John F. Kennedy quote: “First, what does truth require? It requires us to face the facts as they are, not to involve ourselves in self-deceptio…”

“Be of good courage all is before you, and time passed in the difficult is never lost… What is required of us is that we live the difficult and learn to deal with it. In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

“Let us face ourselves. We are Hyperboreans!”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

“Through our own folly and refusal to face realities and deal with evil tendencies while they were yet controllable, we have allowed brutal and intolerant forces to gain almost unchallenged supremacy in Europe and have placed ourselves in a position of weakness and peril, the like of which our history does not record for two and a half centuries.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the New Commonwealth Society (15 July 1936), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Prophet of Truth: Winston S. Churchill, 1922–1939 (London: Minerva, 1990), p. 764
The 1930s

“Let the picture imitate nothing; let it nakedly present its raison d'être. We should indeed be ungrateful were we to deplore the absence of all those things flowers, or landscape, or faces whose mere reflection it might have been. Nevertheless, let us admit that the reminiscence of natural forms cannot be absolutely banished; not yet, at all events. An art cannot be raised to the level of a pure effusion at the first step.”

Albert Gleizes (1881–1953) French painter

1910s, Du Cubisme (1912)

“Let the picture imitate nothing; let it nakedly present its raison d'être. We should indeed be ungrateful were we to deplore the absence of all those things flowers, or landscape, or faces whose mere reflection it might have been. Nevertheless, let us admit that the reminiscence of natural forms cannot be absolutely banished; not yet, at all events. An art cannot be raised to the level of a pure effusion at the first step.”

Jean Metzinger (1883–1956) French painter

Du Cubisme (1912)

“From the idea that the self is not given to us, I think there is only one practical consequence: we have to create ourselves as a work of art.”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

“Think about it: what weakens us is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of our fellow men. Our self-importance requires that we spend most of our lives offended by someone.”

Carlos Castaneda (1925–1998) Peruvian-American author

Variant: Self-importance is our greatest enemy. Think about it - what weakens us is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of our fellowmen. Our self-importance requires that we spend most of our lives offended by someone.
Source: Fire from Within

“I am sick and tired of reality refusing to conform to the requirements of my meticulously-researched near-future or proximate-present fictions.”

Charles Stross The Laundry Files

The Curse of Laundry http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2014/10/the-curse-of-laundry.html, October 19, 2014
The Laundry Files

“We think Slavery a great moral wrong, and while we do not claim the right to touch it where it exists, we wish to treat it as a wrong in the Territories, where our votes will reach it. We think that a respect for ourselves, a regard for future generations and for the God that made us, require that we put down this wrong where our votes will properly reach it. We think that species of labor an injury to free white men — in short, we think Slavery a great moral, social and political evil, tolerable only because, and so far as its actual existence makes it necessary to tolerate it, and that beyond that, it ought to be treated as a wrong.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Allow the humblest man an equal chance (1860)
Context: To us it appears natural to think that slaves are human beings; men, not property; that some of the things, at least, stated about men in the Declaration of Independence apply to them as well as to us. I say, we think, most of us, that this Charter of Freedom applies to the slave as well as to ourselves, that the class of arguments put forward to batter down that idea, are also calculated to break down the very idea of a free government, even for white men, and to undermine the very foundations of free society. We think Slavery a great moral wrong, and while we do not claim the right to touch it where it exists, we wish to treat it as a wrong in the Territories, where our votes will reach it. We think that a respect for ourselves, a regard for future generations and for the God that made us, require that we put down this wrong where our votes will properly reach it. We think that species of labor an injury to free white men — in short, we think Slavery a great moral, social and political evil, tolerable only because, and so far as its actual existence makes it necessary to tolerate it, and that beyond that, it ought to be treated as a wrong.

“We were making the future," he said, "and hardly any of us troubled to think what future we were making. And here it is!”

H. G. Wells (1866–1946) English writer

When The Sleeper Wakes (1899)

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

John F. Kennedy 469

Related quotes

Related topics