Quotes of famous people

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Barack Obama 1158

44th President of the United States of America 1961

Oscar Wilde 812

Irish writer and poet 1854–1900

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“Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it”

Flannery O’Connor book Wise Blood

Source: Wise Blood

“I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.”

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher

Often misattributed to Twain, this is actually by Blaise Pascal, "Lettres provinciales", letter 16, 1657:
Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.
Translation: I have only made this [letter] longer, because I have not had the opportunity to make it shorter.
Misattributed
Source: The Provincial Letters

Time , Funny

“I is here with the geezer who was the Secretary-General of the United Nations. His name be none other than my man, Boutros Boutros Boutros-Ghali.”

Sacha Baron Cohen (1971) English stand-up comedian, writer, actor, and voice actor

As quoted in "War" http://www.listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=C5P9J1wCgNM (28 February 2003), Da Ali G Show http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0508528/?ref_=ttep_ep2.

“During the first six months or so of life… the infant brain is unable to clearly distinguish the source of sensory inputs”

Daniel Levitin (1957) American psychologist

This is Your Brain on Music (2006)
Context: During the first six months or so of life... the infant brain is unable to clearly distinguish the source of sensory inputs; vision, hearing, and touch meld into a unitary perceptual representation.... inputs from the various sensory receptors may connect to many different parts of the brain, pending pruning that will occur later in life. As Simon Baron-Cohen has described it, with all this sensory cross talk, the infant lives in a state of complete psychodelic splendor (without the aid of drugs).

Life

“Since this is an era when many people are concerned about 'fairness' and 'social justice,' what is your 'fair share' of what someone else has worked for?”

Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author

Source: Dismantling America and Other Controversial Essays (2011), p.397

People , Justice

“One of the consequences of such notions as ‘entitlements’ is that people who have contributed nothing to society feel that society owes them something, apparently just for being nice enough to grace us with their presence.”

Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author

People , Feeling

“The problem isn't that Johnny can't read. The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.”

Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author

Feeling , Problem , Thinking , Reading

“Fascism was born to inspire a faith not of the Right (which at bottom aspires to conserve everything, even injustice) or of the Left (which at bottom aspires to destroy everything, even goodness), but a collective, integral, national faith.”

José Antonio Primo de Rivera (1903–1936) Spanish noble and politician

Stanley G. Payne, Falange: A History of Spanish Fascism (1961), p. 31.

Faith

“Either it brings tears to their eyes, or else -"
"Or else what?" said Alice, for the Knight had made a sudden pause.
"Or else it doesn't, you know.”

Lewis Carroll book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Source: Alice in Wonderland

Tear

“We are one of those couples i used to watch, thinking to myself that I'd never be on the inside of something so special. I remember reassuring myself that it probably looked nicer than it actually was, I am happy to be wrong about that.”

Emily Giffin Something Borrowed

Source: Something Borrowed

Thinking , Happiness

“The poet, says Baudelaire, is a decipherer, a Kabbalist of reality, a decoder. Ordinary life, if it is not a message in code, a system of symbols for something else, is unacceptable. It must be a cryptogram; it can't be what it seems. The poet's task is to decode the incomprehensible obvious. His life becomes a deliberately constructed paranoia, as Rimbaud, Breton, Artaud were to say generations later.
As we read him, we discover that Baudelaire believes in the charm, the incantation, the cryptogram, but he ceases to believe in the secret. The spirits have not risen. The code says nothing. This is the mystery concealed by the disorder of the world. The visionary experience ends in itself; the light of the illuminated comes only from and falls only on himself.”

Kenneth Rexroth (1905–1982) American poet, writer, anarchist, academic and conscientious objector

Baudelaire: Poems (p. 175)
Classics Revisited (1968)

Life , Secret , World , Reality

“It is a commonplace that Racine is untranslatable. This is not because his verse is difficult, but because it is not.”

Kenneth Rexroth (1905–1982) American poet, writer, anarchist, academic and conscientious objector

Racine: Phèdre (p. 54)
More Classics Revisited (1989)

“It takes great labor to uncover the convincing simple speech of the heart. Poetic candor comes with hard labor, so even does impetuosity and impudence.”

Kenneth Rexroth (1905–1982) American poet, writer, anarchist, academic and conscientious objector

Catullus (p. 28)
More Classics Revisited (1989)

Heart

“You can achieve anything in life. It just depends on how desperate you are to achieve it.”

Milkha Singh (1935) Indian track and field athlete

The Race of My Life: An Autobiography Milkha Singh (2013)

Life , Dependency

“No man’s really any good till he knows how bad he is, or might be; till he’s realized exactly how much right he has to all this snobbery, and sneering, and talking about ‘criminals,’ as if they were apes in a forest ten thousand miles away; till he’s got rid of all the dirty self-deception of talking about low types and deficient skulls; till he’s squeezed out of his soul the last drop of the oil of the Pharisees; till his only hope is somehow or other to have captured one criminal, and kept him safe and sane under his own hat.”

G. K. Chesterton book The Secret of Father Brown

The Secret of Father Brown (1927) The Secret of Father Brown
The Father Brown Mystery Series (1910 - 1927)

Hope , Soul

“Please give a detailed account as to how I can best serve humanity”

Edgar Cayce (1877–1945) Purported clairvoyant healer and psychic

Many Mansions Chapter 20 - A Philosophy of Vocational Choice
On Vocational Choices
Context: In those ways that open to you day by day. It isn't always the individual that plans to accomplish some great deed that does the most. It is the one who meets the opportunities and privileges which are accorded it day by day. As such opportunities are used, there are better ways opened. For what we use in the way of helpfulness to others, increases in itself. Begin with what you are!

“In today's wars, there are no morals. We believe the worst thieves in the world today and the worst terrorists are the Americans. We do not have to differentiate between military or civilian. As far as we are concerned, they are all targets.”

Osama bin Laden (1957–2011) founder of al-Qaeda

As quoted in "The Most Wanted Man in the World" http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101010924/wosama.html (16 September 2001), Time magazine profile.
2000s, 2001

War , World