowden

27 January 2023 0 comment

Collections

274 motivational quotes

written by quotegal71

title	author
It always seems impossible until it’s done.	Nelson Mandela
If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.	Jim Rohn
If you fell down yesterday, stand up today.	H. G. Wells
With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.	Eleanor Roosevelt
Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after the other.	Walter Elliot
A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.	George S. Patton
When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on.	Franklin D. Roosevelt
Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it.	Dwight D. Eisenhower
Expect problems and eat them for breakfast.	Alfred A. Montapert
Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.	Charles R. Swindoll
If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths, rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success.	John D. Rockefeller
Good, better, best. Never let it rest. ‘Til your good is better and your better is best.	St. Jerome
When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.	Elon Musk
I learned that we can do anything, but we can’t do everything… at least not at the same time. So think of your priorities not in terms of what activities you do, but when you do them. Timing is everything.	Dan Millman
Quality is not an act, it is a habit.	Aristotle
Don’t watch the clock; do what it does. Keep going.	Sam Levenson
If you can dream it, you can do it.	Walt Disney
Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.	Arthur Ashe
Every exit is an entry somewhere else.	Tom Stoppard
I don’t believe you have to be better than everybody else. I believe you have to be better than you ever thought you could be.	Ken Venturi
The will to succeed is important, but what’s more important is the will to prepare.	Bobby Knight
Failure will never overtake me if my determination to succeed is strong enough.	Og Mandino
Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.	Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Even if you fall on your face, you’re still moving forward.	Victor Kiam
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.	Samuel Beckett
Set your goals high, and don’t stop till you get there.	Bo Jackson
There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.	Aldous Huxley
In order to succeed, we must first believe that we can.	Nikos Kazantzakis
Change your life today. Don’t gamble on the future, act now, without delay.	Simone de Beauvoir
The first step toward success is taken when you refuse to be a captive of the environment in which you first find yourself.	Mark Caine
Problems are not stop signs, they are guidelines.	Robert H. Schuller
No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.	William Blake
Either I will find a way, or I will make one.	Philip Sidney
Aim for the moon. If you miss, you may hit a star.	W. Clement Stone
Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.	Dalai Lama
Only I can change my life. No one can do it for me.	Carol Burnett
You simply have to put one foot in front of the other and keep going. Put blinders on and plow right ahead.	George Lucas
Decide what you want, decide what you are willing to exchange for it. Establish your priorities and go to work.	H. L. Hunt
I am not afraid… I was born to do this.	Joan of Arc
You just can’t beat the person who never gives up.	Babe Ruth
You can never quit. Winners never quit, and quitters never win.	Ted Turner
I really believe that everyone has a talent, ability, or skill that he can mine to support himself and to succeed in life.	Dean Koontz
Opportunity does not knock, it presents itself when you beat down the door.	Kyle Chandler
Without hard work, nothing grows but weeds.	Gordon B. Hinckley
I attribute my success to this – I never gave or took any excuse.	Florence Nightingale
I can, therefore I am.	Simone Weil
Where there is a will, there is a way. If there is a chance in a million that you can do something, anything, to keep what you want from ending, do it. Pry the door open or, if need be, wedge your foot in that door and keep it open.	Pauline Kael
You will never win if you never begin.	Helen Rowland
Never retreat. Never explain. Get it done and let them howl.	Benjamin Jowett
Infuse your life with action. Don’t wait for it to happen. Make it happen. Make your own future. Make your own hope. Make your own love. And whatever your beliefs, honor your creator, not by passively waiting for grace to come down from upon high, but by doing what you can to make grace happen… yourself, right now, right down here on Earth.	Bradley Whitford
Leap, and the net will appear.	John Burroughs
Perseverance is failing 19 times and succeeding the 20th.	Julie Andrews
I am not a has-been. I am a will be.	Lauren Bacall
The ultimate aim of the ego is not to see something, but to be something.	Muhammad Iqbal
The secret of getting ahead is getting started.	Mark Twain
If you’re going through hell, keep going.	Winston Churchill
Well done is better than well said.	Benjamin Franklin
Consult not your fears but your hopes and your dreams. Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential. Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in, but with what it is still possible for you to do.	Pope John XXIII
Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it’s always your choice.	Wayne Dyer
Look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see, and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious.	Stephen Hawking
By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.	Benjamin Franklin
It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.	Confucius
Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.	Theodore Roosevelt
Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.	William James
Go big or go home. Because it’s true. What do you have to lose?	Eliza Dushku
You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.	Woodrow Wilson
One way to keep momentum going is to have constantly greater goals.	Michael Korda
Whatever you want in life, other people are going to want it too. Believe in yourself enough to accept the idea that you have an equal right to it.	Diane Sawyer
Don’t think, just do.	Horace
Never complain and never explain.	Benjamin Disraeli
The people who influence you are the people who believe in you.	Henry Drummond
If you think you can do it, you can.	John Burroughs
Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.	Lao Tzu
Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible.	Tony Robbins
The will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to reach your full potential… these are the keys that will unlock the door to personal excellence.	Confucius
No matter how many goals you have achieved, you must set your sights on a higher one.	Jessica Savitch
You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.	Les Brown
Follow your dreams, work hard, practice and persevere. Make sure you eat a variety of foods, get plenty of exercise and maintain a healthy lifestyle.	Sasha Cohen
Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.	Helen Keller
Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.	Norman Vincent Peale
Motivation will almost always beat mere talent.	Norman Ralph Augustine
I’d rather attempt to do something great and fail than to attempt to do nothing and succeed.	Robert H. Schuller
Accept the challenges so that you can feel the exhilaration of victory.	George S. Patton
Do not wait; the time will never be ‘just right.’ Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.	George Herbert
The hardships that I encountered in the past will help me succeed in the future.	Philip Emeagwali
There is progress whether ye are going forward or backward! The thing is to move!	Edgar Cayce
The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.	Walt Disney
To begin, begin.	William Wordsworth
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
Always do your best. What you plant now, you will harvest later.	Og Mandino
Step by step and the thing is done.	Charles Atlas
Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.	Thomas A. Edison
Follow your inner moonlight; don’t hide the madness.	Allen Ginsberg
There is always room at the top.	Daniel Webster
They can conquer who believe they can.	Virgil
Either you run the day or the day runs you.	Jim Rohn
You never know what motivates you.	Cicely Tyson
Go for it now. The future is promised to no one.	Wayne Dyer
Always desire to learn something useful.	Sophocles
He conquers who endures.	Persius
When you fail you learn from the mistakes you made and it motivates you to work even harder.	Natalie Gulbis
A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.	Ayn Rand
Set your sights high, the higher the better. Expect the most wonderful things to happen, not in the future but right now. Realize that nothing is too good. Allow absolutely nothing to hamper you or hold you up in any way.	Eileen Caddy
Things do not happen. Things are made to happen.	John F. Kennedy
You can’t expect to hit the jackpot if you don’t put a few nickels in the machine.	Flip Wilson
Small deeds done are better than great deeds planned.	Peter Marshall
The most effective way to do it, is to do it.	Amelia Earhart
What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.	Zig Ziglar
We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.	Maya Angelou
Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.	Harriet Beecher Stowe
Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.	William Butler Yeats
Your talent is God’s gift to you. What you do with it is your gift back to God.	Leo Buscaglia
There’s a way to do it better – find it.	Thomas A. Edison
If you want to conquer fear, don’t sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.	Dale Carnegie
You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.	Rabindranath Tagore
We make the world we live in and shape our own environment.	Orison Swett Marden
It is very important to know who you are. To make decisions. To show who you are.	Malala Yousafzai
The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.	Epictetus
Press forward. Do not stop, do not linger in your journey, but strive for the mark set before you.	George Whitefield
If you don’t ask, you don’t get.	Stevie Wonder
There is nothing deep down inside us except what we have put there ourselves.	Richard Rorty
If you ask me what I came into this life to do, I will tell you: I came to live out loud.	Emile Zola
Never, never, never give up.	Winston Churchill
You create your opportunities by asking for them.	Shakti Gawain
It’s always too early to quit.	Norman Vincent Peale
You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.	Henry Ford
One finds limits by pushing them.	Herbert A. Simon
Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend to them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again.	Og Mandino
Deserve your dream.	Octavio Paz
The more we do, the more we can do.	William Hazlitt
Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.	Thomas Jefferson
Be gentle to all and stern with yourself.	Saint Teresa of Avila
Don’t fight the problem, decide it.	George C. Marshall
Arriving at one goal is the starting point to another.	John Dewey
Wherever you are – be all there.	Jim Elliot
I think people who are creative are the luckiest people on earth. I know that there are no shortcuts, but you must keep your faith in something Greater than You, and keep doing what you love. Do what you love, and you will find the way to get it out to the world.	Judy Collins
What you do today can improve all your tomorrows.	Ralph Marston
We should not give up and we should not allow the problem to defeat us.	A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.	Thomas Paine
I know where I’m going and I know the truth, and I don’t have to be what you want me to be. I’m free to be what I want.	Muhammad Ali
After a storm comes a calm.	Matthew Henry
If you don’t like how things are, change it! You’re not a tree.	Jim Rohn
In motivating people, you’ve got to engage their minds and their hearts. I motivate people, I hope, by example – and perhaps by excitement, by having productive ideas to make others feel involved.	Rupert Murdoch
Never give in and never give up.	Hubert H. Humphrey
A somebody was once a nobody who wanted to and did.	John Burroughs
The more things you do, the more you can do.	Lucille Ball
Do something wonderful, people may imitate it.	Albert Schweitzer
Big shots are only little shots who keep shooting.	Christopher Morley
We aim above the mark to hit the mark.	Ralph Waldo Emerson
Do your work with your whole heart, and you will succeed – there’s so little competition.	Elbert Hubbard
A goal is a dream with a deadline.	Napoleon Hill
Only the educated are free.	Epictetus
Who seeks shall find.	Sophocles
Hitch your wagon to a star.	Ralph Waldo Emerson
To be a good loser is to learn how to win.	Carl Sandburg
The past cannot be changed. The future is yet in your power.	Unknown
Be Impeccable With Your Word. Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.	Don Miguel Ruiz
Learn from the past, set vivid, detailed goals for the future, and live in the only moment of time over which you have any control: now.	Denis Waitley
Pursue one great decisive aim with force and determination.	Carl von Clausewitz
Do the one thing you think you cannot do. Fail at it. Try again. Do better the second time. The only people who never tumble are those who never mount the high wire. This is your moment. Own it.	Oprah Winfrey
Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand.	Baruch Spinoza
A will finds a way.	Orison Swett Marden
I was motivated to be different in part because I was different.	Donna Brazile
The dog that trots about finds a bone.	Golda Meir
Don’t give up. Don’t lose hope. Don’t sell out.	Christopher Reeve
Know or listen to those who know.	Baltasar Gracian
I know not age, nor weariness nor defeat.	Rose Kennedy
You have to make it happen.	Denis Diderot
Your heaviest artillery will be your will to live. Keep that big gun going.	Norman Cousins
How do you know you’re going to do something, untill you do it?	J. D. Salinger
Begin to be now what you will be hereafter.	William James
I come to win.	Leo Durocher
Either move or be moved.	Ezra Pound
True happiness involves the full use of one’s power and talents.	John W. Gardner
The wise does at once what the fool does at last.	Baltasar Gracian
Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.	Thomas Jefferson
I’ve found that luck is quite predictable. If you want more luck, take more chances. Be more active. Show up more often.	Brian Tracy
Crave for a thing, you will get it. Renounce the craving, the object will follow you by itself.	Swami Sivananda
Poverty was the greatest motivating factor in my life.	Jimmy Dean
Be thine own palace, or the world’s thy jail.	John Donne
March on. Do not tarry. To go forward is to move toward perfection. March on, and fear not the thorns, or the sharp stones on life’s path.	Khalil Gibran
One may miss the mark by aiming too high as too low.	Thomas Fuller
You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.	Unknown
I’ve worked too hard and too long to let anything stand in the way of my goals. I will not let my teammates down and I will not let myself down.	Mia Hamm
Set yourself earnestly to see what you are made to do, and then set yourself earnestly to do it.	Phillips Brooks
Do whatever you do intensely.	Robert Henri
We are taught you must blame your father, your sisters, your brothers, the school, the teachers – but never blame yourself. It’s never your fault. But it’s always your fault, because if you wanted to change you’re the one who has got to change.	Katharine Hepburn
I’ve always tried to go a step past wherever people expected me to end up.	Beverly Sills
The weeds keep multiplying in our garden, which is our mind ruled by fear. Rip them out and call them by name.	Sylvia Browne
If you’ve got a talent, protect it.	Jim Carrey
God always strives together with those who strive.	Aeschylus
Many are called but few get up.	Oliver Herford
The more man meditates upon good thoughts, the better will be his world and the world at large.	Confucius
You must take action now that will move you towards your goals. Develop a sense of urgency in your life.	H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
Always continue the climb. It is possible for you to do whatever you choose, if you first get to know who you are and are willing to work with a power that is greater than ourselves to do it.	Ella Wheeler Wilcox
You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.	Jack London
The turning point was when I hit my 30th birthday. I thought, if really want to write, it’s time to start. I picked up the book How to Write a Novel in 90 Days. The author said to just write three pages a day, and I figured, I can do this. I never got past Page 3 of that book.	James Rollins
To know oneself, one should assert oneself.	Albert Camus
Learning is the beginning of wealth. Learning is the beginning of health. Learning is the beginning of spirituality. Searching and learning is where the miracle process all begins.	Jim Rohn
From my tribe I take nothing, I am the maker of my own fortune.	Tecumseh
Get action. Seize the moment. Man was never intended to become an oyster.	Theodore Roosevelt
To be wholly devoted to some intellectual exercise is to have succeeded in life.	Robert Louis Stevenson
What is called genius is the abundance of life and health.	Henry David Thoreau
When one must, one can.	Charlotte Whitton
The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: ‘If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?’ But… the good Samaritan reversed the question: ‘If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?’	Martin Luther King, Jr.
You need to overcome the tug of people against you as you reach for high goals.	George S. Patton
The people that are feeding you the information on things that I like – love life, believe in yourself, be motivational, give your time to things and meditate – they’re all older people who are well into their 50s and have had careers, and for me, at this point, I’m the young ambassador for this whole lifestyle of making your mentality a reality.	Mod Sun
Music – it’s motivational and just makes you relax.	Taika Waititi
There is no stronger case for the motivational power of real science than the discoveries that come from the Hubble Space Telescope as it unravels the mysteries of the universe.	John M. Grunsfeld
Madam Walker was a master marketer. But her brilliance was in taking it to another level by training women, by traveling, by making very motivational speeches and by providing independent income for women who otherwise would have to be maids and sharecroppers.	A’Lelia Bundles
My father is my true inspiration. He’s a motivational speaker, so he does a fine job of guiding me.	Tridha Choudhury
Fear of failure, it’s the greatest motivational tool. It drives me and drives me and drives me.	Jerry West
Our subliminal mental processes operate outside awareness because they arise in these portions of our mind that are inaccessible to our conscious self; their inaccessibility is due to the architecture of the brain rather than because they have been subject to Freudian motivational forces like repression.	Leonard Mlodinow
People say ‘dream big,’ that’s kind of one of those motivational sayings, but I would dream hard, meaning I just wanted it so badly, I could feel it.	Jim Nantz
People always accuse me of being motivational in a way, like it was a bad thing, but that’s just how I was raised. My mom raised me in a positive environment, with lots of love in my heart, and that reflects in my music.	Lenny Kravitz
I realized I love motivating and I love empowering and I love inspiring people. I did that as an athlete for 18 years, and I am able to do that as a motivational speaker now as well as doing work on television.	Dominique Dawes
Success is the only motivational factor that a boy with character needs.	Woody Hayes
Motivational talks are something I have been asked to do and i fancy taking a crack at it.	George Groves
I like to put on hardcore when I have to clean my apartment, which I hate to do, but it’s motivational. I like old heavy metal when I’m outside working on my car. Music has definite functions for me.	Peter Steele
I want to be motivational and inspirational for everybody: my big aim is more women on bicycles.	Marianne Vos
One day, I got so disgusted that I sat down and wrote a list called ‘Justin’s list of things to do before he kicks the bucket.’ I wrote it for myself and shortened it to ‘Justin’s Bucket List.’ It was there on the wall, not as a story idea but as a motivational tool for myself, which actually ended up working pretty well.	Justin Zackham
I’m able to do motivational speaking all over the world and do so many positive things with my life because of my journey and the battles I’ve fought. Without cancer, I would have never had some of these opportunities, and I wouldn’t be the man I am today.	Daniel Jacobs
Choosing a system is no longer enough, coaches have to be psychologists and motivational leaders too.	Giorgio Chiellini
I’ve always thought of acting as more of an exercise in empathy, which is not to be confused with sympathy. You’re trying to get inside a certain emotional reality or motivational reality and try to figure out what that’s about so you can represent it.	Edward Norton
I don’t know what it’s like to have a typical father figure. He’s not the dad who’s going to take me to the beach and go swimming, but he’s such a motivational person.	Tiffany Trump
Stoking fears of a potential shutdown is a strong motivational tool to get members on board with legislation that they don’t want to support. Both parties are guilty of this.	Mark Meadows
Coy Wire played in the NFL for 9 years and is now a motivational speaker and has a book out called ‘Change Your Mind.’ He is an amazing person with such positive energy! When Kroy and I first met and started dating, there weren’t a whole lot of people that supported us, but Coy always did.	Kim Zolciak-Biermann
Marvin’s Motivational Moments actually started as something that was actually therapeutic for me. I would sit up late at night after my wife passed trying to adjust to being alone.	Marvin Sapp
I believe that any type of education can be great, but an education about ourselves can create something wonderful. I am a comedian, but people have called me a motivational speaker. I don’t really consider myself that at all.	Andy Andrews
I like motivational books, because I like the go-getting American spirit – your destiny is in your own hands, life is what you make it, don’t accept your limitations, jump before you’re pushed, leap before you look.	Louise Mensch
One of the things that I did before I ran for president is I was a professional speaker. Not a motivational speaker – an inspirational speaker. Motivation comes from within. You have to be inspired. That’s what I do. I inspire people, I inspire the public, I inspire my staff. I inspired the organizations I took over to want to succeed.	Herman Cain
I’m going to write a book, continue acting, continue motivational speaking and just share with people who I am and what I’ve learned in my second chance of life and pass it on to people in their first chance of life.	J. R. Martinez
Give Obama a script he has made his own, and he is the motivational speaker to end all speakers. Tony Robbins cloned with Honest Abe.	Tina Brown
Throughout my career, the pounding in my heart, the fright, has been ever-present, but I never turned back. Fear can be a highly motivational part of the journey.	Nina Tassler
Giving back, doing motivational speeches and stuff like that, that’s always made me feel good. If you repeatedly go out there, and you are the change that you want to see, then that’s what you are.	Keke Palmer
The Duke family, those are my brothers, and it’s something I’ll always take with me. Coach K, he gives me a lot of motivational things and checks in on me and my family. He knows where my heart is.	Brandon Ingram
Church is definitely still present in my life. Every Sunday I’m tuned in and then throughout the week I read scriptures, I read motivational messages.	Robert Covington
You hope to bring your ‘A Game’ to any game, and of course you do in a final. You hope to bring experience, fitness, communication skills, motivational skills.	Edwin van der Sar
I’m a motivational speaker, so I’m going to look at something in as much of a positive way as possible.	Harris Faulkner
Religious speech is extreme, emotional, and motivational. It is anti-literal, relying on metaphor, allusion, and other rhetorical devices, and it assumes knowledge within a community of believers.	Amy Waldman
I can’t put this down. I’m reading it in Spanish but I am still having English lessons. It is a motivational book about basketball legend Michael Jordan. His determination was inspiring. It helps me focus and drives me on.	Bojan Krkic
I’m thrilled to continue my partnership with U by Kotex for Generation Know while helping to empower girls. I’ve always been a motivational resource for my younger sisters and hope I can positively impact and inspire other young girls too.	Khloe Kardashian
I used to watch a lot of motivational films and videos to remain positive.	S. Sreesanth
I taught myself how to be a speaker on Google. I just Googled ‘how to be a motivational speaker.’	Lizzie Velasquez
Before I play matches I’m always switching myself on. That’s why I have that walk-on music – Two Steps From Hell – they produce really good motivational gladiator-style music. As soon as that music comes on I’m switched on and I’m ready for a brawl!	Neil Robertson
I told myself that I wanted to be a motivational speaker, I wanted to write a book, graduate college, have my own family, and have my own career.	Lizzie Velasquez
My first book was called, ‘Mountain, Get Out of My Way,’ where I did an autobiographical sketch, if you will, looking back at myself and looking back at things in my life, and juxtaposing them against things that are happening in other people’s lives and trying to be motivational.	Montel Williams
Ever since I was a kid, I knew I could play in the NFL because I had a knack for the game. But I can’t play this game forever. When I’m finished, maybe I’ll become a motivational speaker, maybe a preacher. But children need to know that life may be hard, but you can always overcome.	Ed Reed
Typically, if you reward something, you get more of it. You punish something, you get less of it. And our businesses have been built for the last 150 years very much on that kind of motivational scheme.	Daniel H. Pink
Zidane transmits a very clear idea to the players. He doesn’t need to give a 20 minute motivational talk, he doesn’t need it. With his presence alone, he achieves what he wants – his personality is synonymous with success.	Toni Kroos
My dad is too cute. Every morning, he sends me one motivational quote. I have a folder full of all his quotes.	Alia Bhatt
You cannot compare Pep to any Brazilian coach. If you put all Brazilian coaches together, you would get Pep. One has motivational skills, another is tactically strong. But Pep has it all.	Douglas Costa
My mum was massively important to everything I’ve done, and now her memory is a motivational tool for me.	Fran Kirby
I’ve a great family, two children to take care of. Then, of course, I do commentary for TV. I do speak about various women’s issues around the world – like LGBT, motivational speeches. I have a lot on my plate right now. But eventually, yes, I would like to pass on the knowledge and something that I would like to do.	Martina Navratilova
Sometimes I’ll put on a Zig Ziglar tape: he’s a motivational speaker who is really funny and really American. I know I should do the things he says, but I’m too cynical.	Laila Rouass
I’m on the playstation, or else I go out and play football. I enjoy movies and sitcoms. I love reading motivational books too.	Shreyas Iyer
Oh, I would love to be a motivational speaker. I have pulled myself out of a million potholes, and I can see the potholes ahead of me. That doesn’t mean that I could always do that so perfectly for my own life. I totally fall in potholes.	Drew Barrymore
I started doing motivational tours. I’ve seen all kinds of people, from the CEOs to the lowest executive, opening up to their fears. We don’t introspect as much as we should.	Anupam Kher
The Village Voice gave me an outlet. They encouraged writers to publish idiosyncratic, intellectually ambitious journalism in voices that ranged from demonic to highfalutin. And they paid me well once the magazine was unionized. Getting paid is motivational.	Robert Christgau
I was perceived to be a first- to third-rounder. I kind of had a tough junior year and fell to the fifth round. At that time, it was motivational.	Ryan Howard
I’m a motivational speaker.	Young Jeezy
One of the hidden benefits of me being a student manager at Kentucky was me having the responsibility of driving Rick Pitino to his motivational speaking engagements.	Frank Vogel
I have never moved away from my mainstay – trying to address all the environmental issues that come to me. I consult with law firms in the U.S., Australia, the U.K., Italy, Greece, and India to begin to address environmental disasters. I do motivational speaking.	Erin Brockovich
I have given motivational speeches at IIT and other well-known establishments. I want to appeal to the people, and therefore, I talk from the heart.	Sangram Singh
The Gunnar Challenge offers new workouts every day, a meal plan and daily ‘verbal vitamins,’ which are a motivational video or workout tip. The thing that really makes the program work is the forum, where Challengers can communicate with each other and with me.	Gunnar Peterson
I listen to a lot of TED talks and motivational speakers.	Jordan Burroughs
I’m a wrestler with nine toes. I’m a wrestler who has been through a lot of battles. I get to do a lot of motivational speaking, and people are blown away and say, ‘You never quit. You keep coming back.’	Rulon Gardner
I went to a motivational training course once, a course of self-discovery, and I found out after a week that my fear – it was not a fear of not being accepted – was a very violent fear of failure.	Emanuel Steward
We need to accept that the commandments of God aren’t just a long list of good ideas. They aren’t ‘life hacks’ from an Internet blog or motivational quotes from a Pinterest board.	Dieter F. Uchtdorf
Earl Nightingale has inspired more people toward success and fortune than any other motivational speaker on the planet.	Zig Ziglar
After my ski jumping career finished, I went back to school to study law, and now I travel between five to 20 times a year doing after-dinner speaking, motivational talks, appearances, openings, TV and radio shows.	Eddie the Eagle
I want to build a legacy at the WWE, but I definitely want to continue to grow the Bella Empire. I want it to go beyond the ring. I would love to be a motivational speaker.	Nikki Bella
As long as I’m not selling out the people that ride or die with me, I’m glad I’m not an MC. I’m a motivational speaker. I’m not that rapper dude.	Young Jeezy

27 January 2023 0 comment

Inventors

52 Thomas A. Edison quotes

written by quotegal71

Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman.^[1]^[2]^[3] He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures.

These inventions, which include the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and early versions of the electric light bulb, have had a widespread impact on the modern industrialized world.

He was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of organized science and teamwork to the process of invention, working with many researchers and employees. He established the first industrial research laboratory.

List of quotes

There is far more opportunity than there is ability.

The value of an idea lies in the using of it.

The three great essentials to achieve anything worth while are: Hard work, Stick-to-itiveness, and Common sense.

The reason a lot of people do not recognize opportunity is because it usually goes around wearing overalls looking like hard work.

The chief function of the body is to carry the brain around.

The best thinking has been done in solitude. The worst has been done in turmoil.

Restlessness is discontent and discontent is the first necessity of progress. Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure.

There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the labor of thinking.

We don’t know a millionth of one percent about anything.

Religion is all bunk.

Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won’t work.

There is no substitute for hard work.

There will one day spring from the brain of science a machine or force so fearful in its potentialities, so absolutely terrifying, that even man, the fighter, who will dare torture and death in order to inflict torture and death, will be appalled, and so abandon war forever.

There’s a way to do it better – find it.

They say President Wilson has blundered. Perhaps he has, but I notice he usually blunders forward.

To have a great idea, have a lot of them.

To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.

Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.

Waste is worse than loss. The time is coming when every person who lays claim to ability will keep the question of waste before him constantly. The scope of thrift is limitless.

Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure.

What a man’s mind can create, man’s character can control.

What you are will show in what you do.

When I have fully decided that a result is worth getting I go ahead of it and make trial after trial until it comes.

Your worth consists in what you are and not in what you have.

To my mind the old masters are not art; their value is in their scarcity.

I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

Be courageous. I have seen many depressions in business. Always America has emerged from these stronger and more prosperous. Be brave as your fathers before you. Have faith! Go forward!

Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing.

Discontent is the first necessity of progress.

Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits.

Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.

Great ideas originate in the muscles.

Hell, there are no rules here – we’re trying to accomplish something.

His genius he was quite content in one brief sentence to define; Of inspiration one percent, of perspiration, ninety nine.

I am proud of the fact that I never invented weapons to kill.

The body is a community made up of its innumerable cells or inhabitants.

I have friends in overalls whose friendship I would not swap for the favor of the kings of the world.

Anything that won’t sell, I don’t want to invent. Its sale is proof of utility, and utility is success.

I know this world is ruled by infinite intelligence. Everything that surrounds us- everything that exists – proves that there are infinite laws behind it. There can be no denying this fact. It is mathematical in its precision.

I never did a day’s work in my life. It was all fun.

I never did anything by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work.

I start where the last man left off.

If we did all the things we are capable of, we would literally astound ourselves.

It is astonishing what an effort it seems to be for many people to put their brains definitely and systematically to work.

Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do doesn’t mean it’s useless.

Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.

Maturity is often more absurd than youth and very frequently is most unjust to youth.

Nearly every man who develops an idea works it up to the point where it looks impossible, and then he gets discouraged. That’s not the place to become discouraged.

Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.

One might think that the money value of an invention constitutes its reward to the man who loves his work. But… I continue to find my greatest pleasure, and so my reward, in the work that precedes what the world calls success.

I find my greatest pleasure, and so my reward, in the work that precedes what the world calls success.

27 January 2023 0 comment

Presidents

171 Thomas Jefferson quotes

written by quotegal71

Thomas Jefferson was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, slaver, and Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809.

He was previously the nation’s second vice president under John Adams and the first United States secretary of state under George Washington.

The principal author of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson was a proponent of democracy, republicanism, and individual rights, motivating American colonists to break from the Kingdom of Great Britain and form a new nation. He produced formative documents and decisions at state, national, and international levels.

List of quotes

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.

The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.

The spirit of this country is totally adverse to a large military force.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.

The way to silence religious disputes is to take no notice of them.

The second office in the government is honorable and easy; the first is but a splendid misery.

The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.

The natural cause of the human mind is certainly from credulity to skepticism.

The most successful war seldom pays for its losses.

The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees in every object only the traits which favor that theory.

The good opinion of mankind, like the lever of Archimedes, with the given fulcrum, moves the world.

The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.

The glow of one warm thought is to me worth more than money.

The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead.

The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it.

The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people; that… it is their right and duty to be at all times armed.

Truth is certainly a branch of morality and a very important one to society.

The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave.

The advertisement is the most truthful part of a newspaper.

That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part.

Taste cannot be controlled by law.

Speeches that are measured by the hour will die with the hour.

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.

The Creator has not thought proper to mark those in the forehead who are of stuff to make good generals. We are first, therefore, to seek them blindfold, and then let them learn the trade at the expense of great losses.

We never repent of having eaten too little.

I have seen enough of one war never to wish to see another.

So confident am I in the intentions, as well as wisdom, of the government, that I shall always be satisfied that what is not done, either cannot, or ought not to be done.

Wisdom I know is social. She seeks her fellows. But Beauty is jealous, and illy bears the presence of a rival.

Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.

Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching.

Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.

Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.

When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on.

When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe.

When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty.

When angry count to ten before you speak. If very angry, count to one hundred.

To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.

Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

The world is indebted for all triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression.

We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of its majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

We did not raise armies for glory or for conquest.

We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.

War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.

Walking is the best possible exercise. Habituate yourself to walk very fast.

To penetrate and dissipate these clouds of darkness, the general mind must be strengthened by education.

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.

There is not a truth existing which I fear… or would wish unknown to the whole world.

There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.

There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.

When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property.

An injured friend is the bitterest of foes.

I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.

I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master.

I have no ambition to govern men; it is a painful and thankless office.

Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.

I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it.

I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.

I believe that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another.

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.

Bodily decay is gloomy in prospect, but of all human contemplations the most abhorrent is body without mind.

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion.

As our enemies have found we can reason like men, so now let us show them we can fight like men also.

I find that he is happiest of whom the world says least, good or bad.

An enemy generally says and believes what he wishes.

An association of men who will not quarrel with one another is a thing which has never yet existed, from the greatest confederacy of nations down to a town meeting or a vestry.

Always take hold of things by the smooth handle.

All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.

Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.

A wise and frugal Government, which shall retrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.

A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned – this is the sum of good government.

A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be your constant companion of your walks.

A coward is much more exposed to quarrels than a man of spirit.

A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.

Be polite to all, but intimate with few.

Peace and abstinence from European interferences are our objects, and so will continue while the present order of things in America remain uninterrupted.

Resort is had to ridicule only when reason is against us.

Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.

Power is not alluring to pure minds.

Politics is such a torment that I advise everyone I love not to mix with it.

I cannot live without books.

Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it.

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.

In truth, politeness is artificial good humor, it covers the natural want of it, and ends by rendering habitual a substitute nearly equivalent to the real virtue.

In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.

In every country and every age, the priest had been hostile to Liberty.

In defense of our persons and properties under actual violation, we took up arms. When that violence shall be removed, when hostilities shall cease on the part of the aggressors, hostilities shall cease on our part also.

Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong.

If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest.

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.

Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.

If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?

I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others.

I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.

I think with the Romans, that the general of today should be a soldier tomorrow if necessary.

I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.

I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led, and bearding every authority which stood in their way.

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

If God is just, I tremble for my country.

I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.

It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.

My theory has always been, that if we are to dream, the flatteries of hope are as cheap, and pleasanter, than the gloom of despair.

Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government.

My only fear is that I may live too long. This would be a subject of dread to me.

Money, not morality, is the principle commerce of civilized nations.

Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.

Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people.

Leave all the afternoon for exercise and recreation, which are as necessary as reading. I will rather say more necessary because health is worth more than learning.

It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good.

Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.

It is neither wealth nor splendor; but tranquility and occupation which give you happiness.

But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life, and thanks to a benevolent arrangement the greater part of life is sunshine.

It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.

It is in our lives and not our words that our religion must be read.

It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.

It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong.

It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God.

It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.

Never spend your money before you have earned it.

Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto.

Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.

It is our duty still to endeavor to avoid war; but if it shall actually take place, no matter by whom brought on, we must defend ourselves. If our house be on fire, without inquiring whether it was fired from within or without, we must try to extinguish it.

Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.

No duty the Executive had to perform was so trying as to put the right man in the right place.

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.

Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.

Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence.

Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail.

One travels more usefully when alone, because he reflects more.

One man with courage is a majority.

Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man.

Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.

None but an armed nation can dispense with a standing army. To keep ours armed and disciplined is therefore at all times important.

No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden.

No man will ever carry out of the Presidency the reputation which carried him into it.

No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will.

No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms.

One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them.

I abhor war and view it as the greatest scourge of mankind.

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.

Educate and inform the whole mass of the people… They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.

Errors of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.

Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state.

I am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greek and Roman leave to us.

How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.

Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.

History, in general, only informs us of what bad government is.

He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.

He who knows best knows how little he knows.

Happiness is not being pained in body or troubled in mind.

Friendship is but another name for an alliance with the follies and the misfortunes of others. Our own share of miseries is sufficient: why enter then as volunteers into those of another?

Don’t talk about what you have done or what you are going to do.

Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor.

I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too.

Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it.

Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor – over each other.

Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.

Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.

Delay is preferable to error.

For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security.

Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.

Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.

Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism.

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.

27 January 2023 0 comment

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