Martin Svoboda favourite quotes (page 14)

“It is always easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.”

Alfred Adler (1870–1937) Medical Doctor, Psychologist, Psychiatrist, Psychotherapist, Personality Theorist

Quoted in: Phyllis Bottome, Alfred Adler: Apostle of Freedom (1939), ch. 5
Problems of Neurosis: A Book of Case Histories (1929)

“The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well.”

Alfred Adler (1870–1937) Medical Doctor, Psychologist, Psychiatrist, Psychotherapist, Personality Theorist

“Another word for creativity is courage.”

Henri Matisse (1869–1954) French artist

Variant: Creativity takes courage.

“I'm not strange, weird, off, nor crazy, my reality is just different from yours.”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

Variant: I'm not crazy. My reality is just different than yours.

“If you want to make the world a better place
Take a look at yourself, and then make a change.”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

Source: Song Man in the Mirror
Context: I'm starting with the man in the mirror
I'm asking him to change his ways
And no message could have been any clearer
If you want to make the world a better place
Take a look at yourself, and then make a change

“The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Intercontinental Press (Vol. 3 January-April 1965); also, in Che Guevara speaks: Selected Speeches and Writings (1967)

“I don't care if I fall as long as someone else picks up my gun and keeps on shooting.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

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.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

“There is only one tragedy in the end, not to have been a saint.”

Léon Bloy (1846–1917) French writer, poet and essayist

In Catholic Christianity: A Complete Catechism of Catholic Beliefs Based on the Catechism of the Catholic Church by Peter Kreeft

Catholic Christianity: A Complete Catechism of Catholic Beliefs Based on the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Ignatius Press, 2001 https://books.google.com/books?id=VZ-xgfJkNNgC&pg=PA89&dq=%22There+is+only+one+tragedy+in+the+end,+not+to+have+been+a+saint%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAGoVChMIrLb4nOL6yAIVhjk-Ch1XSQVB#v=onepage&q=%22There%20is%20only%20one%20tragedy%20in%20the%20end%2C%20not%20to%20have%20been%20a%20saint%22&f=false

“Suffering passes, but the fact of having suffered never passes.”

Léon Bloy (1846–1917) French writer, poet and essayist

Review of Existential Psychology and Psychiatry, Volume 19, Association of Existential Psychology and Psychiatry., 1984 [Association of Existential Psychology and Psychiatry., 1984]

“I am firmly convinced that Spain is the strongest country of the world. Century after century trying to destroy herself and still no success”

Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898) German statesman, Chancellor of Germany

A Spanish politician in a political meeting said it for the first time and attributed to Bismarck https://es.wikiquote.org/wiki/Discusi%C3%B3n:Otto_von_Bismarck
Misattributed

“There is love of course. And then there's life, its enemy.”

Jean Anouilh (1910–1987) French playwright

“Everything we are is at every moment alive in us.”

Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States

“If you cry because the sun has gone out of your life, your tears will prevent you from seeing the stars.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

“Clouds come floating into my life from other days no longer to shed rain or usher storm but to give colour to my sunset sky.”

Rabindranath Tagore Stray Birds

292
Source: Stray Birds (1916)

“The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.”

Jack London (1876–1916) American author, journalist, and social activist

Variant: "I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time." also mentioned as Jack London quote in Ian Fleming book You Only Live Twice (1964), Ch. 21 : Orbit
Source: San Francisco Bulletin in 1916. Also included as an introduction to a compilation of Jack London short stories in 1956.

“If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is.”

John Von Neumann (1903–1957) Hungarian-American mathematician and polymath

Remark made by von Neumann as keynote speaker at the first national meeting of the Association for Computing Machinery in 1947, as mentioned by Franz L. Alt at the end of "Archaeology of computers: Reminiscences, 1945--1947", Communications of the ACM, volume 15, issue 7, July 1972, special issue: Twenty-fifth anniversary of the Association for Computing Machinery, p. 694.

“Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.”

Bill Gates (1955) American business magnate and philanthropist

“I drink to make other people more interesting.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

“The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation' — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer