Quotes about beginning

A collection of quotes on the topic of beginning, end, time, timing.

Quotes about beginning

Tom Hiddleston photo

“We all have two lives. The second begins when you realize you only have one.”

Tom Hiddleston (1981) English actor, producer and musical performer

Bob Marley photo
H.L. Mencken photo

“Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

Source: Heliogabalus

Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
James Baldwin photo

“Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.”

"In Search of a Majority: An Address" (Feb 1960); reprinted in Baldwin, "Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobody_Knows_My_Name (1961)

Adolf Hitler photo

“When diplomacy ends, War begins.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party
Henry Ford photo

“Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success.”

Henry Ford (1863–1947) American industrialist

Variant: Coming together is the beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.

Mary, Queen of Scots photo

“In my end is my beginning.”

Mary, Queen of Scots (1542–1587) Scottish monarch and queen consort of France

"Mary, Queen of Scots" The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. Ed. Elizabeth Knowles. Oxford University Press, 2004. Oxford Reference Online. http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t115.e2074

Tyler Joseph photo
Tyler Joseph photo
Laozi photo

“If you would take, you must first give, this is the beginning of intelligence.”

Laozi (-604) semi-legendary Chinese figure, attributed to the 6th century, regarded as the author of the Tao Te Ching and fou…
Nikola Tesla photo
Jacques-Yves Cousteau photo
Avicenna photo

“Now it is established in the sciences that no knowledge is acquired save through the study of its causes and beginnings, if it has had causes and beginnings; nor completed except by knowledge of its accidents and accompanying essentials.”

Avicenna (980–1037) medieval Persian polymath, physician, and philosopher

"On Medicine, (c. 1020) http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/1020Avicenna-Medicine.html
Context: The knowledge of anything, since all things have causes, is not acquired or complete unless it is known by its causes. Therefore in medicine we ought to know the causes of sickness and health. And because health and sickness and their causes are sometimes manifest, and sometimes hidden and not to be comprehended except by the study of symptoms, we must also study the symptoms of health and disease. Now it is established in the sciences that no knowledge is acquired save through the study of its causes and beginnings, if it has had causes and beginnings; nor completed except by knowledge of its accidents and accompanying essentials. Of these causes there are four kinds: material, efficient, formal, and final.

Maya Angelou photo
Theodor W. Adorno photo

“Auschwitz begins wherever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they’re only animals.”

Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) German sociologist, philosopher and musicologist known for his critical theory of society
Marcus Garvey photo

“If I die in Atlanta my work shall then only begin, but I shall live, in the physical or spiritual to see the day of Africa’s glory.”

Marcus Garvey (1887–1940) Jamaica-born British political activist, Pan-Africanist, orator, and entrepreneur

Source: Selected Writings and Speeches of Marcus Garvey

Joseph Goebbels photo
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe photo

“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician

Attributed to Goethe by popular British novelist Marie Corelli in her essay "The Spirit of Work" as published in The Queen's Christmas carol : an anthology of poems, stories, essays, drawings and music / by British authors, artists and composers in 1905 by The Daily Mail of London.
Attributed to Goethe by William Hutchinson Murray, in his book The Scottish Himalayan Expedition (1951), this has been shown to be a misattribution at "German Myth 12: The Famous 'Goethe' Quotation", Answer.com http://german.about.com/library/blgermyth12.htm and "Popular Quotes: Commitment", Goethe Society of North America http://www.goethesociety.org/pages/quotescom.html
Misattributed
Variant: Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.

Sadhguru photo
Emily Dickinson photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Source: I Have a Dream: Writings and Speeches That Changed the World

Aristotle photo

“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”

Aristotle (-384–-321 BC) Classical Greek philosopher, student of Plato and founder of Western philosophy
William Wilberforce photo
Manuel L. Quezon photo

“My loyalty to my party ends where my loyalty to my country begins.”

Manuel L. Quezon (1878–1944) president of the Philippines from 1935 to 1944

As quoted in John Gunther's Inside Asia. (1939)

Tupac Shakur photo
Galileo Galilei photo

“I have succeeded in proving; and what I consider more important, there have been opened up to this vast and most excellent science, of which my work is merely the beginning, ways and means by which other minds more acute than mine will explore its remote corners.”

Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) Italian mathematician, physicist, philosopher and astronomer

Author, Third Day. Change of Position<!--p.153 [190]-->
Dialogues and Mathematical Demonstrations Concerning Two New Sciences (1638)
Context: It has been observed that missiles and projectiles describe a curved path of some sort; however no one has pointed out the fact that this path is a parabola. But this and other facts, not few in number or less worth knowing, I have succeeded in proving; and what I consider more important, there have been opened up to this vast and most excellent science, of which my work is merely the beginning, ways and means by which other minds more acute than mine will explore its remote corners.

Morihei Ueshiba photo

“The Art of Peace begins with you.”

Morihei Ueshiba (1883–1969) founder of aikido

As quoted in Inspire! What Great Leaders Do (2004) by Lance Secretan, p. 45
Context: The Art of Peace begins with you. Work on yourself and your appointed task in the Art of Peace. Everyone has a spirit that can be refined, a body that can be trained in some manner, a suitable path to follow. You are here to realize your inner divinity and manifest your innate enlightenment. Foster peace in your own life and then apply the Art to all than you encounter.

Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Harriet Tubman photo
Confucius photo

“The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Source: Confucius: The Analects

Charles Manson photo

“The mind is endless. You put me in a dark solitary cell, and to you that's the end, to me it's the beginning, it's the universe in there, there's a world in there, and I'm free.”

Charles Manson (1934–2017) American criminal and musician

Source: Manson in His Own Words: The Shocking Confessions of 'The Most Dangerous Man Alive'

Marcus Aurelius photo
Confucius photo

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Laozi in the Tao Te Ching, Chapter 64
Misattributed, Chinese

Oscar Wilde photo
Aldo Leopold photo

“We abuse land because we see it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.”

Source: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, Foreword, p. viii.
Context: Conservation is getting nowhere because it is incompatible with our Abrahamic concept of land. We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect. There is no other way for land to survive the impact of mechanized man, nor for us to reap from it the aesthetic harvest it is capable, under science, of contributing to culture.

Amos Oz photo
N.T. Wright photo
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky photo
Shigeru Miyamoto photo

“When we’re doing an action game, we make the second level first. We begin making level 1 once everything else is completed.”

Shigeru Miyamoto (1952) Japanese video game designer and producer

Source: http://gamasutra.com/view/news/175791/A_free_tip_from_Miyamoto_Make_your_first_level_last.php

Francis Drake photo

“There must be a beginning of any great matter, but the continuing unto the end until it be thoroughly finished yields the true glory.”

Francis Drake (1540–1596) English sea captain, privateer, navigator, slaver, and politician of the Elizabethan era

Letter to Sir Francis Walsingham, from off Cape Sagres, Portugal (17 May 3067)

Tupac Shakur photo
Tupac Shakur photo
LeBron James photo
Dante Alighieri photo

“The path to paradise begins in hell.”

Source: The Divine Comedy

Mitch Albom photo
Federico Fellini photo

“There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the infinite passion of life.”

Federico Fellini (1920–1993) Italian filmmaker

Fellini on Fellini (1976) edited by Anna Keel and Christian Strich; translated by Isabel Quigly.
Variant: There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the passion of life.

Henry David Thoreau photo
Virginia Woolf photo
W.B. Yeats photo
Alejandro Jodorowsky photo
Hans Christian Andersen photo
Michel Foucault photo
Stan Lee photo
Jean Jacques Rousseau photo
Mark Twain photo

“A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

According to R. Ken Rasmussen in The Quotable Mark Twain (1998), this is most probably not Twain's.
Misattributed

Confucius photo

“We have two lives, and the second begins when we realize we only have one.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher
Helder Camara photo
Jodi Picoult photo
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi photo
Keith Haring photo

“The only way art lives is through the experience of the observer. The reality of art begins with the eyes of the beholder, through imagination, invention and confrontation.”

Keith Haring (1958–1990) American artist and social activist whose work responded to the New York City street culture of the 1980s b…

Haring – Art in Transit http://www.haring.com/!/selected_writing/haring-art-in-transit#.V1cw0tIrKyw The Keith Haring Foundation

John Fletcher photo

“Charity and treating begin at home.”

Scene 2.
Wit Without Money (c. 1614; published 1639)

Franz Brentano photo

“What is at first small is often extremely large in the end. And so it happens that whoever deviates only a little from truth in the beginning is led farther and farther afield in the sequel, and to errors which are a thousand times as large.”

Franz Brentano (1838–1917) Austrian philosopher

Was klein ist im Beginn wird oft am Ende überaus groß sein. Und so geschieht es, das wer im Anfange auch nur um ein Weniges von der Wahrheit abweicht, im Verlauf immer weiter und weiter und zu tausendmal größern Irrthümer fortgeführt wird.
On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle (1862)

Charles Manson photo
Hermann Göring photo
Brian Cox (physicist) photo

“As a fraction of the lifespan of the universe as measured from the beginning to the evaporation of the last black hole, life as we know it is only possible for one-thousandth of a billion billion billionth, billion billion billionth, billion billion billionth, of a percent (10^-84). And that's why, for me, the most astonishing wonder of the universe isn't a star or a planet or a galaxy. It isn't a thing at all. It's an instant in time. And that time is now. Humans have walked the earth for just the shortest fraction of that briefest of moments in deep time. But in our 200,000 years on this planet we've made remarkable progress. It was only 2,500 years ago that we believed that the sun was a god and measured its orbit with stone towers built on the top of a hill. Today the language of curiosity is not sun gods, but science. And we have observatories that are almost infinitely more sophisticated than those towers, that can gaze out deep into the universe. And perhaps even more remarkably through theoretical physics and mathematics we can calculate what the universe will look like in the distant future. And we can even make concrete predictions about its end. And I believe that it's only by continuing our exploration of the cosmos and the laws of nature that govern it that we can truly understand ourselves and our place in this universe of wonders.”

Brian Cox (physicist) (1968) English physicist and former musician

Conclusion in Wonders of the Universe - Destiny

Karl Popper photo

“Science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths.”

Source: Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (1963), Ch. 1 "Science : Conjectures and Refutations", Section VII

Shigeru Miyamoto photo
Robert K. Merton photo

“The self-fulfilling prophecy is, in the beginning, a false definition of the situation evoking a new behaviour which makes the original false conception come "true".”

Source: Social Theory and Social Structure (1949), p. 477 (1968 Enlarged edition)
Context: The self-fulfilling prophecy is, in the beginning, a false definition of the situation evoking a new behaviour which makes the original false conception come "true". This specious validity of the self-fulfilling prophecy perpetuates a reign of error. For the prophet will cite the actual course of events as proof that he was right from the very beginning.

Ronald Reagan photo

“I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life. I know that for America there will always be a bright dawn ahead. Thank you, my friends. May God always bless you.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Letter announcing Alzheimer's diagnosis http://www.nationalreview.com/document/reagan_sunset200406070915.asp (5 November 1994)
Post-presidency (1989&ndash;2004)
Context: In closing, let me thank you, the American people, for giving me the great honor of allowing me to serve as your president. When the Lord calls me home, whenever that day may be, I will leave with the greatest love for this country of ours and eternal optimism for its future. I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life. I know that for America there will always be a bright dawn ahead. Thank you, my friends. May God always bless you.

Virgil photo

“Look with favor upon a bold beginning.”
Audacibus annue coeptis.

Book I, line 40
Georgics (29 BC)

Pierre Bonnard photo
Volodymyr Zelensky photo

“Every morning my day begins with an SMS from the General Staff. Over the past 24 hours there were 7 occasions of shelling and two casualties. Figures may vary, but only one figure makes the morning good. It is zero. The shelling is zero. The loss is zero.”

Volodymyr Zelensky (1978) 6th President of Ukraine

Original: (uk) Кожен мій ранок починається з sms-повідомлення. Це sms від Генерального штабу. За минулу добу обстрілів – сім, втрат – дві. Цифри можуть бути різними, але тільки одна робить ранок добрим. Це – нуль. Обстрілів – нуль. Втрат – нуль.

Transliteration: Kozhen miy ranok pochynayetʹsya z sms-povidomlennya. Tse sms vid Heneralʹnoho shtabu. Za mynulu dobu obstriliv – sim, vtrat – dvi. Tsyfry mozhutʹ buty riznymy, ale tilʹky odna robytʹ ranok dobrym. Tse – nulʹ. Obstriliv – nulʹ. Vtrat – nulʹ.

Speech by Zelensky during the celebration of Independence Day of Ukraine https://www.ukrinform.ua/rubric-society/2766331-promova-zelenskogo-z-nagodi-28i-ricnici-nezaleznosti-ukraini.html (24 August 2019)

Volodymyr Zelensky photo

“Let Moscow not forget that the sanctions policy will only be continued and intensified. As long as there is no peace — sanctions are needed. Until Russia begins to invest as sincerely in the search for peace as it invests in the destruction of our state, sanctions will remain unalterable.”

Volodymyr Zelensky (1978) 6th President of Ukraine

"We all equally want to win, but there will be battles ahead" (1 April 2022) https://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/mi-vsi-odnakovo-hochemo-peremogi-ale-poperedu-budut-bitvi-zv-74009

Graham Greene photo
Vincent Van Gogh photo
John Connolly photo
Neville Goddard photo
Douglas Adams photo

“The story so far:
In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”

Variant: In the beginning the Universe was created.
This had made many people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.
Source: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Terry Pratchett photo

“In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.”

Source: Lords and Ladies

Neal A. Maxwell photo

“God does not begin by asking us about our ability, but only about our availability, and if we then prove our dependability, he will increase our capability.”

Neal A. Maxwell (1926–2004) Mormon leader

Variant: God does not begin by asking our ability, but more of our availability. When we prove our dependability, He will in crease our capability.

Meister Eckhart photo

“And suddenly you know: It's time to start something new and trust the magic of beginnings”

Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) German theologian

Widely circulated on the internet, but no actual text to tie it back to Eckhart, as of yet.
Ref: en.wikiquote.org - Meister Eckhart / Disputed

Erich Maria Remarque photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“First, we must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. It is impossible even to begin the act of loving one's enemies without prior acceptance of the necessity, over and over again, of forgiving those who inflict evil and injury upon us. It is also necessary to realize that the forgiving act must always be initiated by the person who has been wronged, the victim of some great hurt, the recipient of some tortuous injustice, the absorber of some terrible act of oppression.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1950s, Loving Your Enemies (Christmas 1957)
Context: First, we must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. It is impossible even to begin the act of loving one's enemies without prior acceptance of the necessity, over and over again, of forgiving those who inflict evil and injury upon us. It is also necessary to realize that the forgiving act must always be initiated by the person who has been wronged, the victim of some great hurt, the recipient of some tortuous injustice, the absorber of some terrible act of oppression. The wrongdoer may request forgiveness. He may come to himself, and, like the prodigal son, move up with some dusty road, his heart palpitating with the desire for forgiveness. But only the injured neighbor, the loving father back home can really pour out the warm waters of forgiveness.

Bell Hooks photo

“The one person who will never leave us, whom we will never lose, is ourself. Learning to love our female selves is where our search for love must begin.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Source: Communion: The Female Search for Love