Stanislaw Ulam (1909–1984) Polish-American mathematician
Source: Adventures of a Mathematician - Third Edition (1991), Chapter 15, Random Reflections on Mathematics and Science, p. 278
Source: The Walking Drum (1984), Ch. 57
Stanislaw Ulam (1909–1984) Polish-American mathematician
Source: Adventures of a Mathematician - Third Edition (1991), Chapter 15, Random Reflections on Mathematics and Science, p. 278
“No, I do not weep at the world. I'm too busy sharpening my oyster knife.”
Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960) American folklorist, novelist, short story writer
How It Feels to Be Colored Me (1928)
Source: Folklore, Memoirs, and Other Writings
Context: I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all. I do not belong to that sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal. Even in the helter-skelter skirmish that is my life, I have seen that the world is to the strong regardless of a little pigmentation more or less. No, I do not weep at the world — I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.
“Men are like steel — when they lose their temper, they lose their worth.”
Chuck Norris (1940) American martial artist and actor
Though often attributed to Norris, this seems to have appeared as an anonymous proverb at least as early as 1961, in an edition of The Physical Educator
Misattributed
Bhagat Singh (1907–1931) Indian revolutionary
Quotations by 60 Greatest Indians, Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology http://resourcecentre.daiict.ac.in/eresources/iresources/quotations.html,
Friedrich Nietzsche book On the Genealogy of Morality
Second Essay, Aphorism 14
On the Genealogy of Morality (1887)
Umar II (681–720) Umayyad caliph
Letter to Abd al-Rahman bin Nu'aym, also quoted in History of the Prophets and Kings, Vol. 24, p. 101
Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist
Variant: Tragedy and adversary are the stones we sharpen our swords against so we can fight new battles.
Source: Infinity
Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) American poet
The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)
Herbert N. Casson (1869–1951) Canadian journalist and writer
Herbert N. Casson cited in: Forbes magazine (1950) The Forbes scrapbook of Thoughts on the business of life. p. 236
1950s and later