“To be free is to learn, to test yourself constantly, to gamble. It is not safe. I had learnt to use my fears as stepping stones rather than stumbling blocks, and”

“There will always be rocks in the road ahead of us. They will be stumbling blocks or stepping stones; it all depends on how you use them.”

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

“My poetry journey into the wilderness of language was a journey where each point of arrival turned out to be a stepping stone rather than a destination.”

Seamus Heaney (1939–2013) Irish poet, playwright, translator, lecturer

“The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you've got to have a what-the-hell attitude.”

Julia Child (1921–2004) American chef

“The block of granite which was an obstacle in the pathway of the weak becomes a stepping-stone in the pathway of the strong.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

“You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!”

William Shakespeare Julius Caesar

“Women have ever been the stumbling block and betrayers of ambition.”

Arthur Desmond (1859–1929) New Zealnd writer

“I myself had rather excel others in excellency of learning than in greatness of power.”

Plutarch book Parallel Lives

“In point of fact, Western philosophy has never set itself free of Christianity: wherever Christianity did not have a hand in the construction of modern philosophy it served instead as a stumbling block.”

Jacques Maritain (1882–1973) French philosopher

“The fear of death comes from identifying yourself as the body. The earthly component, rather than the pure soul within.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author