Martin Svoboda favourite quotes (page 33)

“Sometimes I believe in God, sometimes I don’t. I think it’s 50-50 maybe.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

Quoted by his biographer, Walter Isaacson http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/steve-jobs-in-the-end-he-didnt-like-the-off-switch/61586?tag=nl.e589
2010s
Context: Sometimes I believe in God, sometimes I don’t. I think it’s 50-50 maybe. But ever since I’ve had cancer, I’ve been thinking about it more. And I find myself believing a bit more. I kind of – maybe it’s ’cause I want to believe in an afterlife. That when you die, it doesn’t just all disappear. The wisdom you’ve accumulated. Somehow it lives on, but sometimes I think it’s just like an on-off switch. Click and you’re gone. And that’s why I don’t like putting on-off switches on Apple devices.

“Wonder. Go on and wonder.”

William Faulkner book The Sound and the Fury

Source: The Sound and the Fury

“Don't be 'a writer'. Be writing.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

“I could not dig: I dared not rob:
Therefore I lied to please the mob.”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

A Dead Statesman
Epitaphs of the War (1914-1918) (1918)
Context: I could not dig: I dared not rob:
Therefore I lied to please the mob.
Now all my lies are proved untrue
And I must face the men I slew.
What tale shall serve me here among
Mine angry and defrauded young?

“Leadership is ability to decide what is to be done a then get others to do it.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

“I always think that when something is currently very trendy, it's already very old.”

Ennio Morricone (1928–2020) Italian composer, orchestrator and conductor

“Everyone has to die. I'm not particularly scared about it. What really frightens me is that if I go before my wife, I will leave her alone, and vice versa. The ideal would be to die together.”

Ennio Morricone (1928–2020) Italian composer, orchestrator and conductor

“Music needs room to breathe.”

Ennio Morricone (1928–2020) Italian composer, orchestrator and conductor

“The better we get at getting better, the faster we will get better.”

Douglas Engelbart (1925–2013) American engineer and inventor

Computer History Museum - Fellow Awards http://www.computerhistory.org/fellows2005/bios/engelbart.shtml

“No individual can win a game by himself.”

Pelé (1940–2022) Brazilian association football player

“We have two essential strategies for coping: the way of avoidance or the way of attention.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Three, Brains Changing, Minds Changing

“We are only seeking Man. We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors. We don't know what to do with other worlds. A single world, our own, suffices us; but we can't accept it for what it is. We are searching for an ideal image of our own world: we go in quest of a planet, of a civilisation superior to our own but developed on the basis of a prototype of our primeval past. At the same time, there is something inside us which we don't like to face up to, from which we try to protect ourselves, but which nevertheless remains, since we don't leave Earth in a state of primal innocence. We arrive here as we are in reality, and when the page is turned and that reality is revealed to us — that part of our reality which we would prefer to pass over in silence — then we don't like it any more.”

Stanisław Lem book Solaris

Solaris (1961), Ch. 6: "The Little Apocrypha", p. 72
Solaris (1961)

“The head talks to the heart and the heart talks to the feet.”

Pelé (1940–2022) Brazilian association football player

“God thinks in the geniuses, dreams in the poets, and sleeps in the other people.”

Peter Altenberg (1859–1919) Austrian writer and poet

Gott denkt in den Genies, träumt in den Dichtern und schläft in den übrigen Menschen.
Der Nachlass von Peter Altenberg, p. 20

“Insanity — a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world.”

Ronald David Laing (1927–1989) Scottish psychiatrist and author

As quoted in Wisdom for the Soul : Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing (2006) by Larry Chang, p. 412; this might be a paraphrase, as the earliest occurrence of this phrase thus far located is in the form: "Ronald David Laing has shocked many people when he suggested in 1972 that insanity can be a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world." in Studii de literatură română și comparată (1984), by The Faculty of Philology-History at Universitatea din Timișoara. A clear citation to Laing's own work has not yet been found.
Disputed

“I think the American dream is still what gets us out of bed every day, that life can be better…”

Vanessa Hua American journalist and writer

On the state of the “American Dream” in “A Conversation with Vanessa Hua” https://www.readitforward.com/author-interview/a-conversation-with-vanessa-hua/ in Read It Forward

“If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week.”

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"

Source: The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1809–82

“What is a scientist after all? It is a curious man looking through a keyhole, the keyhole of nature, trying to know what’s going on.”

Jacques-Yves Cousteau (1910–1997) French naval officer, explorer, conservationist, filmmaker, innovator, scientist, photographer, author and …

Christian Science Monitor (21 July 1971)

“A man is a fool not to put everything he has, at any given moment, into what he is creating”

Frank Herbert (1920–1986) American writer

As quoted in Shoptalk: learning to write with writers (1990), edited by Donald Morison Murray
General sources
Context: A man is a fool not to put everything he has, at any given moment, into what he is creating. You're there now doing the thing on paper. You're not killing the goose, you're just producing an egg. So I don't worry about inspiration, or anything like that. It's a matter of just sitting down and working. I have never had the problem of a writing block. I've heard about it. I've felt reluctant to write on some days, for whole weeks, or sometimes even longer. I'd much rather go fishing, for example, or go sharpen pencils, or go swimming, or what not. But, later, coming back and reading what I have produced, I am unable to detect the difference between what came easily and when I had to sit down and say, 'Well, now it's writing time and now I'll write.' There's no difference on paper between the two.

“Real leaders must be ready to sacrifice all for the freedom of their people.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

Nelson Madenla on leadership, Chief Albert Luthuli Centenary celebrations, Kwadukuza, Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa (25 April 1998). Source: From Nelson Mandela By Himself: The Authorised Book of Quotations © 2010 by Nelson R. Mandela and The Nelson Mandela Foundation http://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/mini-site/selected-quotes
1990s