Popular quotes
page 87

“Don't loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club.”

Jack London (1876–1916) American author, journalist, and social activist

"Getting into Print", first published in 1903 in The Editor magazine
Variant: You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
Context: Don't loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club, and if you don't get it you will nonetheless get something that looks remarkably like it.
Context: Fiction pays best of all and when it is of fair quality is more easily sold. A good joke will sell quicker than a good poem, and, measured in sweat and blood, will bring better remuneration. Avoid the unhappy ending, the harsh, the brutal, the tragic, the horrible - if you care to see in print things you write. (In this connection don't do as I do, but do as I say.) Humour is the hardest to write, easiest to sell, and best rewarded... Don't write too much. Concentrate your sweat on one story, rather than dissipate it over a dozen. Don't loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club, and if you don't get it you will nonetheless get something that looks remarkably like it.

“Humankind does not submit passively to the power of nature. It takes control over this power. This process is not an internal or subjective one. It takes place objectively in practice, once women cease to be viewed as mere sexual beings, once we look beyond their biological functions and become conscious of their weight as an active social force. What's more, woman's consciousness of herself is not only a product of her sexuality. It reflects her position as determined by the economic structure of society, which in turn expresses the level reached by humankind in technological development and the relations between classes.

The importance of dialectical materialism lies in going beyond the inherent limits of biology, rejecting simplistic theories about our being slaves to the nature of our species, and, instead, placing facts in their social and economic context.”

Thomas Sankara (1949–1987) President of Upper Volta

Source: Women's Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle

“Anything Anytime Anyplace For No Reason At All (or AAAFNRAA)”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer

“This book was written using 100% recycled words.”

Terry Pratchett book Wyrd Sisters

Source: Wyrd Sisters

“I'd made it this far and refused to give up because all my life I had always finished the race.”

Louis Zamperini (1917–2014) Italian-American middle distance runner

Source: Devil at My Heels

“He who is to be a good ruler must have first been ruled”

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

“Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.”

Gustav Mahler (1860–1911) late-Romantic Austrian composer

“When we long for life without difficulty,
remind us that oaks grow strong under contrary winds
and diamonds are made under pressure.”

Peter Marshall (1902–1949) American preacher

“Because in the end you are really alone, whatever you do.”

Marina Abramović (1946) Yugoslav-American artist

“I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they're right, you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.”

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

“If you fear making anyone mad, then you ultimately probe for the lowest common denominator of human achievement.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

“Words suck. I mean, every thing has been said. I can't remember the last real interesting conversation I've had in a long time. Words aren't as important as the energy derived from music, especially live.”

Kurt Cobain book Journals

Source: Journals

“Music is the space between the notes.”

Claude Debussy (1862–1918) French composer

As quoted in Turning Numbers into Knowledge: Mastering the Art of Problem Solving (2001) by Jonathan G. Koomey, p. 96; since at least 2010 similar statements are also sometimes attributed to Mozart, and a similar remark, apparently one of Ben Jonson, is quoted in "Notes to Cynthia's Revels, in The Works of Ben Jonson: With Notes Critical and Explanatory, and a Biographical Memoir (1875), edited by William Gifford, Vol. 2, in notes to p. 223, on p. 551: Division, in music, is "the space between the notes of music, or the dividing of the tones."
Unsourced variants:
Music is the silence between the notes.
The music is not in the notes, but in the silence between.
The music is not in the notes, but in the silence between them.
Variant: Music is the space between the notes.