Quotes about the world
page 5

“The most troubling feeling in the world is to be aware of how much you know. Yet, you don't know how to apply that knowledge into action.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Feeling, Knowledge

“The only difference between the spiritual and physical world lies in having the bodies, but the souls are common in all beings.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Soul

“I have the best fans in the world and I aim to utilise my platform for good — to share things I uncover about the world, climate, technology.”

Robert Downey Jr. (1965) American actor

Source: "Playing Iron Man was hard and I dug deep: Robert Downey Jr" https://www.hindustantimes.com/hollywood/playing-iron-man-was-hard-and-i-dug-deep-robert-downey-jr/story-OOv6pvyDb8ojxc1r78g89K.html (13 December 2020)

“War damages, the fabric of civilisation not by the destruction it causes (the net effect of a war may even be to increase the productive capacity of the world as a whole) nor even by the slaughter of human beings, but by the stimulated hatred and dishonesty.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

Source: "As I Please," Tribune (4 August 1944)
http://alexpeak.com/twr/orwell/quotes/

War

“I love to see a happy child.
They find magic in everything.
This gives me pleasure and hope for the future.
A well-adjusted individual is a prodigious asset to the world!”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Love, Happiness, Pleasure, Hope

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Pain, Sadness, Fear, Smile

“The world and history will take from Russia much more than Russian missiles will take from Ukraine. Every lost life is an argument for Ukrainians and other free nations to perceive Russia exclusively as a threat generation after generation.”

Volodymyr Zelensky (1978) 6th President of Ukraine

2022, We, the world and history will take from Russia much more than Russian missiles will take from Ukraine (18 April 2022)]

Life, History

“We're already taking back the Internet. With your help, we can take back the world.”

Jimmy Wales (1966) Wikipedia co-founder and American Internet entrepreneur

Help

“Nothing someone says before the world 'but' really counts. - Benjen Stark”

George Raymond Richard Martin (1948) American writer, screenwriter and television producer

“Art evokes the mystery without which the world would not exist”

René Magritte (1898–1967) Belgian surrealist artist

Art

“At this very moment enormous numbers of intelligent men and women of goodwill are trying to build a better world. But problems are born faster than they can be solved.”

B.F. Skinner Walden Two

Source: Walden Two

Women, Men, Intelligence, Problem

“Human evolution has two steps -
from being somebody to being nobody;
and from being nobody to being everybody.
This knowledge can bring
sharing and caring throughout the world.”

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar (1956) spiritual leader

Knowledge

“All knowledge that the world has ever received comes from the mind; the infinite library of the universe is in our own mind.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

Knowledge, Universe

“When I treat other people with kindness and love, it is part of my way of paying my debt to God and the world for the privilege of living on this planet.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence

Love, God, People, Way

“When people concentrate on the idea of beauty, they are, without realizing it, confronted with the darkest thoughts that exist in this world. That, I suppose, is how human beings are made.”

Yukio Mishima book The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

Source: The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

People, Beauty, Idea

“The west need someone to tell the man who walks around with the biggest stick in the world, that that stick can`t bring down God`s house.”

Saddam Hussein (1937–2006) Iraqi politician and President

God, Housing

“If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable - what then?”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

Past

“When each expects the other to live in his or her world, to always be there to join in his or her chosen activities, an ego battle inevitably develops.”

James Redfield book The Celestine Prophecy

Source: The Celestine Prophecy

“I'm her protection! I don't care if it's in this world or the next. Just show me how to get where she is, and I'll be there for her. ~Stark”

P. C. Cast book Burned

Source: Burned

“To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Variant: I wish you would tell me your secret. To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Youth, Exercises

“Childhood is the world of miracle and wonder; as if creation rose, bathed in the light, out of the darkness, utterly new and fresh and astonishing. The end of childhood is when things cease to astonish us.”

Eugéne Ionesco (1909–1994) Romanian playwright

Light, Childhood

“I've been all over the world and I've never seen a statue of a critic.”

Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990) American composer, conductor, author, music lecturer, and pianist

“Rachel: You're a half-blood, too?
Annabeth: Shhh! Just announce it to the world, how about?
Rachel: Okay. Hey, everybody! These two aren't human! They're half Greek god!… They don't seem to care.”

Rick Riordan book The Battle of the Labyrinth

Source: The Battle of the Labyrinth

God

“I've always believed that a lot of the trouble in the world would disappear if we were talking to each other instead of about each other.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

“The world has a habit of going on.”

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

“Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be?”

Charles Bukowski book Post Office

Source: Post Office

“All the world is made of music. We are all strings on a lyre. We resonate. We sing together.”

Joe Hill (1879–1915) Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World

Source: Heart-Shaped Box

Music, Singing

“I stick my finger in existence — it smells of nothing. Where am I? Who am I? How came I here? What is this thing called the world? What does this world mean? Who is it that has lured me into the world?”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Voice: Young Man
1840s, Repetition (1843)
Context: One sticks one’s finger into the soil to tell by the smell in what land one is: I stick my finger in existence — it smells of nothing. Where am I? Who am I? How came I here? What is this thing called the world? What does this world mean? Who is it that has lured me into the world? Why was I not consulted, why not made acquainted with its manners and customs instead of throwing me into the ranks, as if I had been bought by a kidnapper, a dealer in souls? How did I obtain an interest in this big enterprise they call reality? Why should I have an interest in it? Is it not a voluntary concern? And if I am to be compelled to take part in it, where is the director? I should like to make a remark to him. Is there no director? Whither shall I turn with my complaint?

“some people meet the way the sky meets the earth, inevitably, and there is no stopping or holding back their love. It exists in a finished world, beyond the reach of common sense.”

Louise Erdrich (1954) writer from the United States

Source: Tales of Burning Love

Love, People, Way, Sense

“We could never learn to be brave and patient if there were only joy in the world”

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

Learning, Joy, Courageous

“Even if I now saw you only once, I would long for you through worlds, worlds, worlds.”

Izumi Shikibu (976–1033) Japanese poet

Source: The Ink Dark Moon: Love Poems by Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu, Women of the Ancient Court of Japan

“Once in a while you find yourself in an odd situation. You get into it by degrees and in the most natural way but, when you are right in the midst of it, you are suddenly astonished and ask yourself how in the world it all came about.”

Thor Heyerdahl (1914–2002) Norwegian anthropologist and adventurer

Way, Nature

“Understand me. I’m not like an ordinary world. I have my madness, I live in another dimension and I do not have time for things that have no soul.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Soul, Understanding, Time, Madness

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: Kabir, Hajara Muhammad (2010). Northern women development. [Nigeria]. ISBN 978-978-906-469-4. OCLC 890820657 note: 1940s, Male and Female (1949)

Change, Motivational, For women, Deep

“I turned silences and nights into words. What was unutterable, I wrote down. I made the whirling world stand still.”

Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891) French Decadent and Symbolist poet

Source: A Season in Hell/The Drunken Boat

Silence, Night

“This world, which has the potential to be Eden, is instead the hell before Hell. In our arrogance, we have made it so.”

Dean Koontz book Forever Odd

Source: Forever Odd

Hell

“Visible and mobile, my body is a thing among things; it's caught in the fabric of the world, and its cohesion is that of a thing. But, because it moves itself and sees, it holds things in a circle around itself.”

Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961) French phenomenological philosopher

“If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, I will answer you: I am here to live out loud!”

Emile Zola (1840–1902) French writer (1840-1902)

As quoted in Writers on Writing‎ (1986) by Jon Winokur.
Variant: If you ask me what I came into this life to do, I will tell you: I came to live out loud.

“Everything in the world began with a yes. One molecule said yes to another molecule and life was born. But before prehistory there was the prehistory of prehistory and there was the never and there was the yes. It was ever so. I do not know why, but I do know that the universe never began.”

Clarice Lispector book The Hour of the Star

Source: The Hour of the Star (1977), p. 11

Life, Universe

“If a society permits one portion of its citizenry to be menaced or destroyed, then, very soon, no one in that society is safe. The forces thus released in the people can never be held in check, but run their devouring course, destroying the very foundations which it was imagined they would save.

But we are unbelievably ignorant concerning what goes on in our country--to say nothing of what goes on in the rest of the world--and appear to have become too timid to question what we are told. Our failure to trust one another deeply enough to be able to talk to one another has become so great that people with these questions in their hearts do not speak them; our opulence is so pervasive that people who are afraid to lose whatever they think they have persuade themselves of the truth of a lie, and help disseminate it; and God help the innocent here, that man or womn who simply wants to love, and be loved. Unless this would-be lover is able to replace his or her backbone with a steel rod, he or she is doomed. This is no place for love. I know that I am now expected to make a bow in the direction of those millions of unremarked, happy marriages all over America, but I am unable honestly to do so because I find nothing whatever in our moral and social climate--and I am now thinking particularly of the state of our children--to bear witness to their existence. I suspect that when we refer to these happy and so marvelously invisible people, we are simply being nostalgic concerning the happy, simple, God-fearing life which we imagine ourselves once to have lived. In any case, wherever love is found, it unfailingly makes itself felt in the individual, the personal authority of the individual. Judged by this standard, we are a loveless nation. The best that can be said is that some of us are struggling. And what we are struggling against is that death in the heart which leads not only to the shedding of blood, but which reduces human beings to corpses while they live.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

Source: nothing personal

Love, Life, Death, God

“Nothing takes place in the world whose meaning is not that of some maximum or minimum.”

Leonhard Euler (1707–1783) Swiss mathematician

“The world, after all, was still a place of bottomless horror. It was by no means a place of childlike simplicity where everything could be settled by a simple then-and-there decision.”

Osamu Dazai book No Longer Human

Source: No Longer Human

Decision

“I have seen beyond the bounds of infinity and drawn down daemons from the stars…. I have harnessed the shadows that stride from world to world to sow death and madness….”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Death, Star, Madness

“Journalism is "a low trade and a habit worse than heroin, a strange seedy world of misfits and drunkards and failures.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

Failure

“You have two choices. you can keep running and hiding and blaming the world for your problems, or you can stand up for yourself and decide to be somebody important.”

Sidney Sheldon book Nothing Lasts Forever

Source: Nothing Lasts Forever

Problem

“Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel…the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood.”

Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) American women's rights activist

Women, Feeling, Thinking, Freedom

“To terrify children with the image of hell, to consider women an inferior creation—is that good for the world?”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

Women, Children, Hell

“All the world is birthday cake, so take a piece but not too much.”

George Harrison book I, Me, Mine

Source: I, Me, Mine

Birthday, Birthday

“Is the world crucified to you or does it fascinate you?”

Leonard Ravenhill (1907–1994) British writer

“Perhaps not one religion contains all of the truth of the world. Perhaps every religion contains fragments of the truth, and it is our responsibility to identify those fragments and piece them together.”

Christopher Paolini book Brisingr

Source: Brisingr

Truth, Religion

“There is no story that is not true, […] The world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others.”

Chinua Achebe book Things Fall Apart

Variant: The world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others.
Source: Things Fall Apart (1958), Chapter 15 (p. 130)
Context: "We have heard stories about white men who make the powerful guns and the strong drinks and took slaves away across the seas, but no one thought the stories were true." [said Obierika]
"There is no story that is not true," said Uchendu. "The world has no end, and what is good among one people is an abomination with others. We have albinos among us. Do you not think that they came to our clan by mistake, that they have strayed from their way to a land where everybody is like them?"

People

“And that's when I first learned about evil. It is built in to the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.”

Terry Pratchett book Unseen Academicals

Source: Unseen Academicals

Pain, Nature, Learning, Universe

“A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Variant: A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.
Source: The Critic as Artist (1891), Part II

Way

“Suffering is not increased by numbers. One body can contain all the suffering the world can feel.”

Graham Greene book The Quiet American

Source: The Quiet American

Feeling, Suffering

“Being in a minority, even in a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

Truth, Madness

“To live in the world without becoming aware of the meaning of the world is like wandering about in a great library without touching the books.”

Dan Brown book The Lost Symbol

Source: The Lost Symbol

Books

“And though you think the world is at your feet, it can rise up and tread on you.”

Ian McEwan book Atonement

Source: Atonement

Thinking

“I wanted to end the world, but I'll settle for ending yours.”

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) Scottish physician and author

“If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden.”

Frances Hodgson Burnett The Secret Garden

Source: The Secret Garden

Way, Motivational, Attitude

“It is through living that we discover ourselves, at the same time as we discover the world around us.”

Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004) French photographer

Source: Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century

Time

“Spiritually evolved people, by virtue of their discipline, mastery and love, are people of extraordinary competence, and in their competence they are called on to serve the world, and in their love they answer the call.”

M. Scott Peck (1936–2005) American psychiatrist

Love, People

“Never believe that a few caring people can't change the world. For indeed that's all who ever have.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: The World Ahead: An Anthropologist Anticipates the Future

People, Change

“Remorse for what? You people have done everything in the world to me. Doesn't that give me equal right?”

Charles Manson (1934–2017) American criminal and musician

People

“In a meat-eating world, wearing leather for shoes and even clothes, the discussion of fur is childish.”

Karl Lagerfeld (1933–2019) German fashion designer

Shoe, Clothes

“I ask not for any crown
But that which all may win;
Nor try to conquer any world
Except the one within.”

Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888) American novelist

“What do you think an artist is?… he is a political being, constantly aware of the heart breaking, passionate, or delightful things that happen in the world, shaping himself completely in their image. Painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

War, Thinking, Passion, Heart

“People who dream when they sleep at night know of a special kind of happiness which the world of the day holds not, a placid ecstasy, and ease of heart, that are like honey on the tongue. They also know that the real glory of dreams lies in their atmosphere of unlimited freedom. It is not the freedom of the dictator, who enforces his own will on the world, but the freedom of the artist, who has no will, who is free of will.”

Karen Blixen book Out of Africa

Source: Out of Africa (1937)
Context: People who dream when they sleep at night know of a special kind of happiness which the world of the day holds not, a placid ecstasy, and ease of heart, that are like honey on the tongue. They also know that the real glory of dreams lies in their atmosphere of unlimited freedom. It is not the freedom of the dictator, who enforces his own will on the world, but the freedom of the artist, who has no will, who is free of will. The pleasure of the true dreamer does not lie in the substance of the dream, but in this: that there things happen without any interference from his side, and altogether outside his control. Great landscapes create themselves, long splendid views, rich and delicate colours, roads, houses, which he has never seen or heard of...

Happiness, People, Dreams, Sleep

“You mortals are like fish
swimming in a globe of glass.
That globe is your world.
You do not see beyond it.”

Tamora Pierce book Lady Knight

Source: Lady Knight

Fish

“We must be the change we wish to see in the world.”

Audre Lorde (1934–1992) writer and activist

Change

“I'm not so fond of people myself, Evvy, but I took my vows for a reason. There are two classes of people in the world, the destroyers and the builders. I want to build, not destroy. You need to ask yourself who you're going to be.”

Tamora Pierce book Melting Stones

Source: Melting Stones

People

“An oppressed class which does not strive to learn to use arms, to acquire arms, only deserves to be treated like slaves. We cannot, unless we have become bourgeois pacifists or opportunists, forget that we are living in a class society from which there is no way out, nor can there be, save through the class struggle. In every class society, whether based on slavery, serfdom, or, as at present, wage-labor, the oppressor class is always armed. Not only the modern standing army, but even the modern militia - and even in the most democratic bourgeois republics, Switzerland, for instance - represent the bourgeoisie armed against the proletariat. That is such an elementary truth that it is hardly necessary to dwell upon it. Suffice it to point to the use of troops against strikers in all capitalist countries.
A bourgeoisie armed against the proletariat is one of the biggest fundamental and cardinal facts of modern capitalist society. And in face of this fact, revolutionary Social-Democrats are urged to “demand” “disarmament”! That is tantamount of complete abandonment of the class-struggle point of view, to renunciation of all thought of revolution. Our slogan must be: arming of the proletariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie. These are the only tactics possible for a revolutionary class, tactics that follow logically from, and are dictated by, the whole objective development of capitalist militarism. Only after the proletariat has disarmed the bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world-historic mission, to consign all armaments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this condition has been fulfilled, certainly not before.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Source: The Military Programme of the Proletarian Revolution

Truth, Way, Learning, Country

“i think thats one of the problems with the world today, nobody knows who they are. everyone is running around looking for an identity, or trying to borrow one, only they dont know it. they actually think they know who they are and hat they are? theyre just a bunch of schleppers… who have no idea what a search for personal truth and identity really is, which would be alright if they didn't get in your way, but they insist that they know everything and that if you dont live their way then youre not living properly and they want to take your space away… they actually want to somehow get into your space and live in it and change it or destroy it… they just cant believe that you know what you are doing and that you are happy and content with it. you see thats the problem right there. if they could see that then they wouldnt have to feel threatened and feel that they have to destroy you before you destroy them. they just cant get it through their philistine heads that you are happy where you are and dont want to have anything to do with them. my space is mine and thats enough for me.”

Hubert Selby Jr. Requiem for a Dream

Source: Requiem for a Dream

Happiness, Truth, Way, Feeling

“Never use the word “cheap”. Today everybody can look chic in inexpensive clothes (the rich buy them too). There is good clothing design on every level today. You can be the chicest thing in the world in a T-shirt and jeans — it’s up to you.”

Karl Lagerfeld (1933–2019) German fashion designer

Clothes

“The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance… logic can be happily tossed out the window.”

Stephen King book The Stand

Source: The Stand

God, Beauty, Chance

“Dying is one of those things that can’t be fixed. Not by talking about it, not with all the brain surge in the world.”

Scott Westerfeld book Extras

Source: Extras

“No one who is not utterly blind can fail to see that God gathered all the beauty of which the whole world is capable of in woman.”

Cornelius Agrippa (1486–1535) Magician, occult writer, theologian, astrologer, alchemist

God, Beauty

“There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

Truth, Madness

“Nothing ever happens in the world that does not happen first inside human hearts.”

Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) Catholic bishop and television presenter

Source: Life Is Worth Living

Heart

“A single person is missing for you, and the whole world is empty.”

Joan Didion The Year of Magical Thinking

Source: The Year of Magical Thinking

Personality, Missing You

“A world of "if"s, but it would make no difference. If I could go back in time… but I couldn't. The past was behind me. The best thing now would be to stop looking over my shoulder. It was time to forget the past and look to the present and future.”

Darren Shan book Cirque du Freak

Source: A Living Nightmare

Time, Past, Future, Forgetting

“So what’s wrong if there happens to be one guy in the world who enjoys trying to understand you?”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

Guy, Understanding

“Come, gentle night; come, loving, black-browed night;
Give me my Romeo; and, when I shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night…”

William Shakespeare book Romeo and Juliet

Variant: When he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.
Source: Romeo and Juliet

Love, Star, Night

“What do you think an artist is? An imbecile who only has eyes, if he is a painter, or ears if he is a musician, or a lyre in every chamber of his heart if he is a poet, or even, if he is a boxer, just his muscles? Far from it: at the same time he is also a political being, constantly aware of the heartbreaking, passionate, or delightful things that happen in the world, shaping himself completely in their image. How could it be possible to feel no interest in other people, and with a cool indifference to detach yourself from the very life which they bring to you so abundantly? No, painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

Life, War, People, Feeling

“With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.”

Max Ehrmann (1872–1945) American writer, poet, and attorney

Source: Desiderata: A Poem for a Way of Life

Happiness, Beauty, Dreams