Quotes about the world
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Sadhguru photo
F. Scott Fitzgerald photo

“There’s a loneliness that only exists in one’s mind. The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is blink.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Variant: The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.

“Graffiti is one of the few tools you have if you have almost nothing. And even if you don't come up with a picture to cure world poverty you can make someone smile while they're having a piss.”

Banksy pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, and painter

Other sources
Source: Banging Your Head Against a Brick Wall
Context: Bus stops are far more interesting and useful places to have art than in museums. Graffiti has more chance of meaning something or changing stuff than anything indoors. Graffiti has been used to start revolutions, stop wars, and generally is the voice of people who aren't listened to. Graffiti is one of those few tools you have if you have almost nothing. And even if you don't come up with a picture to cure world poverty you can make somebody smile while they're having a piss.

Richard Bach photo
H.P. Lovecraft photo
F. Scott Fitzgerald photo
Sergei Rachmaninoff photo

“I feel like a ghost wandering in a world grown alien. I cannot cast out the old way of writing and I cannot acquire the new. I have made an intense effort to feel the musical manner of today, but it will not come to me.”

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943) Russian composer, pianist, and conductor

Interviewed by Leonard Liebling in The Musical Courier, 1939; cited from Sergei Bertensson and Jay Leyda Sergei Rachmaninoff: A Lifetime in Music (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002) p. 351.

Barack Obama photo
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart photo

“All I insist on, and nothing else, is that you should show the whole world that you are not afraid. Be silent, if you choose; but when it is necessary, speak—and speak in such a way that people will remember it.”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) Austrian Romantic composer

Letter as published in The Letters of Mozart & His Family (1938) translated and edited by Emily Anderson, p. 1114.

Tove Jansson photo
Johnny Depp photo
Nikola Tesla photo
Helen Keller photo
Helen Keller photo

“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

Variant: The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.
Variant: The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen, nor touched... but are felt in the heart.

Andrei Tarkovsky photo
Isaac Newton photo

“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”

Isaac Newton (1643–1727) British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics

Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton (1855) by Sir David Brewster (Volume II. Ch. 27). Compare: "As children gath'ring pebbles on the shore", John Milton, Paradise Regained, Book iv. Line 330

Hasan al-Basri photo
Socrates photo
Osamu Dazai photo
Peter Wessel Zapffe photo

“In accordance with my conception of life, I have chosen not to bring children into the world. A coin is examined, and only after careful deliberation, given to a beggar, whereas a child is flung out into the cosmic brutality without hesitation.”

Peter Wessel Zapffe (1899–1990) Norwegian philosopher, mountaineer, and author

Source: The Last Messiah (1933), To Be a Human Being https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4m6vvaY-Wo&t=1110s (1989–90)

Shams-i Tabrizi photo

“Being the companion of the folk of this world is fire. There must be an Abraham if the fire is not going to burn”

Shams-i Tabrizi (1185–1248) 1185-1248, spiritual instructor of Mewlānā Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhi.

you
Me & Rumi (2004)

Dwayne Johnson photo
Josef Mengele photo

“The Jewish people, no matter where they are, they become the best in the world.”

Josef Mengele (1911–1979) Nazi officer and physician

As quoted in Defy the darkness: A Tale of Courage in the Shadow of Mengele (2000) by Joe Rosenblum and David Kohn, p. 192

Paul Watson photo

“It's dangerous & humiliating. The whalers killed whales while green peace watched. Now, you don't walk by a child that is being abused, you don't walk by a kitten that is being kicked to death and do nothing. So I find it abhorrent to sit there and watch a whale being slaughtered and do nothing but "bear witness" as they call it. I think it was best illustrated a few years ago, the contradictions that we have, when a ranger in Zimbabwe shot and killed a poacher that was about to kill a black rhinoceros and uh human rights groups around the world said "how dare you? Take a human life to protect an animal". I think the rangers' answer to that really illustrated a hypocrisy. He said "Ya know, if I lived in, If I was a police officer in Herrari and a man ran out of Bark Place Bank with a bag of money and I shot him in the head in front of everybody and killed him, you'd pin a medal on me and call me a national hero. Why is that bag of paper more valued than the future heritage of this nation?" This is our values. WE fight, WE kill, WE risk our lives for things we believe in… Imagine going into Mecca, walk up to the black stone and spit on it. See how far you get. You’re not going to get very far. You’re going to be torn to pieces. Walk into Jerusalem, walk up to that wailing wall with a pick axe, start whacking away. See how far you’re going to get, somebody is going to put a bullet in your back. And everybody will say you deserved it. Walk into the Vatican with a hammer, start smashing a few statues. See how far you’re going to get. Not very far. But each and every day, ya know, people go into the most beautiful, most profoundly sacred cathedrals of this planet, the rainforests of the Amazonia, the redwood forests of California, the rainforests of Indonesia, and totally desecrate & destroy these cathedrals with bulldozers, chainsaws and how do we respond to that? Oh, we write a few letters and protest; we dress up in animal costumes with picket signs and jump up and down; but if the rainforests of Amazonia and redwoods of California, were as, or had as much value to us as a chunk of old meteorite in Mecca, a decrepit old wall in Jerusalem or a piece of old marble in the Vatican, we would literally rip those pieces limb from limb for the act of blasphemy that we’re committing but we won’t do that because nature is an abstraction, wilderness is an abstraction. It has no value in our anthropocentric world where the only thing we value is that which is created by humans.”

Paul Watson (1950) Canadian environmental activist
Laozi photo

“By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try, the world is beyond the winning.”

Source: Tao Te Ching, Ch. 48, as translated by Raymond B. Blakney (1955)

Rudolf Steiner photo

“To truly know the world, look deeply within your own being; to truly know yourself, take real interest in the world.”

Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925) Austrian esotericist

Verses and Meditations

Adolf Hitler photo
Michael Jackson photo
Suleiman photo
Michael Jackson photo
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva photo

“If the US is the country that most contributes with greenhouse gases, in the world, it should assume more responsibility to reduce emissions.”

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (1945) Brazilian politician, 35th president of Brazil

" Brazil rejects Bush move on climate change talks http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/jun/04/brazil.usa" in: The Guardian, May 31, 2007.

Karl Popper photo
Percy Bysshe Shelley photo
Hirohito photo
Socrates photo

“The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

No findable citation to Socrates. Found ascribed to Socrates in Stephen Covey (1992), Principle Centered Leadership (1990) p. 51 https://books.google.com/books?id=w4zCIPZrniQC&pg=PA51&dq=%22be+what+we+pretend+to+be%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiyvZnCg5HKAhUU5mMKHQIIAIgQ6AEIHTAA#v=onepage&q=%22be%20what%20we%20pretend%20to%20be%22&f=false.
Misattributed

Angelina Jolie photo

“These problems do not disappear just because we do not hear about them. There is so much more happening around the world than what is communicated to us about the top stories we do hear.”

Notes from My Travels: Visits with Refugees in Africa, Cambodia, Pakistan and Ecuador(2006)
Context: These problems do not disappear just because we do not hear about them. There is so much more happening around the world than what is communicated to us about the top stories we do hear. We all need to look deeper and discover for ourselves.... What is the problem? Where is it? How can we help to solve it?

Terence McKenna photo
John Amos Comenius photo
Keanu Reeves photo
Jacque Fresco photo
Peter Wessel Zapffe photo

“To bear children into this world is like carrying wood into a burning house.”

Peter Wessel Zapffe (1899–1990) Norwegian philosopher, mountaineer, and author

As quoted in Reflekser i trylleglass: stemmer fra vårt århundre [Magical Reflections : Voices of Our Century] (1998) edited by Haagen Ringnes

Aryabhata photo
Robert Greene photo
Billie Eilish photo

“I've been walking through a world gone blind
Can't stop thinking of your diamond mind
Careful creature made friends with time
He left her lonely with a diamond mind
And those ocean eyes”

Billie Eilish (2001) American singer-songwriter

"Ocean Eyes" — though her breakthrough hit after she posted her performance of it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d--DyK0wtYo to SoundCloud for her dance teacher on 18 November 2015, the lyrics were written entirely by her brother Finneas O'Connell, who also collaborates with her on most of her other musical work. · Official Music Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viimfQi_pUw
Misattributed

Trevor Noah photo
Alexis Karpouzos photo
George Orwell photo
George Raymond Richard Martin photo
Harriet Tubman photo
Jean Jacques Rousseau photo
Stephen King photo
Ludwig Van Beethoven photo

“Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend.”

Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770–1827) German Romantic composer

As reported by Elizabeth Brentano (Bettina) in a letter to Goethe, 27 May 1810.
Quoted in Edwin Burgum The new criticism (1930), p. 179

Aldous Huxley photo
Hannah Arendt photo
Arthur Schopenhauer photo

“Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.”

"Psychological Observations"
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Studies in Pessimism
Variant: Everyone takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world.
Source: Studies in Pessimism: The Essays

“Some people become cops because they want to make the world a better place, some people become vandals because they want to make the world a better looking place.”

Banksy pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, and painter

Banksyhttp://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/arts/2018739.stm
Variant: Some people want to make the world a better place. I just wanna make the world a better-looking place. If you don't like it, you can paint over it!
Source: Wall and Piece (2005)

Bertrand Russell photo

“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Variant: The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.

Johnny Depp photo
Dr. Seuss photo

“To the world you may be one person; but to one person you may be the world.”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books
Charles Manson photo

“The mind is endless. You put me in a dark solitary cell, and to you that's the end, to me it's the beginning, it's the universe in there, there's a world in there, and I'm free.”

Charles Manson (1934–2017) American criminal and musician

Source: Manson in His Own Words: The Shocking Confessions of 'The Most Dangerous Man Alive'

Ingrid Bergman photo
George Soros photo
Virginia Woolf photo

“As a woman I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman, my country is the whole world.”

Source: Three Guineas (1938), Ch. 3, p. 109
Context: The outsider will say, "in fact, as a woman, I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman my country is the whole world." And if, when reason has said its say, still some obstinate emotion remains, some love of England dropped into a child's ears by the cawing of rooks in an elm tree, by the splash of waves on a beach, or by English voices murmuring nursery rhymes, this drop of pure, if irrational, emotion she will make serve her to give to England first what she desires of peace and freedom for the whole world.

Ozzy Osbourne photo
Marilyn Manson photo

“I think art is the only thing that's spiritual in the world. And I refuse to forced to believe in other people's interpretations of God. I don't think anybody should be. No one person can own the copyright to what God means.”

Marilyn Manson (1969) American rock musician and actor

Variant: I think art is the only thing that's spirtual in the world. And I refuse to be forced to believe in other people's interpretations of God. I don't think anybody should be. No one person can own the copyright to what God means.

Hayao Miyazaki photo

“The creation of a single world comes from a huge number of fragments and chaos.”

Hayao Miyazaki (1941) Japanese animator, film director, and mangaka

Variant: The creation of a single world comes from a huge number of fragments and chaos.

Carol Gilligan photo
Maurice Merleau-Ponty photo
Ai Weiwei photo

“Without freedom of speech, there is no modern world, just a barbaric one.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2000-09, Ai Weiwei, Nursing Head Wound, Sharpens Criticism, 2009
Variant: Without freedom of speech, there is no modern world, just a barbaric one.

Jane Addams photo
Bertrand Russell photo

“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Often paraphrased as "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts."
Compare: "One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision." B. Russell, New Hopes for a Changing World (1951). Compare also: "The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity." W. B. Yeats, The Second Coming (1919).
See also: Dunning-Kruger effect, Historical Antecedents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect#Historical_antecedents.
1930s, Mortals and Others (1931-35)

Louise L. Hay photo
Mary Kay Ash photo
Bob Marley photo

“The people who were trying to make this world worse are not taking the day off. Why should I?”

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

Response, after being asked why he went ahead and performed in the concert "Smile Jamaica", two days after he, his wife and manager were wounded inside his home after an assault by unknown gunmen, thought to be politically motivated (5 December 1976), as quoted in Bob Marley The Father of Music (2010) by Jean-Pierre Hombasch, p. 5
Variant: The people that are trying to make the world worse never take a day off, why should I?

John Wayne photo
Kurt Cobain photo
Woodrow Wilson photo

“Friendship is the only cement that will ever hold the world together.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

Red Cross Speech http://books.google.com/books?id=f6l-dsvnjhEC&pg=PA406&dq=%22Friendship+is+the+only+cement%22, New York (18 May 1918)
1910s

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Source: 1960s, Strength to Love (1963), Ch. 4 : Love in action, Sct. 3

Bram Stoker photo

“How good and thoughtful he is; the world seems full of good men--even if there are monsters in it.”

Variant: The world seems full of good men, even if there are monsters in it.
Source: Dracula

Ramana Maharshi photo

“Your own Self-realization is the greatest service you can render the world.”

Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950) Indian religious leader

Abide as the Self

Werner Heisenberg photo
Emily Dickinson photo
Babur photo
Socrates photo

“If, I say now, when, as I conceive and imagine, God orders me to fulfill the philosopher's mission of searching into myself and other men, I were to desert my post through fear of death, or any other fear; that would indeed be strange, and I might justly be arraigned in court for denying the existence of the gods… then I would be fancying that I was wise when I was not wise. For this fear of death is indeed the pretense of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being the appearance of knowing the unknown; since no one knows whether death, which they in their fear apprehend to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good. …this is the point in which, as I think, I am superior to men in general, and in which I might perhaps fancy myself wiser than other men — that whereas I know but little of the world below, I do not suppose that I know: but I do know that injustice and disobedience to a better, whether God or man, is evil and dishonorable, and I will never fear or avoid a possible good rather than a certain evil.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

29a–b
Alternate translation: "To fear death, is nothing else but to believe ourselves to be wise, when we are not; and to fancy that we know what we do not know. In effect, no body knows death; no body can tell, but it may be the greatest benefit of mankind; and yet men are afraid of it, as if they knew certainly that it were the greatest of evils."
Plato, Apology

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart photo

“I know myself, and I have such a sense of religion that I shall never do anything which I would not do before the whole world; but I am alarmed at the very thoughts of being in the society of people, during my journey, whose mode of thinking is so entirely different from mine (and from that of all good people). But of course they must do as they please. I have no heart to travel with them, nor could I enjoy one pleasant hour, nor know what to talk about; for, in short, I have no great confidence in them. Friends who have no religion cannot be long our friends.”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) Austrian Romantic composer

Letter to Leopold Mozart (Mannheim, 2 February 1778), from The letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, 1769-1791, translated, from the collection of Ludwig Nohl, by Lady [Grace] Wallace (Oxford University Press, 1865, digitized 2006) vol. I, # 91 (p. 164) http://books.google.com/books?vid=0SGwLiCNxu7qZ5ch&id=KEgBAAAAQAAJ&printsec=titlepage&dq=%22The+letters+of+Wolfgang+Amadeus+Mozart,+1769-1791%22&hl=en#PRA1-PA164,M1

Paul Éluard photo

“There is another world, but it is in this one.”

Paul Éluard (1895–1952) French poet

Il y a assurément un autre monde, mais il est dans celui-ci...
Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, Gallimard, 1968.

Michael Jackson photo
John of the Cross photo

“Strive to preserve your heart in peace; let no event of this world disturb it; reflect that all must come to an end.”

John of the Cross (1542–1591) Spanish mystic and Roman Catholic saint

The Sayings of Light and Love

Michael Jackson photo

“In a world filled with hate, we must still dare to hope. In a world filled with anger, we must still dare to comfort. In a world filled with despair, we must still dare to dream. And in a world filled with distrust, we must still dare to believe.”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

Also used at his funeral (3 Sep. 2009) invitation. Quoted in "Dead stars and classic art will surround Michael Jackson " in CNN.com/entertainment (03 July 2009) http://edition.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Music/09/03/michael.jackson.funeral/index.html#cnnSTCOther1

The Mother photo
Augustus photo