Martin Svoboda favourite quotes (page 2)

“Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Letter to Jost Winteler (1901), quoted in The Private Lives of Albert Einstein by Roger Highfield and Paul Carter (1993), p. 79 http://books.google.com/books?id=zY7FE9ZyDO0C&lpg=PP1&pg=PA79#v=onepage&q&f=false. Einstein had been annoyed that Paul Drude, editor of Annalen der Physik, had dismissed out of hand some criticisms Einstein made of Drude's electron theory of metals.
1900s
Variant: A foolish faith in authority is the worst enemy of truth.

“Anyone can write. Some people can write a bit better than others; they're called authors. Then there are some who can write better than authors; they're called artists.”

Walter Moers (1957) German comic creator and author

“Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

“I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.”

James Baldwin book The Fire Next Time

"Me and My House" in Harper's (November 1955); republished in Notes of a Native Son (1955)
Source: The Fire Next Time

“Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

“Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.”

James Baldwin book Nobody Knows My Name

"In Search of a Majority: An Address" (Feb 1960); reprinted in Baldwin, "Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobody_Knows_My_Name (1961)

“Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

"As Much Truth As One Can Bear" in The New York Times Book Review (14 January 1962); republished in The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings (2011), edited by Randall Kenan
Context: Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced. … Most of us are about as eager to change as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.

“The place in which I'll fit will not exist until I make it.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

“The only thing greater than the power of the mind is the courage of the heart”

John Nash (1928–2015) American mathematician and Nobel Prize laureate

“I would rather die standing up to live life on my knees.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

“Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it.”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

“What is to give light must endure burning.”

Viktor E. Frankl (1905–1997) Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor

“The minute you start caring about what other people think, is the minute you stop being yourself.”

Meryl Streep (1949) American actress

“Love starts when we push aside our ego and make room for someone else.”

Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925) Austrian esotericist

“To look life in the face, always, to look life in the face, and to know it for what it is… at last, to love it for what it is, and then, to put it away…”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

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

“We are each of us angels with only one wing, and we can only fly by embracing one another.”

Luciano De Crescenzo (1928–2019) Italian writer

“Courage is a love affair with the unknown.”

Rajneesh (1931–1990) Godman and leader of the Rajneesh movement

“Being on the edge isn’t as safe, but the view is better.”

Ricky Gervais (1961) English comedian, actor, director, producer, musician, writer, and former radio presenter

“Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table.”

W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet