Quotes

Alexander Pope photo

“The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

Heraclitus, Fragments, 54; http://philoctetes.free.fr/heraclitefraneng.htm and http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/GREECE/HERAC.HTM; also translated in such variants as:
The unapparent connection is more powerful than the apparent one
The hidden harmony is better than the open one.
Misattributed

Steve Jobs photo

“There are sneakers that cost more than an iPod.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

On the iPod's $300 price tag, as quoted in Newsweek (27 October 2003)
2000s

“Better be killed than frightened to death.”

Robert Smith Surtees (1805–1864) English writer

Mr. Facey Romford's Hounds (1865) ch. 39

Joseph Joubert photo
Charles Sumner photo

“Ideas are more important than battles.”

Charles Sumner (1811–1874) American abolitionist and politician

As quoted in Lies My Teacher Told Me https://books.google.com/books?id=5m23RrMeLt4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22lies+my+teacher+told+me%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAGoVChMIgsHjgsrpxwIVBpANCh3kRgDA#v=snippet&q=even%20canada&f=false, by James W. Loewen

Wisława Szymborska photo

“There's nothing more debauched than thinking.”

Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) Polish writer

"An Opinion Concerning the Question of Pornography"
Poems New and Collected (1998), The People on the Bridge (1986)

Joseph Joubert photo

“Glory. Lovelier to desire than to possess.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist
Benjamin Franklin photo

“Lighthouses are more useful than churches.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

Also quoted as “Lighthouses are more helpful than churches” or “A lighthouse is more useful than a church.” Although not by Franklin in this form, it may be intended as a paraphrase of something he wrote to his wife on 17 July 1757, given in a footnote on page 133 of Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Benjamin Franklin (1818). After describing a narrow escape from shipwreck he added:
The bell ringing for church, we went thither immediately, and with hearts full of gratitude, returned sincere thanks to God for the mercies we had received: were I a Roman Catholic, perhaps I should on this occasion vow to build a chapel to some saint, but as I am not, if I were to vow at all, it should be to build a light-house.
Misattributed

John le Carré photo

“Blackmail is more effective than bribery.”

Smiley's People (1979)

Orson Scott Card photo

“Knowing was better than not knowing. But not by much.”

Homebody (1998)

John C. Calhoun photo

“It is harder to preserve than to obtain liberty.”

John C. Calhoun (1782–1850) 7th Vice President of the United States

Speech in the Senate (January 1848)
1840s

Dejan Stojanovic photo

“The game itself is bigger than the winning.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

“Game II,” p. 97
The Sun Watches the Sun (1999), Sequence: “A Game”

Leonardo Da Vinci photo

“Movement will fail sooner than usefulness.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), X Studies and Sketches for Pictures and Decorations

“Loopier than a snake in a garden hose.”

Source: The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad (2004), Chapter 24 “A Glimpse into Wet, Dark Jewels” (p. 147)

Kage Baker photo

“This ain’t any better than the Tao?”

Source: The Machine's Child (2006), Chapter 18, “In the Dark Night of the Soul (Year Indeterminate)” (pp. 173-174)
Context: Now then, Nick, wilt thou not sleep?
Nicholas glanced up from the plaquette on which he had been studying the Pali canon of Buddha’s teachings. He sighed and set it aside...
You don’t look like revelation has struck you, somehow.
No, Spirit.
This ain’t any better than the Tao?
No.
Nor the Bhagavad Gita? Nor the Avesta, neither?
No.
I thought certain you’d like them Gnostic Gospels.
Nicholas shrugged.
And I reckon you ain’t even looked at that nice book on Vodou.
Spirit, this is futility. What do the best of them but recapitulate the Ten Commandments, in one form or another? And I find no proof that men have obeyed strange gods any better than the God of the Israelites, or learned any more of the true nature of the Almighty. Shall I worship a cow? Shall I spin paper prayers on a wheel? I’d as lief go back to eating fish in Lent lest God smite me down, or pray to wooden Mary to take away the toothache.
Well, son, allowing for the foolishness, which I reckon depends on what port you hail from—ain’t there any one seems better than the rest?
None, Spirit. That I must be kind and do no harm, I needed no prophets to tell me; but not one will open his dead mouth to say what kind and harmless Lord would create this dreadful world, said Nicholas...
What do I tell my boy, then, if he gets the shakes about eternal life?
Set up no gods for thine Alec, Spirit. Nicholas lay back and put his arms about Mendoza, pulling her close. There is love, or there is nothing. The rest is vanity.

Randy Pausch photo

“People are more important than things.”

The Last Lecture (2008)
Variant: The questions are always more important than the answers."

Henri Barbusse photo

“Truth is more beautiful than dreams”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

Light (1919), Ch. XXIII - Face To Face
Context: What is there within us to-night? What is this sound of wings? Are our eyes opening as fast as night falls? Formerly, we had the sensual lovers' animal dread of nothingness; but to-day, the simplest and richest proof of our love is that the supreme meaning of death to us is — leaving each other.
And the bond of the flesh — neither are we afraid to think and speak of that, saying that we were so joined together that we knew each other completely, that our bodies have searched each other. This memory, this brand in the flesh, has its profound value; and the preference which reciprocally graces two beings like ourselves is made of all that they have and all that they had.
I stand up in front of Marie — already almost a convert — and I tremble and totter, so much is my heart my master: —
"Truth is more beautiful than dreams, you see."

Black Elk photo

“Sometimes dreams are wiser than waking.”

Black Elk (1863–1950) Oglala Lakota leader

Black Elk Speaks (1961)
Context: A long time ago my father told me what his father told him, that there was once a Lakota holy man, called Drinks Water, who dreamed what was to be; and this was long before the coming of the Wasichus. He dreamed that the four-leggeds were going back into the earth and that a strange race had woven a spider's web all around the Lakotas. And he said: "When this happens, you shall live in square gray houses, in a barren land, and beside those square gray houses you shall starve." They say he went back to Mother Earth soon after he saw this vision, and it was sorrow that killed him. You can look about you now and see that he meant these dirt-roofed houses we are living in, and that all the rest was true. Sometimes dreams are wiser than waking.

Heraclitus photo

“It is better to conceal ignorance than to expose it.”

Heraclitus (-535) pre-Socratic Greek philosopher

Fragment 109
Variant translation: Hide our ignorance as we will, an evening of wine soon reveals it.
Numbered fragments