“Build your opponent a golden bridge to retreat across.”
Sun Tzu (-543–-495 BC) ancient Chinese military general, strategist and philosopher from the Zhou Dynasty
This has appeared as a variant of Sun Tzu's assertion to "leave a way of escape." Tu Mu, commenting on Sun Tzu, advises, "Show him there is a road to safety..." Ch. 7; it has also recently appeared on the internet attributed to Scipio Africanus, but without citation.
Disputed
“Deep down, the young are lonelier than the old.”
Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary
Source: The Diary of a Young Girl
Kanō Jigorō (1860–1938) Japanese educator and judoka
Budo Secrets (2002)
Context: Jigoro Kano's Five Principles of Judo:
1. Carefully observe oneself and one's situation, carefully observe others, and carefully observe one's environment,
2. Seize the initiative in whatever you undertake,
3. Consider fully, act decisively,
4. Know when to stop,
5. Keep to the middle.
Jane Goodall (1934) British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist
" An Interview with Jane Goodall https://web.archive.org/web/20100920074838/http://www.idausa.org:80/essays/goodallinterview.html", In Defense of Animals (date unknown) <br class="br">Context: Researchers find it very necessary to keep blinkers on. They don't want to admit that the animals they are working with have feelings. They don't want to admit that they might have minds and personalities because that would make it quite difficult for them to do what they do; so we find that within the lab communities there is a very strong resistance among the researchers to admitting that animals have minds, personalities and feelings.
Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer
Illusions : The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977)
Source: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
“The art of war is of vital importance to the State.”
Sun Tzu book The Art of War
The Art of War, Chapter I · Detail Assessment and Planning
Context: The art of war is of vital importance to the State. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected.
“Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.”
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity
In answer to a question asked by the editors of Youth, a journal of Young Israel of Williamsburg, NY. Quoted in the New York Times, June 20, 1932, pg. 17 http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F40617F83B5A13738DDDA90A94DE405B828FF1D3 <br class="br">Unsourced variant: Only a life in the service of others is worth living. <br class="br">1930s <br class="br">Variant: I believe in one thing—that only a life lived for others is a life worth living.
Sun Tzu (-543–-495 BC) ancient Chinese military general, strategist and philosopher from the Zhou Dynasty
Translation by Lionel Giles
Source: The Art of War, Chapter IV · Disposition of the Army
Freddie Mercury (1946–1991) British singer, songwriter and record producer
"The Man Who Would Be Queen" in Melody Maker (2 May 1981) http://www.queenarchives.com/index.php?title=Freddie_Mercury_-_05-02-1981_-_Melody_Maker.
“How many people you know who can name every serial killer who ever existed in a row?”
Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor
2000s, Relapse (2009)
Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor
About the role of J. Pierpont Morgan, and the failure of Tesla's "World System" project
My Inventions (1919)
Context: He had the highest regard for my attainments and gave me every evidence of his complete faith in my ability to ultimately achieve what I had set out to do. I am unwilling to accord to some small−minded and jealous individuals the satisfaction of having thwarted my efforts. These men are to me nothing more than microbes of a nasty disease. My project was retarded by laws of nature. The world was not prepared for it. It was too far ahead of time, but the same laws will prevail in the end and make it a triumphal success.
“Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky book Crime and Punishment
Source: Crime and Punishment (Zločin a trest)
“It's so easy to laugh, it's so easy to hate, it takes strength to be gentle and kind.”
Morrissey (1959) English singer
from the 1986 song "I Know It's Over"
From songs
“The moon has set,
And the Pleiades.
Midnight.
The hour has gone by.
I sleep alone.”
Sappho (-630–-570 BC) ancient Greek lyric poet
Stanley Lombardo translations, Frag. 72
Edward Sapir (1884–1939) American linguist and anthropologist
The Status Of Linguistics As A Science (1929), p. 69 <!-- 1958 edition -->
Context: Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection. The fact of the matter is that the "real world" is to a large extent unconsciously built upon the language habits of the group. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached … We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation.
“Although I think that life may be the result of an accident, I do not think that of consciousness.”
Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) Austrian physicist
As quoted in The Observer (11 January 1931); also in Psychic Research (1931), Vol. 25, p. 91
Context: Although I think that life may be the result of an accident, I do not think that of consciousness. Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else.
Sun Tzu (-543–-495 BC) ancient Chinese military general, strategist and philosopher from the Zhou Dynasty
Variant translations
If you know others and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know others but know yourself, you win one and lose one; if you do not know others and do not know yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.
Know your enemy and know yourself, find naught in fear for 100 battles. Know yourself but not your enemy, find level of loss and victory. Know not thy enemy nor yourself, wallow in defeat every time.
Literal translation: Know [the] other, know [the] self, hundred battles without danger; not knowing [the] other but know [the] self, one win one loss; not knowing [the] other, not knowing [the] self, every battle must [be] lost.
Source: The Art of War, Chapter III · Strategic Attack
Paul Bowles book The Sheltering Sky
The Sheltering Sky (1949)
Context: Because we don't know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more, perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.
Smith Wigglesworth (1859–1947) British evangelist
Page 79 <br class="br"> The Complete Story: A New Biography on the Apostle of Faith By Julian Wilson http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=e2RWZpOHfmoC|Wigglesworth:
