Quotes

Barbara Marciniak photo
Ram Dass photo
Margaret Peterson Haddix photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Niccolo Machiavelli photo

“How we live is so different from how we ought to live that he who studies what ought to be done rather than what is done will learn the way to his downfall rather than to his preservation.”

Source: The Prince (1513), Ch. 15
Context: Many have imagined republics and principalities which have never been seen or known to exist in reality; for how we live is so far removed from how we ought to live, that he who abandons what is done for what ought to be done, will rather bring about his own ruin than his preservation.

Vincent Van Gogh photo
Mark Kingwell photo
N. K. Jemisin photo
Harry Chapin photo
Kim Stanley Robinson photo

“No one ever wanted to see it as anything other than a boring play about a middle-aged man having a mid-life crisis. I think it’s about rather more than that - or maybe it’s not. Maybe that’s exactly what it is about.”

Patrick Marber (1964) English comedian, actor and screenwriter

Of his play Howard Katz.
Interview in Jewish Chronicle, 26 September 2007 http://thejc.com/home.aspx?AId55759&ATypeId1&searchtrue2&srchstrpatrick%20marber&srchtxt1&srchhead1&srchauthor1&srchsandp1&scsrch0

Willie Nelson photo
William Hazlitt photo
Samuel Butler photo

“When I am dead I would rather people thought me better than I was instead of worse; but if they think me worse, I cannot help it and, if it matters at all, it will matter more to them than to me.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Apologia, i
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XXIV - The Life of the World to Come

Benito Mussolini photo

“Lenin is an artist who has worked men, as other artists have worked marble or metals. But men are harder than stone and less malleable than iron. There is no masterpiece. The artist has failed. The task was superior to his capacities.”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

Popolo d'Italia (14 July 1920) "The Artificer and the Material," quoted in Mussolini in the Making (1938) by Gaudens Megaro, p. 326
1920s

Richard Rodríguez photo
Michelle Obama photo

“But today, more than 150 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, more than 50 years after the end of 'separate but equal', when it comes to getting an education, too many of our young people just can’t be bothered.”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

Remarks at Bowie State University ceremony (17 May 2013) http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/05/17/remarks-first-lady-bowie-state-university-commencement-ceremony
2010s
Context: But today, more than 150 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, more than 50 years after the end of 'separate but equal', when it comes to getting an education, too many of our young people just can’t be bothered. Today, instead of walking miles every day to school, they're sitting on couches for hours playing video games, watching T. V. Instead of dreaming of being a teacher or a lawyer or a business leader, they're fantasizing about being a baller or a rapper. Right now, one in three African American students are dropping out of high school. Only one in five African Americans between the ages of 25 and 29 has gotten a college degree; one in five.