Quotes of famous people
Popular topics
Authors
Tupac Shakur 154
rapper and actor 1971–1996
Barack Obama 1158
44th President of the United States of America 1961
William Shakespeare 699
English playwright and poet 1564–1616
George Orwell 473
English author and journalist 1903–1950
Oscar Wilde 812
Irish writer and poet 1854–1900Recommended quotes
“Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.”
Source: Cosmos (1980), p. 4
1960s, Memorial Day speech (1963)
Context: The law cannot save those who deny it but neither can the law serve any who do not use it. The history of injustice and inequality is a history of disuse of the law. Law has not failed — and is not failing. We as a nation have failed ourselves by not trusting the law and by not using the law to gain sooner the ends of justice which law alone serves. If the white over-estimates what he has done for the Negro without the law, the Negro may under-estimate what he is doing and can do for himself with the law.
Source: Beatrice Mtetwa: In Conversation with Trevor https://kubatana.net/2019/11/05/beatrice-mtetwa-in-conversation-with-trevor/
“…sometimes I feel like I betray the writer when I try to teach literature.”
Source: https://portal.ucm.cl/noticias/la-literatura-la-biografia-emocional-humano-se-ha-atrevido-escribirla
Touch the Sky
Lyrics, Late Registration (2005)
Source: "Interview: Timothée Chalamet on being a young Hollywood actor" in SilverKris https://www.silverkris.com/interview-timothee-chalamet/ (13 December 2019)
“The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you. —NDT”
Variant: The Universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.
Source: Astrophysics for People in a Hurry
“A faith that can be destroyed by suffering is not faith.”
If Prison Walls Could Speak (1972)
“Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened.”
Often attributed to Dr. Seuss without citation; also cited as an anonymous proverb.
This quote has also been attributed to Gabriel García Márquez, in Spanish: "No llores porque ya se terminó, sonríe porque sucedió."
Compare lines from In Memoriam A.H.H. of Tennyson:
  'Tis better to have loved and lost
  Than never to have loved at all.
Disputed
Variant: Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.
“The biggest coward of a man is to awaken the love of a woman without the intention of loving her.”
“I don't care that they stole my idea.. I care that they don't have any of their own”
“Modern paintings are like women, you'll never enjoy them if you try to understand them. ”
Source: All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
In Mint newspaper quoted in: BBC News India yoga guru BKS Iyengar dies http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-28862979 BBC News, 20 August 2014
Letter to his wife (Congo, My Country)
“If you don’t call it art, you’re likely to get a better result.”
March 24, 1995, p. 83
A Year With Swollen Appendices (1996)
