“We cannot do everything at once, but we can do something at once.”
Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)
Book VIII, line 63 (tr. Fairclough)
Eclogues (37 BC)
“We cannot do everything at once, but we can do something at once.”
Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)
Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher
“Everything's a scandal. Dying's a scandal. But we all do it.”
Don DeLillo book Cosmopolis
Source: Cosmopolis
“Paradoxes explain everything. Since they do, they cannot be explained.”
Gene Wolfe (1931–2019) American science fiction and fantasy writer
Volume 1, Ch. 9
Fiction, The Book of the Short Sun (1999–2001)
Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist
Edward Everett Hale in a statement published in A Year of Beautiful Thoughts (1902) by Jeanie Ashley Bates Greenough, p. 172; <!-- and perhaps as early as an edition of Ten Times One is Ten (1870) by Hale--> This has been misattributed to Keller in published works since at least 1980. Keller and Hale were good friends, and letters to Hale can be found in her youthful autobiography The Story of My Life (1902). In 1910 Keller dedicated her poem "The Song of the Stone Wall" to Hale who had died in 1909.
Misattributed
Variant: I am only one, but I am one. I can not do everything, but I can do something. I must not fail to do the something that I can do.
Edward Everett Hale (1822–1909) American author and Unitarian clergyman
Statement published in A Year of Beautiful Thoughts (1902) by Jeanie Ashley Bates Greenough, p. 172, Third statement for June 11. This has often been misattributed to Helen Keller in some published works since at least 1980, perhaps because she somewhere quoted it.
Variant:
I am only one,
But still I am one.
I cannot do everything,
But still I can do something;
And because I cannot do everything,
I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.
The Book of Good Cheer : A Little Bundle of Cheery Thoughts (1909) by Edwin Osgood Grover, p. 28; also in Masterpieces of Religious Verse (1948) by James Dalton Morrison, p. 416, where it is titled "Lend a Hand"
Variant: I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do.
Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States
2010s, 2016 Democratic National Convention (2016)
José Saramago book Blindness
Se não formos capazes de viver inteiramente como pessoas, ao menos façamos tudo para não viver inteiramente como animais.
Source: Blindness (1995), p. 116
Isabel II do Reino Unido (1926–2022) queen of the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and head of the Commonwealth of Nations
Speech during the commemorations of D-Day, 06/06/2014. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/10883074/D-Day-anniversary-Queen-stirred-by-commemorations.html