
“I would rather hire a man with enthusiasm, than a man who knows everything.”
As quoted in Classic Wisdom for the Professional Life (2010) by Bryan Curtis, p. 75
A collection of quotes on the topic of enthusiasm, people, life, likeness.
“I would rather hire a man with enthusiasm, than a man who knows everything.”
As quoted in Classic Wisdom for the Professional Life (2010) by Bryan Curtis, p. 75
Variant: Put yourself into life and never lose your openness, your childish enthusiasm throughout the journey that is life, and things will come your way.
“You can't expect the fatted calf to share the enthusiasm of the angels over the prodigal's return.”
"Reginald on the Academy"
Reginald (1904)
The Satanic Bible (1969)
“You can succeed at almost anything for which you have unbridled enthusiasm.”
“Enthusiasm is the most important thing in life.”
“You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.”
New York World-Telegram and Sun (1961)
Source: The Voices of Marrakesh: A Record of a Visit
Source: How to Stop Worrying and Start Living
“Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.”
Source: The Wealth of Nations
Source: The Limits of State Action (1792), Ch. 16
The White Blot
The Ruling Passion http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext97/rlpsn10.txt (1901)
Boisgeloup, 1935
As quoted in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008
Quotes, 1930's, "Conversations avec Picasso," 1934–35
“Enthusiasm does not always speak for those who arouse it, but always for those who experience it.”
Source: Aphorisms (1880/1893), p. 76.
Ralph Waldo Emerson in "Goethe; or, the Writer" writes of this passage, and quotes a slightly different translation: The ardent and holy Novalis characterized the book as "thoroughly modern and prosaic; the romantic is completely levelled in it; so is the poetry of nature; the wonderful. The book treats only of the ordinary affairs of men: it is a poeticized civic and domestic story. The wonderful in it is expressly treated as fiction and enthusiastic dreaming:" — and yet, what is also characteristic, Novalis soon returned to this book, and it remained his favorite reading to the end of his life.
Novalis (1829)
Source: Referring to Frederick Temple, letter to Queen Victoria (4 November 1868), cited in The Letters of Queen Victoria, 2nd series) (1926), ed. George Earle Buckle, p. 550.
“Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm.”
Isaac D'Israeli, The Curiosities of Literature, "Solitude".
Misattributed, Isaac D'Israeli
1910s, Citizenship in a Republic (1910)
“An understanding of beauty and enthusiasm for it are one and the same.”
Verständnis des Schönen und Begeisterung für das Schöne sind Eins.
Source: Aphorisms (1880/1893), p. 31.
“Enthusiasm for a cause sometimes warps judgment.”
Quoted in David G. Plotkin (1955), Dictionary of American Maxims.
Attributed
Source: Econometrics, 1951, p. 3; Cited in: Economia e finanças: anais do Instituto superior de ciências económicas e financeiras. (1953), p. 463
Global Ideas from Pluto's Challenger (May 21, 2009)
Context: The best educators are the ones that inspire their students. That inspiration comes from a passion that teachers have for the subject they're teaching. Most commonly, that person spent their lives studying that subject, and they bring an infectious enthusiasm to the audience.I think many people have that enthusiasm, but they are prevented from being teachers because they didn't go through the teacher mill. Now you have teachers who have been through the teacher mill, yet they have no capacity to inspire anyone at all. It's the inspired student that continues to learn on their own. That's what separates the real achievers in the world from those who pedal along, finishing assignments.
On German fascism, in "An Appeal to Reason" ["Deutsche Ansprache. Ein Appell an die Vernunft"] in Berliner Tageblatt (18 October 1930); as translated by Helen T. Lowe-Porter in Order of the Day, Political Essays and Speeches of Two Decades (1942), p. 57
Context: This fantastic state of mind, of a humanity that has outrun its ideas, is matched by a political scene in the grotesque style, with Salvation Army methods, hallelujahs and bell-ringing and dervishlike repetition of monotonous catchwords, until everybody foams at the mouth. Fanaticism turns into a means of salvation, enthusiasm into epileptic ecstasy, politics becomes an opiate for the masses, a proletarian eschatology; and reason veils her face.
Victor Frankenstein in Ch. 4
Frankenstein (1818)
Context: No one can conceive the variety of feelings which bore me onwards, like a hurricane, in the first enthusiasm of success. Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world. A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs.
Lecture at Yale University, "Chemical Achievement and Hope for the Future." (October 1947) Published in Science in Progress. Sixth Series. Ed. George A. Baitsell. 100-21, (1949).
1940s-1960s
Context: Science cannot be stopped. Man will gather knowledge no matter what the consequences – and we cannot predict what they will be. Science will go on — whether we are pessimistic, or are optimistic, as I am. I know that great, interesting, and valuable discoveries can be made and will be made… But I know also that still more interesting discoveries will be made that I have not the imagination to describe — and I am awaiting them, full of curiosity and enthusiasm.
“Enthusiasm is everything. It must be taut and vibrating like a guitar string.”
“Enthusiasm makes up for a host of deficiencies.”
“Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.”
Source: Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential
“… love is a skill, not just an enthusiasm.”
Source: The Course of Love
Variant: The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm.
“He was contemplation and enthusiasm. Ambition and strong coffee.”
Variant: He was contemplation and enthusiasm. Ambition and strong coffee. I could have looked at him forever.
Source: We Were Liars
“I don't know what I'm doing, but my incompetence has never stopped my enthusiasm.”
Variant: I have no idea what I am doing but incompetence has never prevented me from plunging in with enthusiasm.
“I prefer the folly of enthusiasm to the wisdom of indifference.”
J'ai toujours préféré la folie des passions à la sagesse de l'indifférence.
Pt. II, ch. 4
The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard (1881)
Variant: I prefer the errors of enthusiasm to the wisdom of indifference.
“Spring work is going on with joyful enthusiasm.”
Source: The Wilderness World of John Muir
“Enthusiasm spells the difference between mediocrity and accomplishment.”
“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.”
1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Circles
“Not a visible enthusiasm but a hidden one, an excitement burning with a cold flame.”
Source: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
As quoted in A Joke, a Quote, & the Word : Feed Your Body, Soul and Spirit (2006) by Ronald P. Keeven, p. 147
“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm”
Attribution debunked in Langworth's Churchill by Himself. The earliest close match located by the Quote Investigator is from the 1953 book How to Say a Few Words by David Guy Powers.
Misattributed
Variant: Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.
Source: 1953, How to Say a Few Words by David Guy Powers, Quote p. 109, Doubleday & Company, Garden City, New York. Referenced by Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/06/28/success
Source: The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
“What color is in a picture, enthusiasm is in life.”
Source: Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life
Carl Sagan, author interview
PT Staff
Psychology Today
1996
January
01
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/199601/carl-sagan?page=3
Source: The Economics of Welfare (1920), Ch. 1 : Welfare and Economic Welfare, § 1
[On the Trail of the Assassins (New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1988)]
“Never mistake the enthusiasm of the minority for the support of the majority.”
Harriet Harman, " A Woman's Work https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ogtGDQAAQBAJ&pg=PT75&lpg=PT75&dq=neil+kinnock+%22never+mistake+the+enthusiasm+of+the+minority+for+the+support+of+the+majority%22&source=bl&ots=OpoPF2iMuC&sig=uVo7pu8ZjOjHVdXaVvDKeo4Lt94&hl=en&sa=X&sqi=2&ved=0ahUKEwj5veCHxbLSAhXlIcAKHTZIBU0Q6AEIGjAA#v=onepage&q=neil%20kinnock%20%22never%20mistake%20the%20enthusiasm%20of%20the%20minority%20for%20the%20support%20of%20the%20majority%22&f=false" (Penguin Books, 2017).
Letter to John Adams (1 August 1816)
1810s
Peter Howard, "Men on Trial" (Blandford Press, 1945), p. 37-8
Speech in December 1944
Trump responding to a reporter's question about rising anti-Semitic incidents and a perception of xenophobia in his administration, during a joint press conference with Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmfseeZt5fA (15 February 2017)
2010s, 2017, February
“Nothing is better than a justified enthusiasm.”
As quoted in "What Does the Military Think of Donald Trump?" https://www.yahoo.com/news/does-military-think-donald-trump-204408128.html (15 June 2016), Time
2016
Another part of the interview: Also cited at: Mark Wunsch. "[http://markwunsch.com/blog/2008/09/27/design-q-a-with-charles-eames.html A software engineer and technologist: Design Q&A with Charles Eames". at markwunsch.com/blog, 2008/09/27
Design Q & A with Charles Eames, 1972
Collected Works, Vol. 18, pp. 163–169.
Collected Works
Source: 1880s, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (1885), p. 296
Source: Christianizing the Social Order (1912), p. 103
The Chicago Guide to Communicating Science, second edition, University of Chicago press, 2017, page 302 ISBN 978-0-226-14450-4.
Source: Hayek's Challenge: An Intellectual Biography of F. A. Hayek (2004), Ch. 14 : Journey’s End—Hayek’s Multiple Legacies
Source: Light (2002), Chapter 17 “The Lost Entradas” (p. 181)
Nobel autobiography (1975)
“Speeches made to the people are essential to the arousing of enthusiasm for a war.”
As quoted in Talks with Mussolini, Emil Ludwig, Boston, MA, Little, Brown and Company (1933). Mussolini’s interview was in 1932.
1930s
Book VI, Note V, p. 86
Les confidences (1849)
An account of the European Settlements in America (1757), pp. 19-20, in The Works of Edmund Burke in Nine Volumes, Vol. IX. Boston: Little, Brown (1839)
1750s
2015, Why do people believe myths about the Confederacy? Because our textbooks and monuments are wrong (2015)
Paul R. Lawrence and Nitin Nohria, Driven: How Human Nature Shapes Our Choices, 2002