Popular quotes
page 100

Desmond Tutu photo

“Be nice to the whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity.”

Desmond Tutu (1931) South African churchman, politician, archbishop, Nobel Prize winner

As quoted in New York Times (19 October 1984)

Stephen R. Covey quote: “The way we see the problem is the problem.”
Stephen R. Covey photo

“The way we see the problem is the problem.”

Stephen R. Covey (1932–2012) American educator, author, businessman and motivational speaker

Niki Lauda photo

“A race isn’t won until it’s over.”

Niki Lauda (1949–2019) Austrian former Formula 1 racing driver

Angelina Jolie photo

“I always play women I would date.”

Angelina Jolie (1975) American actress, film director, and screenwriter

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva photo

“Brazil is in a solid position. In the past, if the United States sneezed, we caught pneumonia. Today, if the United States sneezes, we sneeze too.”

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

" Interview transcript: Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/6d42ae3a-110b-11db-9a72-0000779e2340.html in: Financial Times, July 7, 2006

Shakira photo
Marilyn Monroe photo

“I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

Attributed to Monroe in self-help books and on social media, this quotation is of unknown origin and date.
Misattributed

Rosa Parks photo

“Each person must live their life as a model for others.”

Rosa Parks (1913–2005) African-American civil rights activist

Franz Liszt photo

“Sorrowful and great is the artist's destiny.”

Franz Liszt (1811–1886) Hungarian romantic composer and virtuoso pianist

As quoted in Joseph Machlis, The Enjoyment of Music: An Introduction to Perceptive Listening (1963) Page 107.

Emma Goldman photo

“Anarchism stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion and liberation of the human body from the coercion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. It stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals…”

Emma Goldman book Anarchism and Other Essays

Variant: Anarchism, then, really stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government.
Source: Anarchism and Other Essays

Ludwig von Mises photo

“Every advocate of the welfare state and of planning is a potential dictator.”

Ludwig von Mises book Socialism

Socialism (1922), Epilogue (1947)
Context: In fact, however, the supporters of the welfare state are utterly anti-social and intolerant zealots. For their ideology tacitly implies that the government will exactly execute what they themselves deem right and beneficial. They entirely disregard the possibility that there could arise disagreement with regard to the question of what is right and expedient and what is not. They advocate enlightened despotism, but they are convinced that the enlightened despot will in every detail comply with their own opinion concerning the measures to be adopted. They favour planning, but what they have in mind is exclusively their own plan, not those of other people. They want to exterminate all opponents, that is, all those who disagree with them. They are utterly intolerant and are not prepared to allow any discussion. Every advocate of the welfare state and of planning is a potential dictator. What he plans is to deprive all other men of all their rights, and to establish his own and his friends' unrestricted omnipotence. He refuses to convince his fellow-citizens. He prefers to "liquidate" them. He scorns the "bourgeois" society that worships law and legal procedure. He himself worships violence and bloodshed.

William Shakespeare photo

“Let me be that I am and seek not to alter me.”

William Shakespeare book Much Ado About Nothing

Source: Much Ado About Nothing

William Shakespeare photo

“What's done cannot be undone.”

William Shakespeare Macbeth

Variant: What's done, is done
Source: Macbeth

Oscar Wilde photo
George Orwell photo
Herodotus photo

“Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all. The conscientious historian will correct these defects.”

Herodotus (-484–-425 BC) ancient Greek historian, often considered as the first historian

This statement is not to be found in the works of Herodotus. It appears in the acknowledgements to Mark Twain's A Horse's Tale (1907) preceded by the words "Herodotus says", but Twain was simply summarizing what he took to be Herodotus' attitude to historiography.
Misattributed

Galileo Galilei quote: “I have never met a man so ignorant that I could not learn something from him.”
Galileo Galilei photo

“I have never met a man so ignorant that I could not learn something from him.”

Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) Italian mathematician, physicist, philosopher and astronomer

As quoted in The Story of Civilization : The Age of Reason Begins, 1558-1648 (1935) by Will Durant, p. 605
Attributed

Theodore Roosevelt photo

“It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.”

Theodore Roosevelt The Strenuous Life

1900s, The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses (1900), The Strenuous Life
Context: It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. In this life we get nothing save by effort. Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been stored up effort in the past.
Context: A life of slothful ease, a life of that peace which springs merely from lack either of desire or of power to strive after great things, is as little worthy of a nation as of an individual. [... ] If you are rich and are worth your salt, you will teach your sons that though they may have leisure, it is not to be spent in idleness; for wisely used leisure merely means that those who possess it, being free from the necessity of working for their livelihood, are all the more bound to carry on some kind of non-remunerative work in science, in letters, in art, in exploration, in historical research—work of the type we most need in this country, the successful carrying out of which reflects most honor upon the nation. We do not admire the man of timid peace. We admire the man who embodies victorious effort; the man who never wrongs his neighbor, who is prompt to help a friend, but who has those virile qualities necessary to win in the stern strife of actual life. It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. In this life we get nothing save by effort. Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been stored up effort in the past. A man can be freed from the necessity of work only by the fact that he or his fathers before him have worked to good purpose. If the freedom thus purchased is used aright, and the man still does actual work, though of a different kind, whether as a writer or a general, whether in the field of politics or in the field of exploration and adventure, he shows he deserves his good fortune. But if he treats this period of freedom from the need of actual labor as a period, not of preparation, but of mere enjoyment, even though perhaps not of vicious enjoyment, he shows that he is simply a cumberer of the earth's surface, and he surely unfits himself to hold his own with his fellows if the need to do so should again arise.