Douglas Adams book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
Source: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
Quotes about greatness page 24
“I do not admire greatness that has no substance.”
Mary Balogh (1944) Welsh-Canadian novelist
Slightly Dangerous
“Beneath the rule of men entirely great,
The pen is mightier than the sword.”
Edward Bulwer-Lytton Richelieu
Act ii, Scene ii. This is the origin of the much quoted phrase "the pen is mightier than the sword". Compare: "Hinc quam sic calamus sævior ense, patet. The pen worse than the sword", Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, Part i. Sect. 2, Memb. 4, Subsect. 4.
Richelieu (1839)
“That's great. Except for the fact that it's completely unimportant.”
Rick Riordan The Maze of Bones
Source: The Maze of Bones
“great principles, great ideals know no nationality.”
Marcus Garvey (1887–1940) Jamaica-born British political activist, Pan-Africanist, orator, and entrepreneur
Source: Selected Writings and Speeches of Marcus Garvey
John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author
Travels in Alaska http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/travels_in_alaska/ (1915), chapter 1: Puget Sound and British Columbia <br class="br">1910s
Terri Farley (1950) American writer
Source: Seven Tears Into the Sea
“if the sex was too easy to get,
it was not that great.”
Sherry Argov (1977) American writer
Source: Why Men Love Bitches: From Doormat to Dreamgirl—A Woman's Guide to Holding Her Own in a Relationship
“There is greatness in doing something you hate for the sake of someone you love.”
Shmuley Boteach (1966) American Orthodox rabbi and writer
Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist
Variant: Life... It's a great and terrible and short and endless thing. None of us come out of it alive.
John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America
1963, Speech at Amherst College
“Behind every great fortune there is a crime.”
Variant: Behind every successful fortune there is a crime.
Source: The Godfather
“All great thinkers are initially ridiculed – and eventually revered.”
Robin S. Sharma (1965) Canadian self help writer
“I've got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher
“Great. I'd been dumped in Hell's waiting room.”
Karen Chance book Touch the Dark
Source: Touch the Dark
“It's all overrated, man. Sex is only a great thing if you're not getting any.”
Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer
“Some things I loved have vanished. A great many others have been given to me”
Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist
Source: The Woman Destroyed
Robert Fulghum book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
Source: All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States
1760s, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765)
Source: The Works Of John Adams, Second President Of The United States
Context: Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers. Rulers are no more than attorneys, agents, and trustees, of the people; and if the cause, the interest, and trust, is insidiously betrayed, or wantonly trifled away, the people have a right to revoke the authority that they themselves have deputed, and to constitute other and better agents, attorneys and trustees.
James C. Collins (1958) American business consultant and writer
Source: Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't
“The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been.”
Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer
“Great,” Percy said. “I always wanted to be glue.”
Rick Riordan book The Son of Neptune
Source: The Son of Neptune
“One is too small a number to achieve greatness.”
John C. Maxwell (1947) American author, speaker and pastor
“Every great thinker keeps a journal, you know.”
Trenton Lee Stewart The Mysterious Benedict Society
Source: The Mysterious Benedict Society
“One great love in a single lifetime was enough for anyone.”
Robert James Waller book A Thousand Country Roads
Source: A Thousand Country Roads
“It is a great thing to know your vices.”
Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman
Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor
Source: The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are
Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary
Excerpts from the two paragraphs above have sometimes been quoted in abbreviated form: At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality... We must strive every day so that this love of living humanity will be transformed into actual deeds, into acts that serve as examples, as a moving force.
Man and Socialism in Cuba (1965)
Context: At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality. Perhaps it is one of the great dramas of the leader that he or she must combine a passionate spirit with a cold intelligence and make painful decisions without flinching. Our vanguard revolutionaries must idealize this love of the people, of the most sacred causes, and make it one and indivisible. They cannot descend, with small doses of daily affection, to the level where ordinary people put their love into practice.
The leaders of the revolution have children just beginning to talk, who are not learning to call their fathers by name; wives, from whom they have to be separated as part of the general sacrifice of their lives to bring the revolution to its fulfilment; the circle of their friends is limited strictly to the number of fellow revolutionists. There is no life outside of the revolution.
In these circumstances one must have a great deal of humanity and a strong sense of justice and truth in order not to fall into extreme dogmatism and cold scholasticism, into isolation from the masses. We must strive every day so that this love of living humanity will be transformed into actual deeds, into acts that serve as examples, as a moving force.
“A great many people think they are thinking when they are really rearranging their prejudices.”
Edward R. Murrow (1908–1965) Television journalist
“A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.”
William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist
Not found in James's writings. Earliest similar cite is to Episcopal Methodist Bishop W. F. Oldham in 1906. Quote Investigator https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/05/10/merely/. A related quote is in James's 1907 book, Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking: "Our minds thus grow in spots; and like grease-spots, the spots spread. But we let them spread as little as possible: we keep unaltered as much of our old knowledge, as many of our old prejudices and beliefs, as we can. We patch and tinker more than we renew. The novelty soaks in; it stains the ancient mass; but it is also tinged by what absorbs it." <br class="br">Misattributed
“It is the nature of man to rise to greatness if greatness is expected of him.”
John Steinbeck (1902–1968) American writer
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement
1960s, Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963)
Source: The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Context: Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.
“It isn't the big pleasures that count the most; it's making a great deal out of the little ones.”
Jean Webster (1876–1916) American novelist
Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books
Source: Oh, The Places You'll Go!
Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher
Source: The Great Learning
“I don't know if great times make great men, but I know they can kill them.”
Max Brooks book World War Z
Source: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451
Usher II (1950)
The Martian Chronicles (1950)
Source: Fahrenheit 451
Context: They began by controlling books of cartoons and then detective books and, of course, films, one way or another, one group or another, political bias, religious prejudice, union pressures; there was always a minority afraid of something, and a great majority afraid of the dark, afraid of the future, afraid of the past, afraid of the present, afraid of themselves and shadows of themselves.
“A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely
rearranging their prejudices.”
David Bohm (1917–1992) American theoretical physicist
Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer
Source: Smooth Talking Stranger
“There is a great deal of difference between a penis and a heart.”
Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear
Variant: There is a great difference between being fearless and being brave.
Source: The Wise Man's Fear
Zhuangzi (-369–-286 BC) classic Chinese philosopher
Source: The Butterfly as Companion: Meditations on the First Three Chapters of the Chuang-Tzu
Context: How do I know that enjoying life is not a delusion? How do I know that in hating death we are not like people who got lost in early childhood and do not know the way home? Lady Li was the child of a border guard in Ai. When first captured by the state of Jin, she wept so much her clothes were soaked. But after she entered the palace, shared the king's bed, and dined on the finest meats, she regretted her tears. How do I know that the dead do not regret their previous longing for life? One who dreams of drinking wine may in the morning weep; one who dreams weeping may in the morning go out to hunt. During our dreams we do not know we are dreaming. We may even dream of interpreting a dream. Only on waking do we know it was a dream. Only after the great awakening will we realize that this is the great dream. And yet fools think they are awake, presuming to know that they are rulers or herdsmen. How dense! You and Confucius are both dreaming, and I who say you are a dream am also a dream. Such is my tale. It will probably be called preposterous, but after ten thousand generations there may be a great sage who will be able to explain it, a trivial interval equivalent to the passage from morning to night.
“Don't be afraid to give up the good to go for the great”
John D. Rockefeller (1839–1937) American business magnate and philanthropist
Earliest citation found in Google Books is from 1993 https://books.google.com/books?id=bdTko5oHTd4C&pg=PA25&dq=%22give+up+the+good+to+go+for+the+great%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiH2e_QivXLAhUps4MKHdf0A9wQ6AEIHTAA#v=onepage&q=%22give%20up%20the%20good%20to%20go%20for%20the%20great%22&f=false, where it is attributed to country-music singer Kenny Rogers. Not found attributed to Rockefeller until 2006 https://books.google.com/books?id=F7OGT9WTiPQC&pg=PA24&dq=%22give+up+the+good%22+%22go+for+the+great%22+rockefeller&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjw_rb9ivXLAhXrmoMKHbgHBqkQ6wEIHjAA#v=onepage&q=%22give%20up%20the%20good%22%20%22go%20for%20the%20great%22%20rockefeller&f=false. <br class="br">Disputed <br class="br">Variant: Don't be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.
“If love is great, then it is worth fighting for.”
Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel
Source: Clockwork Angel
Zora Neale Hurston book Their Eyes Were Watching God
Source: Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), Ch. 20, p. 193.
Context: Of course he wasn't dead. He could never be dead until she herself had finished feeling and thinking. The kiss of his memory made pictures of love and light against the wall. Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see.
George MacDonald book At the Back of the North Wind
Source: At the Back of the North Wind (1871), Chapter 18
“We must use time creatively - and forever realize that the time is always hope to do great things.”
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement