My Favorite Quotes
LIFE
Adults are obsolete children.
-Dr. Seuss
The sonatas of Mozart are unique; they
are too easy for children, and too difficult for artists.
-Artur Schnabel
We do
not stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing.
-George
Bernard Shaw
The secret to genius is to carry the
spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm.
-Aldous Huxley
When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do
not despair for the future of the human race.
-H. G. Wells
All human beings seek to locate
themselves in the stream of time.
-Carl N. Degler
Who knows only his own generation
remains always a child.
-Norlin Library, west entrance,
University of Colorado, Boulder
The richness of life lies in the
memories we have forgotten.
-Cesare Pavese
We have reached an important point
when the end begins to come into view.
-William Childs Westmoreland
A life is like a garden. Perfect
moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP
-Leonard Nimoy's final tweet
(1931-2015, Mr. Spock) February 23, 2015
To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of
mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.
- George Santayana
The secret of good old age is simply
an honorable pact with solitude.
-Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Solitude is the salt of personhood. It
brings out the authentic flavor of every experience.
-May Sarton
Millions long for immortality who don't
know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
-Susan Ertz
Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.
-William Penn
The unexamined life is not worth
living.
-Socrates
The unlived life isn't worth examining.
- Sheldon Kopp, American Psychologist
A well-written life is almost as rare
as a well-spent one.
-Thomas Carlyle
In the end, it's not the years in your life that count; it's the life in your years.
-Abraham Lincoln.
A
man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams.
-John
Barrymore
Today
is the oldest you’ve ever been, and the youngest you’ll ever be again.
-Eleanor
Roosevelt
A quiet and modest life brings more joy than a pursuit of success bound with constant unrest.
-Albert Einstein
Grow old along with me! The best is
yet to be.
-Robert Browning
We don’t grow older, we grow riper.
-Pablo Picasso
It is better to be a human being
dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a
fool satisfied.
-John Stuart Mill
If you’re going through hell, keep
going.
-Winston Churchill.
There are only two ways to live your
life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything
is a miracle.
-Albert Einstein
Your net worth to the world is usually
determined by what remains after your bad habits are subtracted from your good
ones.
-Benjamin Franklin
Money is a great servant but a bad master.
-Francis Bacon
Some people are born on third base and
go through life thinking they hit a triple.
-Barry Switzer
A technical objection is the first
refuge of a scoundrel.
-Heywood Broun
A man is about as big as the things
that make him angry.
-Winston Churchill
We must as second best...take the least of the evils.
-Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
A man’s health can be judged by which he takes two at a time – pills or stairs.
-John Welsh
Walking is the best possible
exercise. Habituate yourself to walk
very far.
-Thomas Jefferson
A vigorous five-mile walk will do more
good for an unhappy but otherwise healthy adult than all the medicine and
psychology in the world.
-Paul Dudley White
Wine is constant proof that God loves
us and wants to see us happy.
-Benjamin Franklin
I’ve wrestled with reality for 35
years, doctor, and I’m happy to state that I’ve finally won out over it.
-Jimmy Stewart, as Elwood P. Down in
Life is a tragedy for those who feel and
a comedy for those who think.
-from
a Chinese fortune cookie!
I am an old man and have known many
troubles, but most never happened.
-attributed to Martin Farquhar Tupper,
Mark Twain, Thomas Dixon Jr. and Winston Churchill, none verifiable…
Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but religiously follows the new.
-Henry David Thoreau
Nobody ever figures out what life is
all about, and it doesn’t matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is
really interesting if you go into it deeply enough.
-Richard P. Feynman
The trouble with life isn’t that there
is no answer, it’s that there are so many answers.
-Ruth Benedict
There is more to life than increasing
its speed.
-Mahatma Gandhi
Idleness is fatal only to the
mediocre.
- Albert Camus
Don’t cry because it’s
over, smile because it happened.
-Dr. Seuss
PURPOSE
If a man knows not to which port he
sails, no wind is favorable.
-Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Roman Stoic
Philosopher
All philosophy lies in two words, sustain
and abstain.
-Epictetus
Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or
do without
-New
England Proverb
He will always be a slave who does not
know how to live upon a little.
-Horace
Only when he has ceased to need things
can a man truly be his own master and so really exist.
-Anwar al-Sadat
He who would travel happily must
travel light.
-Antoine de Saint-Exupery
A good traveler has no fixed plans,
and is not intent on arriving.
-Lao Tzu
Tourists don’t know where they’ve been, travelers don’t know where they’re going.
- Paul Theroux
Travel: Some good advice from one who
knows: Take twice the cash and half the clothes.
-unknown?
Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.
-Paul Theroux
Why grab possessions like thieves, or
divide them like socialists, when you can ignore them like wise men?
-Natalie Clifford Barney
What some people mistake for the high cost of living is really the cost of living high.
-Doug Larson
Things only have the value that we
give them.
-Moliere
Prosperity is only an instrument to be
used, not a deity to be worshipped.
-Calvin Coolidge
We act as though comfort and luxury
were the chief requirements of life, when all we need to make us happy is
something to be enthusiastic about.
-Albert Einstein
We choose to go to the Moon in this
decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are
hard.
-John F. Kennedy.
The two most important days in your
life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.
-Mark Twain
I have learned to seek my happiness by
limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them.
-John Stuart Mill
Desiring less is even more valuable
than owning less.
- Joshua Becker
I’m concentrating on staying healthy,
having peace, being happy, remembering what is important, taking in nature and
animals, spending time reading, trying to understand the universe, where
science and the spiritual meet.
-Joan Jett
Another flaw in the human character is
that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.
-Kurt Vonnegut
The greatest use of life is to spend
it for something that will outlast it.
-William James
The clearest way into the universe is
through a forest wilderness.
-John Muir
I went into the woods because
I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and
see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die,
discover that I had not lived.
-Henry David Thoreau
The proper function of man is to live,
not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use
my time.
-Jack London
You do what you can for as long as you can, and when you finally can’t, you do the next best thing. You back up but you don’t give up.
-Chuck Yeager
None of us can estimate what we do
when we do it from instinct.
-Luigi Pirandello
In order to serve its purpose, a vision has to be a shared vision.
-Warren Bennis
Planning is as natural to the process
of success as its absence is to the process of failure.
-Robin Sieger
When the student is ready the teacher
will appear. When the student is truly ready... The teacher will Disappear.
-Lao Tzu
To laugh
often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of
children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of
false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the
world a little better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a
redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because
you have lived. This is the meaning of success!
-Ralph
Waldo Emerson
Success is always something that you
have to recover from.
-Marsha Norman
CONVICTION
The secret of success is constancy to
purpose.
-Benjamin Distaeli
To succeed, you have to believe in
something with such a passion that it becomes a reality.
-Anita Roddick
Ideals are like stars; you will not succeed in touching them in your hands. But like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you will reach your destiny.
-Carl Schurz
It is so many years before one can believe enough in what one feels even to know what that feeling is.
-W.B. Yeats
Talent hits a target no one else can
hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.
-Arthur Schopenhauer
Dreams are the most powerful
motivators of all.
-Nick Thornely
I like the dreams of the future better
than I like the history of the past.
-Thomas Jefferson
Dream as if you’ll live forever. Live
as if you’ll die tomorrow.
-James Dean
Do not hurry. Do not rest.
-Goethe
Sometimes you just have to take the
leap, and build your wings on the way down.
-Kobi Yamada
Whether you think you can, or think you can’t - you’re right.
-Henry Ford
WISDOM
The beginning of wisdom is to call
things by their right names.
-Chinese
Proverb
Knowing yourself is the beginning of
all wisdom.
-Aristotle
Man’s mind, once stretched by a new
idea, never regains its original dimensions.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes
Great minds discuss ideas, average ones discuss events, and small minds discuss people.
-Eleanor Roosevelt
It is the mark of an educated mind to
be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
-Aristotle
I would rather have questions that can’t
be answered than answers that can’t be questioned.
-Richard Feynman
The surest way to corrupt a youth is
to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who
think differently.
-Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries.
- Aldous Huxley
The true lover of knowledge naturally
strives for truth, and is not content with common opinion, but soars with
undimmed and unwearied passion till he grasps the essential nature of things.
-Plato
The enemy of the
conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events
-John Kenneth Galbraith
Two things are infinite: the universe
and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.
-Albert Einstein
Keep away from people
who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really
great ones make you feel that you, too, can become great.
-Mark Twain
A friendship founded on business is
better than a business founded on friendship.
-John D. Rockefeller (1874-1960)
One of the lessons of history is that
nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.
-Will Durant
If you want
me to give you a two-hour presentation, I am ready today. If you want only a
five-minute speech, it will take me two weeks to prepare.
-Mark Twain
Only in quiet waters do things mirror themselves
undistorted. Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world.
-Hans Margolius
The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of
non-essentials.
-Lin Yu-Tang
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not
simpler.
-Albert Einstein
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to
add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
-Antoine de
Saint-Exupery
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
-Leonardo da Vinci
The best solution is the simplest one that works.
-William of Ockham from
Ockham’s razor
He is happiest of whom the world says least, good or bad.
-Thomas Jefferson
The higher a monkey climbs, the more you can see of its
behind.
-Saint Bonaventure (1217-1274)
With fame I become more and more stupid, which is of
course, a very common phenomenon.
-Albert Einstein
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test
a man’s character, give him power.
-Abraham Lincoln
It’s said that power corrupts, but actually it’s more true
that power attracts the corruptible.
-David Brin
Men of power have not time to read; yet men who don’t read
are unfit for power.
-Michael Foot
Adversity makes men, prosperity makes monsters.
-Victor Hugo
I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the
only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself.
-Aldous Huxley
Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot
change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the
difference.
-Saint Francis of
It is very rare or almost impossible that an event can be negative
from all points of view.
-Dalai Lama
It is easier to fool people than it is
to convince them they have been fooled.
-Mark Twain
Nature teaches more than she preaches.
There are no sermons in stones.
-John Burroughs
This is my simple religion. There is
no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own
heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.
-Dalai Lama
The gospel is meant to comfort the
afflicted and afflict the comfortable.
-Garrison Keillor
Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier.
-Mother Theresa
DISCOVERY
Science is the topography of
ignorance.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that
heralds new discoveries, is not
-Isaac Asimov
A hidden connection is stronger than an obvious one.
-Heraclitus
Solve the problem yourself or accept a fate you may not like...from this perspective, the ethic of personal responsibility gains appeal.
-Noel M. Tichy
Don’t study the idea to death with
experts and committees. Get on with it and see if it works.
-Ken Iverson
An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.
-Neils Bohr
The pessimist complains about the wind, the optimist hopes it will change, the realist adjusts the sails.
-William Arthur Ward
The mathematician has reached the highest rung on the ladder of human thought.
-
If you’re not part of the solution,
you’re part of the precipitate.
-Steven Wright
To make an apple pie from scratch, you
must first invent the universe.
-Carl Sagan
A useless but amusing fact is that if
all the DNA in all the cells in a single human being were stretched out it
would reach the moon and back eight thousand times.
-Steve Jones
It is a mathematical fact that the casting of this pebble from my hand alters the centre of gravity of the universe.
-Thomas Carlyle
He who learns and learns and yet does
not know what he knows, is one who plows and plows yet never sows.
-Alfred Korzybski
What use is it that knowledge mounts?
It’s knowing something good that counts.
-Friedrich von Logau
Knowledge is like a sphere; the greater its volume, the larger its contact with the unknown.
-David Christian
OR
As our circle of knowledge expands, so does the circumference of darkness surrounding it.
-Albert Einstein
I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.
- Abraham Maslow
We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
I think that only daring speculation can lead us further and not accumulation of facts.
-Albert Einstein
No pessimist ever discovered the
secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to
the human spirit.
-Helen Keller
We shall never cease from exploration.
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
-T.S. Elliot
FLIGHT
When once you have tasted flight, you
will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have
been, and there you will always long to return.
-Leonardo da Vinci
Pilots are drawn to flying because it’s
a perfect combination of science, romance and adventure.
-Charles Lindbergh
I fly because it releases my mind from
the tyranny of petty things.
-Antoine de Saint Exupery
High Flight, by John G. Magee
Oh, I have
slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of, wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew
And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
In August or September 1941,
Pilot Officer Magee composed High Flight and sent a copy to his parents.
Several months later, on December 11, 1941 his Spitfire collided with another
plane over England and Magee, only 19 years of age, crashed to his death.
Man must rise above the Earth - to the
top of the atmosphere and beyond - for only thus will he fully understand the
world in which he lives.
-Socrates (4th century, BC)
…we are too feeble and sluggish to
make our way out to the upper limit of the air. If someone could reach the
summit, or put on wings and fly aloft, when he put up his head he would see the
world above, just as fishes see our world when they put up their heads out of
the sea; and if his nature were able to bear the sight, he would recognize that
that is the true heaven...
-Plato
(from The Last Days of Socrates, 5th century, BC)
…there may be only a brief window of
opportunity for space travel during which we will in principle have the
capability to establish colonies... If we let that opportunity pass without
taking advantage of it we will be doomed to remain on the Earth, where we will
eventually go extinct.
- J.
Richard Gott III,