Over the years, I have collected quotes related to character, life, and education.

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• It often takes more courage to change one’s opinion than to stick to it.
  

  Geoffrey Abert

• There is no such thing as a ‘self-made’ man. We are made up of thousands of others. Everyone who has ever done a kind deed for us, or spoken one word of encouragement to us, has entered into the make-up of our character and of our thoughts, as well as our success.
  

  George Burton Adams

• There are obviously two educations. One should teach us how to make a living and the other how to live.
  

  James Truslow Adams

• Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, ‘This is the real me,’ and when you have found that attitude, follow it.
  

  James Truslow Adams

• Be not afraid of life. Believe that life IS worth living and your belief will help create the fact.
  

  James Truslow Adams

• Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.
  

  John Adams

• The longer I live, the more I read, the more patiently I think, and the more anxiously I inquire, the less I seem to know…Do justly. Love mercy. Walk humbly. This is enough.
  

  John Adams

• If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.
  

  John Quincy Adams

• Most of us are just about as happy as we make up our minds to be.
  

  William Adams

• What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the soul.
  

  Joseph Addison

• The grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love and something to hope for.
  

  Joseph Addison

• If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up somewhere else.
  

  Alfred Adler

• It is always easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them.
  

  Alfred Adler

• Meanings are not determined by situations, but we determine ourselves by the meanings we give to situations.
  

  Alfred Adler

• The greater the feeling of inferiority that has been experienced, the more powerful is the urge to conquest and the more violent the emotional agitation.
  

  Alfred Adler

• We must interpret a bad temper as a sign of inferiority.
  

  Alfred Adler

• When we associate with the virtuous we form ourselves in imitation of their virtues, or at least lose, every day, something of our faults.
  

  Agapet

• True wisdom is less presuming than folly. The wise man doubts often, and changes his mind; the fool is obstinate, and doubts not; he knows all things but his own ignorance.
  

  Akhenaton (1354 BC)

• Far away in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them and try to follow where they lead.
  

  Louisa May Alcott

• When I was a young man I vowed never to marry until I found the ideal woman. Well, I found her but, alas, she was waiting for the ideal man.
  

  Alain

• The man who has no imagination has no wings.
  

  Muhammad Ali

• Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It’s not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything.
  

  Muhammad Ali

• It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe.
  

  Muhammad Ali

• If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative.
  

  Woody Allen

• The man who has no inner life is the slave of his surroundings.
  

  Henri Amiel

• Life is short and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are traveling the dark journey with us. Oh be swift to love, make haste to be kind.
  

  Henri Amiel

• A lively, disinterested, persistent looking for truth is extraordinarily rare. Action and faith enslave thought, both of them in order not to be troubled or inconvenienced by reflection, criticism or doubt.
  

  Henri Amiel

• If everything seems under control, you’re not going fast enough.
  

  Mario Andretti

• I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
  

  Maya Angelou

• We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.
  

  Maya Angelou

• A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.
  

  Maya Angelou

• Marriage is when a man and woman become as one; the trouble starts when they try to decide which one.
  

  Anonymous

• Most people would rather be certain they’re miserable, than risk being happy.
  

  Robert Newton Anthony

• Never utter these words: ‘I do not know this, therefore it is false.’ One must study to know; know to understand; understand to judge.
  

  Apothegm of Narda

• It is one of the maladies of our age to profess a frenzied allegiance to truth in unimportant matters, and to refuse consistently to face her where graver issues are at stake.
  

  Janos Arany

• The high minded man must care more for the truth than for what people think.
  

  Aristotle

• 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 the government to the utmost.
  

  Aristotle

• All men by nature desire to know.
  

  Aristotle

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

  Aristotle

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

  Aristotle

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

  Aristotle

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

  Aristotle

• Dissimilarity of habit tends more than anything to destroy affection.
  

  Aristotle

• The Good of man is the active exercise of his soul’s faculties in conformity with excellence or virtue
  

  Aristotle

• …the primary question [is] not What do we know, but How do we know.
  

  Aristotle

• Christmas gift suggestions: To your enemy, forgiveness. To an opponent, tolerance. To a friend, your heart. To a customer, service. To all, charity. To every child, a good example. To yourself, respect.
  

  Oren Arnold

• Success is a journey not a destination. The doing is usually more important than the outcome. Not everyone can be Number 1.
  

  Arthur Ashe

• From what we get, we can make a living; what we give, however, makes a life.
  

  Arthur Ashe

• Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.
  

  Arthur Ashe

• Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.
  

  Isaac Asimov

• A friend is one who sees through you and still enjoys the view.
  

  Wilma Askinas

• People travel to wonder at the height of the mountains, at the huge waves of the seas, at the long course of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars, and yet they pass by themselves without wondering.
  

  Saint Augustine

• Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.
  

  Saint Augustine

• Indeed, man wishes to be happy even when he so lives as to make happiness impossible.
  

  Saint Augustine

• The human race is inquisitive about other people’s lives, but negligent to correct their own.
  

  St. Augustine

• We ought to do good to others as simply as a horse runs, or a bee makes honey, or a vine bears grapes season after season without thinking of the grapes it has borne.
  

  Marcus Aurelius

• How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.
  

  Marcus Aurelius

• How much trouble he avoids who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks.
  

  Marcus Aurelius

• Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.
  

  Marcus Aurelius

• You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.
  

  Marcus Aurelius

• The general root of superstition is that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss and commit to memory the one, and pass over the other.
  

  Francis Bacon

• If we begin with certainties, we shall end in doubts; but if we begin with doubts, and we are patient in them, we shall end in certainties.
  

  Francis Bacon

• Who questions much, shall learn much, and retain much.
  

  Francis Bacon

• A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
  

  Walter Bagehot

• To defend one’s self against fear is simply to ensure that one will, one day, be conquered by it; fears must be faced.
  

  James Arthur Baldwin

• We often say: “There is light at the end of the tunnel.” We forget there was light at the beginning of the tunnel. There was no need to get into the tunnel in the first place.
  

  Shabbir Banoobhai

• To look backward for a while is to refresh the eye, to restore it, and to render it more fit for its prime function of looking forward.
  

  Margaret Barber

• Happiness is a conscious choice, not an automatic response.
  

  Mildred Barthel

• People of integrity and honesty not only practice what they preach, they are what they preach.
  

  David A. Bednar

• The most important things to do in the world are to get something to eat, something to drink and somebody to love you.
  

  Brandan Behan

• Pride is concerned with who is right. Humility is concerned with what is right.
  

  Ezra Taft Benson

• [R]elationships with other humans are both the foundation and the theme of the human condition: We are born into relationships, we live our lives in relationships with others, and when we die, the effects of our relationships survive in the lives of the living, reverberating throughout the tissue of their relationships.
  

  Ellen Berscheid

• Blessed are those who can give without remembering and take without forgetting.
  

  Elizabeth Bibesco

• Be like a postage stamp. Stick to one thing until you get there.
  

  Josh Billings

• I am not what I think I am. I am not what you think I am. I am what I think you think I am.
  

  Bleiberg & Leubling

• The difference between school and life? In school you’re taught lessons and then given a test. In life you’re given a test that teaches you a lesson.
  

  Tom Bodett

• Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.
  

  Niels Bohr

• In politics stupidity is not a handicap.
  

  Napolean Bonaparte

• It is not your love that sustains the marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love.
  

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

• The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.
  

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

• There is meaning in every journey that is unknown to the traveler.
  

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

• Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil.
  

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

• The belief that there is only one truth and that oneself is in possession of it seems to me the deepest root of all evil that is in the world.
  

  Max Born

• Change comes more from managing the journey than from announcing the destination.
  

  William Bridges

• People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they’re not on your road doesn’t mean they’ve gotten lost.
  

  H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

• Live so that when your children think of fairness, caring, and integrity, they think of you.
  

  H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

• Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.
  

  William Jennings Bryan

• If anything goes bad, I did it. If anything goes semi-good, we did it. If anything goes really good, then you did it. That’s all it takes to get people to win football games for you.
  

  Paul “Bear” Bryant

• Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, faithfulness the best relationship.
  

  Buddha

• We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world
  

  Buddha

• Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.
  

  Buddha

• Happiness is not a destination. It is a method of life.
  

  Buddha

• Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.
  

  Buddha

• Believe nothing merely because you have been told it. Do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of respect for the teacher. But whatsoever, after due examination and analysis, you find to be kind, conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings — that doctrine believe and cling to, and take it as your guide.
  

  Buddha

• They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.
  

  Carl W. Buechner

• Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they’re too heavy to be broken.
  

  Warren Buffett

• I honestly think it is better to be a failure at something you love than to be a success at something you hate.
  

  George Burns

• Change is the end result of all true learning. Change involves three things: First, a dissatisfaction with self-a felt void or need; second, a decision to change-to fill the void or need; and third, a conscious dedication to the process of growth and change-the willful act of making the change; Doing Something.
  

  Leo Buscaglia

• Let go. Why do you cling to pain? There is nothing you can do about the wrongs of yesterday. It is not yours to judge. Why hold on to the very thing which keeps you from hope and love?
  

  Leo Buscalglia

• It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.
  

  Warren Buffett

• Rudeness is the weak man’s imitation of strength.
  

  Edmund Burke

• An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less.
  

  Nicholas Murray Butler

• The purpose of life is a life of purpose.
  

  Robert Byme

• Perfectionism is not a quest for the best. It is a pursuit of the worst in ourselves, the part that tells us that nothing we do will ever be good enough.
  

  Julia Cameron

• Show me the man you honor, and I will know what kind of man you are.
  

  Thomas Carlyle

• One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon– instead of enjoying the roses blooming outside our windows today.
  

  Dale Carnegie

• You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.
  

  Dale Carnegie

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

  Jimmy Carter

• To the wrongs that need resistance, To the right that needs assistance, To the future in the distance, Give yourselves.
  

  Carrie Chapman Catt

• Never does the human soul appear so strong and noble as when it forgoes revenge and dares to forgive injury.
  

  Edwin Hubbel Chapin

• May your life preach more loudly than your lips.
  

  William Ellery Channing

• An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.
  

  G. K. Chesterton

• Those who say it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it.
  

  Chinese Proverb

• Rewards and punishments are the lowest form of education.
  

  Chuang-tzu

• Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from being discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb.
  

  Winston Churchill

• Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.
  

  Winston Churchill

• Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never — in nothing, great or small, large or petty — never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.
  

  Winston Churchill

• For myself I am an optimist–it does not seem to be much use being anything else.
  

  Winston Churchill

• The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
  

  Winston Churchill

• Life is change. Growth is optional. Choose wisely.
  

  Karen K. Clark

• You never really learn much from hearing yourself speak.
  

  George Clooney

• The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion.
  

  Paulo Coelho

• The ship is safest when it is in port, but that’s not what ships were built for.
  

  Paulo Coelho

• Faith handles the ultimate incongruities of life, humor handles the more immediate ones.
  

  William Sloan Coffin

• Every man ought to be inquisitive through every hour of his great adventure down to the day when he shall no longer cast a shadow in the sun. For if he dies without a question in his heart, what excuse is there for his continuance?
  

  Frank Moore Colby

• Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination are alone omnipotent.
  

  Calvin Coolidge

• Christmas is not a time nor a season, but a state of mind. To cherish peace and goodwill, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas.
  

  Calvin Coolidge

• If I had permitted my failures, or what seemed to me at the time a lack of success, to discourage me, I cannot see any way in which I would ever have made progress.
  

  Calvin Coolidge

• Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be worshipped.
  

  Calvin Coolidge

• Learning, undigested by thought, is labor lost.
  

  Confucius

• Thought, unassisted by learning, is dangerous.
  

  Confucius.

• It is only the wisest and the stupidest that cannot change.
  

  Confucius

• We all have two lives. The second one starts when we realize we only have one.
  

  Confucius

• Individuality is either the mark of genius or the reverse. Mediocrity finds safety in standardization.
  

  Frederick Crane

• I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me. I love you for that part of me you bring out.
  

  Roy Croft

• What would it be like if you lived each day, each breath, as a work of art in progress? Imagine that you are a Masterpiece unfolding, every second of every day, a work of art taking form with every breath.
  

  Thomas Crum

• Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them.
  

  Dalai Lama

• If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.
  

  Charles Darwin

• It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent; it is the one that is most adaptable to change.
  

  Charles Darwin

• A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.
  

  Charles Darwin

• Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.
  

  Charles Darwin

• If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once a week.
  

  Charles Darwin

• It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.
  

  Leonardo Da Vinci

• To live in the presence of great truths and eternal laws, to be led by permanent ideals – that is what keeps a man patient when the world ignores him, and calm and unspoiled when the world praises him.
  

  Honore De Balzac

• Each problem that I solved became a rule which served afterwards to solve other problems.
  

  Rene Descartes

• There is a great difference between mind and body insomuch as body is by nature always divisible, and the mind is entirely indivisible.
  

  Rene Descartes

• If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.
  

  Rene Descartes

• If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing.
  

  W. Edwards Deming

• Mankind likes to think in terms of extreme opposites — between which it recognizes no intermediate possibilities.
  

  John Dewey

• Anyone who has begun to think places some portion of the world in jeopardy.
  

  John Dewey

• Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has plenty; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.
  

  Charles Dickens

• Our observation of nature must be diligent, our reflection profound, and our experiments exact. We rarely see these three means combined; and for this reason, creative geniuses are not common.
  

  Denis Diderot

• When Thales was asked what was difficult, he said, ‘To know one’s self.’ And what was easy, ‘To advise another.’
  

  Laertius Diogenes (-c. 320 BC)

• Mediocrity can talk; but it is for genius to observe.
  

  Benjamin Disraeli

• All of us encounter, at least once in our life, some individual who utters words that make us think forever. There are men whose phrases are oracles; who can condense in one sentence the secrets of life; who blurt out an aphorism that forms a character, or illustrates an existence.
  

  Benjamin Disraeli

• When it’s all over, it’s not who you were. . . it’s whether you made a difference.
  

  Bob Dole

• Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius.
  

  Arthur Conan Doyle

• It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment.
  

  Arthur Conan Doyle

• Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.
  

  Peter Drucker

• He who will not reason, is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.
  

  William Drummond

• I prefer the wicked rather than the foolish. The wicked sometimes rest.
  

  Alexandre Dumas

• What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.
  

  Ecclesiastes 1:9

• As a cure for worrying, work is better than whiskey.
  

  Thomas A. Edison

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

  Thomas Edison

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

  Thomas Edison

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

  Thomas Edison

• Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you that mine are still greater.
  

  Albert Einstein

• We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.
  

  Albert Einstein

• If A is success in life, then A = X + Y + Z. Work is X, play is Y, and Z is keeping your mouth shut.
  

  Albert Einstein

• The whole of science is nothing more than the refinement of everyday thinking.
  

  Albert Einstein

• Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.
  

  Albert Einstein

• Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.
  

  Albert Einstein

• Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
  

  Albert Einstein

• Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.
  

  Albert Einstein

• When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That’s relativity.
  

  Albert Einstein

• He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.
  

  Albert Einstein

• The ideas that have lighted my way and, time after time, have given me new courage to face life cheerfully have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth.
  

  Albert Einstein

• Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.
  

  Albert Einstein

• I want to know God’s thoughts. The rest are details.
  

  Albert Einstein

• There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.
  

  Albert Einstein

• Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
  

  Albert Einstein

• If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn’t be called research, would it?
  

  Albert Einstein

• The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.
  

  Albert Einstein

• Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.
  

  Albert Einstein

• It is not enough that you should understand about applied science in order that your work may increase man’s blessings. Concern for the man himself and his fate must always from the chief interest of all technical endeavors. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations.
  

  Albert Einstein

• More and more I come to value charity and love of one’s fellow being above everything else… All our lauded technological progress–our very civilization–is like the axe in the hand of the pathological criminal.
  

  Albert Einstein

• Never regard study as a duty but as an enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later works belong.
  

  Albert Einstein

• What is right is not always popular, and what is popular is not always right.
  

  Albert Einstein

• Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
  

  Albert Einstein

• A ship is always safe at shore but that is not what it’s built for.
  

  Albert Einstein

• The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don’t know.
  

  Albert Einstein

• Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it.
  

  Dwight D Eisenhower

• The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office.
  

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

• Most of the trouble in the world is caused by people wanting to be important.
  

  T. S. Eliot

• Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go.
  

  T.S. Eliot

• People only see what they are prepared to see.
  

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

• We are always getting ready to live but never living.
  

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

• It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life, that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.
  

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

• What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.
  

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

• Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
  

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

• To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a little better; whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is the meaning of success.
  

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

• Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. What if they are a little course, and you may get your coat soiled or torn? What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice. Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble.
  

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

• Be as beneficent as the sun or the sea, but if your rights as a rational being are trenched on, die on the first inch of your territory.
  

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

• For everything you have missed, you have gained something else; and for everything you gain, you lose something.
  

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

• Life is a succession of lessons, which must be lived to be understood.
  

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

• The things taught in colleges and schools are not an education, but the means of education.
  

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

• The Religion that is afraid of science dishonors God and commits suicide.
  

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

• Money often costs too much.
  

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

• Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can.
  

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

• That only which we have within, can we see without. If we meet no Gods, it is because we harbor none. If there is a grandeur in you, you will find grandeur in porters and sweeps.
  

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

• The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.
  

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

• The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.
  

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

• I am thankful for small mercies. I compared notes with one of my friends who expects everything of the universe, and is disappointed when anything is less than the best, and I found that I begin at the other extreme, expecting nothing, and am always full of thanks for moderate goods.
  

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

• The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him with his friendship.
  

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

• A smooth sea never made a skilled mariner.
  

  English proverb

• Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of them.
  

  Epictetus

• He is a man of sense who does not grieve for what he has not, but rejoices in what he has.
  

  Epictetus

• First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.
  

  Epictetus

• If evil be spoken of you and it be true, correct yourself. If it be a lie, laugh at it.
  

  Epictetus

• We can often do more for other men by trying to correct our own faults than by trying to correct theirs.
  

  Francois Fenelon

• There are plenty of fools in the world; but if they had not been sent for some wise purpose, they wouldn’t have been here; and since they are here they have as good a right to have elbow-room in the world as the wisest.
  

  Susan Ferrier

• It does not make any difference how beautiful your guess is if it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. That is all there is to it.
  

  Richard Feynman

• If you thought before that science was certain — well, that is just an error on your part.
  

  Richard Feynman

• If you want light to come into your life, you need to stand where it is shining.
  

  Guy Finley

• If we would only give, just once, the same amount of reflection to what we want to get out of life, that we give to the question of what to do with two weeks’ vacation, we would be startled at our false standards and the aimless procession of our busy days.
  

  Dorothy Canfield Fisher

• A great obstacle to happiness is the expectation of too great a happiness.
  

  Fontenelle

• The most important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one’s work seriously and taking one’s self seriously. The first is imperative, and the second disastrous.
  

  Margaret Fontey

• Victory is sweetest when you’ve known defeat.
  

  Malcolm Forbes

• The first virtue of all really great men is that they are sincere. They eradicate hypocrisy from their hearts.
  

  Anotole France

• Rivers do not drink their own water; trees do not eat their own fruit; the sun does not shine on itself and flowers do not spread their fragrance for themselves. Living for others is a rule of nature. We are all born to help each other. No matter how difficult it is… Life is good when you are happy; but much better when others are happy because of you.
  

  Pope Francis

• We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken away but one thing: the last of human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances – to choose one’s own way.
  

  Victor Frankl

• The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.
  

  Benjamin Franklin

• Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.
  

  Benjamin Franklin

• An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.
  

  Benjamin Franklin

• If you are too big to do the little things, you are too little to do big things.
  

  Jentezen Franklin

• Man’s main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is.
  

  Erich Fromm

• The history of man is a graveyard of great cultures that came to catastrophic ends because of their incapacity for planned, rational, voluntary reaction to challenge.
  

  Erich Fromm

• If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
  

  John Kenneth Galbraith

• In the choice between changing ones mind and proving there’s no need to do so, most people get busy on the proof.
  

  John Kenneth Galbraith

• I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
  

  Galileo Galilei

• Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so.
  

  Galileo Galilei

• Some people hate the very name of statistics, but I find them full of beauty and interest. Whenever they are not brutalized, but delicately handled by the higher methods, and are warily interpreted, their power of dealing with complicated phenomena is extraordinary. They are the only tools by which an opening can be cut through the formidable thicket of difficulties that bars the path of those who pursue the Science of Man.
  

  Francis Galton

• Be the change that you want to see in this world.
  

  Mohandas Gandhi

• Truth never damages a cause that is just.
  

  Mohandas Gandhi

• The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems.
  

  Mohandas Gandhi

• There is more to life than increasing its speed.
  

  Mohandas Gandhi

• The various religions are like different roads converging on the same point. What difference does it make if we follow different routes, provided we arrive at the same destination.
  

  Mahatma Gandhi

• The most heinous and the most cruel crimes of which history has record have been committed under the cover of religion or equally noble motives
  

  Mohandas Gandhi

• Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.
  

  Mahatma Gandhi

• Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment, full effort is full victory.
  

  Mahatma Gandhi

• Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.
  

  Mahatma Gandhi

• There are many who lust for the simple answers of doctrine or decree. They are on the left and right. They are not confined to a single part of the society. They are terrorists of the mind.
  

  A. Bartlett Giamatti

• Be faithful to that which exists within yourself.
  

  Andre Gide

• Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others, and in their pleasure takes joy, even as though t’were his own.
  

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

• Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in action.
  

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

• First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth.
  

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

• All truly wise thoughts have been thoughts already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience.
  

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

• Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you will help them become what they are capable of becoming.
  

  Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

• You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.
  

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

• What happens is not as important as how you react to what happens.
  

  Thaddeus Golas

• When wealth is lost, nothing is lost; when health is lost, something is lost; when character is lost, all is lost.
  

  Billy Graham

• Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened.
  

  Billy Graham

• Mountaintops are for views and inspiration, but fruit is grown in the valleys.
  

  Billy Graham

• Suffering in life can uncover untold depths of character and unknown strength for service. People who go through life unscathed by sorrow and untouched by pain tend to be shallow in their perspectives on life. Suffering, on the other hand, tends to plow up the surface of our lives to uncover the depths that provide greater strength of purpose and accomplishment. Only deeply plowed earth can yield bountiful harvests.
  

  Billy Graham

• A suffering person does not need a lecture – he needs a listener.
  

  Billy Graham

• Integrity means that if our private life were suddenly exposed, we’d have no reason to be ashamed or embarrassed. Integrity means that our outward life is consistent with our inner convictions.
  

  Billy Graham

• Knowledge is like a garden: if it is not cultivated, it cannot be harvested.
  

  Guinean saying

• The words you speak become the house you live in.
  

  Hafiz

• I have come to the conclusion that my subjective account of my motivation is largely mythical on almost all occasions. I don’t know why I do things.
  

  John Burdon Sanderson Haldane

• I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something I can do.
  

  Edward Hale

• Happiness is as a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.
  

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

• No man, for any considerable time, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true.
  

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

• You’ve been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.
  

  Louise Hay

• We learn from history that we do not learn from history.
  

  Georg Hegel

• A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity.
  

  Robert Anson Heinlein

• Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains or slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take but as for me; give me liberty or give me death!
  

  Patrick Henry

• If have but one lamp by which my feet are guided; and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging the future but by the past.
  

  Patrick Henry

• The soul is dyed the color of its thoughts. Think only on those things that are in line with your principles and can bear the light of day. The content of your character is your choice. Day by day, what you choose, what you think, and what you do is who you become. Your integrity is your destiny … it is the light that guides your way.
  

  Heraclitus

• The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.
  

  Theodore Hesburgh

• If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.
  

  Hermann Hesse

• I wanted only to try to live in accord with the promptings which came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult?
  

  Hermann Hesse

• I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value.
  

  Hermann Hesse

• It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.
  

  Edmund Hillary

• What good fortune for those in power that people do not think.
  

  Adolf Hitler

• It is easier to find a score of men wise enough to discover the truth than to find one intrepid enough, in the face of opposition, to stand up for it.
  

  A. Hodge

• Rudeness is the weak man’s imitation of strength.
  

  Eric Hoffer

• The trouble with putting armor on is that, while it protects you from pain, it also protects you from pleasure.
  

  Celeste Holm

• It is well to remember that the entire population of the universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others.
  

  John Andrew Holmes

• Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man’s upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground floor.
  

  Oliver Wendell Holmes

• Man’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.
  

  Oliver Wendell Holmes

• The foolish reject what they see, not what they think; the wise reject what they think, not what they see.
  

  Huang-Po

• The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives.
  

  Robert Maynard Hutchins

• The greatest happiness in life is the conviction that we are loved – loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.
  

  Victor Hugo

• Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them.
  

  David Hume

• The great tragedy of science: the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.
  

  Aldous Huxley

• The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different.
  

  Aldous Huxley

• Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.
  

  Thomas Huxley

• The known is finite, the unknown is infinite; intellectually we stand on an island in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land.
  

  Thomas Huxley

• The greatest test of courage on earth is to bear defeat without losing heart.
  

  Robert Ingersoll

• I will not attack your doctrines nor your creeds if they accord liberty to me. If they hold thought to be dangerous if they aver that doubt is a crime, then I attack them one and all, because they enslave the minds of men.
  

  Robert Ingersoll

• The first rule of holes: when you’re in one, stop digging.
  

  Molly Ivins

• It is not the function of our government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error.
  

  Robert H. Jackson

• The deepest principle of Human Nature is the craving to be appreciated.
  

  William James

• The greatest discovery of my generation is that man can alter his life simply by altering his attitudes of mind.
  

  William James

• Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, “This is the real me,” and when you have found that attitude, follow it.
  

  William James

• Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.
  

  William James

• I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.
  

  Thomas Jefferson

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

  Thomas Jefferson

• One man with courage is a majority.
  

  Thomas Jefferson

• …it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket, nor breaks my leg.
  

  Thomas Jefferson

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

  Thomas Jefferson

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

  Thomas Jefferson

• Honesty is the first chapter of the book wisdom.
  

  Thomas Jefferson

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

  Thomas Jefferson

• He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.
  

  Thomas Jefferson

• If you want something you’ve never had, you must be willing to do something you’ve never done.
  

  Thomas Jefferson

• When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.
  

  Thomas Jefferson

• The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra.
  

  Jimmy Johnson

• I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.
  

  Michael Jordan

• Children need models rather than critics.
  

  Joseph Joubert

• If there is anything we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is something that could better be changed in ourselves.
  

  Carl Jung

• Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside awakes.
  

  Carl Jung

• Virture offers the only path in this life that leads to tranquility.
  

  Juvenal

• May you live your life as if the maxim of your actions were to become universal law.
  

  Immanuel Kant

• Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.
  

  Immanuel Kant

• From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned.
  

  Immanuel Kant

• Be of good cheer. Do not think of today’s failures, but of the success that may come tomorrow. You have set yourselves a difficult task, but you will succeed if you persevere; and you will find joy in overcoming obstacles. Remember, no effort that we make to attain something beautiful is ever lost.
  

  Helen Keller

• When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.
  

  Helen Keller

• One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.
  

  Helen Keller

• Face your deficiencies and acknowledge them; but do not let them master you. Let them teach you patience, sweetness, insight.
  

  Helen Keller

• Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.
  

  Helen Keller

• The real test of friendship is: Can you literally do nothing with the other person? Can you enjoy together those moments of life that are utterly simple? They are the moments people look back on at the end of life and number as their most sacred experiences.
  

  Eugene Kennedy

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

  John F. Kennedy

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

  John F. Kennedy

• Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.
  

  Robert Kennedy

• In crises the most daring course is often safest.
  

  Robert Kennedy

• The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.
  

  John Maynard Keynes

• There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.
  

  Soren Kierkegaard

• Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.
  

  Soren Kierkegaard

• The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.
  

  Martin Luther King

• Learn from the past, Hope for the future, Live in the present.
  

  Ken Lancaster

• It is the province of knowledge to speak, It is the privilege of wisdom to listen.
  

  Christine Lane

• To love for the sake of being loved is human, But to love for the sake of loving is angelic.
  

  Alphonse Marie Louis de Lamartine

• When you choose the lesser of two evils, always remember that it is still an evil.
  

  Max Lerner

• If you want truly to understand something, try to change it.
  

  Kurt Lewin

• If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth – only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.
  

  Clive Staples Lewis

• The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
  

  Martin Luther King Jr.

• Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
  

  Martin Luther King Jr.

• We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.
  

  Martin Luther King Jr.

• One clear moment, one of trance; One missed step, one perfect dance; One missed shot, one and only chance; Life is all…but one fleeting glance.
  

  Sanober Khan

• Pain should not be wasted.
  

  Gerda Weissman Klein

• Do not let the behavior of others destroy your inner peace.
  

  Dalai Lama

• The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident.
  

  Charles Lamb

• If you have love in your life it can make up for a great many things you lack. If you don’t have it, no matter what else there is, it’s not enough.
  

  Ann Landers

• Opportunities are usually disguised as hard work, so most people don’t recognize them.
  

  Ann Landers

• A winner never stops trying.
  

  Tom Landry

• When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down “happy.” They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.
  

  John Lennon

• There is nothing so practical as a good theory.
  

  Kurt Lewin

• Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less.
  

  C.S. Lewis

• Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.
  

  C. S. Lewis

• The possibility that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.
  

  Abraham Lincoln

• Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.
  

  Abraham Lincoln

• The better part of one’s life consists of his friendships.
  

  Abraham Lincoln

• The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend.
  

  Abraham Lincoln

• I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.
  

  Abraham Lincoln

• And in the end it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.
  

  Abraham Lincoln

• The best way to predict the future is to create it.
  

  Abraham Lincoln

• When someone asked Abraham Lincoln, after he was elected president, what he was going to do about his enemies, he replied, “I am going to destroy them. I am going to make them my friends.”
  

  Abraham Lincoln

• It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.
  

  Walter Lippman

• The final test of a leader is that he leaves in others behind him the conviction to carry on.
  

  Walter Lippman

• I think it every man’s indispensable duty to do all the service he can to his country; and I see not what difference he puts between himself and his cattle who lives without that thought.
  

  John Locke

• New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.
  

  John Locke

• If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm any hostility.
  

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

• What we see depends mainly on what we look for.
  

  Sir John Lubbock

• In the final analysis there is no solution to man’s progress but the day’s honest work, the day’s honest decisions, the day’s generous utterances and the day’s good deed.
  

  Clare Booth Luce

• What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable than that of Liberty and Learning, each leaning on the other for their natural and surest support.
  

  James Madison

• The sea is dangerous and its storms terrible, but these obstacles have never been sufficient reason to remain ashore … Unlike the mediocre, intrepid spirits seek victory over those things that seem impossible … It is with an iron will that they embark on the most daring of all endeavors … to meet the shadowy future without fear and conquer the unknown.
  

  Ferdinand Magellan

• You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.
  

  Naguib Mahfouz

• Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.
  

  Nelson Mandela

• I will persist until I succeed. Always will I take another step. If that is of no avail I will take another, and yet another. In truth, one step at a time is not too difficult…. I know that small attempts, repeated, will complete any undertaking.
  

  Og Mandino

• The sign of intelligent people is their ability to control emotions by the application of reason.
  

  Marya Mannes

• Small deeds done are better than great deeds planned.
  

  Peter Marshall

• A very large amount of human suffering and frustration is caused by the fact that many men and women are not content to be the sort of beings that God has made them, but try to persuade themselves that they are really beings of some different kind.
  

  Eric Mascall

• Musicians must make music, artists must paint, poets must write if they are to be ultimately at peace with themselves. What humans can be, they must be. They must be true to their own nature.
  

  Abraham Maslow

• The most persistent threat to freedom, to the rights of Americans, is fear.
  

  George Meany

• It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in argument.
  

  William McAdoo

• Climb mountains not so the world can see you, but so you can see the world.
  

  David McCullough

• Man has no nobler function than to defend the truth.
  

  Ruth McKenney

• Never doubt that a small, group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
  

  Margaret Mead

• The comfort zone takes our greatest aspirations and turns them into excuses for not bothering to aspire.
  

  Peter McWilliams

• Live your life each day as you would climb a mountain. An occasional glance towards the summit keeps the goal in mind, but many beautiful scenes are to be observed from each new vantage point.
  

  Harold B. Melchart

• Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers.
  

  Mignon McLaughlin

• If you realize that you aren’t as wise today as you thought you were yesterday, you’re wiser today.
  

  Michigan Presbyterian Church

• Men do not desire to be rich, but to be richer than other men.
  

  John Stuart Mill

• Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing.
  

  John Stuart Mill

• That which seems the height of absurdity in one generation often becomes the height of wisdom in the next.
  

  John Stuart Mill

• He who establishes his arguments by noise and command shows that his reason is weak.
  

  Michel de Montaigne

• There is no conversation so boring than the one where everybody agrees.
  

  Michel del Montaigne

• The greatest motivational act one person can do for another is to listen.
  

  Roy E. Moody

• To know one thing, you must know the opposite.
  

  Henry Moore

• Life is like a game of cards. The hand you are dealt is determinism; the way you play it is free will.
  

  Jawaharial Nehru

• What does not destroy me makes me strong.
  

  Freidrich Nietzsche

• Distrust all men in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.
  

  Friedrich Nietzsche

• I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.
  

  Friedrich Nietzsche

• If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
  

  Isaac Newton

• To know a truth well, one must have fought it out.
  

  Novalis

• The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.
  

  Flannery O’Connor

• The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet.
  

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

• Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.
  

  Frank Outlaw

• The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.
  

  Ellen Parr

• Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.
  

  Thomas Paine

• The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is Reason. I have never used any other, and I trust I never shall.
  

  Thomas Paine

• To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.
  

  Thomas Paine

• The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.
  

  Dolly Parton

• Doubt is often the beginning of wisdom.
  

  M. Scott Peck

• Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders than the arguments of its opponents.
  

  William Penn

• We come into this world crying while everybody around us is smiling. May we so live that we go out of this world smiling while everybody around us is weeping.
  

  Persian proverb

• The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.
  

  Pablo Picasso

• What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world remains and is immortal.
  

  Albert Pike

• To live only for some future goal is shallow. It’s the sides of the mountains that sustain life, not the top.
  

  Robert Pirsig

• The learning and knowledge that we have, is, at the most, but little compared with that of which we are ignorant.
  

  Plato

• Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools talk because they have to say something.
  

  Plato

• Let praise be given equally to women as well as men who have been distinguished in virtue.
  

  Plato

• Science is built up with fact, as a house is with stone. But a collection of fact is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house.
  

  Jules Henri Poincare

• We don’t receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one else can take for us or spare us.
  

  Marcel Proust

• Courage does not always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, I will try again tomorrow.
  

  Mary Anne Radmacher

• You’ll never get mixed up if you simply tell the truth. Then you don’t have to remember what you have said, and you never forget what you have said.
  

  Sam Rayburn

• The job of an actor is disclosure, not pretence!
  

  Max Reinhardt

• I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity an obligation; every possession a duty.
  

  John D. Rockefeller, Jr.

• The road to happiness lies in two simple principles: find what it is that interests you and that you can do well, and when you find it, put your whole soul into it — every bit of energy and ambition and natural ability you have.
  

  John D. Rockefeller III

• Never continue in a job you don’t enjoy. If you’re happy in what you’re doing, you’ll like yourself, you’ll have inner peace. And if you have that, along with physical health, you will have had more success than you could possibly have imagined.
  

  Rodan of Alexandria

• What we need is more people who specialize in the impossible.
  

  Theodore Roethke

• There are countless ways of achieving greatness, but any road to achieving one’s maximum potential must be built on a bedrock of respect for the individual, a commitment to excellence, and a rejection of mediocrity.
  

  Buck Rogers

• The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.
  

  Carl Rogers

• If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging.
  

  Will Rogers

• Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.
  

  Will Rogers

• Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life.
  

  Eleanor Roosevelt

• No one can make you feel inferior without your permission.
  

  Elenor Roosevelt

• When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.
  

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

• A smooth sea never made a skillful sailor.
  

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

• It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
  

  Theodore Roosevelt

• Happiness does not come from doing easy work but from the afterglow of satisfaction that comes after the achievement of a difficult task that demanded our best.
  

  Theodore Isaac Rubin

• There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking.
  

  Theodore Isaac Rubin

• There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.
  

  Bertrand Russell

• The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.
  

  Bertrand Russell

• Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.
  

  Bertrand Russell

• Love is wise; hatred is foolish. In this world, which is getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other, we have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don’t like. We can only live together in that way. But if we are to live together, and not die together, we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance, which is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet.
  

  Bertrand Russell

• To understand the actual world as it is, not as we should wish it to be, is the beginning of wisdom.
  

  Bertrand Russell

• The most valuable things in life are not measured in monetary terms. The really important things are not houses and lands, stocks and bonds, automobiles and real state, but friendships, trust, confidence, empathy, mercy, love and faith.
  

  Bertrand Russell

• Science does not aim at establishing immutable truths and eternal dogmas; its aim is to approach the truth by successive approximations, without claiming that at any stage final and complete accuracy has been achieved.
  

  Bertrand Russell

• The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
  

  Bertrand Russell

• Next to worry probably one of the most potent causes of unhappiness is envy.
  

  Bertrand Russell

• I believe four ingredients are necessary for happiness: health, warm personal relations, sufficient means to keep you from want, and successful work.
  

  Bertrand Russell

• Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.
  

  Bertrand Russell

• Those who have never known the deep intimacy and the intense companionship of happy mutual love have missed the best thing that life has to give.
  

  Bertrand Russell

• It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.
  

  Bertrand Russell

• The good life is inspired by love and guided by knowledge.
  

  Bertrand Russell

• Never let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game.
  

  Babe Ruth

• Every strike brings me closer to the next home run.
  

  Babe Ruth

• What we don’t need to know for achievement, we need to know for our pleasure. Knowing how things work is the basis for appreciation, and is thus a source of civilized delight.
  

  William L. Safire

• Tell me who admires you and loves you, and I will tell you who you are.
  

  Charles Augustin Sainte-Beauve

• The spirit is smothered, as it were, by ignorance, but so soon as ignorance is destroyed, spirit shine forth, like the sun when released from clouds.
  

  Sankara

• The wisest mind has something yet to learn.
  

  George Santanaya

• When you control your reaction to the seemingly uncontrollable problems of life, then, in fact, you do control the problem’s effect on you. Your reaction to the problem is the last word! That’s the bottom line. What will you let this problem do to you? It can make you tender or tough. It can make you better or bitter. It all depends on you.
  

  Robert Schuller

• Example is not the main thing in influencing others, it is the only thing.
  

  Albert Schweitzer

• We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.
  

  Seneca

• It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness.
  

  Seneca

• Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.
  

  Seneca

• The child should gain no request by anger; when he is quiet let him be offered what was refused when he wept.
  

  Seneca

• It is not the man who has little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.
  

  Seneca

• One should count each day a separate life.
  

  Seneca

• It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.
  

  Seneca

• You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose.
  

  Dr. Seuss

• There’s nothing either good or bad but thinking makes them so.
  

  Shakespere

• If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
  

  George Bernard Shaw

• People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.
  

  George Bernard Shaw

• Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.
  

  George Bernard Shaw

• Success does not consist in never making a mistake but in never making the same one a second time.
  

  George Bernard Shaw

• No pleasure philosophy, no sensuality, no place nor power, no material success can for a moment give such inner satisfaction as the sense of living for good purposes, for maintenance of integrity, for the preservation of self-approval.
  

  Minot Simons

• When you cannot make up your mind which of two evenly balanced courses of action you should take – choose the bolder.
  

  W.J. Slim

• The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder.
  

  Ralph M. Sockman

• They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers.
  

  Socrates

• All I know is that I know nothing.
  

  Socrates

• The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.
  

  Socrates

• The nearest way to glory — a shortcut, as it were — is to strive to be what you wish to be thought to be.
  

  Socrates

• The unexamined life is not worth living.
  

  Socrates

• Know thyself.
  

  Socrates

• Rather fail with honor than succeed by fraud.
  

  Sophocles

• The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools.
  

  Herbert Spencer

• There is a principle which is bar against all information, which will keep you in everlasting ignorance — that principle is a contempt prior to investigation.
  

  Herbert Spencer

• I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.
  

  Spinoza

• Be not astonished at new ideas; for it is well known to you that a thing does not therefore cease to be true because it is not accepted by many.
  

  Spinoza

• A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean question: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well – or ill?
  

  John Steinbeck

• It is the nature of man to rise to greatness if greatness is expected of him.
  

  John Steinbeck

• The one who plants trees, knowing that he or she will never sit in their shade, has at least started to understand the meaning of life.
  

  Rabindranath Tagore

• He who saves one life, it is as if he saves the world entire.
  

  Talmud

• We don’t see things as they are. We see them as we are.
  

  Talmud

• In dwelling, live close to the ground. In thinking, keep to the simple. In conflict, be fair and generous. In governing, don’t try to control. In work, do what you enjoy. In family life, be completely present.
  

  Tao Le Ching

• If you judge people, you have no time to love them.
  

  Mother Teresa

• If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one.
  

  Mother Teresa

• Life is an opportunity, benefit from it. Life is a beauty, admire it. Life is a dream, realize it. Life is a challenge, meet it. Life is a duty, complete it. Life is a game, play it. Life is a promise, fulfill it. Life is sorrow, overcome it. Life is a song, sing it. Life is a struggle, accept it. Life is a tragedy, confront it. Life is an adventure, dare it. Life is luck, make it. Life is life, fight for it!
  

  Mother Teresa

• Not all of us can do great things, but we can do small things with great love.
  

  Mother Teresa

• The world is good-natured to people who are good natured.
  

  William Makepeace Thackeray

• Standing in the middle of the road is very dangerous; you get knocked down by traffic from both sides.
  

  Margaret Thatcher

• It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.
  

  Henry David Thoreau

• Be true to your work, your word, and your friends.
  

  Henry David Thoreau

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

  Henry David Thoreau

• The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play.
  

  Arnold Joseph Toynbee

• There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist.
  

  Mark Twain

• The holy passion of friendship is so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring in nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money.
  

  Mark Twain

• The secret of success is making your vocation your vacation.
  

  Mark Twain

• The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.
  

  Mark Twain

• Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
  

  Mark Twain

• The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.
  

  Mark Twain

• Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.
  

  Mark Twain

• The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.
  

  Mark Twain

• The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.
  

  Lao Tzu

• When a thing is said to be not worth refuting you may be sure that either it is flagrantly stupid-in which case all comment is superfluous-or it is something formidable, the very crux of the problem.
  

  Miguel de Unamuno

• What nobler profession than to touch the next generation–to see children hold your understanding in their eyes, your hope in their lives, your world in their hands. In their success, you find your own and so to them you give your all.
  

  Unknown

• The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.
  

  Paul Ambroise Valery

• Four short words sum up what has lifted most successful individuals above the crowd: a little bit more. They did all that was expected of them and a little bit more.
  

  A. Lou Vickery

• Sir, your remarks are repugnant to me, and I disagree with your viewpoints. But I will defend to the death your right to express them.
  

  Voltaire

• Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.
  

  Booker T. Washington

• Few things can help an individual more than to place responsibility on him, and to let him know that you trust him.
  

  Booker T. Washington

• The greater part of happiness or misery depends on our dispositions, not our circumstances.
  

  Martha Washington

• You have to become the kind of person who deserves the life you want.
  

  Brianna Wiest

• Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.
  

  John Wesley

• Whenever people are certain they understand our peculiar situation here on this planet, it is because they have accepted some religious Faith or a secular Ideology and just stopped thinking
  

  Robert Wilson

• I used to think the worst thing in life was to end up all alone. It’s not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel all alone.
  

  Robin Williams

• Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody’s going to know whether you did it or not.
  

  Oprah Winfrey

• The best portion of a good man’s life are the little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love.
  

  William Wordsworth

• The sages do not consider that making no mistakes is a blessing. They believe, rather, that the great virtue of man lies in his ability to correct his mistakes and continually make a new man of himself.
  

  Wang Yang-Ming

• Reality is what we take to be true. What we take to be true is what we believe. What we believe is based upon our perceptions. What we perceive depends upon what we look for. What we look for depends upon what we think. What we think depends upon what we perceive. What we perceive determines what we believe. What we believe determines what we take to be true. What we take to be true is our reality.
  

  Gary Zukav

• We make a living by what we get; we make a life by what we give.
  

  Unknown (often attributed to Winston Churchill)

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