Quotes about life and people

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“To make a decision you need to be in a perfect environment: you have to be motivated and surrounded by the right people.”

Niki Lauda (1949–2019) Austrian former Formula 1 racing driver

“From success, you learn absolutely nothing. From failure and setbacks conclusions can be drawn. That goes for your private life as well as your career.”

Niki Lauda (1949–2019) Austrian former Formula 1 racing driver

“Fortune is given to brave men.”
Fortibus est fortuna viris data.

Ennius (-239–-169 BC) Roman writer

As quoted by Macrobius in Saturnalia, Book VI, Chapter I

“The mind wanders unsure, except in that life is lived.”
Incerte errat animus; praeterpropter vitam vivitur.

Ennius (-239–-169 BC) Roman writer

As quoted by Aulus Gellius in Noctes Atticae (Attic Nights), Book XIX, Chapter X
Iphigenia

“Your minds that once did stand erect and strong,
What madness swerves them from their wonted course?”
Quo vobis mentes, rectae quae stare solebant Antehac, dementis sese flexere viai?

Ennius (-239–-169 BC) Roman writer

As quoted by Cicero in De Senectute, Chapter VI (Loeb translation)

“where the Gauls stealthily, at the time of night when sleep falls on men, attacked the high citadel and of a sudden stained with blood walls and watchers.”
Qua Galli furtim noctu summa arcis adorti moenia concubia vigilesque repente cruentant.

Ennius (-239–-169 BC) Roman writer

As quoted by Macrobius in Saturnalia, Book I, Chapter IV (tr. J. Elliott)

“Let no one pay me honor with tears, nor celebrate my funeral rites with weeping. Why? I fly, living, through the mouths of men.”
Nemo me lacrumis decoret neque funera fletu faxit. Cur? volito vivos per ora virum.

Ennius (-239–-169 BC) Roman writer

As quoted by Cicero in Tusculanae Disputationes, Book I, chapter XV, section 34

“Neither you nor any man alive shall do this unpunished: no, you shall give recompense to me with your life-blood.”
Nec pol homo quisquam faciet inpune animatus hoc nec tu; nam mi calido dabis sanguine poenas.

Ennius (-239–-169 BC) Roman writer

As quoted by Macrobius in Saturnalia; Book VI, Chapter I
Compare: Tu tamen interea calido mihi sanguine poenas persolves amborum, Virgil, Aeneid, Book IX, line 422

“The biggest people with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest people with the smallest minds. Think big anyway!”

Matka Tereza (1910–1997) Roman Catholic saint of Albanian origin

“Some people feel the rain. Others just get wet.”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician

“Politics is a great art. It succeeds at convincing the people that they have to pay for what has been stolen from them.”

Andrzej Majewski (1966) Polish writer and photographer

Aphorisms. Magnum in Parvo (2000)

“Sweat saves blood, blood saves lives, but brains saves both.”

Erwin Rommel (1891–1944) German field marshal of World War II

“Instead of supposing that a work of art must be something that all can behold—a poem, a painting, a book, a great building—consider making your own life a work of art. You have yourself to begin with, and a time of uncertain duration to work on it. You do not have to be what you are, and even though you may be quite content with who you are, it will not be hard for you to think of something much greater that you might become. It need not be something spectacular or even something that will attract notice from others. What it will be is a kind of excellence that you project for yourself, and then attain—something that you can take a look at, with honest self-appraisal, and be proud of.”

Richard Taylor (philosopher) (1919–2003) American philosopher, born 1919

Source: Restoring Pride: The Lost Virtue of Our Age (1995), p. 64

“As I conclude I reflect on my childhood experience when I would visit a stream next to our home to fetch water for my mother. I would drink water straight from the stream. Playing among the arrowroot leaves I tried in vain to pick up the strands of frogs’ eggs, believing they were beads. But every time I put my little fingers under them they would break. Later, I saw thousands of tadpoles: black, energetic and wriggling through the clear water against the background of the brown earth. This is the world I inherited from my parents. Today, over 50 years later, the stream has dried up, women walk long distances for water, which is not always clean, and children will never know what they have lost. The challenge is to restore the home of the tadpoles and give back to our children a world of beauty and wonder.”

Wangari Maathai (1940–2011) Kenyan environmental and political activist

Nobel lecture http://nobelprize.org/peace/laureates/2004/maathai-lecture.html (10 December 2004)

“This is a personal testimony, a testimony of my own experience of thought and life. It is not intended to be objective and makes no claim to establish eternal truths. In fact I rather despise claims to objectivity in philosophy; the point of view is the thing.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Preface
The Importance of Living (1937)
Context: This is a personal testimony, a testimony of my own experience of thought and life. It is not intended to be objective and makes no claim to establish eternal truths. In fact I rather despise claims to objectivity in philosophy; the point of view is the thing. I should have liked to call it "A Lyrical Philosophy," using the word "lyrical" in the sense of being a highly personal and individual outlook...

“When small men begin to cast big shadows, it means that the sun is about to set.”

Lin Yutang (1895–1976) Chinese writer

As quoted in Hard-to-Solve Cryptograms (2001) by Derrick Niederman, p. 96

“It is my duty to inform the Governments assembled in Geneva, responsible as they are for the lives of millions of men, women and children, of the deadly peril which threatens them, by describing to them the fate which has been suffered by Ethiopia.”

Haile Selassie (1892–1975) Emperor of Ethiopia

Address to the League of Nations (1936)
Context: It is my duty to inform the Governments assembled in Geneva, responsible as they are for the lives of millions of men, women and children, of the deadly peril which threatens them, by describing to them the fate which has been suffered by Ethiopia. It is not only upon warriors that the Italian Government has made war. It has above all attacked populations far removed from hostilities, in order to terrorize and exterminate them.

“Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

Source: Heliogabalus

“Education and training for all children to be equal in opportunity in all schools, colleges, universities, and other institutions of training in the professions and vocations in life; to be regulated on the capacity of children to learn, and not on the ability of parents to pay the costs. Training for life's work to be as much universal and thorough for all walks of life as has been the training in the arts of killing.”

Huey Long (1893–1935) American politician, Governor of Louisiana, and United States Senator

Number 7 in the sum and substance of the Share our Wealth program (1935); quoted in Hugh Davis Graham, Huey Long (1970), p. 74.

“Don't liken me to that [SOB]. Anybody that lets his public policies be mixed up with religious prejudice is a plain [GD] fool.”

Huey Long (1893–1935) American politician, Governor of Louisiana, and United States Senator

Huey Long on Adolph Hitler and fascism.(Williams p. 761P)