
Der Spiegel (17 October 1988)
Der Spiegel (17 October 1988)
“Care about people's approval and you will be their prisoner.”
Also: "Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner"
Also: "If you care what people think, you will always be their prisoner"
Appears in Stephen Mitchell's rendering into English http://terebess.hu/english/tao/mitchell.html#Kap09 of Tao Te Ching chapter 9; but this is an interpretation of Mitchell's which does not appear in the original text or other recognized English translations. Repeated without attribution in Gilliland, Hide Your Goat https://books.google.com/books?id=ziJQdUzCgTIC&pg=PT98&dq=Care+what+other+think+%22you+will+always+be%22+their+prisoner&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CDQQ6AEwBGoVChMIpsbNzO69yAIVCU2ICh0mXwIE#v=onepage&q=Care%20what%20other%20think%20%22you%20will%20always%20be%22%20their%20prisoner&f=false, a positive thinking book published in 2013.
Misattributed
“To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities.”
Variant: You can quicker get back a million dollars that was stolen than a word that you gave away.
Source: A View from the Bridge: A Play in Two Acts
Source: The Beloved Returns (1939), Ch. 7
Context: Hold fast the time! Guard it, watch over it, every hour, every minute! Unregarded it slips away, like a lizard, smooth, slippery, faithless, a pixy wife. Hold every moment sacred. Give each clarity and meaning, each the weight of thine awareness, each its true and due fulfillment.
Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 4
Context: Writing well was almost the same as thinking well, and thinking well was the next thing to acting well. All moral discipline, all moral perfection derived from the soul of literature, from the soul of human dignity, which was the moving spirit of both humanity and politics. Yes, they were all one, one and the same force, one and the same idea, and all of them could be comprehended in one single word... The word was — civilization!
Reflections of a Non-Political Man [Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen] (1918)
Context: The important thing for me, then, is not the "work," but my life. Life is not the means for the achievement of an esthetic ideal of perfection; on the contrary, the work is an ethical symbol of life.
“Every reasonable human being should be a moderate Socialist.”
As quoted in The New York Times (18 June 1950); also in Thomas Mann: A Critical Study (1971) by R. J. Hollingdale, Ch. 2
“We like to be out in nature so much because it has no opinion about us.”
“He who climbs upon the highest mountains laughs at all tragedies, real or imaginary.”
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra
“It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”
“Silence is worse; all truths that are kept silent become poisonous.”
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra
“History is almost always written by the victors and conquerors and gives their view.”
The Discovery of India (1946), pp. 287-8.