Quotes about doing
page 5

Source: Leaves of Grass

“I remember the time an older man asked me when I was young, "Do you know what you are doing now?" I thought it was some kind of trick question.
Tell me," I said.
You are building your memories," he replied, "so make them good ones.”

Ravi Zacharias (1946) Indian philosopher

Question, Memory, Time

“There was no need to do any housework at all. After four years the dirt doesn’t get any worse.”

Quentin Crisp book The Naked Civil Servant

Source: The Naked Civil Servant (1968), Ch. 15

“If you don't read the newspaper, you are uninformed. If you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

No known source in Twain's works. The earliest known source is a Usenet post from November 2000 https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=israel.francophones/j_b0peHVcJw/YN5cG6Pdk6QJ. Disputed

Reading

“I tell you, commander, it's true that some of the most terrible things in the world are done by people who think, genuinely think, that they're doing it for the best, especially if there is some god involved.”

Terry Pratchett book Snuff

Source: Snuff

God, People, World, Thinking

“Normal people do not create art.”

Irving Stone book Lust for Life

Source: Lust for Life

People, Art

“She heard him mutter, 'Can you take away this grief?'
'I'm sorry,' she replied. 'Everyone asks me. And I would not do so even if I knew how. It belongs to you. Only time and tears take away grief; that is what they are for.”

Terry Pratchett book I Shall Wear Midnight

Source: I Shall Wear Midnight

Tear, Time

“The capacity to give one's attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle. Nearly all those who think they have this capacity do not possess it. Warmth of heart, impulsiveness, pity are not enough.”

Simone Weil book Waiting for God

Waiting on God (1950), Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God
Source: Waiting for God

Thinking, Suffering, Heart

“Tell me, is the rose naked
or is that her only dress?

Why do trees conceal
the splendor of their roots?

Who hears the regrets
of the thieving automobile?

Is there anything in the world sadder
than a train standing in the rain?”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Source: The Book of Questions

World, Tree, Training

“The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naïve forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.”

Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian psychiatrist

"Personal Conduct" http://books.google.com/books?id=IYOcAQAAQBAJ&q=%22The+stupid+neither+forgive+nor+forget+the+na%C3%AFve+forgive+and+forget+the+wise+forgive+but+do+not+forget%22&pg=PA177#v=onepage, p. 51. http://openlibrary.org/works/OL15151528W/The_Second_Sin The Second Sin (1973)

Wise, Life, Stupidity, Forgiveness

“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Dream Work (1986)
Source: "Wild Geese"

Beauty, Love, Animals

“Don't let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.”

John Wooden (1910–2010) American basketball coach

Variant: Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.

Motivational, Success, Leadership

“Do not think that one has to be sad in order to be militant, even though the thing one is fighting is abominable.”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

Source: Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia

Sadness, Thinking, Fight

“The very best thing you can do for the whole world is to make the most of yourself.”

Wallace D. Wattles (1860–1911) American writer

World, Motivational

“I'm retiring because there are more pleasant things to do than beat up people.”

Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) African American boxer, philanthropist and activist

As quoted in Secrets of Power Persuasion for Salespeople (2003) by Roger Dawson , p. 192

People

“I'm tired of living unable to love anyone. I don't have a single friend - not one. And, worst of all, I can't even love myself. Why is that? Why can't I love myself? It's because I can't love anyone else. A person learns how to love himself through the simple acts of loving and being loved by someone else. Do you understand what I am saying? A person who is incapable of loving another cannot properly love himself.”

Haruki Murakami book 1Q84

Source: 1Q84 (2009-2010)

Love, Understanding, Learning, Personality

“Dogs are better than human beings because they know but do not tell.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Dogs

“Why do people have to be this lonely? What's the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?”

Haruki Murakami book Sputnik Sweetheart

Source: Sputnik Sweetheart

Sad, People, World, Loneliness

“Do you not see the Madonna always beside the tabernacle?”

Padre Pio (1887–1968) Italian saint, priest, stigmatist and mystic

“I would never do anything just for spite.”

Justin Timberlake (1981) American singer and actor

“Those who know, do. Those that understand, teach.”

Aristotle (-384–-321 BC) Classical Greek philosopher, student of Plato and founder of Western philosophy

This and many similar quotes with the same general meaning are misattributed to Aristotle as a result of Twitter attribution decay. The original source of the quote remains anonymous. The oldest reference resides in the works of George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman (1903): "Maxims for Revolutionists", where he claims that “He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.”. However, the related quote, "Those who can, do. Those who understand, teach" likely originates from Lee Shulman in his explanation of Aristotlean views on professional mastery: Source: Shulman, L. S. (1986). Those who understand: Knowledge growth in teaching. Educational Researcher, 15(2), 4 - 14. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1175860
Misattributed
Variant: Those who can, do, those who cannot, teach.

Teachers' Day, Understanding

“You can't make your kids do anything. All you can do is make them wish they had. And then, they will make you wish you hadn't made them wish they had.”

Marshall B. Rosenberg (1934–2015) American psychologist

“Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

As quoted in The Federal Career Service: A Look Ahead (1954)
1950s
Variant: Now I think, speaking roughly, by leadership we mean the art of getting someone else to do something that you want done because he wants to do it.

For Team, Leadership, Business, Art

“To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be place under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality."
General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century, translated by John Beverly Robinson (London: Freedom Press, 1923), pp. 293-294.”

Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) French politician, mutualist philosopher, economist, and socialist

Wisdom, Justice, Law, Idea

“I am doing things that are true to me. The only thing I have a problem with is being labeled.”

Johnny Depp (1963) American actor, film producer, and musician

Problem

“The first thing a man will do for his ideal is lie”

Joseph Alois Schumpeter (1883–1950) Austrian economist

Source: History of Economic Analysis, p. 43

Lie

“The victim should have the right to end his life, if he wants. But I think it would be a great mistake. However bad life may seem, there is always something you can do, and succeed at. While there's life, there is hope.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

On voluntary euthanasia as quoted in People's Daily Online (14 June 2006) http://english.people.com.cn/200606/14/eng20060614_273839.html

Life, Hope, Thinking

“With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion.”

Steven Weinberg (1933) American theoretical physicist

People, Religion, Evil

“Sun, and sky, and breeze, and solitary walks, and summer holidays, and the greenness of fields, and the delicious juices of meats and fishes, and society, and the cheerful glass, and candle-light, and fire-side conversations, and innocent vanities, and irony itself-- do these things go out with life? Can a ghost laugh, or shake his gaunt sides, when you are pleasant with him?”

Charles Lamb (1775–1834) English essayist

Life, Fish, Light, Sun

“Dignity and love do not blend well, nor do they continue long together.”

Ovid (-43–17 BC) Roman poet

Love

“There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.”

Jane Austen book Northanger Abbey

Source: Northanger Abbey

love, Friendship, Relationship, Romantic

“You are what you do, not what you say you'll do.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

“Political reform need not go hand in hand with economic liberalisation. I do not believe that if you are libertarian, full of diverse opinions, full of competing ideas in the market place, full of sound and fury, therefore you will succeed.”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, Straits Times, Aug 17, 2004
2000s

Idea

“Every once in a while she'll get worked up and cry like that. But that's ok. She's letting her feelings out. The scary thing is not being able to do that. Then your feelings build up and harden and die inside. That's when you're in big trouble.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

Feeling, Cry

“Don't tell me what I'm doing; I don't want to know.”

Federico Fellini (1920–1993) Italian filmmaker

“There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.”

Booker T. Washington (1856–1915) African-American educator, author, orator, and advisor

Source: 1910s, My Larger Education, Being Chapters from My Experience (1911), Ch. V: The Intellectuals and the Boston Mob (pg. 118)

People, Business, Learning

“The first question I ask myself when something doesn't seem to be beautiful is why do I think it's not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason.”

John Cage (1912–1992) American avant-garde composer

Beauty, Question, Thinking

“When I see someone who just follows their dream and succeeds, and just does basically what they want to do and doesn't have to answer to anyone, obviously not harming anyone, that's great.”

Johnny Depp (1963) American actor, film producer, and musician

Dreams

“Your soul doesn't care what you do for a living - and when your life is over, neither will you. Your soul cares only about what you are being while you are doing whatever you are doing.”

Neale Donald Walsch (1943) American writer

Life, Soul

“I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

Attributed in Civilization's Quotations : Life's Ideal (2002) by Richard Alan Krieger, p. 132, and many places on the internet, this was actually stated by Vincent van Gogh in a letter to Anthon van Rappard http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthon_van_Rappard (18 August 1885) http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let528/letter.html, also rendered "I keep on making what I can’t do yet in order to learn to be able to do it." Misattributed Variant: I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.

Learning

“I think the thing to do is to enjoy the ride while you're on it.”

Johnny Depp (1963) American actor, film producer, and musician

Thinking

“Do what you have to do, to do what you want to do.”

Denzel Washington (1954) actor, screenwriter, director, producer

Variant: Do what you gotta do so you can do what you wanna do.

Motivational, Hope, Positive

“I confess I do not know why, but looking at the stars always makes me dream.”

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

Dreams, Star

“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Deep, Inspirational, Leadership, Life

“Never do anything yourself that others can do for you.”

Agatha Christie book The Labours of Hercules

Source: The Labours of Hercules

“Whatever happiness and peace that one knows in one's life is generally so fragile that it is always subservient to the external situation. So most of your lives go in trying to manage a perfect external situation which is just impossible to do. No human being is ever capable of creating a perfect external situation because the outside situation will never be hundred percent in your control, no matter how powerful a human being you are. So yoga focuses on the inner situation. If you can create a perfect inward situation, no matter what the external situation, you can be in perfect bliss and peace.”

Sadhguru (1957) Yogi, mystic, visionary and humanitarian

Source: Himalayan Lust

Life, Peace, Perfection, Happiness

“Have courage and do not fear the assaults of the Devil. Remember this forever; it is a healthy sign if the devil shouts and roars around your conscience, since this shows that he is not inside your will.”

Padre Pio (1887–1968) Italian saint, priest, stigmatist and mystic

Fear, Courage

“I just hope I don't become so blissful I become boring. I think I'll always be neurotic enough to do something weird.”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

Hope, Thinking

“"What do you do from morning to night?" "I endure myself."”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
Source: The Trouble with Being Born

Night

“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”

Henry Ford (1863–1947) American industrialist

Depressing, Business

“Once, Picasso was asked what his paintings meant. He said, “Do you ever know what the birds are singing? You don’t. But you listen to them anyway.” So, sometimes with art, it is important
just to look.”

Marina Abramović (1946) Yugoslav-American artist

Art, Bird, Singing, Painting

“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”

- Chinese proverb”

Alvin Toffler (1928–2016) American writer

Understanding, Forgetting

“I've got so much work to do today, I'd better spend two hours in prayer instead of one.”

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

Variant: I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer.

“Son, are you happy?
I don't mean to pry,
but do you dream of Heaven?
Have you ever wanted to die?”

Tim Burton (1958) American filmmaker

Source: The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories

Dreams, Happiness

“Not responding is a response - we are equally responsible for what we don't do.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Eating Animals

Source: Eating Animals

“To find fault is easy; to do better may be difficult.”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

“Beauty has no obvious use; nor is there any clear cultural necessity for it. Yet civilization could not do without it.”

Sigmund Freud book Civilization and Its Discontents

Source: 1920s, Civilization and Its Discontents (1929), Ch. 2, as translated by James Strachey, p.62

Beauty

“We are all alone, born alone, die alone, and—in spite of True Romance magazines—we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way. I do not say lonely—at least, not all the time—but essentially, and finally, alone. This is what makes your self-respect so important, and I don't see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

Source: The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967

Way, Time, Heart, Happiness

“Fingerprints are like values--you leave them all over everything you do”

Elvis Presley (1935–1977) American singer and actor

Variant: Values are like fingerprints. Nobody's are the same, but you leave 'em all over everything you do

“We all do better when we work together. Our differences do matter, but our common humanity matters more.”

Bill Clinton (1946) 42nd President of the United States

“Life is simple. Everything happens for you, not to you. Everything happens at exactly the right moment, neither too soon nor too late. You don't have to like it… it's just easier if you do.”

Byron Katie (1942) American spiritual writer

Inspirational, Life

“Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is an act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets, and cannons, all of which are highly authoritarian means. And the victorious party must maintain its rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionaries. Would the Paris Commune have lasted more than a day if it had not used the authority of the armed people against the bourgeoisie? Cannot we, on the contrary, blame it for having made too little use of that authority? Therefore, one of two things: either that anti-authoritarians don’t know what they are talking about, in which case they are creating nothing but confusion. Or they do know, and in that case they are betraying the cause of the proletariat. In either case they serve only reaction.8 This”

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher

Source: On Authority, see https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm

People, Communication, Victory, Parting

“there are worse things
than being alone
but it often takes
decades to realize this
and most often when you do
it's too late
and there's nothing worse
than too late”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

“I've got a stele we can use. Who wants to do me?"
"A regrettable choice of words," muttered Magnus.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

“Writing is like sex. First you do it for love, then you do it for your friends, and then you do it for money.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

The Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/tag/virginia-woolf/ traces the origin of such statements to The Intimate Notebooks of George Jean Nathan (1932), where the diarist states: We were sitting one morning two Summers ago, Ferenc Molnár, Dr. Rudolf Kommer and I, in the little garden of a coffee-house in the Austrian Tyrol. “Your writing?” we asked him. “How do you regard it?” Languidly he readjusted the inevitable monocle to his eye. “Like a whore,” he blandly ventured. “First, I did it for my own pleasure. Then I did it for the pleasure of my friends. And now — I do it for money.” Misattributed

Love, Money, Sex

“Every revolutionary idea seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases: (1) It's completely impossible. (2) It's possible, but it's not worth doing. (3) I said it was a good idea all along.”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

Idea

“Your calling isn’t something that somebody can tell you about. It’s what you feel. It is the thing that gives you juice. The thing that you are supposed to do. And nobody can tell you what that is. You know it inside yourself.”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

Feeling

“It is not fair to ask of others what you are unwilling to do yourself.”

Eleanor Roosevelt My Day

http://books.google.com/books?id=EcKZ8bbMLDMC&q=%22It+is+not+fair+to+ask+of+others+what+you+are+not+willing+to+do+yourself%22&pg=PA64#v=onepage
http://www.gwu.edu/~erpapers/myday/displaydoc.cfm?_y=1946&_f=md000366
15 June 1946
My Day (1935–1962)

“You're responsible for yourself. You messed up your life, and it's up to you to fix it. No one else is going to do it for you -- for any of you.”

Louis Sachar book Holes

Source: Holes

Life

“Good is never accomplished except at the cost of those who do it, truth never breaks through except through the sacrifice of those who spread it.”

John Henry Newman (1801–1890) English cleric and cardinal

Truth

“Life and death are of supreme importance. Time swiftly passes by and opportunity is lost. Each of us should strive to awaken. Awaken! Take heed, do not squander your life.”

Dogen (1200–1253) Japanese Zen buddhist teacher

Life, Death, Time

“All I’m trying to do is survive and make good out of the dirty, nasty, unbelievable lifestyle that they gave me.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

“Whatever is destined not to happen will not happen, try as you may. Whatever is destined to happen will happen, do what you may to prevent it. This is certain. The best course, therefore, is to remain silent.”

Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950) Indian religious leader

“Evil will win if good people do nothing.”

P. C. Cast book Hunted

Source: Hunted

People, Evil

“You love the beauty that you can see and touch and handle, the beauty that you can destroy, and do destroy, but of the unseen beauty of life, of the unseen beauty of a higher life, you know nothing.”

Oscar Wilde A Woman of No Importance

Source: A Woman of No Importance

Love, Life, Beauty

“In terms of experience, we want to make this (referring to the self) very pleasant. We want this to be blissful, ecstatic. But, as I said before, even being ecstatic is not goal by itself. If you are blissful by your own nature, then the important thing is that you are no more the issue. There are other issues in this existence; we can look at those. But if you are an issue, what other issue will you take in your hands? You will not touch anything. When I am enough trouble myself, why do I want to take on this one or that one? When I am no more an issue, now I am willing to dig into the whole existence and see what it is all about.”

Sadhguru (1957) Yogi, mystic, visionary and humanitarian

Source: Of Mystics & Mistakes

Nature

“Rules for happiness: something to do, someone to love, something to hope for.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Love, Hope, Happiness

“To Stay Focused in Life:

You can't know everyone
You can't do everything
You can't go everywhere

We have to pick and choose between good and a little bit better.”

John C. Maxwell (1947) American author, speaker and pastor

Life

“The most important thing you do in your life is to die.”

Timothy Leary (1920–1996) American psychologist

Life

“But knowing what I don’t want to do doesn’t help me figure out what I do want to do. I could do just about anything if somebody made me. But I don’t have an image of the one thing I really want to do. That’s my problem now. I can’t find the image.”

Haruki Murakami book The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Source: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Problem, Help

“You can conquer almost any fear if you will only make up your mind to do so. For remember, fear doesn't exist anywhere except in the mind.”

Dale Carnegie (1888–1955) American writer and lecturer

Fear

“Do you know what it’s like to like someone so much you can’t stand it and know that they’ll never feel the same way?”

Jenny Han book To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Source: To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Way, Feeling

“If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is.”

John Von Neumann (1903–1957) Hungarian-American mathematician and polymath

Remark made by von Neumann as keynote speaker at the first national meeting of the Association for Computing Machinery in 1947, as mentioned by Franz L. Alt at the end of "Archaeology of computers: Reminiscences, 1945--1947", Communications of the ACM, volume 15, issue 7, July 1972, special issue: Twenty-fifth anniversary of the Association for Computing Machinery, p. 694.

Life, People, Mathematics

“The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me. The last of one’s freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstance.”

Viktor E. Frankl (1905–1997) Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor

Way, Freedom

“Failure is a reality; we all fail at times, and it's painful when we do. But it's better to fail while striving for something wonderful, challenging, adventurous, and uncertain than to say, " I don't want to try because I may not succeed completely.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Source: Sources of Strength: Meditations on Scripture for a Living Faith

Pain, Failure, Reality, Time

“Each day is God's gift to you. What you do with it is your gift to Him.”

T.D. Jakes (1957) American bishop

Source: Maximize the Moment: God's Action Plan For Your Life

God

“I do not evolve, I AM.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

Yo no busco, yo encuentro. Quoted in Graham Sutherland, "A Trend in English Draughtsmanship", Signature, III (1936), pp. 7-13.
Disputed
Variant: I do not seek. I find.

“The greatest crimes in the world are not committed by people breaking the rules. It's people who follow orders that drop bombs and massacre villages. As a precaution to ever committing major acts of evil it is our solemn duty never to do what we're told, this is the only way we can be sure.”

Banksy pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, and painter

Source: Wall and Piece (2005)

People, World, Way, Evil