Quotes about life and people (page 14) | Quotes of famous people

“Hide your intentions not by closing up (with the risk of appearing secretive, and making people suspicious) but by talking endlessly about your desires and goals-just not the real ones.”

Robert Greene book The 48 Laws of Power

Source: The 48 Laws of Power

“I enjoy challenging a person's ideas. No one loves a good and passionately fought argument more than I do. This isn't about being tough-minded and straightforward. That's the job. But so is sensing when to hug and when to kick. Of course, arrogant people who refuse to learn from their mistakes have to go. If we're managing good people who are clearly eating themselves up over an error, our job is to help them through it. That doesn't mean you have to take it easy on your top performers.”

Jack Welch (1935) American executive: General Electric CEO

Source: Jack: Straight from the Gut (2001), Ch. 3.

“In such a world, the last thing a teacher needs to give her pupils is more information. They already have far too much of it. Instead, people need the ability to make sense of information, to tell the difference between what is important and what is unimportant, and above all to combine many bits of information into a broad picture of the world.”

Yuval Noah Harari book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

21 Lessons for the 21st Century

“You men do not understand the delights of a glance, of a pressure of the hand… but as for me, I swear to you that, when I listen to your voice, I feel such a deep, strange bliss that the most passionate kisses could not take its place.”

Mikhail Lermontov book A Hero of Our Time

A Hero of Our Time (1840; rev. 1841)

“The chain of young life is broken,
The journey is ended, the hour has struck, it is time to leave,
Time to go where there is no future,
No past, no eternity, no years;
Where there are no expectations, no passions,
No bitter tears, no fame, no honour;
Where memory sleeps deeply
And the heart in its narrow coffin home
Does not feel the worm gnawing it.”

Mikhail Lermontov (1814–1841) Russian writer, poet and painter

"Death" (1830 or 1831)
Poems

“To judge from the Internet postings that people have sent me, probably most of what you learned [about me] was nonsense.”

Theodore Kaczynski (1942) American domestic terrorist, mathematician and anarchist

Letter to J. N.
The Road to Revolution (2008)

“The poor buggers are caught between structural dysfunction and politicians running around who don’t really know what they’re doing all day or what the purpose of their being in power is. Everyone thinks there’s some moment, like in a James Bond movie, where you open the door and that’s where the really good people are, but there is no door.”

Dominic Cummings (1971) English political strategist

Quoted in The Times, 16 June 2014 https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/cameron-bumbles-from-one-shambles-to-another-with-no-sense-of-purpose-d2vxlbxchvf

“My men don't dig foxholes. I don't want them to. Foxholes only slow up an offensive. Keep moving. And don't give the enemy time to dig one either.”

George S. Patton (1885–1945) United States Army general

Speech to the Third Army (1944)
Context: When a man is lying in a shell hole, if he just stays there all day, a German will get to him eventually. The hell with that idea. The hell with taking it. My men don't dig foxholes. I don't want them to. Foxholes only slow up an offensive. Keep moving. And don't give the enemy time to dig one either. We'll win this war, but we'll win it only by fighting and by showing the Germans that we've got more guts than they have; or ever will have. We're not going to just shoot the sons-of-bitches, we're going to rip out their living Goddamned guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks. We're going to murder those lousy Hun cocksuckers by the bushel-fucking-basket. War is a bloody, killing business. You've got to spill their blood, or they will spill yours. Rip them up the belly. Shoot them in the guts. When shells are hitting all around you and you wipe the dirt off your face and realize that instead of dirt it's the blood and guts of what once was your best friend beside you, you'll know what to do!

“I feel that story, first. I know those people, first. When I put them down they've already lived.”

Jack Kirby (1917–1994) American comic book artist, writer and editor

an archival video clip included in With Great Power: The Stan Lee Story, a 2010 documentary, beginning at 17:50

“Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don't want to.”

Richard Branson (1950) English business magnate, investor and philanthropist

“Progress is slow partly from mere intellectual inertia. In a subject where there is no agreed procedure for knocking out errors, doctrines have a long life.”

Joan Robinson (1903–1983) English economist

Source: Economic Philosophy (1962), p. 79
Context: Progress is slow partly from mere intellectual inertia. In a subject where there is no agreed procedure for knocking out errors, doctrines have a long life. A professor teaches what he was taught, and his pupils, with a proper respect and reverence for teachers, set up a resistance against his critics for no other reason than that it was he whose pupils they were.

“Time is Life.”

Michael Ende book Momo

Momo (1973) (Originally "Zeit ist Leben")

“Five minutes are enough to dream a whole life, that is how relative time is.”

Mario Benedetti (1920–2009) Uruguayan journalist, novelist, and poet

“If a woman sleeps alone it puts a shame on all men. God has a very big heart, but there is one sin He will not forgive. If a woman calls a man to her bed and he will not go.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book Zorba the Greek

Source: Zorba the Greek

“All I feel are the assaults of apprehension and terror at the thought that I am the only one who is entirely unlike the rest. It is almost impossible for me to converse with other people. What should I talk about, how should I say it? - I don't know.”

Osamu Dazai book No Longer Human

Source: No Longer Human

“I like roses best. But they bloom in all four seasons. I wonder if people who like roses best have to die four times over again.”

Osamu Dazai book The Setting Sun

Source: The Setting Sun

“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Variant: A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.

“Creativity is intelligence having fun.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

“Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

From the same 24 March 1954 letter as above, p. 44
Attributed in posthumous publications, Albert Einstein: The Human Side (1979)

“Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

In answer to a question asked by the editors of Youth, a journal of Young Israel of Williamsburg, NY. Quoted in the New York Times, June 20, 1932, pg. 17 http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F40617F83B5A13738DDDA90A94DE405B828FF1D3
Unsourced variant: Only a life in the service of others is worth living.
1930s
Variant: I believe in one thing—that only a life lived for others is a life worth living.