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Wisdom & Reflection

50 quotes

"Men despise one another and flatter one another; and men wish to raise themselves above one another, and crouch before one another."

Marcus Aurelius

"Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself."

Richard David Bach

"If you haven't forgiven yourself something, how can you forgive others?"

Dolores Huerta

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

Aristotle

"Oh, you know. I am secretary of state. My trips aren't successful. I just talk to people."

George Pratt Shultz

"There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and, after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second."

Logan Pearsall Smith

"Do something. If it doesn't work, do something else. No idea is too crazy."

Jim Hightower

"The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good."

Ann Landers

"Television is an invention that permits you to be entertained in your living room by people you wouldn't have in your home."

David Frost

"More appealing than knowledge itself is the feeling of knowledge."

Daniel J. Boorstin

"97 Give me fruitful error any time, full of seeds, bursting with its own corrections. You can keep your sterile truth for yourself."

Vilfredo Pareto

"As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which he cannot apply will make no man wise."

Samuel Johnson

"Good taste is always an asset."

Rudy Bakalov

"The intelligence of any discussion diminishes with the square of the number of participants."

Adam Walinsky

"Occasionally, I have to think like myself to remember where I put something."

Susan S. Taylor

"I have seen soldiers panic at the first sight of battle, and a wounded squire pulling arrows out from his wound to fight and save his dying horse. Nobility is not a birth right but is defined by one's action."

Kevin Costner

"The great discoveries are usually obvious."

Philip Crosby

"The wit of a graduate student is like champagne. Canadian champagne."

Robertson Davies

"If you have to keep reminding yourself of a thing, perhaps it isn't so."

Christopher Murley

"Character, in great and little things, means carrying through what you feel able to do."

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"[When asked if he had strongly held left-wing views]: No. I have extreme views, weakly held."

A. J. P. Taylor

"On the whole, age comes more gently to those who have some doorway into an abstract world-art, or philosophy, or learning-regions where the years are scarcely noticed and the young and old can meet in a pale truthful light."

Freya Stark

"Pay attention to your enemies, for they are the first to discover your mistakes."

Antisthenes

"There are two rules for success. . . 1) Never tell everything you know."

Roger H. Lincoln

"It simply comes down to this, Get Busy Living, or Get Busy Dying."

Tim Robbins

"If you don't find it in the index, look very carefully through the entire catalogue."

Sears, Roebuck, and Co., Consumer's Guide

"The Professor’s Song (1974), American Mathematical Monthly 81:745 I feel that if a person has problems communicating the very least he can do is to shut up."

Thomas Andrew Lehrer

"The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy."

Steven Weinberg

"Whenever anyone says, 'theoretically,' they really mean, 'not really.'"

Dave Parnas

"Who knows what he is told, must know a lot of things that are not so."

Arthur Guiterman

"The sympathy of sorrow is stronger than the sympathy of prosperity."

Benjamin Disraeli

"last words (1864) Education is when you read the fine print. Experience is what you get if you don’t."

Pete Seeger

"Man has responsibility, not power."

Tuscarora proverb

"Envy is natural to man from the beginning."

Herodotus (5th century BC)

"It does not matter how many books you have, but how good the books are which you have."

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"Personal relationships are the fertile soil from which all advancement, all success, all achievement in real life grows."

Ben Stein

"If women want any rights they had better take them, and say nothing about it."

Harriet Beecher Stowe

"Compromise, if not the spice of life, is its solidity. It is what makes nations great and marriages happy."

Phyllis McGinley

"He who loves little dares little."

Proverb

"No greater nor more affectionate honor can be conferred on an American than to have a public school named after him."

Herbert Clark Hoover

"Thought is the wind, knowledge the sail, and mankind the vessel."

August Hare (1792-1834)

"Obstacles are things a person sees when he takes his eyes off his goal."

E. Joseph Cossman

"Fame is only good for one thing - they will cash your check in a small town."

Truman Capote

"To condemn spontaneous and delightful occupations because they are useless for self-preservation shows an uncritical prizing of life regardless of its contents."

George Santayana

"The Earth is the Cradle of the Mind -- but one cannot eternally live in a cradle."

Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky

"Age' is the acceptance of a term of years. But maturity is the glory of years."

Martha Graham

"Everyman's life lies within the present, for the past is spent and done with, and the future is uncertain."

Marcus Aurelius

"Every child walks into existence through the golden gate of love."

Henry Ward Beecher

"There is something pagan in me that I cannot shake off. In short, I deny nothing, but doubt everything."

Lord Byron

"One's friends are that part of the human race with which one can be human."

George Santayana