Quotes from almost anywhere, varying from the profound to the eccentric
- Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who will watch the watchmen?).
- Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what’s right.
-Isaac Asimov - Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich, by promising to protect each from the other.
—Oscar Ameringer - The higher we soar, the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.
—Friedrich Nietzsche - You know, Isaac Newton, he thought that the universe functioned like clockwork…like a well-oiled machine. That’s a comforting vision; it’s neat, orderly, predictable. But it’s a vision that’s pretty much been shot to pieces by relativity and quantum mechanics–all the other bugaboos of 20th century physics… The universe is a weird place. We break our teeth developing theories, equations, and systems…where’s it all leave us? ‘A system is like the tail of truth. But truth is like a lizard: it leaves its tail in your fingers and runs away knowing full well it will grow a new one in the twinkling.’
—Chris in the Morning / Leo Tolstoy - Please pay attention very carefully, because this is the truest thing a stranger will ever say to you: In the face of such hopelessness as our eventual, unavoidable death, there is little sense in not at least TRYING to accomplish all your wildest dreams in life.
—Kevin Smith - People are like stained glass windows: they sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light within.
—Elisabeth Kubler-Ross - As a solid rock is not shaken by a strong gale, so wise persons remain unaffected by praise or censure.
—Buddha - At the heart of science is an essential balance between two seemingly contradictory attitudes—an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive they may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep nonsense.
—Carl Sagan: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (1997), 304. - The good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it.
—Neil deGrasse Tyson - A man can accomplish anything when he realizes he’s a part of something bigger, a team of people with the same conviction can change the world.
—Nick Fury - I don’t need time. What I need is a deadline.
—Duke Ellington - Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
—Carl Sagan - Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.
—Apple poster - Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me…Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful…that’s what matters to me.
—Steve Jobs - Mr. Worf, villains who twirl their mustaches are easy to spot. Those who clothe themselves in good deeds are well-camouflaged.
—Capt. Jean-Luc Picard (Jeri Taylor) - Great men are forged in fire, it is the privilege of lesser men to light the flame.
—War Doctor - You know, there are some words I’ve known since I was a schoolboy: “With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably.” Those words were uttered by Judge Aaron Satie, as wisdom and warning. The first time any man’s freedom is trodden on, we’re all damaged.
—Capt. Jean-Luc Picard (Jeri Taylor) - Oh, you mortals are so obtuse. Why do you persist in believing that life and death are such static and rigid concepts?
—Q - If patriotism were defined, not as blind obedience to government, nor as submissive worship to flags and anthems, but rather as love of one’s country, one’s fellow citizens (all over the world), as loyalty to the principles of justice and democracy, then patriotism would require us to disobey our government, when it violated those principles.
—Howard Zinn - “Historically, the most terrible things – war, genocide, and slavery – have resulted not from disobedience, but from obedience.”
—Howard Zinn - Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.
—Sir Winston Churchill - Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.
—Sir Winston Churchill - A hero is made in the moment, not from questioning the past, or fearing what’s to come.
—Brainiac 5 (Smallville) - When two points are destined to touch but a direct connection is impossible…the Universe will always find another way.
—Jake Bohm (Touch) - Imagination is the key to my lyrics. The rest is painted with a little science fiction.
—Jimi Hendrix - In matters of style, swim with the currents. In matters of principle, stand like a rock.
—Thomas Jefferson - The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed — where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.
—Judge Alex Kozinski - Everything is energy and that’s all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics.
—Albert Einstein - Nobody ever feels 100% ready when an opportunity arises. Because most great opportunities in life force us to grow beyond our comfort zones, which means you won’t feel totally comfortable or ready for it.
—Article posted on 955KLOS.com - Good judgment comes from experience, and a lotta that comes from bad judgment.
—Unknown - The best sermons are lived, not preached.
—Unknown - Nobility is not a birthright, it’s defined by one’s actions.
—Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves - Judging others is one of the ways in which the unconscious self, asleep to its unflagging sense of uncertainty, maintains the illusion of being superior to all that it meets.
—Guy Finley - There is no wealth like knowledge, no poverty like ignorance.
—Ali Abi Talib - Faith sees the invisible, believes the incredible and receives the impossible.
—Anonymous - The whole universe is affected by your awakening. You are the space where love pours back into the world.
—Unknown - Life is not the amount of breaths you take; it’s the moments that take your breath away.
—Movie: Hitch - Nothing renews your appreciation for the military like the threat of invasion from life-sucking aliens [from another galaxy].
—Richard Woolsey NID/IOA (Stargate Atlantis) - The power of accurate observation is frequently called cynicism by those who don’t have it.
—George Bernard Shaw - A politician is a man who thinks of the next election; while the statesman thinks of the next generation.
—James Freeman Clark - If knowledge be the key to open all doors, let it be held in the hand of wisdom.
—Lawrence Gordon’s gravestone (Flash Gordon’s dad) - The will of God will never take you where the Grace of God will not protect you.
—Unknown - We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.
—Edward R. Murrow - Let’s assume that each person has an equal opportunity, not to become equal, but to become different. To realize whatever unique potential of body, mind, and spirit he or she possesses.
—John Fischer - Those who can laugh without cause have either found the true meaning of happiness or have gone stark raving mad.
—Norm Papernick - What you own is your own kingdom
What you do is your own glory
What you love is your own power
What you live is your own story
In your head is the answer; let it guide you along
Let your heart be the anchor and the beat of your song
—Rush 2112 - The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.
—John Adams - What kind of supreme being would condone such irony?
—Burt Gummer - All know that the drop merges into the ocean but few know that the ocean
merges into the drop.
—Kabir - To give pleasure to a single heart by a single kind act is better than a
thousand head-bowings in prayer.
—Saadi - Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.
—Albert Einstein - I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered! My life is my own
—No. 6 - To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.
—Theodore Roosevelt, 26th US President (1858-1919) - We despise all reverences and all objects of reverence which are outside the pale of our list of sacred things. And yet, with strange inconsistency, we are shocked when other people despise and defile the things which are holy to us.
—Mark Twain - A bit of fragrance always clings to the hand that gives the rose.
—Chinese proverb - The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.
—Robert Maynard Hutchins - The purpose of education is to exchange a empty mind for a open one.
—fortune cookie - When you have to make a choice and don’t make it, that is in itself a choice.
—William James - Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.
—Scott Adams - The only difference between saints and sinners is that every saint has a past while every sinner has a future.
—Oscar Wilde - Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right.
—Jerry Garcia - A ship in the harbor is safe, but that’s not what ships are made for.
—Unknown..saw on poster - Remember; where there is no solution, there is no problem.
—Shimon Peres - Don’t be afraid your life will end: be afraid that it will never begin.
—Grace Hansen - Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people.
—Eleanor Roosevelt - Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or the handle.
—James Russel Lowell - A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson - Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely.
—Rodin - Those who follow the crowd are quickly lost in it.
—Anonymous - Resentment is one burden that is incompatible with your success. Always be the first to forgive; and forgive yourself first always.
—Dan Zadra - May the best of your past be the worst of your future.
—The Long Kiss Goodnight - To avoid criticism do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.
—Elbert Hubbard - Always hold your head up, but be careful to keep your nose at a friendly level.
—Max L Forman - The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other people the conviction and the will to carry on.
—Walter Lippmann - Support the strong, give courage to the timid, remind the indifferent, and warn the opposed.
—Whitney M.Young - Promote yourself but do not demote another.
—Israel Salanter - The mind is its own place, and in itself, can make heaven of Hell, a hell of Heaven.
—John Milton - Men stumble over the truth from time to time, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened.
—Winston Churchill - By failing to plan you’re planning to fail
—Brian Tracy at a Phoenix seminar - The end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
—T. S. Elliott - The Difficult is that which can be done immediately; the Impossible that which takes a little longer.
—George Santayana - No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happinesss.
—Mary Wollstonecraft - Decide what you want, decide what you are willing to exchange for it. Establish your priorities and go to work.
—H. L. Hunt - The way to become boring is to say everything.
—Voltaire - Experience teaches slowly, and at the cost of mistakes.
—J. A. Froude - Knowledge itself is power.
—Francis Bacon - Shallow men believe in luck; Strong men believe in cause & effect.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson - This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not be false to any man.
—William Shakespeare - If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right
—Henry Ford - Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.
—Marie Curie - Be just, and fear not.
—William Shakespeare - Live your own life, for you will die your own death.
—Latin proverb - Action is eloquence.
—William Shakespeare - Over caution: The person who takes no chances generally has to take whatever is left when others are through choosing.
—Napoleon Hill - Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.
—Mother Teresa - While we stop to think, we often miss our opportunity.
—Publilius Syrus - Face your fears; Live your dreams
—Saw on a “No Fear” bulletin board in Toronto - Where one door shuts another opens.
—Miguel de Cervantes - There is no point at which having arrived we can remain.
—Unknown - Success is a journey not a destination.
—Saw on a poster - Leaders are like eagles, they don’t flock; you find them one at a time.
—Saw on a poster - The diamond cannot be polished without friction, nor the man perfected without trials.
—Chinese proverb - The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time.
—W.B. Yeats - Honesty and virtue produce truth; truth makes one beautiful; and beauty creates love; which is the foundation of all human happiness.
—Martial artist code - When written in Chinese, the word crisis is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.
—John F. Kennedy - It is not the possessions but the desires of mankind which require to be equalized.
—Aristotle - Sad soul, take comfort, nor forget that sunrise never failed us yet.
—Celia Thaxter - We quit the shit we need to in the order that it is killing us.
—Unknown - It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.
—Samuel Johnson - The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident.
—Charles Lamb - A critic is one who leaves no turn unstoned.
—George Bernard Shaw - The world is a looking glass and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face.
—William Thackeray - They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.
—Carl W. Buechner - To teach is to learn twice.
—Joseph Joubert - Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?
—Kurt Vonnegut, Jr - By all means marry. If you get a good wife, you’ll be happy. If you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher. 🙂
—Socrates - Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.
—Paulo Freire - Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?
George Carlin - Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value to its scarcity.
—Samuel Butler - We are all pilgrims on the same journey—but some pilgrims have better road maps.
—Nelson DeMille - Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
—Arthur C Clarke - While we are asleep in this world, we are awake in another one.
—Salvador Dali - The life you have led doesn’t need to be the only life you have.
—Anna Quindlen - Nothing contributes so much to tranquilizing the mind as a steady purpose – a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.
—Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - Great spirits have always met violent opposition from mediocre minds.
—Albert Einstein - And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
—Anaïs Nin - All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher.
—Ambrose Bierce - In the presence of eternity, the mountains are as transient as the clouds.
—Robert Green Ingersoll - There’s one thing every scientist on the planet agrees on: whether it happens in a hundred years, or a thousand years, or a million years, eventually our sun will grow cold, and go out. When that happens, it won’t just take us, it’ll take Marilyn Monroe, and Lao-tsu, Einstein, Maruputo, Buddy Holly, Aristophanes…all of this. All of this was for nothing, unless we go to the stars.
—Jeffrey Sinclair (J. Michael Straczynski) - What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness.
—Leo Tolstoy - When I despair, I remember that all through history, the way of truth and love has always won. There have been murderers and tyrants, and for a time they can seem invincible. But in the end they always fall. Think of it, always.
—Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi - A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.
—Saul Belloe - He who waits to do a great deal of good at once will never do anything.
—Samuel Johnson - The avalanche has already started; it is too late for the pebbles to vote.
—Ambassador Kosh (B5) - Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform.
—Mark Twain - If you make the string too tight, it will break. If you make the string too loose, it will not play.
—A lute player overheard by Siddhartha Gautama - There are two kinds of men who never amount to much: those who cannot do what they are told and those who can do nothing else.
—Cyrus H. Curtis - Self-development is a higher duty than self-sacrifice.
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton - This is the final test of a gentleman: his respect for those who can be of no possible service to him.
—William Lyon Phelps - Zeal without knowledge is fire without light.
—Thomas Fuller - The brook would lose its song if you removed the rocks.
—Fred Beck - We praise or blame as one or the other affords more opportunity for exhibiting our power of judgment.
—Friedrich Nietzsche - Expectations are nothing more than premeditated resentments.
—Unknown - Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.
—Francis Bacon - It is not only what we do, but also what we do not do, for which we are accountable.
—Moltiere - Personally I’m always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.
—Winston Churchill - The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within.
—Mahatma Gandhi - When the moment of opportunity arises the moment for preparation has passed.
—Unknown - There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness.
—Josh Billings - Worry is like a rocking chair – it gives you something to do but it doesn’t get you anywhere.
—Dorothy Galyean - You will soon break the bow if you keep it always stretched.
—Phaedrus - Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness.
—Chuang-tzu - Courage is not the towering oak that sees storms come and go; it is the fragile blossom that opens in the snow.
—Alice M. Swaim - Each snowflake in an avalanche pleads not guilty.
—Stanislaw J. Lee - Procrastination of vital tasks is a close relative of incompetence and a handmaiden of inefficiency.
—R. Alec MacKenzie - Lying is done with words and also with silence.
—Adrienne Rich - Problems are only opportunities in work clothes.
—Henry J. Kaiser - Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need.
—Kahil Gibran - All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
—Edmund Burke - Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.
—Henry Adams - In matters of conscience, the law of majority has no place.
—Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi - Force is all-conquering, but its victories are short-lived.
—Abraham Lincoln - When there is no peril in the fight, there is no glory in the triumph.
—Pierre Corneille - If the wind will not serve, take to the oars.
—Latin proverb - A man [person] either lives life as it happens to him, meets it head-on and licks it, or he turns his back on it…and starts to whither away.
—Dr. Phillip Boyce (Gene Rodenberry) to Captain Christopher Pike (The Cage or The Managerie) - You either live life—bruises, skinned knees and all—or you turn your back on it and start dying.
—Captain Christopher Pike (Gene Rodenberry) paraphrasing Dr. Phillip Boyce’s quote above (The Cage or The Managerie) - May God grant us the wisdom to discover the right, the will to choose it and the strength to make it endure.
—King Arthur: at the beginning of any Knights of The Round Table Meeting (First Knight with Sean Connery & Richard Gere) - The bird of paradise alights only upon the hand that does not grasp.
—John Berry - The discontent of the people is more dangerous to a monarch than all the might of his enemies on the battlefield.
—Isabella d’Este - If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend six sharpening my axe.
—Abraham Lincoln - For sleep, riches and health to be truly enjoyed, they must be interrupted.
—Jean Paul Richter - If people speak ill of you, live so that no one will believe them.
—Plato - It’s a pity one can’t imagine what one can’t compare to anything. Genius is an African who dreams up snow.
—Vladimir Nabokov - Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your mind off your goals.
—Saw on a poster - One of the most valuable gifts of command is the ability to exercise a discerning trust in the competence of others.
—Deborah Turner Harris “The Adept” - Speak only, when thy words are more golden than thy silence.
—Voice of the “I AM” June 1936 pg. 28 - Do not stand in a place of danger trusting in miracles.
—Arab Proverb - Its better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.
—Eleanor Roosevelt - It’s better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.
—Andre Gide - Remember that the faith that moves mountains always carries a pick.
—Anonymous - The past tempts us; the present confuses us & the future frightens us, and our lives slip away moment by moment, lost in that vast terrible in-between, but there is still time to seize that last fragile moment, to choose something better, to make a difference.
—Babylon 5-The coming of shadows-Centari Emperor (J. Michael Straczynski) - Love all, trust a few. Do wrong to none.
—William Shakespeare - The strongest man in the world is the man who stands alone.
—T. H. Huxley - Be aware that a halo hast to fall only a few inches to be a noose.
—Dan McKinnon - He has no hope who never had a fear.
—William Cowper - Men are equal; it is not birth but virtue that makes the difference.
—Voltaire - Life is playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
—Samuel Butler - The words of truth are always paradoxical.
—Lao Tzu - You can’t wait for inspiration-you have to go after it with a club.
—Jack London - Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.
—Carl Jung - Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards.
—Vernon Sanders Law - Do not look where you fell, but where you slipped.
—African proverb - In times when the government imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also the prison.
—Henry David Thoreau - Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.
—William Shakespeare - I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it.
—Voltaire - He who is only just is cruel. Who on earth could live were all judged justly?
—Lord Byron - No life ever grows great until it is focused, dedicated, and disciplined.
—Henry Emerson Fosdick - Well-timed silence is the most commanding expression.
—Mark Helprin - As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.
—Abraham Lincoln - He who allows oppression, shares the crime.
—Erasmus Darwin - Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.
—Abraham Lincoln - Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.
—Anaïs Nin - The soul would have no rainbow had the eyes no tears.
—John Vance Cheney - Remember: no matter where you go… there you are.
—Buckaroo Banzai