Blaise Pascal
(1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher
Martin Svoboda
@quick, member from April 4, 2011
“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.”
Blaise Pascal
(1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher
“It is better to know something about everything then everything about something”
Blaise Pascal
(1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher
“Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.”
Edmund Burke
(1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman
“Pooh, how do you spell love?' 'You don't spell love Piglet, you feel it”
A.A. Milne
(1882–1956) British author
Variant: How do you spell love?
You don't spell it, you feel it.
“Love is so short and forgetting is so long.”
Es tan corto el amor y tan largo el olvido.
"Tonight I Can Write" (Puedo Escribir), XX, p. 51.
Variant: Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
Source: Veinte Poemas de Amor y una Canción Desesperada (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair) (1924)
“Love should not be polluted with friendship.”
Erich Maria Remarque
(1898–1970) German novelist
Source: Arch of Triumph: A Novel of a Man Without a Country
“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”
Albert Einstein
(1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity
Variant: A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
“Try to become not a man of success, but try rather to become a man of value.”
Albert Einstein
(1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity
As quoted by LIFE magazine (2 May 1955)
1950s
Variant: Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.
“The head talks to the heart and the heart talks to the feet.”
Pelé
(1940–2022) Brazilian association football player
“If you are first you are first. If you are second, you are nothing.”
Pelé
(1940–2022) Brazilian association football player
“The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well.”
Alfred Adler
(1870–1937) Medical Doctor, Psychologist, Psychiatrist, Psychotherapist, Personality Theorist
“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
“We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology.”
Edward O. Wilson
(1929) American biologist
Source: debate at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, Cambridge, Mass., 9 September 2009
“Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff.”
Frank Zappa
(1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer
Zen Masters : The Wisdom of Frank Zappa (2003)
Johnny Depp
(1963) American actor, film producer, and musician
Also attributed to Chester Bennington (singer of Linkin Park)
“What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”
Jane Goodall
(1934) British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist