Popular quotes
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“I refuse to accept other people's ideas of happiness for me. As if there's a "one size fits all" standard for happiness”

Kanye West (1977) American rapper, singer and songwriter

Source: Thank You and You're Welcome (2009), p.22

“One must always be careful of books," said Tessa, "and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: The Infernal Devices, Clockwork Angel (2010), p. 87

“Only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Variant: Only in the darkness can you see the stars.
Context: But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars.

“I never really got nightmares for movies. I was much more terrified by my own family and real life, you know?”

Tim Burton (1958) American filmmaker

“Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.”

Roald Dahl (1916–1990) British novelist, short story writer, poet, fighter pilot and screenwriter

“Democracy has nothing to do with freedom. Democracy is a soft variant of communism, and rarely in the history of ideas has it been taken for anything else.”

Hans-Hermann Hoppe (1949) Austrian school economist and libertarian anarcho-capitalist philosopher

"Reflections on State and War" (2 December 2006) http://www.lewrockwell.com/hoppe/hoppe17.html

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”

Oscar Wilde Lady Windermere's Fan

Lord Darlington, Act III
Source: Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)

“A coward dies a thousand times before his death, but the valiant taste of death but once. It seems to me most strange that men should fear, seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.”

William Shakespeare Julius Caesar

Variant: Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.
Source: Julius Caesar

“The more I think about language, the more it amazes me that people ever understand each other at all.”

Kurt Gödel (1906–1978) logician, mathematician, and philosopher of mathematics

“People whose history and future were threatened each day by extinction considered that it was only by divine intervention that they were able to live at all. I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God's will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at a commensurate speed.”

Maya Angelou book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Source: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“I have succeeded in proving; and what I consider more important, there have been opened up to this vast and most excellent science, of which my work is merely the beginning, ways and means by which other minds more acute than mine will explore its remote corners.”

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

Author, Third Day. Change of Position
Dialogues and Mathematical Demonstrations Concerning Two New Sciences (1638)
Context: It has been observed that missiles and projectiles describe a curved path of some sort; however no one has pointed out the fact that this path is a parabola. But this and other facts, not few in number or less worth knowing, I have succeeded in proving; and what I consider more important, there have been opened up to this vast and most excellent science, of which my work is merely the beginning, ways and means by which other minds more acute than mine will explore its remote corners.

“One, remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Two, never give up work. Work gives you meaning and purpose and life is empty without it. Three, if you are lucky enough to find love, remember it is there and don't throw it away.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

Variant: Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Never give up work. Work gives you meaning and purpose and life is empty without it. If you are lucky enough to find love, remember it is there and don't throw it away.

“Jesus himself did not try to convert the two thieves on the cross; he waited until one of them turned to him.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Source: Letters and Papers from Prison

“What is most personal is most universal.”

Carl R. Rogers (1902–1987) American psychologist

Source: On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy

“Living is Easy with Eyes Closed.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

"Strawberry Fields Forever" (1967)
Lyrics
Variant: Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see.
Context: Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see.
It's getting hard to be someone but it all works out.
It doesn't matter much to me. Let me take you down, 'cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields.
Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about.
Strawberry Fields forever.