Popular quotes (page 93) | Quotes of famous people

“I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

Edward Everett Hale in a statement published in A Year of Beautiful Thoughts‎ (1902) by Jeanie Ashley Bates Greenough, p. 172;  This has been misattributed to Keller in published works since at least 1980. Keller and Hale were good friends, and letters to Hale can be found in her youthful autobiography The Story of My Life (1902). In 1910 Keller dedicated her poem "The Song of the Stone Wall" to Hale who had died in 1909.
Misattributed
Variant: I am only one, but I am one. I can not do everything, but I can do something. I must not fail to do the something that I can do.

“Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny.”

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

'Be-Bop Tango (Of the Old Jazzmen's Church)
Roxy & Elsewhere (1974)
Variant: Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny

Dead

“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

Life , Wedding

“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.

Light

“Some people like to read their bibles in the Hebrew; some like to read it in the Greek; I like to read it in the Holy Spirit”

Smith Wigglesworth (1859–1947) British evangelist

Page 79
The Complete Story: A New Biography on the Apostle of Faith By Julian Wilson http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=e2RWZpOHfmoC|Wigglesworth:

People , Reading

“Honesty is the first chapter of the book wisdom.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Wise , Wisdom , Books

“Only if we understand can we care. Only if we care will we help. Only if we help shall they be saved.”

Jane Goodall (1934) British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist

Reported in Patti Denys, Mary Holmes, Animal Magnetism: At Home With Celebrities & Their Animal Companions (1998), p. 106
Source: Jane Goodall: 40 Years at Gombe

Motivational , Back To Work , Understanding , Help

“In what terms should we think of these beings, nonhuman yet possessing so very many human-like characteristics? How should we treat them? Surely we should treat them with the same consideration and kindness as we show to other humans; and as we recognize human rights, so too should we recognize the rights of the great apes? Yes.”

Jane Goodall (1934) British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist

"Chimpanzees - Bridging the Gap", in Paola Cavalieri, Peter Singer, The Great Ape Project: Equality Beyond Humanity (1996), p. 14

Thinking

“I have loved books all my life. There is nothing more beautiful in our material world than the book.”

Patti Smith (1946) American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist

Love , Life , Books , World

“Don't be dismayed at goodbyes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Illusions : The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977)
Source: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

“No human being will ever know the truth, for even if they happened to say it by chance, they would not know they had done so.”

Xenophon (-430–-354 BC) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

Truth , Chance

“When the interests of mankind are at stake, they will obey with joy the man whom they believe to be wiser than themselves. You may prove this on all sides: you may see how the sick man will beg the doctor to tell him what he ought to do, how a whole ship’s company will listen to the pilot.”

Xenophon book Cyropaedia

Bk. 1, ch. 6; as translated by Henry Graham Dakyns in Cyropaedia (2004) p. 29.
Cyropaedia, 4th Century BC
Context: That... is the road to the obedience of compulsion. But there is a shorter way to a nobler goal, the obedience of the will. When the interests of mankind are at stake, they will obey with joy the man whom they believe to be wiser than themselves. You may prove this on all sides: you may see how the sick man will beg the doctor to tell him what he ought to do, how a whole ship’s company will listen to the pilot.

Joy

“Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.”

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

Source: A Knock at Midnight: Inspiration from the Great Sermons of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.

Wise , Peaceful , Hate

“Play always as if in the presence of a master.”

Robert Schumann (1810–1856) German composer, aesthete and influential music critic

“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.

“Being honest may not get you a lot of friends but it’ll always get you the right ones.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

“I am, now as before, of the opinion that I did the best that I could do for my nation. I therefore do not regret my conduct and will bear the consequences that result from my conduct.”

Sophie Scholl (1921–1943) White Rose member

Response to the closing question of whether she hadn't "indeed come to the conclusion that your conduct and the actions along with your brother and other persons in the present phase of the war should be seen as a crime against the community, but in particular against our troops fighting arduously in the east, that merits the severest sentence?" in the official examination transcripts (February 1943); Bundesarchiv Berlin, ZC 13267, Bd. 3 http://www.bpb.de/themen/5H3ZT3,3,0,Ausz%FCge_aus_den_Verh%F6rprotokollen_von_Sophie_Scholl.html#art3