Quotes about finding
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“There is much you can learn from books and scrolls. These books are my friends, my companions. They make me laugh and cry and find meaning in life.”

Christopher Paolini book Eragon

Source: Eragon

Life, Books, Learning, Cry

“…I keep looking for one more teacher, only to find that fish learn from the water and birds learn from the sky.” (p.275)”

Mark Nepo (1951) American writer

Source: Facing the Lion, Being the Lion: Finding Inner Courage Where It Lives

Bird, Fish, Learning, Teachers

“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.”

Rachel Carson (1907–1964) American marine biologist and conservationist

Source: The Sense of Wonder (1965)
Context: Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life. Whatever the vexations or concerns of their personal lives, their thoughts can find paths that lead to inner contentment and to renewed excitement in living. Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.

Life, Beauty, Beauty, Hope

“everyone tells you what's good for you. they don't want you to find your own answers. they want you to believe theirs.”

Dan Millman (1946) American self help writer

Source: Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives

“Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus; and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs, and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves.”

William Shakespeare Julius Caesar

Source: Julius Caesar

Men, World

“He who does not travel, who does not read,
who does not listen to music,
who does not find grace in himself,
she who does not find grace in herself,
dies slowly.
He who slowly destroys his own self-esteem,
who does not allow himself to be helped”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

dies slowly… Muere lentamente quien no viaja, quien no lee, quien no oye música, quien no encuentra gracia en sí mismo. Muere lentamente quien destruye su amor propio, quien no se deja ayudar... Poem "Muere lentamente" (Dying Slowly), wrongly attributed to Pablo Neruda. See "Fake Pablo Neruda Poem Spreads on Internet" http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=325275&CategoryId=14094 by Ana Mendoza, Latin American Herald Tribune (12 January 2009). Misattributed Source: Selected Poems

Music, Travel, Reading, Help

“We do not need to go out and find love; rather, we need to be still and let love discover us.”

John O'Donohue (1956–2008) Irish writer, priest and philosopher

Source: Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

Love

“You find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life, but by realizing who you are at the deepest level.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Life, Peace, Peaceful

“We find ourselves in a bewildering world. We want to make sense of what we see around us and to ask: What is the nature of the universe? What is our place in it and where did it and we come from? Why is it the way it is?”

Stephen Hawking book A Brief History of Time

Source: A Brief History of Time

World, Way, Nature, Sense

“Those who look for the bad in people will surely find it.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

People

“When you really want love you will find it waiting for you.”

Oscar Wilde book De Profundis

Source: De Profundis

Love, Waiting

“Why should we build our happiness on the opinons of others, when we can find it in our own hearts?”

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) Genevan philosopher

Source: The Social Contract and Discourses

Happiness, Heart

“The two most important days in your life are the day you were born and the day you find out why.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

This appears on the opening placard of the film The Equalizer, attributing it to Twain, but there is no evidence that Twain wrote it. A precursor is found in Taylor Hartman's self-help book The Character Code (first published 1991), where it is not attributed to Twain: "The three most significant days in your life are: 1. The day you were born. 2. The day you find out why you were born. 3. The day you discover how to contribute the gift you were born to give" ( Google Books link https://books.google.com/books?id=gIKCxWxNmeMC&pg=PA147&dq=%22day+you+find+out+why%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwijrJzc84vLAhUJzGMKHajvADEQ6AEIIjAB#v=onepage&q=%22day%20you%20find%20out%20why%22&f=false) Disputed

Life, Motivational

“Use only that which works, and take it from any place you can find it.”

Bruce Lee book Tao of Jeet Kune Do

As quoted in Bruce Lee : Fighting Spirit (1994) by Bruce Thomas (1994), p. 44
Source: Tao of Jeet Kune Do

“To find out what is truly individual in ourselves, profound reflection is needed; and suddenly we realize how uncommonly difficult the discovery of individuality is.”

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

“Sometimes when I'm alone
I Cry,
Cause I am on my own.
The tears I cry are bitter and warm.
They flow with life but take no form
I Cry because my heart is torn.
I find it difficult to carry on.
If I had an ear to confide in,
I would cry among my treasured friend,
but who do you know that stops that long,
to help another carry on.
The world moves fast and it would rather pass by.
Then to stop and see what makes one cry,
so painful and sad.
And sometimes…
I Cry
and no one cares about why.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

Life, Pain, World, Sadness

“Books are a poor substitute for female companionship, but they are easier to find.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear

Source: The Wise Man's Fear

Books

“After all, how can a mere dragon expect to tell a man like yourself what to do? In fact, everyone should stand in awe of your brilliance of finding the only dead end.
- Saphira”

Christopher Paolini book Eragon

Source: Eragon

Dead

“I remember awakening one morning and finding everything smeared with the color of forgotten love.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire

Love, Color

“Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Variant: Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

Life, Motivational, Wise, Inspirational

“do not worry about these things. find peace in where and what you are ~saphira to eragon page 429”

Christopher Paolini book Eragon

Source: Eragon

Peace

“Yoga allows you to find a new kind of freedom that you may not have known even existed.”

B.K.S. Iyengar (1918–2014) Indian yoga teacher and scholar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p.xiv

Freedom

“And finally I twist my heart round again, so that the bad is on the outside and the good is on the inside, and keep on trying to find a way of becoming what I would so like to be, and could be, if there weren't any other people living in the world.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

People, World, Way, Heart

“I didn't think I would ever meet a noble who wasn't corrupt. Now that I have, I find that I prefer them when they're greedy bastards. (Brom to Eragon)”

Christopher Paolini book Eragon

Source: Eragon

Thinking

“The artist is a receptacle for emotions derived from anywhere: from the sky, from the earth, from a piece of paper, from a passing figure, from a spider’s web. This is a spider's web. This is why one must not make a distinction between things. For them there are no aristocratic quarterings. One must take things where one finds them.”

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

Quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 258 (translation Daphne Woodward)
1960s

“A warrior does not give up what he loves, he finds the love in what he does”

Dan Millman (1946) American self help writer

Source: Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives

Love

“My future starts when I wake up every morning. Every day I find something creative to do with my life.”

Miles Davis (1926–1991) American jazz musician

Life, Future, Good Morning

“Well, if you live long enough, you lose a lot. Just as long as you don't throw them away. Whatever you loose, you'll find again, but what you throw away you never get back.
-Oibore (Enishi's dad) to Yahiko and Misao”

Nobuhiro Watsuki (1970) Japanese manga artist

“Perhaps we are in this world to search for love, find it and lose it, again and again. With each love, we are born anew, and with each love that ends we collect a new wound. I am covered with proud scars.”

Isabel Allende (1942) Chilean writer

Love, World, Search, Relationship

“The history of thought may be summed up in these words: it is absurd by what it seeks and great by what it finds.”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

History

“At some point, you have to stop running and turn around and face whoever wants you dead. The hard thing is finding the courage to do it.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

Courage, Dead

“You probe with bayonets: if you find mush, you push. If you find steel, you withdraw”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

“When we surrender when we do not fight with life when it calls upon us we are lifted and the strength to do what needs to be done finds us.”

Oriah Mountain Dreamer (1954) Canadian author

Source: The Invitation

Life, Fight

“If you find from your own experience that something is a fact and it contradicts what some authority has written down, then you must abandon the authority and base your reasoning on your own findings.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

“The reason people find it so hard to be happy is that they always see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is, and the future less resolved than it will be.”

Marcel Pagnol (1895–1974) novelist, playwright and filmmaker from France

Variant: People see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is and the future less resolved than it’ll be.

Happiness, People, Past, Future

“To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place…I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.”

Elliott Erwitt (1928) American photographer

Art, Way

“The most beautiful clothes that can dress a woman are the arms of the man she loves. But for those who haven't had the fortune of finding this happiness, I am there.”

Yves Saint Laurent (1936–2008) fashion designer

Love, Happiness, Beauty, Clothes

“Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.”

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

La inspiración existe, pero tiene que encontrarte trabajando.
Attributed from posthumous publications
Source: Tomás R. Villasante (1994), Las ciudades hablan: identidades y movimientos sociales en seis metrópolis latinoamericanas. p. 264.

“If you look hard and long, you can find us. If you listen hard and long, you can hear any of us, call any of us that you wish.”

Tamora Pierce book Wild Magic

Source: Wild Magic

“Now I see that I will never find the light
Unless, like the candle, I am my own fuel,
Consuming myself.”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

Light

“If I have learned anything in this long life of mine, it is this: in love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are.”

Kristin Hannah book The Nightingale

Source: The Nightingale

Love, Life, War, Learning

“You know how you let yourself think that everything will be all right if you can only get to a certain place or do a certain thing. But when you get there you find it's not that simple.”

Richard Adams book Watership Down

Source: Watership Down

Thinking

“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.”

Henri Nouwen (1932–1996) Dutch priest and writer

Out of Solitude

Pain, Reality, Personality, Despair

“Evolving our consciousness is not something we do only for ourselves — it is something we do also for others… for all others, and for the Earth. Because when we open up and let our body and mind feel our ties with others and with nature, we change ourselves, and change others around us. When a sufficient number of people pray or meditate together, or find another path to evolve their consciousness, other people are affected as well. More sick people heal, divorce and suicide rates drop, crime and violence diminish. When many people open up, a powerful force develops — a leap of consciousness takes place. All the great prophets and sages of history knew this, Jesus as well as the Buddha, Mohammed as well as Zoroaster — and more recently Bahá'u'lláh the same as Sri Aurobindo, Teilhard de Chardin and the Dalai Lama.”

Ervin László (1932) Hungarian musician and philosopher

Source: You Can Change the World (2003), p. 86.

People, Feeling, History, Nature

“We may search long to find where God is, but we shall find Him in those who keep the words of Christ. For the Lord Christ saith, " If any man love me, he will keep my words; and we will make our abode with him."”

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

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 278

Love, God, Search, Christ

“A little bit goes a long way — it's true. And I sure am glad I went such a long, long way to find that out for myself.”

AnnaSophia Robb (1993) American actress, singer, and model

How I Spent My Summer Vacation (2008)

Way

“I cannot say whether I will still be doing geometry ten years from now. It also seems to me that the mine has maybe already become too deep and unless one finds new veins it might have to be abandoned. Physics and chemistry now offer a much more glowing richness and much easier exploitation. Also, the general taste has turned entirely in this direction, and it is not impossible that the place of Geometry in the Academies will someday become what the role of the Chairs of Arabic at the universities is now.”

Joseph Louis Lagrange (1736–1813) Italian mathematician and mathematical physicist

Letter to d'Alembert (1781) cited in R. Laubenbacher, D. Pengelly: Mathematical Expeditions: Chronicles by the Explorers (1999) Springer, pp. 233–234.

Universe

“When we examine the opinions of men, we find that nothing is more uncommon, than common sense; or, in other words, they lack judgment to discover plain truths, or to reject absurdities, and palpable contradictions.”

Baron d'Holbach (1723–1789) French-German author, philosopher, encyclopedist

Good Sense without God, or, Freethoughts Opposed to Supernatural Ideas (London: W. Stewart & Co., ca. 1900) ( Project Gutenberg e-text http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/gsens10.txt), preface Translator unknown. Original publication in French at Amsterdam, 1772, as Le bon sens ("Common Sense"), and often attributed to John Meslier.

Men, Truth, Sense

“I mean that it is more natural for me to be wicked than virtuous, when I do a bad act, and I've done many, I never feel wither shame, remorse or fear, I sometimes wish it was not necessary as I don't like the trouble, but as for any moral sense of principle, I haven't a particle. Many people are like me as actions prove, but they are not so frank in owning it and insist on keeping up the humbug of virtue. You'll find that is true, Rose, when you know the world better.”

Louisa May Alcott A Long Fatal Love Chase

A Long Fatal Love Chase (1866)

People, World, Fear, Feeling

“I'm standing on the bridge; I'm waiting in the dark. I thought that you'd be here by now. There's nothing but the rain, no footsteps on the ground. I'm listening, but there's no sound. Isn't anyone trying to find me? Won't somebody come take me home?”

Avril Lavigne (1984) Canadian singer-songwriter and actress

"I'm With You"
Let Go (2002)

Home, Waiting

“Harvard's motto is "Veritas." Many of you have already found out and others will find out in the course of their lives that truth eludes us if we do not concentrate with total attention on its pursuit. And even while it eludes us, the illusion still lingers of knowing it and leads to many misunderstandings. Also, truth is seldom pleasant; it is almost invariably bitter. There is some bitterness in my speech today, too. But I want to stress that it comes not from an adversary but from a friend.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Harvard University address (1978)

Truth

“If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.”

Cardinal Richelieu (1585–1642) French clergyman, noble and statesman

Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
As quoted in The Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations (1896) by Jehiel K̀eeler Hoyt, p. 763
Édouard Fournier, in L'Espirit dans l'Historie (1867), 3rd edition, Ch. 51, p. 260, disputes the traditional attribution, and suggests various agents of Richelieu might have been the actual author.
David Hackett Fischer, in Champlain's Dream (2009), Simon & Schuster, p. 704, n. 14, says it's a paraphrase of Quintilian and there is no source closer to Richelieu than Francoise Bertaut's Memoires pour servir à l'histoire d'Anne d'Autriche.
Disputed

Men

“If you look for the bad in mankind expecting to find it, you surely will.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

This is attributed to Lincoln in the 1960 film adaptation of Pollyanna. In reality, it was fabricated by screenwriter and director David Swift, who had to have thousands of lockets bearing the false inscription recalled after Disney began selling them at Disneyland.
Misattributed

“A sample limited to one profession would have yielded results of doubtful generality. To develop findings independent of the peculiar circumstances of the engineer, we needed to study a comparable group. Accountants were chosen because their jobs, like those of engineers,· are rich in technique. This richness makes it likely that the accountant, like the engineer, would have much to tell us. However, the groups are vastly different in the nature of their training, their present degree of professionalization, the kind of work they do, and, presumably, the kind of people attracted into them. Last, by covering accountants and engineers, we examined the job attitudes of two of the most important staff groups in modern industry”

Frederick Herzberg (1923–2000) American psychologist

Source: The motivation to work, 1959, p. 32

People, Nature, Study, Training

“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.

Literature, Support, Nature, Forgetting

“I often liken the process of physics research to solving a jigsaw puzzle. As we put together pieces to form patches, a certain image of the overall picture emerges, but until the game is sufficiently progressed, we are not quite sure. I feel much the same way about the wealth of signs for new particles. We have patches that have been put together, but we are not quite sure how all pieces will fit together into a coherent whole. There are also certain pieces which do not seem to fit into any patches at all. For the most part, the experimental findings have not been completely unexpected, but there have been certain surprises that I, for one, had not foreseen. This is what makes particle physics exciting and tantalizing. At moments of despair and frustration, I feel as though somebody has scrambled two boxes of jigsaw puzzles for me to put together.”

Benjamin W. Lee (1935–1977) Korean American physicist

about his work as a particle physicist, at the Fermilab History and Archives Project: Benjamin Lee comments on HEP discoveries http://history.fnal.gov/significant_staff.html#Benjamin_Lee (May, 1976).

Way, Feeling, Game, Parting

“True he was a vocal miracle
But that's only secondary
It's the soul of the monarch butterfly
That I find a little bit scary”

Joan Baez (1941) American singer

Caruso
Gulf Winds (1976)

Soul

“It is a rather unpleasant sensation to feel yourself pulled by the strings and made to do things whether you want to or not — that is quite irrelevant — but to be compelled to act because something pulls you by the strings, something which you do not even see — that is exasperating. … I knew nobody who could help me and I did not have the chance that you have, someone who can tell you: "This is what you have to do!" There was nobody to tell me that. I had to find it out all by myself. And I found it. I started at five.”

The Mother (1878–1973) spiritual collaborator of Sri Aurobindo

On developing her inner experiences, as narrated in later years to her disciples at Sri Aurobindo Ashram, in "Birth and Girlhood", also in The Mother On Herself http://www.miraura.org/bio/herself.html

Feeling, Chance, Help

“In the circumstances in which the Republic finds itself, the constitution cannot be inaugurated; it would destroy itself … The provisional government of France is revolutionary until there is peace.”

Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (1767–1794) military and political leader

(October 10, 1793) [Source: Oeuvres Complètes de Saint-Just, vol. 2 (2 vols., Paris, 1908), pp. 83-88]

Peace

“In fact the only thing that I don't like about Whisky, is that if I take the merest sip of the stuff, it sends a sharp pain from the back of my left eyeball down to the tip of my right elbow, and I begin to walk in a very special way, bumping into people and snarling at the furniture. I have therefore learned to turn my attention to other tipples. Margaritas, I'm very fond of, but they make me buy very stupid things. When ever I've had a few margaritas I always wake up in the morning with a sense of dread as to what I will find downstairs. The worst was a 6ft long pencil and a 2ft wide India rubber that I had shipped over from New York, as a result of one injudicious binge.”

Douglas Adams book The Salmon of Doubt

The Salmon of Doubt (2002)

Pain, People, Stupidity, Way

“Senator Douglas holds, we know, that a man may rightfully be wiser today than he was yesterday — that he may rightfully change when he finds himself wrong. But can we, for that reason, run ahead, and infer that he will make any particular change, of which he, himself, has given no intimation?”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1850s, The House Divided speech (1858)

Change

“Economists have uncovered the conditions necessary if Adam Smith’s results are to be achieved and where, in the real world, such conditions do not appear to be found, they have proposed changes which are designed to bring them about. It is what one finds in the textbooks. Harold Demsetz has said rightly that what this theory analyses is a system of extreme decentralisation. It has been a great intellectual achievement and it throws light on many aspects of the economic system. But it has not been by any means all gain.”

Ronald H. Coase (1910–2013) British economist and author

1990s and later, "The Institutional Structure of Production" (1992)

World, Light, Appearance, Change

“There is no man, let him be aware of it or not, who is not a combatant in this hot contest; no one who does not take an active part in the responsibility of the defeat or victory. The prisoner in his chains and the king on his throne, the poor and the rich, the healthy and the infirm, the wise and the ignorant, the captive and the free, the old man and the child, the civilized and the savage, share equally in the combat. Every word that is pronounced, is either inspired by God or by the world, and necessarily proclaims, implicitly or explicitly, but always clearly, the glory of the one or the triumph of the other. In this singular warfare we all fight through forced enlistment; here the system of substitutes or volunteers finds no place. In it is unknown the exception of sex or age; here no attention is paid to him who says, I am the son of a poor widow; nor to the mother of the paralytic, nor to the wife of the cripple. In this warfare all men born of woman are soldiers.
And don’t tell me you don’t wish to fight; for the moment you tell me that, you are already fighting; nor that you don’t know which side to join, for while you are saying that, you have already joined a side; nor that you wish to remain neutral; for while you are thinking to be so, you are so no longer; nor that you want to be indifferent; for I will laugh at you, because on pronouncing that word you have chosen your party. Don’t tire yourself in seeking a place of security against the chances of war, for you tire yourself in vain; that war is extended as far as space, and prolonged through all time. In eternity alone, the country of the just, can you find rest, because there alone there is no combat. But do not imagine, however, that the gates of eternity shall be opened for you, unless you first show the wounds you bear; those gates are only opened for those who gloriously fought here the battles of the Lord, and were, like the Lord, crucified.”

Juan Donoso Cortés (1809–1853) Spanish author, political theorist and diplomat

Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism (1879)

Men, God, War, Age

“The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been a tragedy, a clash between one very powerful, very convincing, very painful claim over this land and another no less powerful, no less convincing claim. Now such a clash between right claims can be resolved in one of two manners. There's the Shakespeare tradition of resolving a tragedy with the stage hewed with dead bodies and justice of sorts prevails. But there is also the Chekhov tradition. In the conclusion of the tragedy by Chekhov, everyone is disappointed, disillusioned, embittered, heartbroken, but alive. And my colleagues and I have been working, trying…not to find the sentimental happy ending, a brotherly love, a sudden honeymoon to the Israeli-Palestinian tragedy, but a Chekhovian ending, which means clenched teeth compromise.”

Amos Oz (1939–2018) Israeli writer, novelist, journalist and intellectual

From a PBS interview with Amos Oz. The entire interview http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/jan-june02/oz_1-23.html

Love, Pain, Happiness, Justice

“I am rather inclined to silence, and whether that be wise or not, it is at least more unusual nowadays to find a man who can hold his tongue than to find one who cannot.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Remarks at the Monogahela House (14 February 1861); as published in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (1953) by Roy P. Basler, vol. 4, p. 209
1860s

Silence

“The whole idea of what happens when you read a book, I find absolutely stunning. Here's some product of a tree, little black squiggles on it, you open it up, an inside your head is the voice of someone speaking, who may have been dead 3000 years, and there he is talking directly to you, what a magical thing that is.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

Carl Sagan on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson (full interview, May 20th, 1977)
Others

Books, Idea, Tree, Reading

“Even if at times I can still experience outwardly some little sadness and joy, nonetheless there is in my soul a chamber in which no joy, sadness, or enjoyment from any virtue, or delight over anything that can be named, enters. This is where the All Good, which is not any particular good, resides, and it is so much the All Good that there is no other good. Although I blaspheme by speaking about it -- and I speak about it so badly because I cannot find words to express it -- I nonetheless affirm that in this manifestation of God I discover the complete truth. In it, I understand and possess the complete truth that is in heaven and in hell, in the entire world, in every place, in all things, in every enjoyment in heaven and in every creature. And I see all this is so truly and certainly that no one could convince me otherwise. Even if the whole world were to tell me otherwise, I would laugh it to scorn. Furthermore, I saw the One who is and how he is the being of all creatures. I also saw how he made me capable of understanding those realities I have just spoken about better than when I saw them in that darkness which used to delight me so. Moreover, in that state I see myself as alone with God, totally cleansed, totally sanctified, totally true, totally upright, totally certain, totally celestial in him. And when I am in that state, I do not remember anything else…”

Angela of Foligno (1248–1309) Italian saint

Source: The Memorial and Instructions, pp. 214-216

God, Truth, World, Sadness

“The kind of mathematics foisted on children in schools is not meaningful, fun, or even very useful. This does not mean that an individual child cannot turn it into a valuable and enjoyable personal game. For some the game is scoring grades; for others it is outwitting the teacher and the system. For many, school math is enjoyable in its repetitiveness, precisely because it is so mindless and dissociated that it provides a shelter from having to think about what is going on in the classroom. But all this proves is the ingenuity of children. It is not a justifications for school math to say that despite its intrinsic dullness, inventive children can find excitement and meaning in it.”

Seymour Papert book Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas

Source: Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas (1980), Chapter 2, Mathophobia: The Fear of Learning

Children, School, Game, Mathematics

“It continues to develop that the insurrection is largely, if not exclusively, a war upon the first principle of popular government — the rights of the people. Conclusive evidence of this is found in the most grave and maturely considered public documents, as well as in the general tone of the insurgents. In those documents we find the abridgment of the existing right of suffrage and the denial to the people of all right to participate in the selection of public officers except the legislative boldly advocated, with labored arguments to prove that large control of the people in government is the source of all political evil. Monarchy itself is sometimes hinted at as a possible refuge from the power of the people. In my present position I could scarcely be justified were I to omit raising a warning voice against this approach of returning despotism.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, First State of the Union address (1861)

War, People, Evil

“You find in life that there are different levels of being in love with someone, and maybe everyone doesn't find that undeniable, indescribable… I can't describe it, it's indescribable.”

Kristen Stewart (1990) American actress

YouTube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VIPZ3dHD4Y&feature=player_embedded

Love, Life

“Consider the world as an abode where in you have dropped down for an hour, then you have got to leave it and go ahead; or (suppose it is) like the wealth which you lay hands upon in a dream and become over-joyed and glad. Then you wake up to find yourself empty handed.”

Muhammad al-Baqir (677–733) fifth of the Twelve Shia Imams

Ibn Shu’ba al-Harrani, Tuhaf al-'Uqul, p. 287

World, Dreams, Joy, Wealth

“My mom and I lived at Hollywood and Western, a drug-dealer and prostitute corner. It was pretty terrifying. I got beat up a lot. I saw people have sex in the alleys. I remember I was five years old, and this guy with a trench coat, needles and crack cornered me. Early on, seeing the devastation on my block, seeing heroin addicts, made me think twice about ever getting involved in drugs. It's evil. Once you take that step and experiment, drugs can take over your life. You are not yourself anymore. That's something I never wanted. I didn't have a lot of friends growing up. It was kind of just me and my parents. But because of them, the neighborhood did not have a bad effect on me. My dad introduced me to artists, and every few months we'd go to some hippie doo-dah parade as Mudmen in our underwear, carrying sticks and covered in mud. My mother did everything to get me into the best schools she could find.”

Leonardo DiCaprio (1974) American actor and film producer

http://www.popmonk.com/actors/leonardo-dicaprio/quotes-leonardo-dicaprio.htm

Life, People, School, Sex

“So, in the end, have we learned anything from this look at why the world turned out the way it is, that's of any use to us in our future? Something, I think. That the key to why things change is the key to everything. How easy is it for knowledge to spread? And that, in the past, the people who made change happen, were the people who had that knowledge, whether they were craftsmen, or kings. Today, the people who make things change, the people who have that knowledge, are the scientists and the technologists, who are the true driving force of humanity. And before you say what about the Beethovens and the Michelangelos? Let me suggest something with which you may disagree violently: that at best, the products of human emotion, art, philosophy, politics, music, literature, are interpretations of the world, that tell you more about the guy who's talking, than about the world he's talking about. Second hand views of the world, made third hand by your interpretation of them. Things like that [art book] as opposed to this [transparency of some filaments]. Know what it is? It's a bunch of amino acids, the stuff that goes to build up a worm, or a geranium, or you. This stuff [art book] is easier to take, isn't it? Understandable. Got people in it. This, [transparency] scientific knowledge is hard to take, because it removes the reassuring crutches of opinion, ideology, and leaves only what is demonstrably true about the world. And the reason why so many people may be thinking about throwing away those crutches is because thanks to science and technology they have begun to know that they don't know so much. And that, if they are to have more say in what happens to their lives, more freedom to develop their abilities to the full, they have to be helped towards that knowledge, that they know exists, and that they don't possess. And by helped towards that knowledge I don't mean give everybody a computer and say: help yourself. Where would you even start? No, I mean trying to find ways to translate the knowledge. To teach us to ask the right questions. See, we're on the edge of a revolution in communications technology that is going to make that more possible than ever before. Or, if that’s not done, to cause an explosion of knowledge that will leave those of us who don't have access to it, as powerless as if we were deaf, dumb and blind. And I don't think most people want that. So, what do we do about it? I don't know. But maybe a good start would be to recognize within yourself the ability to understand anything. Because that ability is there, as long as it is explained clearly enough. And then go and ask for explanations. And if you're thinking, right now, what do I ask for? Ask yourself, if there is anything in your life that you want changed. That's where to start.”

James Burke (science historian) (1936) British broadcaster, science historian, author, and television producer

Connections (1979), 10 - Yesterday, Tomorrow and You

Life, People, Books, World

“A great wind came forth, the clouds rose on high.
Now that my might rules all within the seas, I have returned to my old village.
Where will I find brave men to guard the four corners of my land?”

Emperor Gaozu of Han (-256–-195 BC) founding emperor of the Han Dynasty (256 BC - 195 BC)

Translated by Burton Watson
大風歌 Song of the Great Wind

Men, Sea

“What if everything that you see, is more than what you see? The person next to you is a warrior and the space that appears empty is a door to another world? What if something appears that shouldn't? You either dismiss it or accept that there is more to the world than you think. Perhaps it is really a doorway, and if you choose to go inside, you'll find many unexpected things.”

Shigeru Miyamoto (1952) Japanese video game designer and producer

Source: Nintendo Power

World, Thinking, Appearance, Personality

“The modern State is by its very nature a military State; and every military State must of necessity become a conquering, invasive State; to survive it must conquer or be conquered, for the simple reason that accumulated military power will suffocate if it does not find an outlet. Therefore the modern State must strive to be a huge and powerful State: this is the indispensable precondition for its survival.”

Mikhail Bakunin book Statism and Anarchy

Source: Statism and Anarchy (1873)

Nature

“It's important for me to find different things and prove I can do them. … Someone told me that inside all actors are many sleeping princesses, and each time we do a role, one of those princesses wakes up. Inside us there is everything. We just have to look for it.”

Monica Bellucci (1964) Italian actress

As quoted in "It's Monica Mania" by Richard Corliss in TIME (10 March 2003) http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1004378,00.html

Sleep, Time, Princess

“I have to find my peace 'cause no-one seems to let me be,
False prophets cry of doom, what are the possibilities?
I told my brothers 'There'll be problem times and tears for fears,
We must live each day like it's the last,
Go with it, go with it, jam!”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

Dangerous (1991)

Fear, Peace, Problem, Tear

“Actually there is little acute hatred of Germany left in this country, and even less, I should expect to find, in the army of occupation. Only the minority of sadists, who must have their "atrocities" from one source or another, take a keen interest in the hunting-down of war criminals and quislings.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"Revenge is Sour", Tribune (9 November 1945)

War, Country

“Yes, your father and Bartolo
They have fallen
And yesterday they fought and fell
But in the quest for joy and freedom
And in the struggle of this life you'll find
That there is love and sometimes more
Yes, in the struggle you will find
That you can love and be loved also

Forgive me all who are my friends
I am with you
I beg of you, do not cry”

Joan Baez (1941) American singer

"The Ballad of Sacco and Vanzetti, Part Three"
Sacco e Vanzetti (1971)

Love, Life, Forgiveness, Freedom

“Let every man abide in the art or employment wherein he was called. And for their labor they may receive all necessary things, except money. … Let none of the brothers, wherever he may be or whithersoever he may go, carry or receive money or coin in any manner, or cause it to be received, either for clothing, or for books, or as the price of any labor, or indeed for any reason, except on account of the manifest necessity of the sick brothers. For we ought not to have more use and esteem of money and coin than of stones. And the devil seeks to blind those who desire or value it more than stones. Let us therefore take care lest after having left all things we lose the kingdom of heaven for such a trifle. And if we should chance to find money in any place, let us no more regard it than the dust we tread under our feet.”

Francis of Assisi (1182–1226) Catholic saint and founder of the Franciscan Order

First Rule of the Friars Minor

Money, Books, Art, Chance

“When it comes to words I have a uniqueness that I find almost impossible in art – and it's my words that actually make my art quite unique.”

Tracey Emin (1963) English artist, one of the group known as Britartists or Young British Artists

"Artist Emin leaves us baffled" http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1693678.stm BBC, (2001-12-06) Emin was given the Plain English Campaign's "Foot in Mouth" award for this remark, made in a newspaper interview.

Art

““Anyway… I find what you write interesting.”
“That’s what people usually say when they disagree with it.””

Ken MacLeod book Learning the World

Source: Learning the World (2005), Chapter 7 “Television” (p. 110)

People

“Since the beginning of time, children have not liked to study. They would much rather play, and if you have their interests at heart, you will let them learn while they play; they will find that what they have mastered is child's play.”

Carl Orff (1895–1982) German composer

As quoted in a review of Langley Schools Music Project : Innocence and Despair (2001) http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/4685-innocence-and-despair/ by Dominique Leone (6 January 2002)

Children, Study, Learning, Time

“The "great things" are nothing less than that she became the Mother of God, in which work so many and such great good things are bestowed upon her as pass man's understanding. For on this there follows all honor, all blessedness, and her unique place in the whole of mankind, among whom she has no equal, namely, that she had a child by the Father in Heaven, and such a child. She herself is unable to find a name for this work, it is too exceedingly great; all she can do is break out in the fervent cry: "They are great things," impossible to describe or define. Hence men have crowded all her glory into a single word, calling her the Mother of God. No one can say anything greater of her or to her, though he had as many tongues as there are leaves on the trees, or grass in the fields, or stars in the sky, or sand by the sea. It needs to be pondered in the heart, what it means to be the Mother of God.”

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

Commentary on the Magnificat (Das Magnificat), A.D. 1521
<cite>Luther's Works</cite>, American Edition, vol. 21, p. 326, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan, Concordia Publishing House, 1956. ISBN 057006421X

Men, God, Star, Understanding