Quotes about limit (2626 quotes, page 2)

“Someday there will be girls and women whose name will no longer mean the mere opposite of the male, but something in itself, something that makes one think not of any complement and limit, but only life and reality: the female human being.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Letter Seven (14 May 1904)
Source: Letters to a Young Poet (1934)

Life , Women , Girl , Thinking

“A wise girl knows her limits, a smart girl knows that she has none.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

For women , Girl

“I wouldn't know what to do with [colour]. Colour to me is too real. It's limiting. It doesn't allow too much of a dream. The more you throw black into a colour, the more dreamy it gets… Black has depth. It's like a little egress; you can go into it, and because it keeps on continuing to be dark, the mind kicks in, and a lot of things that are going on in there become manifest. And you start seeing what you're afraid of. You start seeing what you love, and it becomes like a dream.”

David Lynch (1946) American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor

Source: Lynch on Lynch

Love , Dreams

“There are no limitations to the mind except those that we acknowledge.”

Napoleon Hill book Think and Grow Rich

Source: Think and Grow Rich

Attitude

“I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

1980s, Second term of office (1985–1989), Farewell Address (1989)
Context: I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.

People , Hope

“Every time I think you’ve reached the limits of arrogance, you show me new heights. Truly, your egotism is like the Universe—ever expanding.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Strikes

Thinking , Universe , Time

“Trust allows you to give. Giving is abundant. As you give so it shall be given to you. If you give with judgment, limitation and stinginess, that is what you will create in your life - judgment, limitation, and stinginess.”

Gary Zukav (1942) American writer and revivalist

Life

“You, darkness, of whom I am born- I love you more than the flame that limits the world to the circle it illumines and excludes the rest.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Source: Rilke's Book of Hours

Love , World

“Most people are not really free. They are confined by the niche in the world that they carve out for themselves. They limit themselves to fewer possibilities by the narrowness of their vision.”

V.S. Naipaul (1932–2018) Trinidadian-British writer of Indo-Nepalese ancestry

People , World

“It is perfectly natural for the future woman to feel indignant at the limitations posed upon her by her sex. The real question is not why she should reject them: the problem is rather to understand why she accepts them.”

Simone de Beauvoir book The Second Sex

Source: The Second Sex

Sex , Feeling , Understanding , Question

“Don't limit yourself. Many people limit themselves to what they think they can do. You can go as far as your mind lets you. What you believe remember you can achieve.”

Mary Kay Ash (1918–2001) Entrepreneur

For women , People , Thinking

“Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

As cited in The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World (2007), Alan Greenspan, Penguin Press, Chapter 4 (Private Citizen), p. 87 : ISBN 15942 01315
1980s

“We try to fix the outside so much, but our control of the outer world is limited, temporary, and often, illusory.”

Matthieu Ricard (1946) French writer and Buddhist monk

Source: Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill

Peaceful , World

“Each of us must confront our own fears, must come face to face with them. How we handle our fears will determine where we go with the rest of our lives. To experience adventure or to be limited by the fear of it.”

Judy Blume Tiger Eyes

Source: Tiger Eyes

Fear

“Studies have shown that an ant can carry one hundred times its own weight, but there is no known limit to the lifting power of the average tiny eighty-year-old Spanish peasant grandmother.”

Terry Pratchett book Reaper Man

Source: Reaper Man

Study , Time

“There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.”

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

As quoted in The Art of Expressing the Human Body (1998) edited by John R. Little, p. 23
Context: There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you. A man must constantly exceed his level.

Powerful , Back To Work

“How can you become old in spirit? Only by carrying the past, isn't it? If you carry sixty years of burden with you, you're sixty years old. If you don't carry anything, you're like a newborn. The physical body may develop limitations, but the way you are has no limitations. It simply has no limitations. You are this many years old or that many years old simply because you carry that many years of garbage with you.”

Sadhguru (1957) Yogi, mystic, visionary and humanitarian

Source: Mystic's Musings

Way , Past

“Forgive the past. It is over. Learn from it and let go. People are constantly changing and growing. Do not cling to a limited, disconnected, negative image of a person in the past. See that person now. Your relationship is always alive and changing.”

Brian L. Weiss

Source: Messages from the Masters: Tapping into the Power of Love

People , Forgiveness , Learning , Change

“We're always disappointed when we find out someone else has human limits, the same as we do. It's stupid for us to feel that way, and we really ought to know better, but that doesn't seem to slow us down.”

Jim Butcher Small Favor

Source: Small Favor

Stupidity , Disappointment , Way , Feeling

“Using no way as way; Having no limitation as limitation.”

Bruce Lee book Tao of Jeet Kune Do

Variant: Using no way as way; Having no limitation as limitation.
Source: Tao of Jeet Kune Do
Source: The Warrior Within : The Philosophies of Bruce Lee (1996), p. 112, "To further emphasize this principle [of transcending all styles and forms], Lee placed Chinese characters around the circumference of his jeet kune do emblem that read"

Way

“The man who knows his limitations, has none.”

David Foster Wallace book Infinite Jest

Source: Infinite Jest

“If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it's to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel.”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

People , Way , Feeling

“Effort within the mind further limits the mind, because effort implies struggle towards a goal and when you have a goal, a purpose, an end in view, you have placed a limit on the mind.”

Bruce Lee book Tao of Jeet Kune Do

Source: Tao of Jeet Kune Do

Effort

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Cosmic Religion : With Other Opinions and Aphorisms (1931) by Albert Einstein, p. 97; also in Transformation : Arts, Communication, Environment (1950) by Harry Holtzman, p. 138. This may be an edited version of some nearly identical quotes from the 1929 Viereck interview below.
1930s
Context: I believe in intuition and inspiration. … At times I feel certain I am right while not knowing the reason. When the eclipse of 1919 confirmed my intuition, I was not in the least surprised. In fact I would have been astonished had it turned out otherwise. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research.

World , Imagination , Birth , Knowledge

“Everything has its limit - iron ore cannot be educated into gold.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Education

“Your fears are a kind of prison that confines you within a limited range of action. The less you fear, the more power you will have and the more fully you will live.”

Robert Greene book The 50th Law

Source: The 50th Law

Fear

“Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision.”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

“Limits, like fears, are often just an illusion”

Michael Jordan (1963) American retired professional basketball player and businessman

Hall of Fame induction address, 2009 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nf3PYecdgjE&NR=1

Powerful , Fear

“I never knew I could hate someone as deeply as I do you.”
“I often help others discover the outer limits of their hatred. It’s a talent of mine.”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Lothaire

Hate , Help

“Life has no limitations, except the ones you make.”

Les Brown (1945) American politician

Positive , Good Night , Life

“From this hour I ordain myself loos'd of limits and imaginary lines.”

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist

“The world is my world: this is manifest in the fact that the limits of language (of that language which alone I understand) mean the limits of my world.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

1920s, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922)
Context: This remark provides the key to the problem, how much truth there is in solipsism. For what the solipsist means is quite correct; only it cannot be said, but makes itself manifest. The world is my world: this is manifest in the fact that the limits of language (of that language which alone I understand) mean the limits of my world. (5.62)

World , Understanding

“Your criticism sounds to me as if you have read too many critical books and are too smart in an artificial, destructive, and very limited way.”

Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) American novelist, short story writer

Source: The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor

Books , Way , Reading

“There are no such things as limits to growth, because there
are no limits to the human capacity for intelligence,
imagination, and wonder.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Imagination , Intelligence

“…I was born lazy. I am no lazier now than I was forty years ago, but that is because I reached the limit forty years ago. You can't go beyond possibility.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 2 (2013), p. 115

“Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1940s, A History of Western Philosophy (1945)

Imagination , Knowledge , Science

“Art transcends its limitations only by staying within them.”

Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) American novelist, short story writer

Art

“There is no limit to the power of the human mind. The more concentrated it is, the more power is brought to bear on one point”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

“Love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. Love still stands when all else has fallen.”

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher

Love , Hope

“You are a sceptic." "Never! Scepticism is the beginning of faith." "What are you?" "To define is to limit.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Faith

“Education: that which reveals to the wise, and conceals from the stupid, the vast limits of their knowledge.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Stupidity , Education , Knowledge

“Every work of art is aggressive, Isabella. And every artist's life is a small war or a large one, beginning with oneself and one's limitations. To achieve anything you must first have ambition and then talent, knowledge, and finally the opportunity.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Angel's Game

Source: The Angel's Game

Life , War , Art , Knowledge

“Defining yourself through thought is limiting yourself.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

“There is nothing impossible with God. All the impossibility is with us when we measure God by the limitations of our unbelief.”

Smith Wigglesworth (1859–1947) British evangelist

Source: Ever Increasing Faith

God

“You believe in God?" demanded Billy Karma.

"I believe in thirty-seven separate and distinct gods," answered Argyle proudly. "That puts me thirty-six ahead of you."

"It makes you a pagan."

"It makes you a man of limited vision," said Argyle.”

Mike Resnick The Outpost

Source: The Outpost

God

“Searching for truth is itself a big illusion because whatever we term the truth is always and everywhere. We don't have to search for it; we don't have to seek it; it always is. Now the only problem is your inability to experience life beyond what you call mind; or right now your capability to experience life only through the limited dimension that we call mind. That is the only problem.”

Sadhguru (1957) Yogi, mystic, visionary and humanitarian

Source: Himalayan Lust

Life , Truth , Search , Problem

“Don't limit a child to your own learning, for she was born in another time.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Learning , Time

“I have no use for people who have learned the limits of the possible.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

People , Learning

“Thus, in pornographic novels, action has to be limited to the copulation of clichés.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Lolita

Source: Lolita

“A person is limited only by the thoughts that he chooses.”

James Allen book As a Man Thinketh

Source: As a Man Thinketh

Personality

“The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom, but to set some limit on infinite error.”

Bertolt Brecht book Life of Galileo

Source: Life of Galileo (1939)

Wisdom , Error , Science

“There is a limit to the application of democratic methods. You can inquire of all the passengers as to what type of car they like to ride in, but it is impossible to question them as to whether to apply the brakes when the train is at full speed and accident threatens.”

Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) Marxist revolutionary from Russia

The Russian Revolution (1930)

Cars , Question , Speed , Training

“In view of our strategic goal, and keeping in mind that objective conditions within "Western Armenia" have made it necessary to re-evaluate the future status of that region vis-a-vis the Armenians, we have argued that the much-vaunted "Free, Independent and United Armenia" is neither attainable nor preferable, from the position of the interests of the Armenian people. Propagating this chimerical goal only depletes our already limited human and material resources and wastes time which we cannot afford to waste.”

Monte Melkonian (1957–1993) National Hero of Armenia

Source: The Right to Struggle (1993), P. 62.

People , Time , Future

“You must get away from the real thing because the real thing will limit your acting and cripple you. To think of your own mother's death each time you want to cry onstage is schizophrenic and sick.”

Stella Adler (1901–1992) American actress and teaching coach

Obituary in New York Times

Death , Thinking , Time , Cry

“Up to a certain point it is good for us to know that there are people in the world who will give us love and unquestioned loyalty to the limit of their ability. I doubt, however, if it is good for us to feel assured of this without the accompanying obligation of having to justify this devotion by our behavior.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

This Is My Story (1937)

Love , People , World , Behavior

“Instinctively we divide mankind into friends and foes - friends, towards whom we have the morality of co-operation; foes, towards whom we have that of competition. But this division is constantly changing; at one moment a man hates his business competitor, at another, when both are threatened by Socialism or by an external enemy, he suddenly begins to view him as a brother. Always when we pass beyond the limits of the family it is the external enemy which supplies the cohesive force. In times of safety we can afford to hate our neighbour, but in times of danger we must love him.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Authority and the Individual (1949)
1940s

Love , Hate , Family , Business

“However—the crucial thing is my lack of interest in ordinary life. No one ever wrote a story yet without some real emotional drive behind it—and I have not that drive except where violations of the natural order… defiances and evasions of time, space, and cosmic law… are concerned. Just why this is so I haven't the slightest idea—it simply is so. I am interested only in broad pageants—historic streams—orders of biological, chemical, physical, and astronomical organisation—and the only conflict which has any deep emotional significance to me is that of the principle of freedom or irregularity or adventurous opportunity against the eternal and maddening rigidity of cosmic law… especially the laws of time…. Hence the type of thing I try to write. Naturally, I am aware that this forms a very limited special field so far as mankind en masse is concerned; but I believe (as pointed out in that Recluse article) that the field is an authentic one despite its subordinate nature. This protest against natural law, and tendency to weave visions of escape from orderly nature, are characteristic and eternal factors in human psychology, even though very small ones. They exist as permanent realities, and have always expressed themselves in a typical form of art from the earliest fireside folk tales and ballads to the latest achievements of Blackwood and Machen or de la Mare or Dunsany. That art exists—whether the majority like it or not. It is small and limited, but real—and there is no reason why its practitioners should be ashamed of it. Naturally one would rather be a broad artist with power to evoke beauty from every phase of experience—but when one unmistakably isn't such an artist, there's no sense in bluffing and faking and pretending that one is.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to E. Hoffmann Price (15 August 1934) , quoted in Lord of a Visible World: An Autobiography in Letters edited by S.T. Joshi, p. 268
Non-Fiction, Letters, to E. Hoffmann Price

Life , Law , Beauty , Art

“Our admiration for natural beauty /…/ cares not to understand either the physical theories which explain what it admires, or the psychological theories which explain its admiration. It does not deny the truth of the first, nor (within due limits) the sufficiency of the second. But it requires more. It feels itself belittled unless conscious purpose can be found somewhere in its pedigree. Physics and psycho-physics, by themselves, suffice not. It longs to regard beauty as a revelation—a revelation from spirit to spirit, not from one kind of atomic agitation to the "psychic" accompaniment of another. On this condition only can its highest values be maintained.'”

Arthur James Balfour (1848–1930) British Conservative politician and statesman

Theism and humanism

Truth , Beauty , Feeling , Understanding

“I don't believe in democracy. In the second place, neither did our white forefathers. I believe, as they did, in a republican authoritarian republic with a limited electorate - just like the one the writers of our Constitution meant this country to be. When these white Christian patriots sat down to write the Declaration of Independence, there were no black citizens for them to worry about.”

George Lincoln Rockwell (1918–1967) American politician, founder of the American Nazi Party

Interview with Alex Haley

Democracy , Country

“Age after age, history repeats itself when men and women, in their ignorance, limitations and pride, sit in judgment over the God-incarnated man who declares his Godhood, and condemn him for uttering the Truths they cannot understand. He is indifferent to abuse and persecution for, in his true compassion he understands, in his continual experience of Reality he knows, and in his infinite mercy he forgives.”

Meher Baba (1894–1969) Indian mystic

Meher Baba’s Call (1954)

Women , Men , God , Truth

“The refusal to allow a multiply-disadvantaged class to represent others who may be singularly-disadvantaged defeats efforts to restructure the distribution of opportunity and limits remedial relief to minor adjustments within an established hierarchy. Consequently, “bottom-up” approaches, those which combine all discriminatees in order to challenge an entire employment system, are foreclosed by the limited view of the wrong and the narrow scope of the available remedy. If such “bottom-up” intersectional representation were routinely permitted, employees might accept the possibility that there is more to gain by collectively challenging the hierarchy rather than by each discriminatee individually seeking to protect her source of privilege within the hierarchy. But as long as antidiscrimination doctrine proceeds from the premise that employment systems need only minor adjustments, opportunities for advancement by disadvantaged employees will be limited. Relatively privileged employ- ees probably are better off guarding their advantage while jockeying against others to gain more. As a result, Black women — the class of employees which, because of its intersectionality, is best able to challenge all forms of discrimination — are essentially isolated and often required to fend for themselves.”

Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw book Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex

Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex (1989)

Women , Effort

“The unjust distribution of goods persists, creating a situation of social sin that cries out to Heaven and limits the possibilities of a fuller life for so many of our brothers.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

Said during a gathering of Latin American bishops, as quoted in 'Option for the Poor' alive and well in Latin America, National Catholic Reporter (21 May 2007) http://ncronline.org/news/celam-update-option-poor-alive-and-well-latin-america
2000s, 2007

Life

“Is it not proven beyond all dispute that there is no limit to the enormities which men will commit when they are once persuaded that they are keepers of other men's consciences? To spread religion by any means, and to crush heresy by all means is the practical inference from the doctrine that one man may control another's religion. Given the duty of a state to foster some one form of faith, and by the sure inductions of our nature slowly but certainly persecution will occur. To prevent for ever the possibility of Papists roasting Protestants, Anglicans hanging Romish priests, and Puritans flogging Quakers, let every form of state-churchism be utterly abolished, and the remembrance of the long curse which it has cast upon the world be blotted out for ever.”

Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) British preacher, author, pastor and evangelist

The Inquisition, 1868 The Sword and the Trowel http://www.spurgeon.org/s_and_t/inq.htm

Men , World , Faith , Religion

“!-- The Church needs this extraordinary moment. I’m not saying this extraordinary time is good for the Church … no, no. I’m saying the Church needs this extraordinary time. --> In our age of profound change, the Church is called to offer its unique contribution, by making visible the signs of the presence and closeness of God. And the Jubilee is a favorable time for us all, for in contemplating the Divine Mercy, which surpasses every human limitation and shines on the darkness of sin, we can become more convincing and effective witnesses.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

2010s, Address to the United States Congress, Mercy Is 'What Pleases God Most

God , Age , Change , Time

“Some of you are for reviving the foreign slave trade; some for a Congressional Slave-Code for the Territories; some for Congress forbidding the Territories to prohibit Slavery within their limits; some for maintaining Slavery in the Territories through the judiciary; some for the "gur-reat pur-rinciple" that "if one man would enslave another, no third man should object," fantastically called "Popular Sovereignty"; but never a man among you is in favor of federal prohibition of slavery in federal territories, according to the practice of "our fathers who framed the Government under which we live."”

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

1860s, Cooper Union speech (1860)
Context: Some of you are for reviving the foreign slave trade; some for a Congressional Slave-Code for the Territories; some for Congress forbidding the Territories to prohibit Slavery within their limits; some for maintaining Slavery in the Territories through the judiciary; some for the "gur-reat pur-rinciple" that "if one man would enslave another, no third man should object," fantastically called "Popular Sovereignty"; but never a man among you is in favor of federal prohibition of slavery in federal territories, according to the practice of "our fathers who framed the Government under which we live." Not one of all your various plans can show a precedent or an advocate in the century within which our Government originated. Consider, then, whether your claim of conservatism for yourselves, and your charge or destructiveness against us, are based on the most clear and stable foundations.

“Neo-Plasticism has its roots in Cubism. It could just as easy be called the Painting of Real Abstraction. Since the abstract can be expressed by a plastic reality... It achieves what all painting has tried to achieve but has been able to express only in a veiled manner. By their position and their dimension as well as by the importance of given to colour, the coloured planes express in a plastic way only relations and not forms. Neo-Plasticism imparts to these relations an aesthetic balance and thereby expresses universal harmony... For the moment what art had discovered must still be limited to art itself. Our environment cannot yet be realized as a creation of pure harmony. Art today is at the very point formerly occupied by religion. In its deepest meaning art was the transposition of the natural [into another plane]; in practice it always sought to achieve harmony between man and untransposed nature. Generally speaking, so do Theosophy and Anthroposophy, although these already possessed the original symbol of balance. And this is why they never were able to achieve equivalent relations, that is to say true harmony.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

Quote in Mondrian's letter to Rudolf Steiner, c. 1921-23; as cited in Abstract Painting, Michel Seuphor, Dell Publishing Co 1964, p. 83-85
1920's

Religion , Art , Way , Nature

“Law is a thing which is insensible, and inexorable, more beneficial and more profitious to the weak than to the strong; it admits of no mitigation nor pardon, once you have overstepped its limits.”

Livy (-59–17 BC) Roman historian

Book II, sec. 3
History of Rome

Law , Strong

“Attention is not a mysterious concentration of psychic energy; it is simply an allotment of analyzing mechanisms to a limited region of the field. To pay attention to a figure is to make certain analyses of, or certain constructions in, the corresponding part of the icon.”

Ulric Neisser (1928–2012) American psychologist

Source: Cognitive Psychology, 1967, p. 88-89

Parting

“Germany appeared in my eyes a very tiny portion of the earth. I had emerged from abstract Mysticism, and I learnt a love for Matter. Beauty of material and brilliancy of wit were lordly things to me: as regards my beloved music, I found them both among the Frenchmen and Italians. I forswore my model, Beethoven; his last Symphony I deemed the keystone of a whole great epoch of art, beyond whose limits no man could hope to press, and within which no man could attain to independence.”

Richard Wagner (1813–1883) German composer, conductor

Autobiographical Sketch (1843)

Love , Beauty , Hope , Art

“It is the principle of necessity towards which, as to their ultimate centre, all the ideas advanced in this essay immediately converge. In abstract theory the limits of this necessity are determined solely by considerations of man’s proper nature as a human being; but in the application we have to regard, in addition, the individuality of man as he actually exists. This principle of necessity should, I think, prescribe the grand fundamental rule to which every effort to act on human beings and their manifold relations should be invariably conformed. For it is the only thing which conducts to certain and unquestionable results. The consideration of the useful, which might be opposed to it, does not admit of any true and unswerving decision.”

Wilhelm Von Humboldt (1767–1835) German (Prussian) philosopher, government functionary, diplomat, and founder of the University of Berlin

The Limits of State Action (1792)

Idea , Nature , Thinking , Decision

“I do not forget the position, assumed by some, that constitutional questions are to be decided by the Supreme Court; nor do I deny that such decisions must be binding, in any case, upon the parties to a suit, as to the object of that suit, while they are also entitled to very high respect and consideration in all parallel cases by all other departments of the government. And while it is obviously possible that such decision may be erroneous in any given case, still the evil effect following it, being limited to that particular case, with the chance that it may be overruled and never become a precedent for other cases, can better be borne than could the evils of a different practice. At the same time, the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the government, upon vital questions affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made, in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal. Nor is there in this view any assault upon the court or the judges. It is a duty from which they may not shrink to decide cases properly brought before them, and it is no fault of theirs if others seek to turn their decisions to political purposes.”

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

1860s, First Inaugural Address (1861)

People , Question , Decision , Evil

“At present, many of the ablest minds are trying to devise expedients for preventing a repetition of the awful conflict which is only theoretically ended and the duration and main issues of which I have correctly predicted in an article printed in the Sun of December 20, 1914. The proposed League is not a remedy but, on the contrary, in the opinion of a number of competent men, may bring about results just the opposite. It is particularly regrettable that a punitive policy was adopted in framing the terms of peace, because a few years hence, it will be possible for nations to fight without armies, ships or guns, by weapons far more terrible, to the destructive action and range of which there is virtually no limit. Any city, at a distance, whatsoever, from the enemy, can be destroyed by him and no power on earth can stop him from doing so.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

My Inventions (1919)

Men , Peace , Sun , Fight

“Every now and then a man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions. After looking at the Alps, I felt that my mind had been stretched beyond the limits of its elasticity, and fitted so loosely on my old ideas of space that I had to spread these to fit it.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)

Idea

“We are joined today by inspiring entrepreneurs from more than 120 countries and many from across Africa. And all of you embody a spirit that we need to take on some of the biggest challenges that we face in the world -- the spirit of entrepreneurship, the idea that there are no limits to the human imagination; that ingenuity can overcome what is and create what needs to be. And everywhere I go, across the United States and around the world, I hear from people, but especially young people, who are ready to start something of their own -- to lift up people’s lives and shape their own destinies. And that’s entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship creates new jobs and new businesses, new ways to deliver basic services, new ways of seeing the world -- it’s the spark of prosperity. It helps citizens stand up for their rights and push back against corruption. Entrepreneurship offers a positive alternative to the ideologies of violence and division that can all too often fill the void when young people don’t see a future for themselves. Entrepreneurship means ownership and self-determination, as opposed to simply being dependent on somebody else for your livelihood and your future. Entrepreneurship brings down barriers between communities and cultures and builds bridges that help us take on common challenges together. Because one thing that entrepreneurs understand is, is that you don't have to look a certain way, or be of a certain faith, or have a certain last name in order to have a good idea.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Remarks by President Obama at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit at United Nations Compound in Nairobi, Kenya (July 25, 2015) https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/07/25/remarks-president-obama-global-entrepreneurship-summit
2015

People , World , Faith , Way

“Not that I rise against thee, Poetry,
Mother of Beauty, of ideal Life!
But I must pity him condemned to dwell
Within the limits of these whirling worlds
In dying agonies, or yet to be,
Doomed to sad memories, or prophecies,
Perchance remorse, or vague presentiments,—
Who gives himself to thee! for everywhere
Thou ruinest wholly those who consecrate
Themselves, with all they are, to thee alone,
Who solely live the voices of thy glory!”

Zygmunt Krasiński (1812–1859) One of Poland's three national bards

The Undivine Comedy

Life , World , Sadness , Beauty

“Reason cannot desire for man any condition other than that in which not only every individual enjoys the most absolute, unbounded freedom to develop himself out of himself, in true individuality, but in which physical nature, as well, need receive no other shaping by human hands than that which is given to her voluntarily by each individual, according to the measure of his wants and his inclinations, restricted only by the limits of his energy and his rights.”

Wilhelm Von Humboldt (1767–1835) German (Prussian) philosopher, government functionary, diplomat, and founder of the University of Berlin

Source: The Limits of State Action (1792), Ch. 2

Nature , Freedom

“A man does not kill himself, as is commonly supposed, in a fit of madness but rather in a fit of unendurable lucidity, in a paroxysm which may, if so desired, be identified with madness; for an excessive perspicacity, carried to the limit and of which one longs to be rid at all costs, exceeds the context of reason.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

The New Gods (1969)

Madness

“I've have tried to take from everybody [every artist in American Abstract Expressionism ]... I can't close my eyes or limit my experiences... Because I live now, I am more interested in art now. It's different as any art is different from period to period. But it's no better or worse.”

Joan Mitchell (1925–1992) American painter

Quote in 'Art News', September 1958, p. 41; as cited in The New York school – the painters & sculptors of the fifties, Irving Sandler, Harper & Row, Publishers, 1978, p. 69
1950 - 1975

Art