writing / writers quotes

Albert Camus: 

The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.

Aldous Huxley: 

The author of the Iliad is either Homer or, if not Homer, somebody else of the same name.

Aldous Huxley: 

A bad book is as much of a labour to write as a good one; it comes as sincerely from the author's soul.

Alice Walker: 

Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn't matter. I'm not sure a bad person can write a good book, If art doesn't make us better, then what on earth is it for.

Alice Walker: 

Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn't matter. I'm not sure a bad person can write a good book. If art doesn't make us better, then what on earth is it for.

Blaise Pascal: 

Even those who write against fame wish for the fame of having written well, and those who read their works desire the fame of having read them.

David Ben Gurion: 

Anyone who believes you can't change history has never tried to write his memoirs.

Denise Levertov: 

One of the obligations of the writer is to say or sing all that he or she can, to deal with as much of the world as becomes possible to him or her in language. 

E. B. White: 

English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment and education -- sometimes it's sheer luck, like getting across the street.

Elizabeth Drew: 

The test of literature is, I suppose, whether we ourselves live more intensely for the reading of it.

F. Scott Fitzgerald: 

There was never a good biography of a good novelist. There couldn't be. He is too many people if he's any good.

Flannery O'Conner: 

Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.

Flannery O'Connor: 

Everywhere I go, I'm asked if the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.

Frances Hodgson Burnett: 

I am writing in the garden. To write as one should of a garden one must write not outside it or merely somewhere near it, but in the garden.

Gloria Steinem: 

Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else.

Gracián: 

Good things, when short, are twice as good.

Harvey Cox: 

All human beings have an innate need to hear and tell stories and to have a story to live by ... religion, whatever else it has done, has provided one of the main ways of meeting this abiding need. 
The Seduction of the Spirit, 1973


Isaac Asimov: 

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster.

Jack Lynch: 

Arguments over grammar and style are often as fierce as those over IBM versus Mac, and as fruitless as Coke versus Pepsi and boxers versus briefs.

Jessamyn West: 

Writing is a solitary occupation. Family, friends, and society are the natural enemies of the writer. He must be alone, uninterrupted, and slightly savage if he is to sustain and complete an undertaking.

Kathryn Hughes: 

Women do not always have to write about women, or gay men about gay men. Indeed, something good and new might happen if they did not.

Lavina Goodell: 

Critics are by no means the end of the law. Do not think all is over with you because you articles are rejected. It may be that the editor has his drawer full, or that he does not know enough to appreciate you, or you have not gained a reputation, or he is not in a mood to be pleased. A critic's judgment is like that of any intelligent person. If he has experience, he is capable of judging whether a book will sell. That is all. junior editor, Harper's Bazaar, 1866 

Lillian Hellman: 

If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.

Logan Pearsall Smith: 

Yes there is a meaning; at least for me, there is one thing that matters - to set a chime of words tinkling in the minds of a few fastidious people.

Lord Byron: 

But words are things, and a small drop of ink,
Falling, like dew, upon a thought, produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.

Manuel Puig: 

What's better, a poetic intuition or an intellectual work? I think they complement each other.

Manuel Puig: 

I allow my intuition to lead my path.

Mark Twain: 

There are some books that refuse to be written. They stand their ground year after year and will not be persuaded. It isn't because the book is not there and worth being written -- it is only because the right form of the story does not present itself. There is only one right form for a story and if you fail to find that form the story will not tell itself.

Mark Twain: 

I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English - it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them - then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice.

Mark Twain: 

To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement. To condense the diffused light of a page of thought into the luminous flash of a single sentence, is worthy to rank as a prize composition just by itself...Anybody can have ideas--the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph.

Oscar Wilde: 

Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it.

Pearl S. Buck: 

I don't wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.

Pearl S. Buck: 

In a mood of faith and hope my work goes on. A ream of fresh paper lies on my desk waiting for the next book. I am a writer and I take up my pen to write.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: 

The reality is more excellent than the report.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: 

Put the argument into a concrete shape, into an image, some hard phrase, round and solid as a ball, which they can see and handle and carry home with them, and the cause is half won.

Rita Mae Brown: 

Writers will happen in the best of families.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge: 

Poetry: the best words in the best order.

Sophocles: 

A short saying often contains much wisdom.

Stephen King: 

Fiction is the truth inside the lie.

T. S. Eliot: 

Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.

Thomas Jefferson: 

Take care that you never spell a word wrong. Always before you write a word, consider how it is spelled, and, if you do not remember, turn to a dictionary. It produces great praise to a lady to spell well.
to his daughter Martha


Tom Clancy: 

The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.

V. S. Naipaul: 

I have trusted to my intuition to find the subjects, and I have written intuitively. I have an idea when I start, I have a shape; but I will fully understand what I have written only after some years.

V. S. Naipaul: 

I have trusted to intuition. I did it at the beginning. I do it even now. I have no idea how things might turn out, where in my writing I might go next.

Virginia Woolf: 

It is worth mentioning, for future reference, that the creative power which bubbles so pleasantly in beginning a new book quiets down after a time, and one goes on more steadily. Doubts creep in. Then one becomes resigned. Determination not to give in, and the sense of an impending shape keep one at it more than anything.

Virginia Woolf: 

When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet. . . indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.

Willa Cather: 

Writing ought either to be the manufacture of stories for which there is a market demand -- a business as safe and commendable as making soap or breakfast foods -- or it should be an art, which is always a search for something for which there is no market demand, something new and untried, where the values are intrinsic and have nothing to do with standardized values.

William Wordsworth: 

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart...

Winston Churchill: 

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.

worth quotes

Albert Einstein: 

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

Audrey Hepburn: 

People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone.

Blaise Pascal: 

We are all something, but none of us are everything.

Felix Adler: 

The conception of worth, that each person is an end per se, is not a mere abstraction. Our interest in it is not merely academic. Every outcry against the oppression of some people by other people, or against what is morally hideous is the affirmation of the principle that a human being as such is not to be violated. A human being is not to be handled as a tool but is to be respected and revered. 
An Ethical Philosophy of Life


Felix Adler: 

The unique personality which is the real life in me, I can not gain unless I search for the real life, the spiritual quality, in others. I am myself spiritually dead unless I reach out to the fine quality dormant in others. For it is only with the god enthroned in the innermost shrine of the other, that the god hidden in me, will consent to appear.
An Ethical Philosophy of Life


Goethe: 

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

Izaak Walton: 

The person that loses their conscience has nothing left worth keeping.

John Dewey: 

The only freedom that is of enduring importance is the freedom of intelligence, that is to say, freedom of observation and of judgment, exercised in behalf of purposes that are intrinsically worth while. The commonest mistake made about freedom is, I think, to identify it with freedom of movement, or, with the external or physical side of activity.

Kathleen Norris: 

Over and over again mediocrity is promoted because real worth isn't to be found.

Margaret Laurence: 

Know that although in the eternal scheme of things you are small, you are also unique and irreplaceable, as are all your fellow humans everywhere in the world.

Marian Wright Edelman: 

No one, Eleanor Roosevelt said, can make you feel inferior without your consent. Never give it.

Martin Luther King, Jr.: 

I look forward confidently to the day when all who work for a living will be one with no thought to their separateness as Negroes, Jews, Italians or any other distinctions. This will be the day when we bring into full realization the American dream -- a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few; a dream of a land where men will not argue that the color of a man's skin determines the content of his character; a dream of a nation where all our gifts and resources are held not for ourselves alone, but as instruments of service for the rest of humanity; the dream of a country where every man will respect the dignity and worth of the human personality.

Mohandas K. Gandhi: 

The dignity of man requires obedience to a higher law, to the strength of the spirit.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: 

Conservatism is more candid to behold another's worth; reform more disposed to maintain and increase its own. 
The Conservative


Robert Louis Stevenson: 

There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, that it behooves all of us not to talk about the rest of us.

Rudyard Kipling: 

I always try to believe the best of everybody -- it saves so much trouble.

Sogyal Rinpoche: 

...when we finally know we are dying, and all other sentient beings are dying with us, we start to have a burning, almost heartbreaking sense of the fragility and preciousness of each moment and each being, and from this can grow a deep, clear, limitless compassion for all beings.

Virginia Satir: 

Feelings of worth can flourish only in an atmosphere where individual differences are appreciated, mistakes are tolerated, communication is open, and rules are flexible -- the kind of atmosphere that is found in a nurturing family.

Virginia Woolf: 

Without self-confidence we are as babes in the cradle. And how can we generate this imponderable quality, which is yet so invaluable, most quickly? By thinking that other people are inferior to oneself.

William Ellery Channing: 

I have expressed my strong interest in the mass of the people; and this is founded, not on their usefulness to the community, so much as on what they are in themselves.... Indeed every man (sic), in every condition, is great. It is only our own diseased sight which makes him little. A man is great as a man, be he where or what he may. The grandeur of his nature turns to insignificance all outward distinctions.

William Ellery Channing: 

I do not look on a human being as a machine, made to be kept in action by a foreign force, to accomplish an unvarying succession of motions, to do a fixed amount of work, and then to fall to pieces at death, but as a being of free spiritual powers; and I place little value on any culture but that which aims to bring out these, and to give them perpetual impulse and expansion.

William Lyon Phelps: 

This is the final test of a gentleman: his respect for those who can be of no possible value to him.

worship quotes

Charlotte Perkins Gilman: 

Let us revere, let us worship, but erect and open-eyed, the highest, not the lowest; the future, not the past!

Dorothy Thompson: 

The instinct to worship is hardly less strong than the instinct to eat.

Isocrates: 

The noblest worship is to make yourself as good and as just as you can.

Mohandas Gandhi: 

The Roots of Violence: 
Wealth without work, 
Pleasure without conscience, 
Knowledge without character, 
Commerce without morality, 
Science without humanity, 
Worship without sacrifice, 
Politics without principles.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: 

A person will worship something, have no doubt about that. We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts, but it will out. That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: 

The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship.

Richard Francis Burton: 

The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself.

Sarah Ban Breathnach: 

An authentic life is the most personal form of worship. Everyday life has become my prayer.

Thomas Jefferson: 

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church and State. 
letter to Connecticut Baptists

worry quotes

M. Scott Peck: 

The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.

Rumi: 

Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy, absent-minded. 
Someone sober will worry about events going badly.
Let the lover be.

Stanley C. Allyn: 

There is no use worrying about things over which you have no control, and if you have control, you can do something about them instead of worrying.

Swedish proverb: 

Worry gives a small thing a big shadow.

Unknown: 

Symptoms of Inner Peace

work quotes

Anna Garlin Spencer: 

No book has yet been written in praise of a woman who let her husband and children starve or suffer while she invented even the most useful things, or wrote books, or expressed herself in art, or evolved philosophic systems. 
Woman's Share in Social Culture, 1912 


Barbara Ehrenreich: 

Personally, I have nothing against work, particularly when performed, quietly and unobtrusively, by someone else. I just don't happen to think it's an appropriate subject for an "ethic."

Charlotte Perkins Gilman: 

The first duty of a human being is to assume the right functional relationship to society -- more briefly, to find your real job, and do it.

Colleen C. Barrett: 

Work is either fun or drudgery. It depends on your attitude. I like fun.

Colleen C. Barrett: 

When it comes to getting things done, we need fewer architects and more bricklayers.

Danilo Dolci: 

It's important to know that words don't move mountains. Work, exacting work moves mountains.

Edward Kennedy: 

The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dreams shall never die.

Emily Dickinson: 

What is—"Paradise"—
Who live there—
Are they "Farmers"—
Do they "hoe"—
Do they know that this is "Amherst"—
And that I—am coming—too—

This entry continued ...
Francoise de Motteville: 

The true way to render ourselves happy is to love our work and find in it our pleasure.

Frank Lloyd Wright: 

I know the price of success: dedication, hard work, and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen.

Gloria Steinem: 

I have yet to hear a man ask for advice on how to combine marriage and a career.

Helen Keller: 

I long to accomplish a great and noble tasks, but it is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.

Henri Frederic Amiel: 

Work while you have the light. You are responsible for the talent that has been entrusted to you.

Henry David Thoreau: 

The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: 

The heights by great men reached and kept / Were not attained by sudden flight, / But they, while their companions slept, / Were toiling upward in the night.

John W. Gardner: 

The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity, and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because philosophy is an exalted activity, will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.

Jonas Salk: 

The reward for work well done is the opportunity to do more.

Lane Kirkland: 

If hard work were such a wonderful thing, surely the rich would have kept it all to themselves.

Lena Horne: 

Always be smarter than the people who hire you.

Lou Erickson: 

Gardening requires lots of water -- most of it in the form of perspiration.

Lya Sorano: 

When we talk about equal pay for equal work, women in the workplace are beginning to catch up. If we keep going at this current rate, we will achieve full equality in about 475 years. I don't know about you, but I can't wait that long.

Marian Wright Edelman: 

Never work just for money or for power. They won't save your soul or help you sleep at night.

Mark Twain: 

What work I have done I have done because it has been play. If it had been work I shouldn't have done it. Who was it who said, "Blessed is the man who has found his work"? Whoever it was he had the right idea in his mind. Mark you, he says his work--not somebody else's work. The work that is really a man's own work is play and not work at all. Cursed is the man who has found some other man's work and cannot lose it. When we talk about the great workers of the world we really mean the great players of the world. The fellows who groan and sweat under the weary load of toil that they bear never can hope to do anything great. How can they when their souls are in a ferment of revolt against the employment of their hands and brains? The product of slavery, intellectual or physical, can never be great.

Mohandas Gandhi: 

The Roots of Violence: 
Wealth without work, 
Pleasure without conscience, 
Knowledge without character, 
Commerce without morality, 
Science without humanity, 
Worship without sacrifice, 
Politics without principles.

Orson Scott Card: 

Unemployment is capitalism's way of getting you to plant a garden.

Pearl S. Buck: 

I don't wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.

Pearl S. Buck: 
The secret of joy in work is contained in one word - excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.
Phyllis McGinley: 

The trouble with gardening is that it does not remain an avocation. It becomes an obsession.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: 

Don't waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour's duties will be the best preparation for the hours and ages that will follow it.

Rita Mae Brown: 

I believe you are your work. Don't trade the stuff of your life, time, for nothing more than dollars. That's a rotten bargain.

Rita Mae Brown: 

Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts. And never hope more than you work.

Rudyard Kipling: 

Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made
By singing: -- "Oh, how beautiful!" and sitting in the shade.

Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn: 

The golf links lie so near the mill
  That almost every day
The laboring children can look out
  And see the men at play.
  [from "Through the Needle's Eye," 1916]

Stephen Jay Gould: 

I am somehow less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.

Theodore Roosevelt: 

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done 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 and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows 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 know neither victory nor defeat.
From a speech given in Paris at the Sorbonne in 1910


Thomas Alva Edison: 

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

Thomas Alva Edison: 

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

Thomas Alva Edison: 

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

Thomas Jefferson: 

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

Vaclav Havel: 

Work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.

Victor Hugo: 

A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor.

Vince Lombardi: 

Dictionary is the only place that success comes before work. Hard work is the price we must pay for success. I think you can accomplish anything if you're willing to pay the price.

Vince Lombardi: 

Leaders aren't born they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work. And that's the price we'll have to pay to achieve that goal, or any goal.

Winston Churchill: 

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.

wonder quotes

Albert Einstein: 

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.

Amy Bloom: 

Love at first sight is easy to understand; it's when two people have been looking at each other for a lifetime that it becomes a miracle.

Anais Nin: 

The dream was always running ahead of me. To catch up, to live for a moment in unison with it, that was the miracle.

Anais Nin: 

The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.

Bill Cosby: 

For two people in a marriage to live together day after day is unquestionably the one miracle the Vatican has overlooked.

Buddha: 

If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change.

Emily Dickinson: 

Before the ice is in the pools, 
Before the skaters go, 
Or any cheek at nightfall 
Is tarnished by the snow, 
Before the fields have finished,
Before the Christmas tree, 
Wonder upon wonder 
Will arrive to me!

Maureen Hawkins: 

Before you were conceived I wanted you
Before you were born I loved you
Before you were here an hour I would die for you
This is the miracle of life.

Monica Baldwin: 

The moment when you first wake up in the morning is the most wonderful of the twenty-four hours. No matter how weary or dreary you may feel, you possess the certainty that, during the day that lies before you, absolutely anything may happen. And the fact that it practically always doesn't, matters not a jot. The possibility is always there.

Rachel Carson: 

If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life.

Rachel Carson: 

It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know of wonder and humility.

Rachel Carson: 

If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in.

Ralph Sockman: 

Christmas renews our youth by stirring our wonder. The capacity for wonder has been called our most pregnant human faculty, for in it are born our art, our science, our religion.

Thich Nhat Hanh: 

People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child -- our own two eyes. All is a miracle.

Thomas Carlyle: 

This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle; wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it.

Willa Cather: 

The miracles of the church seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always. (Death Comes for the Archbishop, 1927)

women quotes

Abigail Adams: 

If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.

Adrienne Rich: 

When a woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility for more truth around her.

Adrienne Rich: 

Life on the planet is born of woman.

Amy Johnson: 

Had I been a man, I might have explored the Poles or climbed Mount Everest, but as it was, my spirit found outlet in the air.
aviator


Anna Garlin Spencer: 

The failure of women to produce genius of the first rank in most of the supreme forms of human effort has been used to block the way of all women of talent and ambition for intellectual achievement in a manner that would be amusingly absurd were it not so monstrously unjust and socially harmful. 
Woman's Share in Social Culture, 1912


Anna Garlin Spencer: 

The friendship between a man and a woman which does not lead to marriage or desire for marriage may be a life long experience of the greatest value to themselves and to all their circle of acquaintance and of activity; but for this type of friendship both a rare man and a rare woman are needed. Perhaps it should be added that either the man or the woman thus deeply bound in lifelong friendship who seeks marriage must find a still rarer man or woman to wed, to make such a three cornered comradeship a permanent success.

Anna Garlin Spencer: 

A successful woman preacher was once asked "what special obstacles have you met as a woman in the ministry?" "Not one," she answered, "except the lack of a minister's wife."

Anna Garlin Spencer: 

No book has yet been written in praise of a woman who let her husband and children starve or suffer while she invented even the most useful things, or wrote books, or expressed herself in art, or evolved philosophic systems. 
Woman's Share in Social Culture, 1912 


Anna Quindlen: 

Recently a young mother asked for advice. What, she wanted to know, was she to do with a 7-year-old who was obstreperous, outspoken, and inconveniently willful? "Keep her," I replied.... The suffragettes refused to be polite in demanding what they wanted or grateful for getting what they deserved. Works for me.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman: 

"A house does not need a wife any more than it needs a husband." 
(on the term "housewife")


Charlotte Perkins Gilman: 

There is no female mind. The brain is not an organ of sex. As well speak of a female liver.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman: 

The original necessity for the ceaseless presence of the woman to maintain the altar fire -- and it was an altar fire in very truth at one period -- has passed with the means of prompt ignition; the matchbox has freed the housewife from that incessant service, but the feeling that women should stay at home is with us yet.

Charlotte Whitton: 

Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.

Coco Chanel: 

A woman has the age she deserves.

Dorothy Thompson: 

A little more matriarchy is what the world needs, and I know it. Period. Paragraph.

Eleanor Roosevelt: 

Campaign behavior for wives: Always be on time. Do as little talking as humanly possible. Lean back in the parade car so everybody can see the president.

Elizabeth Dole: 

Women share with men the need for personal success, even the taste of power, and no longer are we willing to satisfy those needs through the achievements of surrogates, whether husbands, children, or merely role models.

Emma Goldman: 

Women need not always keep their mouths shut and their wombs open.

Erma Bombeck: 

We've got a generation now who were born with semiequality. They don't know how it was before, so they think, this isn't too bad. We're working. We have our attache' cases and our three piece suits. I get very disgusted with the younger generation of women. We had a torch to pass, and they are just sitting there. They don't realize it can be taken away. Things are going to have to get worse before they join in fighting the battle.

Faith Whittlesey: 
Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but she did it backwards and in high heels.
Faith Whittlesey: 

Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but she did it backwards and in high heels.

George Carlin: 

Here's all you have to know about men and women: women are crazy, men are stupid. And the main reason women are crazy is that men are stupid.

George Santayana: 

Friends are generally of the same sex, for when men and women agree, it is only in the conclusions; their reasons are always different. 
Persons and Places: The Middle Span, 1945


George Santayana: 

The loneliest woman in the world is a woman without a close woman friend.
The Life of Reason, 1905-1906


Gloria Steinem: 

If women are supposed to be less rational and more emotional at the beginning of our menstrual cycle when the female hormone is at its lowest level, then why isn't it logical to say that, in those few days, women behave the most like the way men behave all month long?

Harriet Beecher Stowe: 

So much has been said and sung of beautiful young girls, why don't somebody wake up to the beauty of old women?

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis: 

I am a woman above everything else.

Jane Austen: 

History, real solemn history, I cannot be interested in.... I read it a little as a duty; but it tells me nothing that does not either vex or weary me. The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars and pestilences in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all - it is very tiresome. (spoken by Catherine Morland in 'Northanger Abbey')

Katharine Hepburn: 

Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then.

Kathryn Hughes: 

Women do not always have to write about women, or gay men about gay men. Indeed, something good and new might happen if they did not.

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich: 

Well behaved women rarely make history.

Louisa May Alcott: 
When women are the advisers, the lords of creation don't take the advice till they have persuaded themselves that it is just what they intended to do; then they act upon it, and if it succeeds, they give the weaker vessel half the credit of it; if it fails, they generously give her the whole. 
in Little Women

Louise Otto: 

The history of all times, and of today especially, teaches that ... women will be forgotten if they forget to think about themselves.

Margaret Atwood: 

Does feminist mean large unpleasant person who'll shout at you or someone who believes women are human beings. To me it's the latter, so I sign up.

Margaret Mead: 

Women want mediocre men, and men are working to be as mediocre as possible.

Margaret Sanger: 

A free race cannot be born of slave mothers.

Margaret Thatcher: 

If you want anything said, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman.

Mary Wollstonecraft: 

Women are systematically degraded by receiving the trivial attentions which men think it manly to pay to the sex, when, in fact, men are insultingly supporting their own superiority.

Maureen Reagan: 

I will feel equality has arrived when we can elect to office women who are as incompetent as some of the men who are already there.

Mohandas K. Gandhi: 

Woman is the companion of man, gifted with equal mental capacity.

Mohandas K. Gandhi: 

There is no occasion for women to consider themselves subordinate or inferior to men.

Pat Schroeder: 

When people ask me why I am running as a woman, I always answer, "What choice do I have?"

Pearl S. Buck: 

The basic discovery about any people is the discovery of the relationship between its men and its women.

Robert A. Heinlein: 

Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.

Robert Frost: 

A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age.

Sarah Grimke: 

It would be as wise to set up an accomplished lawyer to saw wood as a business as to condemn an educated and sensible woman to spend all her time boiling potatoes and patching old garments. Yet this is the lot of many a one who incessantly stitches and boils and bakes, compelled to thrust back out of sight the aspirations which fill her soul.

Sigmund Freud: 

Despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, I have not been able to answer... the great question that has never been answered: what does a woman want?

Simone de Beauvoir: 

No one is more arrogant toward women, more aggressive or scornful, than the man who is anxious about his virility.

Susan B. Anthony: 

Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less.

Tennesse Claflin: 

The history of woman is the history of the continued and universal oppression of one sex by the other. The emancipation of woman is her restoration to equal rights and privileges with man.

Unknown: 

Some leaders are born women.

Virginia Woolf: 

The history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.

Virginia Woolf: 

When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet. . . indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.

Virginia Woolf: 

Why are women ... so much more interesting to men than men are to women?

Vita Sackville-West: 

I worshipped dead men for their strength,
Forgetting I was strong.

Walt Whitman: 

In the faces of men and women I see God.

wisdom quotes

Alex Noble: 

If I have been of service, if I have glimpsed more of the nature and essence of ultimate good, if I am inspired to reach wider horizons of thought and action, if I am at peace with myself, it has been a successful day.

Andre Gide: 

Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.

Baltasar Gracian: 

Without courage, wisdom bears no fruit.

Cicero: 

The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer: 

To understand reality is not the same as to know about outward events. It is to perceive the essential nature of things. The best-informed man is not necessarily the wisest. Indeed there is a danger that precisely in the multiplicity of his knowledge he will lose sight of what is essential. But on the other hand, knowledge of an apparently trivial detail quite often makes it possible to see into the depth of things. And so the wise man will seek to acquire the best possible knowledge about events, but always without becoming dependent upon this knowledge. To recognize the significant in the factual is wisdom.

Doc Childre and Deborah Rozman: 

It is no longer enough to be smart -- all the technological tools in the world add meaning and value only if they enhance our core values, the deepest part of our heart. Acquiring knowledge is no guarantee of practical, useful application. Wisdom implies a mature integration of appropriate knowledge, a seasoned ability to filter the inessential from the essential.

Edith Wharton: 

Life is the only real counselor; wisdom unfiltered through personal experience does not become a part of the moral tissue.

Elbert Hubbard: 

To know when to be generous and when firm—that is wisdom.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox: 

The truest greatness lies in being kind, the truest wisdom in a happy mind.

Georg C. Lichtenberg: 

One's first step in wisdom is to question everything - and one's last is to come to terms with everything.

George Bernard Shaw: 

No question is so difficult to answer as that to which the answer is obvious.

George Bernard Shaw: 

We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.

George Burns: 

Too bad that all the people who really know how to run the country are busy driving taxi cabs and cutting hair.

George Santayana: 

Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.

Groucho Marx: 

A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five.

Helen Keller: 

I do not want the peace that passeth understanding. I want the understanding which bringeth peace.

Henry David Thoreau: 

A man is wise with the wisdom of his time only, and ignorant with its ignorance.

Henry David Thoreau: 

It is characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

Immanuel Kant: 

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

Immanuel Kant: 

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

Isaac D'Israeli: 

The wisdom of the wise, and the experience of ages, may be preserved by quotations.

J. Michael Straczynski: 

The quality of our thoughts is bordered on all sides by our facility with language.

John Naisbitt: 

Strategic planning is worthless -- unless there is first a strategic vision.

Jonathan Kozol: 

Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win. On Being a Teacher

Kalidasa: 

Listen to the Exhortation of the Dawn!
Look to this Day!
For it is Life, the very Life of Life.
In its brief course lie all the 
Verities and Realities of your Existence.
The Bliss of Growth,
The Glory of Action,
The Splendor of Beauty;
For Yesterday is but a Dream,
And To-morrow is only a Vision;
But To-day well lived makes 
Every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness,
And every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope.
Look well therefore to this Day!
Such is the Salutation of the Dawn!

Lin Yutang: 

Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.

Marcel Proust: 

The stellar universe is not so difficult of comprehension as the real actions of other people.

Mark Twain: 

The perfection of wisdom, and the end of true philosophy is to proportion our wants to our possessions, our ambitions to our capacities, we will then be a happy and a virtuous people.

Mark Twain - attributed in error: 

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

Marlene Dietrich: 

I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognizably wiser than oneself.

Martin Fischer: 

Knowledge is a process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification.

Mary Catherine Bateson: 

Insight, I believe, refers to the depth of understanding that comes by setting experiences, yours and mine, familiar and exotic, new and old, side by side, learning by letting them speak to one another.

Mohandas K. Gandhi: 

It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.

Norman Cousins: 

Wisdom consists of the anticipation of consequences.

Norman Cousins: 

Wisdom consists of the anticipation of consequences.

Oprah Winfrey: 

Follow your instincts. That's where true wisdom manifests itself.

Pierre Abelard: 

The beginning of wisdom is found in doubting; by doubting we come to the question, and by seeking we may come upon the truth.

Proverbs 17:28: 

Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding.

Rachel Carson: 

If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow.

Robert Green Ingersoll: 

It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense.

Robert Heinlein: 

But goodness alone is never enough. A hard cold wisdom is required, too, for goodness to accomplish good. Goodness without wisdom invariably accomplishes evil.

Robert Louis Stevenson: 

Most of our pocket wisdom is conceived for the use of mediocre people, to discourage them from ambitious attempts, and generally console them in their mediocrity. 

Sam Levenson: 

It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and say the opposite.

Sam Levenson: 

It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don't say it.

Samuel Johnson: 

Memory is the mother of all wisdom. 

Samuel Smiles : 

We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success. We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.

Sophocles: 

A short saying often contains much wisdom.

Sophocles: 

Wisdom is the supreme part of happiness.

Stephen Covey: 

Whatever is at the center of our life will be the source of our security, guidance, wisdom, and power.

Stephen Sigmund: 

Learn wisdom from the ways of a seedling. A seedling which is never hardened off through stressful situations will never become a strong productive plant.

Stephen Vincent Benét: 

We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom.

Sydney J. Harris: 

An idealist believes the short run doesn't count. A cynic believes the long run doesn't matter. A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run.

Theodore Roosevelt: 

Nine-tenths of wisdom consists in being wise in time.

Theodore Rubin: 

Kindness is more important than wisdom, and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom.

Thomas Jefferson: 

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

Tryon Edwards: 

He that never changes his opinions, never corrects his mistakes, and will never be wiser on the morrow than he is today.

Umberto Eco: 

I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.

Vernon Cooper: 

These days people seek knowledge, not wisdom. Knowledge is of the past, wisdom is of the future.

Wallace Stegner: 

Most things break, including hearts. The lessons of life amount not to wisdom, but to scar tissue and callus.

William Golding: 

Marx, Darwin and Freud are the three most crashing bores of the Western World. Simplistic popularization of their ideas has thrust our world into a mental straitjacket from which we can only escape by the most anarchic violence.

William Menninger: 

Six essential qualities that are the key to success: Sincerity, personal integrity, humility, courtesy, wisdom, charity.

William Saroyan: 

Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from success, you know.

winning quotes

Dianne Feinstein: 

Winning may not be everything, but losing has little to recommend it.

Harriet Woods: 

You can stand tall without standing on someone. You can be a victor without having victims.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: 

If I am not worth the wooing, I am surely not worth the winning.

John Kenneth Galbraith: 

There are times in politics when you must be on the right side and lose.

Jonathan Kozol: 

Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win. On Being a Teacher

Marian Wright Edelman: 

You're not obligated to win. You're obligated to keep trying to do the best you can every day.

Marie Ebner von Eschenbach: 

Conquer, but don't triumph.

Oliver Wendell Holmes: 

Greatness is not in where we stand, but in what direction we are moving. We must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it -- but sail we must and not drift, nor lie at anchor.

Theodore Roosevelt: 

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done 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 and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows 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 know neither victory nor defeat.
From a speech given in Paris at the Sorbonne in 1910

wealth quotes

Aeschylus: 

It is easy when we are in prosperity to give advice to the afflicted.

Anne Bradstreet: 

If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant; if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.

Benjamin Jowett: 

We cannot seek or attain health, wealth, learning, justice or kindness in general. Action is always specific, concrete, individualized, unique.

Henry David Thoreau: 

The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend. I have no wealth to bestow on him. If he knows that I am happy in loving him, he will want no other reward. Is not friendship divine in this?

Henry David Thoreau: 

That man is richest whose pleasures are cheapest.

Kin Hubbard: 

It's pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness. Poverty an' wealth have both failed.

Lane Kirkland: 

If hard work were such a wonderful thing, surely the rich would have kept it all to themselves.

Maimonides: 

Anticipate charity by preventing poverty; assist the reduced fellow man, either by a considerable gift or a sum of money or by teaching him a trade or by putting him in the way of business so that he may earn an honest livelihood and not be forced to the dreadful alternative of holding out his hand for charity. This is the highest step and summit of charity's golden ladder.

Mark Twain: 

I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position.

Michael Harrington: 

That the poor are invisible is one of the most important things about them. They are not simply neglected and forgotten as in the old rhetoric of reform; what is much worse, they are not seen.

Mohammed: 

Our true wealth is the good we do in this world. None of us has faith unless we desire for our neighbors what we desire for ourselves.

Mother Teresa: 

Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough, money can be got, but they need your hearts to love them. So, spread your love everywhere you go.

Norman Thomas: 

After I asked him what he meant, he replied that freedom consisted of the unimpeded right to get rich, to use his ability, no matter what the cost to others, to win advancement.

Samuel Adams: 

If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.

Sarah Bernhardt: 

Life begets life. Energy becomes energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich.

Thornton Wilder: 

Money is like manure; it's not worth a thing unless it's spread around encouraging young things to grow.
from "The Matchmaker"


Wendell Phillips: 

Governments exist to protect the rights of minorities. The loved and the rich need no protection: they have many friends and few enemies.

Winston Churchill: 

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.

washington quotes

John F. Kennedy: 

Washington is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: 

From Washington, proverbially "the city of distances," through all its cities, states, and territories, it is a country of beginnings, of projects, of designs, and expectations.

war quotes

Albert Camus: 

[I]n such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners.

Aldous Huxley: 

A democracy which makes or even effectively prepares for modern, scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic. No country can be really well prepared for modern war unless it is governed by a tyrant, at the head of a highly trained and perfectly obedient bureaucracy.

Alfred Tennyson: 

Till the war-drum throbb`d no longer, and the battle-flags were furl`d; In the parliament of man; the Federation of the world.

Annie Dillard: 

"One of the main reasons that it is so easy to march men off to war," says Ernest Becker, is that "each of them feels sorry for the man next to him who will die."

Aristotle: 

We make war that we may live in peace.

Barbara Kingsolver: 

Wars and elections are both too big and too small to matter in the long run. The daily work - that goes on, it adds up.

Barbara Kingsolver: 

There's a graveyard in northern France where all the dead boys from D-Day are buried. The white crosses reach from one horizon to the other. I remember looking it over and thinking it was a forest of graves. But the rows were like this, dizzying, diagonal, perfectly straight, so after all it wasn't a forest but an orchard of graves. Nothing to do with nature, unless you count human nature.

Benjamin Franklin: 

There never was a good war or a bad peace.

Blaise Pascal: 

Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?

Colman McCarthy: 

Everyone's a pacifist between wars. It's like being a vegetarian between meals.

Croesus: 

In peace the sons bury their fathers, but in war the fathers bury their sons.

David Friedman: 

The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations.

Dorothy Thompson: 

They have not wanted Peace at all; they have wanted to be spared war -- as though the absence of war was the same as peace.

Dwight D. Eisenhower: 

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. [1953] 

Dwight Eisenhower: 

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.
April 16, 1953


Ecclesiastes: 

For everything there is a season,
And a time for every matter under heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die;
A time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
A time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
A time to embrace, And a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to seek, and a time to lose;
A time to keep, and a time to throw away;
A time to tear, and a time to sew;
A time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate,
A time for war, and a time for peace.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8


Eleanor Roosevelt: 

When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?

Franklin Delano Roosevelt: 

I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded. I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed. I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war.

General Douglas MacArthur: 

I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a method of settling international disputes.

George Bernard Shaw: 

Peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous.

George W. Bush: 

No, I know all the war rhetoric, but it's all aimed at achieving peace.

George W. Bush: 

I've been to war. I've raised twins. If I had a choice, I'd rather go to war.

George Washington: 

There is nothing so likely to produce peace as to be well prepared to meet the enemy.

George Washington: 

I do not mean to exclude altogether the idea of patriotism. I know it exists, and I know it has done much in the present contest. But I will venture to assert, that a great and lasting war can never be supported on this principle alone. It must be aided by a prospect of interest, or some reward.

Georges Clemenceau: 

War is too serious a matter to entrust to military men.

Gertrude Stein: 

A nice war is a war where everybody who is heroic is a hero, and everybody more or less is a hero in a nice war. Now this war is not at all a nice war.
1943


Harry Emerson Fosdick: 

I hate war for its consequences, for the lies it lives on and propagates, for the undying hatreds it arouses, for the dictatorships it puts in the place of democracies, and for the starvation that stalks after it. I hate war, and never again will I sanction or support another.

Hermann Goering: 

Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country. quote verified at snopes.com

Howard Nemerov: 

Religion and science both profess peace (and the sincerity of the professors is not being doubted), but each always turns out to have a dominant part in any war that is going or contemplated.

Howard Thurman: 

During times of war, hatred becomes quite respectable, even though it has to masquerade often under the guise of patriotism.

Isaac Asimov: 

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

Isaac Asimov: 

It is not only the living who are killed in war.

James Russell Lowell: 

We kind o' thought Christ went agin war an' pillage.

Jeanette Rankin: 

You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.

John Adams: 

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.

John F. Kennedy: 

The wave of the future is not the conquest of the world by a single dogmatic creed but the liberation of the diverse energies of free nations and free men.

John F. Kennedy: 

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

John F. Kennedy: 

Unconditional war can no longer lead to unconditional victory. It can no longer serve to settle disputes. It can no longer be of concern to great powers alone. For a nuclear disaster, spread by winds and waters and fear, could well engulf the great and the small, the rich and the poor, the committed and the uncommitted alike. Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind.

John Stuart Mill: 

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature, and has no chance of being free unless made or kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

Martha Gelhorn: 

War is a malignant disease, an idiocy, a prison, and the pain it
causes is beyond telling or meaning; but war was our condition
and our history, the place we had to live in.

Omar N. Bradley: 

Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount.

Patrick Henry: 

It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace--but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death! March 23, 1775

R. Buckminster Fuller: 

Either war is obsolete or men are.

Ralph Bunche: 

There are no warlike people, just warlike leaders.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: 

The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.

Robert E. Lee: 

It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.

Ronald Reagan: 

History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.

Simone Weil: 

A self-respecting nation is ready for anything, including war, except for a renunciation of its option to make war. 

Spinoza: 

Peace is not the absence of war; it is a virtue; a state of mind; a disposition for benevolence; confidence; and justice.

Theodore Roosevelt: 

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. (1918)

Thomas Jefferson: 

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

Thomas Paine: 

If there must be trouble let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.

Will Rogers: 

You can't say civilization don't advance -- for in every war, they kill you in a new way.

vision quotes

Peter F. Drucker: 

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.

Albert Einstein: 

The ideals which have lighted me on my way and time after time given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. . . . The ordinary objects of human endeavour -- property, outward success, luxury -- have always seemed to me contemptible.

Arthur Schopenhauer: 

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.

Audre Lorde: 

When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.

Carl Jung: 

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.

Donald Williams: 

For those who have seen the Earth from space, and for the hundreds and perhaps thousands more who will, the experience most certainly changes your perspective. The things that we share in our world are far more valuable than those which divide us.

Eugene V. Debs: 

Solidarity is not a matter of sentiment but a fact, cold and impassive as the granite foundations of a skyscraper. If the basic elements, identity of interest, clarity of vision, honesty of intent, and oneness of purpose, or any of these is lacking, all sentimental pleas for solidarity, and all other efforts to achieve it will be barren of results.

Helen Keller: 

The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight, but has no vision.

High Eagle: 

In life, many thoughts are born in the course of a moment, an hour, a day. Some are dreams, some visions. Often, we are unable to distinguish between them. To some, they are the same; however, not all dreams are visions. Much energy is lost in fanciful dreams that never bear fruit. But visions are messages from the Great Spirit, each for a different purpose in life. Consequently, one person's vision may not be that of another. To have a vision, one must be prepared to receive it, and when it comes, to accept it. Thus when these inner urges become reality, only then can visions be fulfilled. The spiritual side of life knows everyone's heart and who to trust. How could a vision ever be given to someone to harbor if that person could not be trusted to carry it out. The message is simple: commitment precedes vision.

High Eagle: 

The mere possession of a vision is not the same as living it, nor can we encourage others with it if we do not, ourselves, understand and follow its truths. The pattern of the Great Spirit is over us all, but if we follow our own spirits from within, our pattern becomes clearer. For centuries, others have sought their visions. They prepare themselves, so that if the Creator desires them to know their life's purpose, then a vision would be revealed. To be blessed with visions is not enough...we must live them!

John Naisbitt: 

Strategic planning is worthless -- unless there is first a strategic vision.

Jonathan Swift: 

Vision is the art of seeing the invisible.

Kalidasa: 

Listen to the Exhortation of the Dawn!
Look to this Day!
For it is Life, the very Life of Life.
In its brief course lie all the 
Verities and Realities of your Existence.
The Bliss of Growth,
The Glory of Action,
The Splendor of Beauty;
For Yesterday is but a Dream,
And To-morrow is only a Vision;
But To-day well lived makes 
Every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness,
And every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope.
Look well therefore to this Day!
Such is the Salutation of the Dawn!

Steven Foster: 

You may wonder, 'How can I leave it all behind if I am just coming back to it? How can I make a new beginning if I simply return to the old?' The answer lies in the return. You will not come back to the 'same old thing.' What you return to has changed because you have changed. Your perceptions will be altered. You will not incorporate into the same body, status, or world you left behind. The river has been flowing while you were gone. Now it does not look like the same river. [The Book of the Vision Quest]

Theodore Hesburgh: 

The very essence of leadership is that you have to have a vision.

virtue quotes

Alexander Pope: 

In lazy Apathy let Stoics boast,
Their Virtue fix'd, 'tis fixed as in a frost.

Aristotle: 

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

Aristotle: 

The excess of virtue is a vice.

Aristotle: 

In justice is all virtues found in sum.

Cato the Elder: 

I think the first virtue is to restrain the tongue; he approaches nearest to gods who knows how to be silent, even though he is in the right.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman: 

There was a time when Patience ceased to be a virtue. It was long ago.

Cicero: 

It is virtue, virtue, which both creates and preserves friendship. On it depends harmony of interest, permanence, fidelity.

Cicero: 

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.

Clare Booth Luce: 

Courage is the ladder on which all the other virtues mount.

Confucius: 

Humility is the solid foundation of all virtues.

E.Y. Harburn: 

Virtue is its own revenge.

Erik H. Erikson: 

Hope is both the earliest and the most indispensable virtue inherent in the state of being alive. If life is to be sustained hope must remain, even where confidence is wounded, trust impaired.

Francis Bacon: 

Silence is the virtue of fools.

Friedrich Nietzsche: 

Virtues are dangerous as vices insofar as they are allowed to rule over one as authorities and not as qualities one develops oneself.

George Bernard Shaw: 

Disobedience, the rarest and most courageous of the virtues, is seldom distinguished from neglect, the laziest and commonest of the vices.

George Bernard Shaw: 

Virtue is insufficient temptation.

George Orwell: 

On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.

Horace Mann: 

Virtue is an angel, but she is a blind one, and must ask Knowledge to show her the pathway that leads to her goal.

John Locke: 

Fortitude is the guard and support of the other virtues.

Lyndon B. Johnson: 

We preach the virtues of democracy abroad. We must practice its duties here at home. Voting is the first duty of democracy.

Maya Angelou : 

One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.

Mohandas Gandhi: 

The Roots of Violence: 
Wealth without work, 
Pleasure without conscience, 
Knowledge without character, 
Commerce without morality, 
Science without humanity, 
Worship without sacrifice, 
Politics without principles.

Oscar Wilde: 

Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: 

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.

Rene Dubos: 

Human diversity makes tolerance more than a virtue; it makes it a requirement for survival. 
Celebrations of Life, 1981 


Robert S. Lynd: 

Any of us can achieve virtue, if by virtue we merely mean the avoidance of the vices that do not attract us.

Sam Adams: 

It is no dishonor to be in a minority in the cause of liberty and virtue.

Spinoza: 

Peace is not the absence of war; it is a virtue; a state of mind; a disposition for benevolence; confidence; and justice.

Sydney J. Harris: 

Patriotism is proud of a country's virtues and eager to correct its deficiencies; it also acknowledges the legitimate patriotism of other countries, with their own specific virtues. The pride of nationalism, however, trumpets its country's virtues and denies its deficiencies, while it is contemptuous toward the virtues of other countries. It wants to be, and proclaims itself to be, "the greatest," but greatness is not required of a country; only goodness is.

Theodore M. Hesburgh: 

All of us are experts at practicing virtue at a distance.

Thomas Jefferson: 

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

Thomas Wentworth Higginson: 

All ... religions show the same disparity between belief and practice, and each is safe till it tries to exclude the rest. Test each sect by its best or its worst as you will, by its high-water mark of virtue or its low-water mark of vice. But falsehood begins when you measure the ebb of any other religion against the flood-tide of your own. There is a noble and a base side to every history.

Voltaire: 

What most persons consider as virtue, after the age of 40 is simply a loss of energy.

violence quotes

A. J. Muste: 

The survival of democracy depends on the renunciation of violence and the development of nonviolent means to combat evil and advance the good.

Andre Trocme: 

All who affirm the use of violence admit it is only a means to achieve justice and peace. But peace and justice are nonviolence...the final end of history. Those who abandon nonviolence have no sense of history. Rather they are bypassing history, freezing history, betraying history.

Bishop Desmond Tutu: 

We must not allow ourselves to become like the system we oppose.

Colman McCarthy: 

Everyone's a pacifist between wars. It's like being a vegetarian between meals.

Isaac Asimov: 

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

Jean Goss: 

All ideologies end up killing people. If you separate love from nonviolence you turn nonviolence into an ideology, a gimmick. Structures that are not inhabited by justice and love have no liberating or reconciling force, and are never sources of life.

Joan Baez: 

I would say that I'm a nonviolent soldier. In place of weapons of violence, you have to use your mind, your heart, your sense of humor, every faculty available to you...because no one has the right to take the life of another human being.

John Ruskin: 

Punishment is the last and the least effective instrument in the hands of the legislator for the prevention of crime.

John Ruskin: 

All violent feelings have the same effect. They produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things, which I would generally characterize as the pathetic fallacy.

Mohandas Gandhi: 

An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind.

Mohandas Gandhi: 

The Roots of Violence: 
Wealth without work, 
Pleasure without conscience, 
Knowledge without character, 
Commerce without morality, 
Science without humanity, 
Worship without sacrifice, 
Politics without principles.

Unitarian Universalism Quotes

Adlai Stevenson: 

I think that one of our most important tasks is to convince others that there's nothing to fear in difference; that difference, in fact, is one of the healthiest and most invigorating of human characteristics without which life would become meaningless. Here lies the power of the liberal way: not in making the whole world Unitarian [Universalist], but in helping ourselves and others to see some of the possibilities inherent in viewpoints other than one's own; in encouraging the free interchange of ideas; in welcoming fresh approaches to the problems of life; in urging the fullest, most vigorous use of critical self-examination.

L. B. Fisher: 

Universalists are often asked where they stand. The only true answer to give to this question is that we do not stand at all, we move.

William Schulz: 

Unitarian Universalism affirms:

That Creation is too grand, complex, and mysterious to be captured in a narrow creed. That is why we cherish individual freedom of belief. At the same time our convictions lead us to other affirmations . . .

truth quotes

Abraham Lincoln: 

How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four; calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.

Abraham Lincoln: 

It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: "And this, too, shall pass away."

Abraham Lincoln: 

Truth is generally the best vindication against slander.

Abraham Lincoln (attributed): 

You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.

Adrienne Rich: 

When a woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility for more truth around her.

Adrienne Rich: 

False history gets made all day, any day,
the truth of the new is never on the news.

Albert Einstein: 

No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.

Albert Einstein: 

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.

Albert Einstein: 

The ideals which have lighted me on my way and time after time given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. . . . The ordinary objects of human endeavour -- property, outward success, luxury -- have always seemed to me contemptible.

Alfred North Whitehead: 

There are no whole truths: all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil.

Anais Nin: 

When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow.

Anais Nin: 

The personal life deeply lived always expands into truths beyond itself.

Andre Gide: 

Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.

Arthur Conan Doyle: 

Whenever you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Benjamin Disraeli: 

Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth.

Bertrand Russell: 

What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index into his desires -- desires of which he himself is often unconscious. If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.

Blaise Pascal: 

You always admire what you really don't understand.

Blaise Pascal: 

We know the truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart. 

Blaise Pascal: 

There are truths on this side of the Pyranees, which are falsehoods on the other.

Blaise Pascal: 

We know the truth, not only by the reason, but by the heart.

Brad Holland: 

Postmodernists believe that truth is myth, and myth, truth. This equation has its roots in pop psychology. The same people also believe that emotions are a form of reality. There used to be another name for this state of mind. It used to be called psychosis.

Buddha: 

Believe nothing just because a so-called wise person said it. Believe nothing just because a belief is generally held. Believe nothing just because it is said in ancient books. Believe nothing just because it is said to be of divine origin. Believe nothing just because someone else believes it. Believe only what you yourself test and judge to be true. [paraphrased]

Christopher Morley: 

There is no squabbling so violent as that between people who accepted an idea yesterday and those who will accept the same idea tomorrow.

Clarence Darrow: 

Chase after the truth like all hell and you'll free yourself, even though you never touch its coattails.

Corliss Lamont: 

The intuition of free will gives us the truth.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan: 

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts.

David Hume: 

Truth springs from argument amongst friends.

Demosthenes: 

Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true.

Dorothy Thompson: 

Fear grows in darkness; if you think there's a bogeyman around, turn on the light.

Dorothy Thompson: 

There is nothing to fear except the persistent refusal to find out the truth, the persistent refusal to analyze the causes of happenings.

E. L. Doctorow: 

History is the present. That's why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth.

Edward R. Murrow: 

Most truths are so naked that people feel sorry for them and cover them up, at least a little bit.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton: 

Reformers who are always compromising, have not yet grasped the idea that truth is the only safe ground to stand upon.

Elizabeth Kenny: 

Some minds remain open long enough for the truth not only to enter but to pass on through by way of a ready exit without pausing anywhere along the route.

Emily Dickinson: 

Truth is such a rare thing, it is delighted to tell it.

Felix Adler: 

The truth which has made us free will in the end make us glad also.

Friedrich Nietzsche: 

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

Galileo: 

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.

George Bernard Shaw: 

New opinions often appear first as jokes and fancies, then as blasphemies and treason, then as questions open to discussion, and finally as established truths.

George Eliot: 

Falsehood is easy, truth so difficult.

George Eliot: 

[I]t is very hard to say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings – much harder than to say something fine about them which is not the exact truth.

George Orwell: 

In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.

George Orwell: 

Myths which are believed in tend to become true.

Gloria Steinem: 

The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off.

Harry Emerson Fosdick: 

The fact that astronomies change while the stars abide is a true analogy of every realm of human life and thought, religion not least of all. No existent theology can be a final formulation of spiritual truth. The Living of These Days, 1956

Henri Frederic Amiel: 

Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence.

Henry David Thoreau: 

The lawyer's truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency.

Henry David Thoreau: 

Men rush to California and Australia as if the true gold were to be found in that direction; but that is to go to the very opposite extreme to where it lies. They go prospecting farther and farther away from the true lead, and are most unfortunate when they think themselves most successful.

Henry Ward Beecher: 

It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend his faults. So to love a man that you cannot bear to see a stain upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words, that is friendship.

Heraklietos of Ephesos: 

Whosoever wishes to know about the world must learn about it in its particular details.
Knowledge is not intelligence.
In searching for the truth be ready for the unexpected.
Change alone is unchanging.
The same road goes both up and down.
The beginning of a circle is also its end.
Not I, but the world says it: all is one.
And yet everything comes in season.

Isaac Asimov: 

[W]hen people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.

Isaac Asimov: 

A subtle thought that is in error may yet give rise to fruitful inquiry that can establish truths of great value.

Jean-Paul Sartre: 

Like all dreamers I confuse disenchantment with truth.

Joan of Arc: 

Children say that people are hung sometimes for speaking the truth.

John F. Kennedy: 

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

John Locke: 

It is one thing to show a man that he is in error, and another to put him in possession of truth.

John Trapp: 

Unity without verity is no better than conspiracy.

Josh Billings: 

As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.

Leonardo da Vinci: 

Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.

Marcus Aurelius: 

If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.

Margaret Mead: 

I was brought up to believe that the only thing worth doing was to add to the sum of accurate information in the world.

Mark Twain: 

Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing the matter with this, except that it ain't so.

Mark Twain: 

All schools, all colleges, have two great functions: to confer, and to conceal, valuable knowledge. The theological knowledge which they conceal cannot justly be regarded as less valuable than that which they reveal. That is, when a man is buying a basket of strawberries it can profit him to know that the bottom half of it is rotten.
1908, notebook


Mark Twain: 

If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.

Mark Twain: 

A historian who would convey the truth must lie. Often he must enlarge the truth by diameters, otherwise his reader would not be able to see it.

Mark Twain: 

If you don't read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed.

Mark Twain: 

The old saw says, "Let a sleeping dog lie." Right. Still, when there is much at stake it is better to get a newspaper to do it.

Mark Twain: 

In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing. 
Autobiography, 1959


Mark Twain: 

Always tell the truth. That way, you don't have to remember what you said.

Mark Twain: 

Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing the matter with this, except that it ain't so.

Mark Twain: 

When in doubt, tell the truth.

Martin Luther King, jr.: 

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.

Max Planck: 

It is not the possession of truth, but the success which attends the seeking after it, that enriches the seeker and brings happiness to him.

Maya Angelou : 

One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.

Michael Friedlander: 

There are many more wrong answers than right ones, and they are easier to find.

Molly Ivins: 

I believe that ignorance is the root of all evil. And that no one knows the truth.

Noam Chomsky: 

It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose lies.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.: 

Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked.

Pearl S. Buck: 

The truth is always exciting. Speak it, then. Life is dull without it.

Peter F. Drucker: 

There are no creeds in mathematics.

Pierre Abelard: 

The beginning of wisdom is found in doubting; by doubting we come to the question, and by seeking we may come upon the truth.

Rabindranath Tagore: 

Truth comes as conqueror only to those who have lost the art of receiving it as friend.

Rabindranath Tagore: 

We read the world wrong and say that it deceives us. 
Stray Birds


Ralph Waldo Emerson: 

Truth is our element.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: 

Reform is affirmative, conservatism negative; conservatism goes for comfort, reform for truth.
The Conservative


Richard Avedon: 

There is no such thing as inaccuracy in a photograph. All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.

Sam Rayburn: 

Son, always tell the truth. Then you'll never have to remember what you said the last time.

Soren Kierkegaard: 

Truth always rests with the minority, and the minority is always stronger than the majority, because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion, while the strength of a majority is illusory, formed by the gangs who have no opinion—and who, therefore, in the next instant (when it is evident that the minority is the stronger) assume its opinion ... while Truth again reverts to a new minority.

Stephen King: 

Fiction is the truth inside the lie.

Thomas Jefferson: 

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

Thomas Jefferson: 

The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the Supreme Being in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.

Umberto Eco: 

I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.

Virginia Woolf: 

Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.

Virginia Woolfe: 

If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.

Voltaire: 

As long as people believe in absurdities, they will continue to commit atrocities.

Wilfred Owen: 

All the poet can do today is warn.
That is why true Poets must be truthful. 

Will Rogers: 

I guess truth can hurt you worse in an election than about anything that can happen to you.

Will Rogers: 

I have always noticed that people will never laugh at anything that is not based on truth.

William James: 

Pragmatism asks its usual question. "Grant an idea or belief to be true," it says, "what concrete difference will its being true make in anyone's actual life? How will the truth be realized? What experiences will be different from those which would obtain if the belief were false? What, in short, is the truth's cash-value in experiential terms?
Pragmatism (1907)


William James: 

[T]he true is only the expedient in the way of our thinking, just as the right is only the expedient in the way of our thinking.

William James: 

Truths emerge from facts, but they dip forward into facts again and add to them; which facts again create or reveal new truth (the word is indifferent) and so on indefinitely. The 'facts' themselves meanwhile are not true. They simply are. Truth is the function of the beliefs that start and terminate among them.

William James: 

The greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our truths.

William Sloane Coffin: 

The world is too dangerous for anything but truth and too small for anything but love.

trust quotes

Agatha Christie:

Where large sums of money are concerned, it is advisable to trust nobody.

Alfred Adler:

Trust only movement. Life happens at the level of events, not of words. Trust movement.

Arthur Eddington:

Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.

Benjamin Spock:

Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.

Booker T. Washington:

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

Cardinal De Retz:

A man who doesn't trust himself can never really trust anyone else.

Cicero:

Trust no one unless you have eaten much salt with him.

Demosthenes:

There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies as against despots. What is it? Distrust.

E.M. Forster:

One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life.

Eliza Cook:

Who would not rather trust and be deceived?

Elizabeth Gilbert:

To sit patiently with a yearning that has not yet been fulfilled, and to trust that, that fulfillment will come, is quite possibly one of the most powerful "magic skills" that human beings are capable of. It has been noted by almost every ancient wisdom tradition.

Elizabeth Gilbert:

The inability to open up to hope is what blocks trust, and blocked trust is the reason for blighted dreams.

Erik H. Erikson:

Hope is both the earliest and the most indispensable virtue inherent in the state of being alive. If life is to be sustained hope must remain, even where confidence is wounded, trust impaired.

Finley Peter Dunne:

Trust everybody, but cut the cards.

Frank Crane:

You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you don't trust enough.

George MacDonald:

To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved.

Helen Rowland:

Never trust a husband too far, nor a bachelor too near.

Henry David Thoreau:

I think we may safely trust a good deal more than we do.

Indira Gandhi:

You can't shake hands with a clenched fist.

Ingrid Bergman:

You must train your intuition -- you must trust the small voice inside you which tells you exactly what to say, what to decide.

Johann Kaspar Lavater:

Trust him not with your secrets, who, when left alone in your room, turns over your papers.

John Adams:

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.

John F. Kennedy:

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

Margaret Mead:

We will be a better country when each religious group can trust its members to obey the dictates of their own religious faith without assistance from the legal structure of their country.

Nanette Newman:

A good marriage is at least 80 percent good luck in finding the right person at the right time. The rest is trust.

Norman Mailer:

He got a corporation mind. He don't believe in nature; he puts his trust and distrust in man.

Peter Drucker:

The leaders who work most effectively, it seems to me, never say "I." And that's not because they have trained themselves not to say "I." They don't think "I." They think "we"; they think "team." They understand their job to be to make the team function. They accept responsibility and don't sidestep it, but "we" gets the credit. This is what creates trust, what enables you to get the task done.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

Our distrust is very expensive.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

Self-trust is the first secret of success.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, adapted:

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 you discover that someone else believes in you and is willing to trust you with a friendship.

Rita Mae Brown:

Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts. And never hope more than you work.

Samuel Johnson:

It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.

Thomas Jefferson:

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

Thomas Jefferson:

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

William Shakespeare:

Love all, trust a few.