Martin Svoboda
@quick, member from April 4, 2011
“The death of one man is a just death, the death of two millions is a statistic.”
Aber das ist wohl so, weil ein einzelner immer der Tod ist — und zwei Millionen immer nur eine Statistik.
Der schwarze Obelisk (1956)
A variant of this quote "One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is just a statistic." has also been attributed to Joseph Stalin, but no source for this has been found. This version appeared in the English press not later than 1958. (Ремарк, Эрих Мария // Словарь современных цитат / составитель К. В. Душенко — Москва: изд-во «Эксмо», 2006)
“It is just as much a matter of chance that I am still alive as that I might have been hit.”
Source: All Quiet on the Western Front (1929), Ch. 6
Context: It is just as much a matter of chance that I am still alive as that I might have been hit. In a bomb-proof dugout I might have been smashed to atoms, and in the open survive ten hours' bombardment unscathed. No soldier survives a thousand chances. But every soldier believes in Chance and trusts his luck.
“We were all at once terribly alone; and alone we must see it through.”
Source: All Quiet on the Western Front
“Life did not intend to make us perfect. Whoever is perfect belongs in a museum.”
“It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.”
1900s, The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses (1900), The Strenuous Life
Context: It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. In this life we get nothing save by effort. Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been stored up effort in the past.
Context: A life of slothful ease, a life of that peace which springs merely from lack either of desire or of power to strive after great things, is as little worthy of a nation as of an individual. [... ] If you are rich and are worth your salt, you will teach your sons that though they may have leisure, it is not to be spent in idleness; for wisely used leisure merely means that those who possess it, being free from the necessity of working for their livelihood, are all the more bound to carry on some kind of non-remunerative work in science, in letters, in art, in exploration, in historical research—work of the type we most need in this country, the successful carrying out of which reflects most honor upon the nation. We do not admire the man of timid peace. We admire the man who embodies victorious effort; the man who never wrongs his neighbor, who is prompt to help a friend, but who has those virile qualities necessary to win in the stern strife of actual life. It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. In this life we get nothing save by effort. Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been stored up effort in the past. A man can be freed from the necessity of work only by the fact that he or his fathers before him have worked to good purpose. If the freedom thus purchased is used aright, and the man still does actual work, though of a different kind, whether as a writer or a general, whether in the field of politics or in the field of exploration and adventure, he shows he deserves his good fortune. But if he treats this period of freedom from the need of actual labor as a period, not of preparation, but of mere enjoyment, even though perhaps not of vicious enjoyment, he shows that he is simply a cumberer of the earth's surface, and he surely unfits himself to hold his own with his fellows if the need to do so should again arise.
Variant: Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate.
Les pierres du chantier ne sont en vrac qu’en apparence, s’il est, perdu dans le chantier, un homme, serait-il seul, qui pense cathédrale.
Pilote de Guerre (1942) (translated into English as Flight to Arras)
“Education: the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.”
“It's not the size of the dog in the fight; it's the size of the fight in the dog.”
Anonymous American proverb; since 1998 this has often been attributed to Mark Twain on the internet, but no contemporary evidence of him ever using it has been located.
Variants:
It is not the size of the dog in the fight that counts, but the fight in the dog that matters.
"Stub Ends of Thoughts" by Arthur G. Lewis, a collection of sayings, in Book of the Royal Blue Vol. 14, No. 7 (April 1911), cited as the earliest known occurrence in The Dictionary of Modern Proverbs, edited by Charles Clay Doyle, Wolfgang Mieder, and Fred R. Shapiro, p. 232
It is not the size of the dog in the fight that counts, but the fight in the dog that wins.
Anonymous quote in the evening edition of the East Oregonian (20 April 1911)
What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight — it's the size of the fight in the dog.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, declaring his particular variant on the proverbial assertion in Remarks at Republican National Committee Breakfast (31 January 1958) http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=11229
Misattributed
“The trouble is not in dying for a friend, but in finding a friend worth dying for.”
“Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination.”
“"Classic." A book which people praise and don't read.”
Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, Ch. XXV
Following the Equator (1897)
“When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain.”
Source: Notebook
“Each place has its own advantages - heaven for the climate, and hell for the society.”
“Wrinkles should merely indicate where the smiles have been.”
“Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option.”