Quotes about living
page 63

Chris Hedges photo

“To live, indeed, is not in our power; but to live rightly is.”

Quintus Sextius Roman philosopher

Sentences of Sextus

Allen C. Guelzo photo
James I of Scotland photo
Karl Jaspers photo

“The mass-man has very little spare time, does not live a life that appertains to a whole, does not want to exert himself except for some concrete aim which can be expressed in terms of utility; he will not wait patiently while things ripen; everything for him must provide some immediate gratification; and even his mental life must minister to his fleeting pleasures. That is why the essay has become the customary form of literature, why newspapers are taking the place of books… People read quickly and cursorily.”

Karl Jaspers (1883–1969) German psychiatrist and philosopher

Der Massenmensch hat wenig Zeit, lebt kein Leben aus einem Ganzen, will nicht mehr die Vorbereitung und Anstrengung ohne den konkreten Zweck, der sie in Nutzen umsetzt; er will nicht warten und reifen lassen; alles muß sogleich gegenwärtige Befriedigung sein; Geistiges ist zu den jeweils augenblicklichen Vergnügungen geworden. Daher ist der Essay die geeignete Literaturform für alles, tritt die Zeitung an die Stelle des Buches... Man liest schnell.
Man in the Modern Age (1933)

PewDiePie photo
Frances Bean Cobain photo

“She tells me to "live free and be free, but listen to other people's advice." I listen, but I don't always follow it.”

Frances Bean Cobain (1992) American artist

Attributed to a Teen Vogue interview
" Frances Bean Cobain: 'I'm a Different Person' http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,1101912,00.html" (2005)

African Spir photo
Shelley Winters photo
Arthur Schopenhauer photo

“Now if plurality and difference belong only to the appearance-form; if there is but one and the same Entity manifested in all living things: it follows that, when we obliterate the distinction between the ego and the non-ego, we are not the sport of an illusion. Rather are we so, when we maintain the reality of individuation, — a thing the Hindus call Maya, that is, a deceptive vision, a phantasma. The former theory we have found to be the actual source of the phaenomenon of Compassion; indeed Compassion is nothing but its translation into definite expression. This, therefore, is what I should regard as the metaphysical foundation of Ethics, and should describe it as the sense which identifies the ego with the non-ego, so that the individual directly recognises in another his own self, his true and very being. From this standpoint the profoundest teaching of theory pushed to its furthest limits may be shown in the end to harmonise perfectly with the rules of justice and loving-kindness, as exercised; and conversely, it will be clear that practical philosophers, that is, the upright, the beneficent, the magnanimous, do but declare through their acts the same truth as the man of speculation wins by laborious research … He who is morally noble, however deficient in mental penetration, reveals by his conduct the deepest insight, the truest wisdom; and puts to shame the most accomplished and learned genius, if the latter's acts betray that his heart is yet a stranger to this great principle, — the metaphysical unity of life.”

Part IV, Ch. 2, pp. 273 https://archive.org/stream/basisofmorality00schoiala#page/273/mode/2up-274
On the Basis of Morality (1840)

Muammar Gaddafi photo

“During my term in AU, I will initiate an organised compensation claim for Africa and I will fight for a greater voice for Africa in the United Nations Security Council. If they do not want to live with us fairly, it is our planet and they can go to another planet.”

Muammar Gaddafi (1942–2011) Libyan revolutionary, politician and political theorist

Remarks at African Union headquarters, quoted in Daily Nation (5 February 2009) " Gaddafi defends Somali pirates http://www.nation.co.ke/News/africa/-/1066/525348/-/13rtrgiz/-/index.html" by Argaw Ahine

Rick Santorum photo

“Well, yes, absolutely, to say that people of faith have no role in the public square? You bet that makes you throw up. What kind of country do we live that says only people of non-faith can come into the public square and make their case?”

Rick Santorum (1958) American politician

asked why he "almost threw up" at John F. Kennedy's speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association
2012-02-26
This Week with George Stephanopoulos
ABC
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/week-transcript-rick-santorum/story?id=15785514&page=5

Alexis De Tocqueville photo

“The Indian knew how to live without wants, to suffer without complaint, and to die singing.”

Source: Democracy in America, Volume I (1835), Chapter I-V, Chapter I.

Tom Clancy photo
Evelyn Underhill photo
André Maurois photo
Thomas Hardy photo
Thomas Chalmers photo

“Live for something! Do good and leave behind you a monument of virtue that the storm of time can never destroy. Write your name in kindness, love, and mercy on the hearts of the thousands you come in contact with, year by year, and you will never be forgotten. Your name, your deeds, will be as legible on the hearts you leave behind, as the stars on the brow of evening. Good deeds will shine as the stars of heaven.”

Thomas Chalmers (1780–1847) Scottish mathematician and a leader of the Free Church of Scotland

Source: Misattributed, P. 243. in Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895). This is actually a quote from The golden chain; or, The Christian graces illustrated and enforced (1855) by John Harvey

Jan Patočka photo
Adam Goldstein photo

“I've prayed every night for the past 10 years. There's a lot more to thank God for now. My philosophy is 'live life to the fullest,' [and] I was saved for a reason. Maybe I'm going to help someone else. I don't question it. All I know is, I'm thankful I'm still here.”

Adam Goldstein (1973–2009) American DJ

James Montgomery DJ AM Says He Was 'Saved For A Reason' In First Post-Crash Interview http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1597103/20081015/dj_am.jhtml October. 15 2008. Retrieved August 30, 2009. (October 2008).

Geert Wilders photo

“At that Mother got proper blazing,
"And thank you, sir, kindly," said she.
"What, waste all our lives raising children
To feed ruddy Lions? Not me!"”

Marriott Edgar (1880–1951) British poet

"Albert and the Lion", line 69.
Albert, 'Arold and Others (1938)

Michael Savage photo

“There is a dance of death in the West and actual death in the Middle East, courtesy of the Islamofascists. … The radical Muslims are on the warpath and they are against everyone else. They are against Muslims who are not as fanatical. They are against the members of all other religions. They think they are going to take us back to some pristine religious period in human history that never actually occurred. It's all complete rubbish. These "faith warriors" live lower than the pigs they despise. They kidnap and rape 8-year-old girls and say the Quran authorizes it. They're not purists. They're killers. They're Nazis in head scarfs. They aren't leading a religious revival. They're trying to take us back to a state of barbarism that has been extinct for 1,200 years. This is a barbaric revolution… Why would any government bring in unvetted Muslim immigrants at a time like this? It would seem that only an insane prince would do this to his country. But Obama is not insane. He's stoned. He's stoned on the orthodoxy of the progressive left. Obama and his supporters are drunk on their ideology. They think they're going to create a progressive utopia by continuing their attack on all Western values. This is precisely how great civilizations of the past declined and eventually fell. They rejected the values that made them great and degenerated into narcissism and selfishness. They kept on partying until they were too weak to defend themselves. Then, the unthinkable happened. They fell.”

Michael Savage (1942) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, and Author

A dance of death in the West http://www.wnd.com/2015/11/a-dance-of-death-in-the-west/, excerpt from Government Zero.
Government Zero: No Borders, No Language, No Culture (2015)

Stanley Baldwin photo
Bill Clinton photo
Ela Bhatt photo
Mariah Carey photo
Amit Chaudhuri photo
Orson Scott Card photo

“We all choose our own teachers, don't we? I wonder if our choice of teacher shows anything about what our lives will be.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Homecoming saga, Earthborn (1995)

Jordan Peterson photo

“The structure of the lived experience of conscious individuals.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Other

Frank Klepacki photo
Chris Cornell photo
Matthew Stover photo
Ron Paul photo

“Question: You wanna gut that safety net…
Ron Paul: But the safety net doesn't work.
Question: Tell me why it doesn't work.
Ron Paul: It does work for some people, but overall it ultimately fails, because you spend more money than you have, and then you borrow to the hilt. Now we have to borrow $800 billion a year just to keep the safety net going. It's going to collapse when the dollar collapses, you can't even fight the war without this borrowing. And when the dollar collapses, you can't take care of the elderly of today. They're losing ground. Their cost of living is going up about 10%, even though the government denies it, we give them a 2% cost of living increase.
Question: So do you think the gold standard would fix that?
Ron Paul: The gold standard would keep you from printing money and destroying the middle class. Every country where you have runaway inflation, there's no middle class. Mexico, there's no middle class, you have a huge poor class, and a lot of wealthy people. Today we have a growing poor class, and we have more billionaires than ever before. So we're moving into third world status…
Question: Who is the safety net that you're speaking of, who does benefit from all those programs and all those agencies?
Ron Paul: Everybody on a short term benefits for a time. If you build a tenement house by the government, for about 15 or 20 years somebody might live there, but you don't measure who paid for it: somebody lost their job down the road, somebody had inflation, somebody else suffered. But then the tenement house falls down after about 20 years because it's not privately owned, so everybody eventually suffers. But the immediate victims aren't identifiable, because you don't know who lost the job, and who had the inflation, the victims are invisible. The few people who benefit, who get some help from government, everyone sees, "oh! look what we did!", but they never say instead of what, what did we lose. And unless you ask that question, we'll go into bankruptcy, we're in the early stages of it, the dollar is going down, our standard of living is going down, and we're hurting the very people that so many people wanna help, especially the liberals…”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Interview by Mac McKoy on KWQW, December 17, 2007 http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=x3lxo9WIR6w
2000s, 2006-2009

Lila Rose photo
Benoît Mandelbrot photo
Norodom Sihanouk photo
Carlos Drummond de Andrade photo

“When I was born, one of those twisted
angels who live in the shadows said:
"Carlos, get ready to be a misfit in life!"
(…)
My God, why have you forsaken me
if you knew that I wasn't God,
if you knew that I was weak.
World so large, world so wide,
if my name were Clyde,
it would be a rhyme but not an answer.
World so wide, world so large,
my heart's even larger.
I shouldn't tell you,
but this moon
but this brandy
make me sentimental as hell.”

Carlos Drummond de Andrade (1902–1987) Brazilian poet

Quando nasci, um anjo torto
Desses que vivem na sombra
Disse: Vai Carlos! Ser gauche na vida.
(...)
Meu Deus, por que me abandonastes
se sabias que eu não era Deus,
se sabias que eu era fraco.
Mundo mundo vasto mundo,
se eu me chamasse Raimundo
seria uma rima, não seria uma solução.
Mundo mundo vasto mundo,
mais vasto é meu coração.
Eu não devia te dizer
mas essa lua
mas esse conhaque
botam a gente comovido como o diabo.
"Poema de sete faces" ["Seven-sided Poem"]
Alguma Poesia [Some Poetry] (1930)

Alan Bennett photo
Sinclair Lewis photo
Chittaranjan Das photo
Thomas Aquinas photo
Saddam Hussein photo

“Long live Iraq! Long live the Iraqi people! Down with the traitors!”

Saddam Hussein (1937–2006) Iraqi politician and President

Death Penalty for Saddam Hussein http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6117910.stm (BBC News online)
Reaction on being sentenced to death, November 5, 2006.

David Attenborough photo
Jimmy Fallon photo

“Honestly, it's the greatest show on television. It's live. It's topical. It makes you laugh. It's just a great vibe.”

Jimmy Fallon (1974) American TV Personality

About Saturday Night Live, on the set of his post SNL movie, Fever Pitch
No byline (2004-10-08), "Jimmy Fallon's pleasant tomorrow". USA Today, Section: Life, Pg. 01e

Poul Anderson photo
L. Frank Baum photo

“There were only four witches in all the Land of Oz, and two of them, those who live in the North and the South, are good witches.”

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900)
Context: There were only four witches in all the Land of Oz, and two of them, those who live in the North and the South, are good witches. I know this is true, for I am one of them myself, and cannot be mistaken. Those who dwelt in the East and the West were, indeed, wicked witches; but now that you have killed one of them, there is but one Wicked Witch in all the Land of Oz — the one who lives in the West.

Tommy Douglas photo

“Houdini used to pull rabbits out of a hat, but he never tried to make a living out of selling them when he had pulled them out of the hat”

Tommy Douglas (1904–1986) Scottish-born Canadian politician

Budget Debate, Saskatchewan Legislature, March 18, 1947.

Donald J. Trump photo
Mel Gibson photo
Francesco Petrarca photo

“I shall be what I have been, shall live as I have lived.”

Sarò qual fui, vivrò com'io son visso.
Canzone 145, st. 4
Il Canzoniere (c. 1351–1353), To Laura in Life

Bernard Mandeville photo
Georgia O'Keeffe photo
Bob Dylan photo

“But I mean no harm nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it's alright, Ma, if I can't please him”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Bringing It All Back Home (1965), It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)

Hillary Clinton photo

“I don’t have all the answers. I don’t know anyone who does. But this is certain: too many people have lost their lives who shouldn’t have.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), Speech in Orlando, Florida (September 21, 2016)

Brigham Young photo
Anton Chekhov photo

“The more simply we look at ticklish questions, the more placid will be our lives and relationships.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Letter to his brother, A.P. Chekhov (September 24, 1888)
Letters

Max Frisch photo
Bear Bryant photo

“I don't guess anybody would think much of what Joe did nowadays, including myself. But he was supposed to be a leader, so he had to live by the rules. It was the hardest thing I ever had to do, and it was to the greatest athlete I ever coached.”

Bear Bryant (1913–1983) American college football coach

Speaking about Joe Namath, the star quarterback, being benched for an infraction before the 1963 final regular-season game against Miami and the Sugar Bowl.
Source: Football's Supercoach, B.J., Phillips, Sep. 29, 1980, Time, 6, 2008-12-11 http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,952802-6,00.html,

Karl Pilkington photo
Joel Fuhrman photo
John Maynard Smith photo
Bonnie-Jill Laflin photo
Sarah Bakewell photo
Bill Bryson photo
John Gray photo
Charles Kingsley photo

“This is eternal life; a life of everlasting love, showing itself in everlasting good works; and whosoever lives that life, he lives the life of God, and hath eternal life.”

Charles Kingsley (1819–1875) English clergyman, historian and novelist

Source: Attributed, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 209.

Alfred Stieglitz photo

“AS A KID I WAS PROMISED an America - An America I believed in - and I insist on living - and dying - in that America, even I have to create it myself.”

Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) American photographer

in 'Alfred Stieglitz' Photo notes, August 1946, p. 65
From Adams to Stieglitz' (1990)

Tomas Kalnoky photo

“So you're tired of living
Feel like you might give in
Well don't.
It's not your time”

Tomas Kalnoky (1980) American musician

"A Better Place, A Better Time," from Everything Goes Numb (2003) http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/s/streetlight_manifesto/a_better_place_a_better_time.html

Robert Hunter (author) photo
William Ewart Gladstone photo
H. G. Wells photo
Erich Fromm photo
Norman G. Finkelstein photo
Noel Gallagher photo

“With living colours give my verse to glow:
The sad memorial of a tale of woe!”

William Falconer (1732–1769) British writer

Introduction, lines 35-36.
The Shipwreck (1762)

“I don’t think we as a party should let China and Russia stop international action to save lives in Syria … Three times they have vetoed action in Syria, and each time the crisis has escalated and escalated.”

Jo Cox (1974–2016) UK politician

Speaking on BBC Daily Politics show — UK 'should enforce Syria no-fly zone even if Russia vetoes UN resolution' https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/oct/12/uk-should-be-prepared-enforce-syria-no-fly-zone-russian-veto-un-isis-assad (12 October 2015)

Jeet Thayil photo

“I was born in the south of India but I've never lived there. I went to school in Bombay, and in Hong Kong and in New York. But the place I've lived in the most is Bombay, because I've been there at various stages of my life.”

Jeet Thayil (1959) Indian writer

On his being asked Where was he born?
Jeet Thayil on why 'Where are you from?' is a complicated question for all of us

Henry Adams photo
Ursula K. Le Guin photo
E.M. Forster photo
Sydney Smith photo

“My living in Yorkshire was so far out of the way, that it was actually twelve miles from a lemon.”

Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English writer and clergyman

Vol. I, ch. 9
Lady Holland's Memoir (1855)

“I was living Tom’s life. There are only so many material things you can have before it becomes boring. There are only so many dinners, so many things you can buy. I was complacent. I was in a wealthy coma and I wasn’t looking inward.”

Erika Jayne (1969) American singer, actress and television personality

Erika Jayne interview (Daily Mail) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-5500765/Erika-Girardi-details-difficult-upbringing-successful-career.html (2018)

George W. Bush photo
Dwight D. Eisenhower photo
Jon Stewart photo
Alfred Russel Wallace photo

“I thought of the long ages of the past, during which the successive generations of this little creature had run their course — year by year being born, and living and dying amid these dark and gloomy woods, with no intelligent eye to gaze upon their loveliness; to all appearance such a wanton waste of beauty. Such ideas excite a feeling of melancholy. It seems sad that on the one hand such exquisite creatures should live out their lives and exhibit their charms only in these wild inhospitable regions, doomed for ages yet to come to hopeless barbarism; while, on the other hand, should civilized man ever reach these distant lands, and bring moral, intellectual, and physical light into the recesses of these virgin forests, we may be sure that he will so disturb the nicely-balanced relations of organic and inorganic nature as to cause the disappearance, and finally the extinction, of these very beings whose wonderful structure and beauty he alone is fitted to appreciate and enjoy. This consideration must surely tell us that all living things were not made for man. Many of them have no relation to him. The cycle of their existence has gone on independently of his, and is disturbed or broken by every advance in man’s intellectual development; and their happiness and enjoyments, their loves and hates, their struggles for existence, their vigorous life and early death, would seem to be immediately related to their own well-being and perpetuation alone, limited only by the equal well-being and perpetuation of the numberless other organisms with which each is more or less intimately connected.”

The Malay Archipelago (1869)

Ani DiFranco photo