Martin Svoboda
@quick, member from April 4, 2011
“Human happiness and human satisfaction must ultimately come from within oneself.”
The Path to Tranquility: Daily Wisdom (1998) edited by Renuka Singh
Context: Human happiness and human satisfaction must ultimately come from within oneself. It is wrong to expect some final satisfaction to come from money or from a computer.
“Your sacred space is where you can find yourself over and over again.”
“I don't care if I fall as long as someone else picks up my gun and keeps on shooting.”
Variant: I don't care if I fall as long as someone else picks up my gun and keeps on shooting.
“The first duty of a revolutionary is to be educated.”
“Be realistic, demand the impossible!”
“I would rather die standing up to live life on my knees.”
“They fear love because it creates a world they can't control.”
Source: 1984
“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.”
Attributed on the internet but not found in print prior to an attribution in Aero Digest, Vols. 58–59, 1949, p. 115 https://books.google.com/books?id=q2ofAQAAMAAJ&dq=%22Life+is+simple%22+but+we+insist+on+making+it+complicated&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=%22Life+is+simple%22+
Misattributed, Not Chinese
“Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.”
“Kind words do not cost much. Yet they accomplish much”
Variant: Kind words don't cost much. Yet they accomplish much.
“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
Variant: All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit quiet in a room alone.
Source: Pensées
“To understand is to forgive.”
“I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.”
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
“It is better to know something about everything then everything about something”
“Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.”
“You can achieve anything in life. It just depends on how desperate you are to achieve it.”
The Race of My Life: An Autobiography Milkha Singh (2013)