“It is better to be the hammer than the nail.”
Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer
Egwene al'Vere
(15 October 1991)
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Quotes
“To shine is better than to reflect.”
Gregory Benford book Timescape
Source: Timescape (1980), Chapter 16 (p. 220)
“The sky is bigger than the ground.”
Gavin Free (1988) English filmmaker
"Rooster Teeth Video Podcast #200" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzQ-6DXZzSc. youtube.com. January 16, 2013. Retrieved May 4, 2014.
“There will be a player greater than me.”
Michael Jordan (1963) American retired professional basketball player and businessman
Michael Jordan to the Max http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0245280/ (Film, 2000)
“Suspense is worse than disappointment.”
Robert Burns (1759–1796) Scottish poet and lyricist
Letter to Thomas Sloan, (1 September 1791)
“Exuberance is better than taste”
Gustave Flaubert book Sentimental Education
Pt. 1, Ch. 4; the most famous portion of this statement is "Exuberance is better than taste…" [Mieux vaut l'exubérance que le goût.]
Sentimental Education (1869)
Context: Without ideality, there is no grandeur; without grandeur there is no beauty. Olympus is a mountain. The most effective monument will always be the Pyramids. Exuberance is better than taste; the desert is better than a streetpavement, and a savage is surely better than a hairdresser!
John Heywood (1497–1580) English writer known for plays, poems and a collection of proverbs
Part I, chapter 10.
Proverbs (1546), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Harpo Marx (1888–1964) American comedian
Comment on the musical Abie's Irish Rose
Halliwell's Who's Who in the Movies (2001 ed): Art. Marx Brothers p. 297
“It is better to be envied than pitied.”
Book 3, Ch. 52
The Histories
Variant: How much better a thing it is to be envied than to be pitied.
“That is more than morality; it's sense.”
Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) Indian lawyer, statesman, and writer, first Prime Minister of India
Interview by James Cameron in Picture Post (28 October 1950)
Context: If in the modern world wars have unfortunately to be fought (and they do, it seems) then they must be stopped at the first possible moment, otherwise they corrupt us, they create new problems and make our future even more uncertain. That is more than morality; it's sense.
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
Bertrand Russell, attributes this phrase to 'West German friends of peace' but adopted this slogan for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament he helped found http://books.google.com/books?id=c4UoX6-Sv1AC&pg=PA49 William Safire, Safire's Political Dictionary, (2008) p. 49–50 <br class="br">Misattributed
“And the whole [is] greater than the part.”
Καὶ τὸ ὅλον τοῦ μέρους μεῖζον
ἐστιν
Elements, Book I, Common Notion 8 (5 in certain editions)
Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book Η 1045a 8–10: "… the totality is not, as it were, a mere heap, but the whole is something besides the parts … [πάντων γὰρ ὅσα πλείω μέρη ἔχει καὶ μὴ ἔστιν οἷον σωρὸς τὸ πᾶν]"
Euclid’s Elements
“Better late than never.”
Potius sero quam nunquam.
Livy (-59–17 BC) Roman historian
Book IV, sec. 2
History of Rome
“There is no religion higher than truth.”
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891) occult writer
Motto of the Theosophical Society. See for instance: Blavatsky Collected Writings, Volume 6, p. 168 http://www.katinkahesselink.net/blavatsky/articles/v6/y1884_016.htm
Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright
Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part I, Book IV, Ch. 4.
“The past is more than a memory.”
John Trudell (1946–2015) Native American rights activist, musician, poet
"What it Means to be a Human Being" Speech (2001)
“To be a Naturalist is better than to be a King.”
William Beebe (1877–1962) American ornithologist, marine biologist, entomologist, and explorer
Journal (31 December 1893)
“It is Earlier Than We Think.”
Vannevar Bush (1890–1974) American electrical engineer and science administrator
Title of Ch. IX, p. 160
Science is Not Enough (1967)
“There is less there than meets the eye.”
Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
On Prime Minister Clement Attlee, to President Truman, in 1946. When Truman defended Attlee (‘He seems a modest sort of fellow’), Churchill replied ‘He’s got a lot to be modest about.’ As cited in The Origins of the Cold War in Europe (1994), Reynolds, Yale University Press, p. 93 ISBN 0300105622
Post-war years (1945–1955)