Quotes about doing
page 10

Pablo Picasso photo

“Anything new, anything worth doing, can't be recognized.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer
Aung San Suu Kyi photo

“You should never let your fears prevent you from doing what you know is right.”

Aung San Suu Kyi (1945) State Counsellor of Myanmar and Leader of the National League for Democracy
Edward Said photo
Thornton Wilder photo
Christopher Paolini photo
Galileo Galilei photo

“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”

Variant: I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
Source: Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina (1615)
Context: I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.
Context: I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.<!-- ¶22

Tamora Pierce photo
Hayao Miyazaki photo

“Do everything by hand, even when using the computer.”

Hayao Miyazaki (1941) Japanese animator, film director, and mangaka
Cassandra Clare photo
Andrew Carnegie photo
Frederick Buechner photo
Jenny Holzer photo
Michael Ende photo
Doris Lessing photo

“Whatever you're meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.”

Doris Lessing (1919–2013) British novelist, poet, playwright, librettist, biographer and short story writer
Tamora Pierce photo
Nikola Tesla photo

“My method is different. I do not rush into actual work. When I get an idea I start at once building it up in my imagination. I change the construction, make improvements, and operate the device entirely in my mind.”

My Inventions (1919)
Source: My Inventions: The Autobiography of Nikola Tesla
Context: The moment one constructs a device to carry into practice a crude idea, he finds himself unavoidably engrossed with the details of the apparatus. As he goes on improving and reconstructing, his force of concentration diminishes and he loses sight of the great underlying principle.… I do not rush into actual work. When I get an idea, I start at once building it up in my imagination. I change the construction, make improvements and operate the device in my mind. It is absolutely immaterial to me whether I run my turbine in thought or test it in my shop. I even note if it is out of balance.

Greg Mortenson photo

“When you take the time to actually listen, with humility, to what people have to say, it's amazing what you can learn. Especially if the people who are doing the talking also happen to be children.”

Greg Mortenson (1957) American mountaineer and humanitarian

Source: Stones Into Schools: Promoting Peace With Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan

Miles Davis photo
Frédéric Chopin photo

“How strange! This bed on which I shall lie has been slept on by more than one dying man, but today it does not repel me! Who knows what corpses have lain on it and for how long? But is a corpse any worse than I? A corpse too knows nothing of its father, mother or sisters or Titus. Nor has a corpse a sweetheart. A corpse, too, is pale, like me. A corpse is cold, just as I am cold and indifferent to everything. A corpse has ceased to live, and I too have had enough of life…. Why do we live on through this wretched life which only devours us and serves to turn us into corpses? The clocks in the Stuttgart belfries strike the midnight hour. Oh how many people have become corpses at this moment! Mothers have been torn from their children, children from their mothers - how many plans have come to nothing, how much sorrow has sprung from these depths, and how much relief!… Virtue and vice have come in the end to the same thing! It seems that to die is man's finest action - and what might be his worst? To be born, since that is the exact opposite of his best deed. It is therefore right of me to be angry that I was ever born into this world! Why was I not prevented from remaining in a world where I am utterly useless? What good can my existence bring to anyone? … But wait, wait! What's this? Tears? How long it is since they flowed! How is this, seeing that an arid melancholy has held me for so long in its grip? How good it feels - and sorrowful. Sad but kindly tears! What a strange emotion! Sad but blessed. It is not good for one to be sad, and yet how pleasant it is - a strange state…”

Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849) Polish composer

Stuttgart. After 8th September 1831.
Source: "Selected Correspondence Of Fryderyk Chopin"; http://archive.org/stream/selectedcorrespo002644mbp/selectedcorrespo002644mbp_djvu.txt

Christopher Paolini photo

“Do I look dead to you?!”

Eragon

Ken Robinson photo

“What you do for yourself dies with you when you leave this world, what you do for others lives on forever.”

Ken Robinson (1950) UK writer

Source: The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything

Martin Luther photo

“Here I stand; I can do no otherwise. God help me. Amen!”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

As reported in Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895) by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 186; and in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Variant: Here I stand; I can do no other.
Source: Martin Luther's Ninety-Five Theses

Charles Baudelaire photo

“Do not look for my heart any more; the beasts have eaten it.”

Ne cherchez plus mon cœur; des monstres l’ont mangé.
"Causerie" [Conversation] http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Les_Fleurs_du_mal/1857/Causerie
Les fleurs du mal (Flowers of Evil) (1857)
Source: Les Fleurs du Mal

Suzanne Collins photo
Tyler Perry photo
Swami Vivekananda photo
Steven Spielberg photo

“The love we do not show here on Earth is the only thing that hurts us in the after-life.”

Steven Spielberg (1946) American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur
Eckhart Tolle photo
Elliott Erwitt photo
Gabriel García Márquez photo
Nancy Mitford photo
John Cage photo

“I am trying to be unfamiliar with what I'm doing.”

John Cage (1912–1992) American avant-garde composer
Stephen King photo
Galileo Galilei photo

“The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.”

Loose paraphrase of Salviati on Day 3 http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/galileo/dialogue3.html: "For when the sun draws up some vapors here, or warms a plant there, it draws these and warms this as if it had nothing else to do. Even in ripening a bunch of grapes, or perhaps just a single grape, it applies itself so effectively that it could not do more even if the goal of all its affairs were just the ripening of this one grape."
Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632)

Chinua Achebe photo
Anne Frank photo
Tamora Pierce photo
David Foster Wallace photo
Diana Gabaldon photo
Ludwig von Mises photo

“The masses do not like those who surpass them in any regard. The average man envies and hates those who are different.”

Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973) austrian economist

Source: The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science

George Orwell photo
Lewis Carroll photo

“One of the deep secrets of life is that all that is really worth the doing is what we do for others.”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

This is a paraphrase of statement in a thank you note from Carroll to a childhood friend, the actress Ellen Terry, published in Ellen Terry, Player in Her Time (1997), p. 126 https://books.google.com/books?id=2PkzZ9KaRlwC&lpg=PA126&vq=%22do%20for%20others%22&pg=PA126#v=snippet&q=%22do%20for%20others%22&f=fals by Nina Auerbach: "... and so you have found out that secret — one of the deep secrets of Life — that all, that is really worth the doing, is what we do for others?"
Disputed

Henry Rollins photo
Bob Dylan photo
Richard Adams photo
Paramahansa Yogananda photo
Ervin László photo
Martin Luther photo
Rollo May photo

“Now it is no longer a matter of deciding what to do, but of deciding how to decide.”

Source: Love and Will (1969), Ch. 1 : Introduction : Our Schizoid World, p. 15

Michael Phelps photo

“Records are always made to be broken no matter what they are. Anybody can do anything that they set their mind to.”

Michael Phelps (1985) American swimmer

Upon winning his eighth straight Gold medal and having set his eighth straight Olympic record, as well as his seventh world record, in his eight events in the 2008 Olympic Games, 17 August 2008. (Source: [Phelps wins historic eighth gold medal, CNN, http://edition.cnn.com/2008/SPORT/08/17/phelps.history.eight.golds/])

Yanni photo

“You do good work for a long-enough time, I believed, and you'd get noticed.”

Yanni (1954) Greek pianist, keyboardist, composer, and music producer

Yanni in Words. Miramax Books. Co-author David Rensin

Martin Luther photo
Martin Luther photo
Ai Weiwei photo

“I have no sense of why I lost my freedom and if you do not know how you lost something, how can you protect it?”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2010-, Living in Fear Is Worse Than Imprisonment, 2012

Ben Shapiro photo
Rumi photo

“Do not grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.”

Rumi (1207–1273) Iranian poet

"Unmarked boxes" /Ode#1937
Disputed, The Essential Rumi (1995)

Ludwig von Mises photo
V. V. Giri photo

“I am conscious of my shortcomings, but I have always tried as an honest worker to a do a job to the best of my ability and judgment.”

V. V. Giri (1894–1980) Indian politician and 4th president of India

In:P.83
Presidents of India, 1950-2003

Joseph Louis Lagrange photo
Socrates photo
Karel Čapek photo
Richard Feynman photo
Thales photo

“Avoid doing what you would blame others for doing.”

Thales (-624–-547 BC) ancient Greek philosopher and mathematician

As quoted in Diogenes Laërtius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, I, 36
Cf. Golden Rule

Louisa May Alcott photo
Joseph Goebbels photo

“Every age that has historical status is governed by aristocracies.
Aristocracy with the meaning - the best are ruling.
Peoples do never govern themselves. That lunacy was concocted by liberalism. Behind its "people's sovereignty" the slyest cheaters are hiding, who don't want to be recognized.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Jedes Zeitalter wird, wenn es historischen Rang hat, von Aristokratien gestaltet.
Aristokratie = die Besten herrschen.
Niemals regieren Völker sich selbst. Diesen Wahnsinn hat der Liberalismus erfunden. Hinter seiner Volkssouveränität verstecken sich nur die gerissensten Schelme, die nicht erkannt sein wollen.
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn photo
Jordan Peterson photo

“I'm tired of trying to do something worthwhile for the human race, they simply don't want to change!”

August Dvorak (1894–1975) American scientist

Discovery Magazine, 1997 http://discovermagazine.com/1997/apr/thecurseofqwerty1099/

Amos (prophet) photo
Muhammad photo

“If a person abandons his prayer such that he neither desires its rewards nor fears its chastisement, for such a person I do not care if he dies a Jew, a Christian or a Magian.”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Biharul Anwar, Volume 82, Page 202
Shi'ite Hadith

Ben Shapiro photo
Joanna MacGregor photo
Neil Peart photo
Reinhard Heydrich photo
Ibn Khaldun photo
Ludwig von Mises photo
Sheikh Mujibur Rahman photo
Karel Čapek photo
Albert Bandura photo

“If self-efficacy is lacking, people tend to behave ineffectually, even though they know what to do.”

[Albert Bandura, 1982, Self-efficacy mechanism in human agency, American Psychologist, 37, 2, 122-147, 10.1037/0003-066X.37.2.122, 0003-066X] (p. 127)

Dante Alighieri photo

“You dull your own perceptions
with false imaginings and do not grasp
what would be clear but for your preconceptions.”

Canto I, lines 88–90 (tr. Ciardi).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Paradiso

C. Rajagopalachari photo

“Do not demand love. Begin to love. You will be loved. It is the law and no statute can alter it. If we do not follow the law, and let the law die with the teacher, we shall become accomplices to the murderer. But if follow the law with our hearts, [Bapu] will live with us and through us.”

C. Rajagopalachari (1878–1972) Political leader

Rajagopalachari (12 February 1949), quoted in [Rajmohan Gandhi, Rajaji: A Life, http://books.google.com/books?id=JjPHeRd7_UYC&pg=PA475, 1997, Penguin Books India, 978-0-14-026967-3, 286]
Spoken by C.R when Mahatma Gandhi (Bapu) was assassinated.

Emil M. Cioran photo
Jack Ma photo

“The problem is the fake products today are of better quality and better price than the real names … They are exactly the same factories, exactly the same raw materials but they do not use the names.”

Jack Ma (1964) Chinese businessman

Responding to the accusation that Alibaba sells fake merchandise. "Jack Ma Says Fakes 'Better Quality and Better Price Than the Real Names'” http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2016/06/15/jack-ma-says-fakes-better-quality-and-better-price-than-the-real-names/, CHINA REAL TIME REPORT, The Wall Street Journal (June 15, 2016)

Kid Cudi photo

“I know it's easy to imagine but its easier to just "do"
If you can't "do" what you imagine
then what is imagination to you?”

Kid Cudi (1984) American rapper, singer, songwriter, guitarist and actor from Ohio

-Enter Galactic
Music

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn photo

“We shall be told: what can literature possibly do against the ruthless onslaught of open violence? But let us not forget that violence does not live alone and is not capable of living alone: it is necessarily interwoven with falsehood. Between them lies the most intimate, the deepest of natural bonds. Violence finds its only refuge in falsehood, falsehood its only support in violence. Any man who has once acclaimed violence as his METHOD must inexorably choose falsehood as his PRINCIPLE.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Variant translation: Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence. Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle.
As quoted in Solzhenitsyn: A Documentary Record (1974) edited by Leopold Labedz
Nobel lecture (1970)
Context: We shall be told: what can literature possibly do against the ruthless onslaught of open violence? But let us not forget that violence does not live alone and is not capable of living alone: it is necessarily interwoven with falsehood. Between them lies the most intimate, the deepest of natural bonds. Violence finds its only refuge in falsehood, falsehood its only support in violence. Any man who has once acclaimed violence as his METHOD must inexorably choose falsehood as his PRINCIPLE. At its birth violence acts openly and even with pride. But no sooner does it become strong, firmly established, than it senses the rarefaction of the air around it and it cannot continue to exist without descending into a fog of lies, clothing them in sweet talk. It does not always, not necessarily, openly throttle the throat, more often it demands from its subjects only an oath of allegiance to falsehood, only complicity in falsehood.

Shahrukh Khan photo
Martin Luther photo
Benjamin W. Lee photo
Kurt Cobain photo

“I need an easy friend
I do, with an ear to lend.”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

About a Girl.
Song lyrics, Bleach (1989)

Zoran Đinđić photo
Shahrukh Khan photo

“My films do well only because they are good, not because of me.”

Shahrukh Khan (1965) Indian actor, producer and television personality

From interview with Komal Nahta

Solomon photo
Yasser Arafat photo

“Today I come bearing an olive branch in one hand, and the freedom fighter's gun in the other. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand. I repeat, do not let the olive branch fall from my hand.”

Yasser Arafat (1929–2004) former Palestinian President, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

1970s, Speech to UN General Assembly (1974)

George Orwell photo