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“Everything changes when you start to emit your own frequency rather than absorbing the frequencies around you, when you start imprinting your intent on the universe rather than receiving an imprint from existence.”

Barbara Marciniak (1928–2012)

“There's much more in any given moment than we usually perceive, and that we ourselves are much more than we usually perceive. When you know that, part of you can stand outside the drama of your life.”

Ram Dass (1931–2019) American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the 1971 book Be Here Now

“I can tell you that you will have your hearts broken more by the people you love than by the people you hate. But you must still dare to love. The rewards are worth far more than the risks.”

Margaret Peterson Haddix book Into the Gauntlet

Source: Into the Gauntlet

“I dont know," said Simon, "it doesn't sound so bad to me. I'd rather have someone mess around inside my head than chop it off."
"Then you're a bigger idiot than you look.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

“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.”

Niccolo Machiavelli book The Prince

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.

“You will say that I am not a success - vaincre or être vaincu, [to conquer or to be conquered], it doesn't matter to me, one has feeling and movement in any event, and they are more akin than they may seem to be or than can be put into words.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

1880s, 1884, Letter to Theo (Nuenen, Oct. 1884)

“War is smaller in scale than in recent memory, but it is far more ambiguous, intractable, and nasty. Money flows more quickly than ever, but it is still somehow manages to gather and puddle in certain places, for certain people rather then others.”

Mark Kingwell (1963) Canadian philosopher

Preface, p. viii.
The World We Want (2000)

“Very possible! Possible, indeed. Maybe even probable, which, as you know if you study your arithmetic, can happen more often than possible. In other words, probable is more possible than possible. - Bubo”

Kathryn Lasky (1944) American children's writer

Source: The Rescue

“It is blasphemy to separate oneself from the earth and look down on it like a god. It is more than blasphemy, it is dangerous. We can never be gods, after all—but we can become something less than human with frightening ease.”

N. K. Jemisin book The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

Source: The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (2010), Chapter 7 (p. 74)

“Much of the subtlety of baseball is derived from the fact that so much of the game is played in the region between definitely smooth flow and definitely turbulent flow, at ball velocities greater than 50 mph and smaller than 120 mph.”

Robert Adair (physicist) (1924) Physicist and author

Source: The Physics Of Baseball (Second Edition - Revised), Chapter 2, The Flight Of The baseball, p. 7

“And I feel that something's coming, and it's not just in the wind.
It's more than just tomorrow, it's more than where we've been,
It offers me a promise, it's telling me "Begin",
I know we're needing something worth believing in.”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

Remember When the Music
Song lyrics, Sequel (1981)

“I think the US is in a terrible state of denial … Worse than that, we seem to be caught in a kind of Götterdämmerung response: we'd rather have the world go down in flames than change our lifestyle or admit we're wrong.”

Kim Stanley Robinson (1952) American science fiction writer

As quoted in "Future tense" in The Guardian (14 September 2005)

“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. <br class="br">Interview in Jewish Chronicle, 26 September 2007 http://thejc.com/home.aspx?AId55759&ATypeId1&searchtrue2&srchstrpatrick%20marber&srchtxt1&srchhead1&srchauthor1&srchsandp1&scsrch0

“Rather than trying to put an end to Eminem or some other rapper, politicians should think about why they're rapping. It's easier to try to censor some kid who's swearing about poverty than it is to stop the poverty.”

Willie Nelson (1933) American country music singer-songwriter.

Playboy interview, November 2002.

“There are few things in which we deceive ourselves more than in the esteem we profess to entertain for our friends. It is little better than a piece of quackery. The truth is, we think of them as we please — that is as they please or displease us.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

No. 60
Characteristics, in the manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims (1823)

“Rather than being a measure and consequence of the power of naturally occurring sexual desire, pornography is a measure of the extent to which people tend to prefer controlling desire through contrivance rather than being surprised by desire that spontaneously arises.”

Stephen Mitchell (1946–2000) American psychologist

Can Love Last? (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2002), p. 137

“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

“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

“Q: Why do I stay in the Catholic Church?
A: I stay in the Church because the Church is more than its ignorance; the Church gives me more than it denies me. I stay in the Church because it is mine.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography (2013)

“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 <br class="br">2010s <br class="br">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.