Popular quotes
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Virginia Woolf photo

“No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Source: A Room of One's Own / Three Guineas

Winston S. Churchill photo
Albert Einstein photo

“I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Ich habe keine besondere Begabung, sondern bin nur leidenschaftlich neugierig.
Letter to Carl Seelig http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Seelig (11 March 1952), Einstein Archives 39-013
1950s

B.K.S. Iyengar quote: “Yoga does not just change the way we see things, it transforms the person who sees.”
B.K.S. Iyengar photo

“Yoga does not just change the way we see things, it transforms the person who sees.”

B.K.S. Iyengar (1918–2014) Indian yoga teacher and scholar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p. 61

Thomas Sowell photo

“When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.”

Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author

1980s–1990s, Barbarians inside the Gates and Other Controversial Essays (1999)

Henry David Thoreau photo
Henry David Thoreau photo

“There is no remedy for love but to love more.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Variant: The only remedy for love is to love more.

Oscar Wilde photo

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”

The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)
Context: With the abolition of private property, then, we shall have true, beautiful, healthy Individualism. Nobody will waste his life in accumulating things, and the symbols for things. One will live. To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

Victor Hugo photo

“You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.”

Often attributed to Churchill, this thought was originally expressed by the French author Victor Hugo in Villemain (1845), as follows: You have enemies? Why, it is the story of every man who has done a great deed or created a new idea. It is the cloud which thunders around everything that shines. Fame must have enemies, as light must have gnats. Do not bother yourself about it; disdain. Keep your mind serene as you keep your life clear.
Villemain is a brief segment taken from Hugo’s Choses Vues (Things Seen), a running journal Hugo kept of events he witnessed. The original French versions of these journals were published after Hugo's death.
Misattributed

Michael Faraday photo
Sophie Scholl photo

“Such a splendid sunny day, and I have to go. But how many have to die on the battlefield in these days, how many young, promising lives… What does my death matter if by our acts thousands are warned and alerted. Among the student body there will certainly be a revolt.”

Sophie Scholl (1921–1943) White Rose member

As quoted by Else Gebel, in letter to Robert Scholl (November, 1946). Original German text. http://www.mythoselser.de/texts/scholl-gebel.htm

Sophie Scholl photo

“I pity people who can't find laughter or at least some bit of amusement in the little doings of the day. I believe I could find something ridiculous even in the saddest moment, if necessary. It has nothing to do with being superficial. It's a matter of joy in life.”

Sophie Scholl (1921–1943) White Rose member

As quoted in Christian Jazz Artists Newsletter (February/March 2005) http://www.songsofdavid.com/CJAFebMarch2005.htm; this source is disputed as it does not cite an original document for the quote.
Disputed

Carl Sagan photo

“Across the sea of space, the stars are other suns.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator
Anne Frank photo
Leonardo DiCaprio photo
Vangelis photo

“For every album I’ve ever made, I’ve written many times more music than has actually been released, and the way I choose which music appears is almost totally random, but one thing I have never done is to make music for the sake of commercialism”

Vangelis (1943) Greek composer of electronic, progressive, ambient, jazz, pop rock, and orchestral music

1984
Context: On albums and commercialism: "For every album I’ve ever made, I’ve written many times more music than has actually been released, and the way I choose which music appears is almost totally random, but one thing I have never done is to make music for the sake of commercialism... I don’t think it’s possible to guarantee commercial success for an album anyway, because nobody really knows what is commercial and what isn’t. Even if I went out of my way to make an album that was more accessible to the public, that would not guarantee its commercial success".

Jacque Fresco photo
Aristotle photo

“Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.”

Aristotle (-384–-321 BC) Classical Greek philosopher, student of Plato and founder of Western philosophy
Vincent Van Gogh photo

“To some, woman is heresy and diabolical. To me she is just the opposite.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

1880s, 1884, Letter to Theo (Nuenen, Oct. 1884)
Context: Oh, I am no friend of present-day Christianity, though its Founder was sublime - I have seen through present-day Christianity only too well. That icy coldness hypnotized even me, in my youth - but I have taken my revenge since then. How? By worshipping the love which they, the theologians, call sin, by respecting a whore [ Sien in The Hague ]), etc., and not too many would-be respectable, pious ladies. To some, woman is heresy and diabolical. To me she is just the opposite.