Quotes about making
page 17

“She smiled at him, making sure that the smile gathered up everything inside her and directed it toward him, making him a profound promise of herself for so little, for the beat of a response, the assurance of a complimentary vibration in him.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book Tender Is the Night

Source: Tender Is the Night

Smile

“We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.

All art is quite useless.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Art, Forgiveness

“Let us consider that we are all partially insane. It will explain us to each other; it will unriddle many riddles; it will make clear and simple many things which are involved in haunting and harassing difficulties and obscurities now.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“Nobody looks good in their darkest hours. But it's those hours that make us what we are.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Faefever

“Because of your smile, you make life more beautiful.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Life, Smile, Beauty, Beauty

“Contrary to what phenomenology—which is always phenomenology of perception—has tried to make us believe, contrary to what our desire cannot fail to be tempted into believing, the thing itself always escapes.”

Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) French philosopher (1930-2004)

“The person who fights monsters should make sure that in the process, he does not become a monster himself. Because when you stare down at an abyss, the abyss stares back at you.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Variant: Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

Fight, Personality

“You cannot win in a fight against women, cause men have a need to make sense”

Chris Rock (1965) American comedian, actor, screenwriter, television producer, film producer, and director

Women, Men, Sense, Fight

“What makes us want to know the worst? Is it that we tire of preferring to know the best? Does curiosity always hurdle self-interest? Or is it, more simply, that wanting to know the worst is love's favorite perversion.”

Julian Barnes (1946) English writer

Love

“I read anything that’s going to be interesting. But you don’t know what it is until you’ve read it. Somewhere in a book on the history of false teeth there’ll be the making of a novel.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Books, History, Reading, Falseness

“When God puts love and compassion in your heart toward someone, He’s offering you an opportunity to make a difference in that person’s life. You must learn to follow that love. Don’t ignore it. Act on it. Somebody needs what you have.”

Joel Osteen (1963) American televangelist and author

Source: Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential

Love, Life, God, Learning

“Every person has to live his or her own life and then make the choice to share it with other people.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Variant: I think the idea is that every person has to live for his or her own life and then make the choice to share it with other people.
Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Life, People, Personality

“There are only 3 things that can make your dreams come true: your thoughts, your words, and your actions.”

Mike Dooley (1961) American writer

Dreams

“Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; To sleep, perchance to dream—For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause, there's the respect, That makes calamity of so long life”

William Shakespeare Hamlet

Source: Hamlet

Life, Death, Dreams, Sleep

“Language is courage: the ability to conceive a thought, to speak it, and by doing so to make it true.”

Salman Rushdie book The Satanic Verses

Source: The Satanic Verses

Courage

“Her trust makes me faithful, her belief makes me good.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Faith

“I start with a tingle, a kind of feeling of the story I will write. Then come the characters, and they take over, they make the story.”

Karen Blixen (1885–1962) Danish writer

Feeling

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”

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

Imagination, Light

“One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

World, Nature, Beauty, Peaceful

“Science can teach us, and I think our hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supporters, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make the world a fit place to live.”

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

"Fear, the Foundation of Religion"
1920s, Why I Am Not a Christian (1927)
Source: Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects
Context: Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing – fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand-in-hand. It is because fear is at the basis of those two things. In this world we can now begin a little to understand things, and a little to master them by the help of science, which has forced its way step by step against the Christian religion, against the churches, and against the opposition of all the old precepts. Science can help us to get over this craven fear in which mankind has lived for so many generations. Science can teach us, and I think our own hears can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supports, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make this world a fit place to live in, instead of the sort of place that the churches in all these centuries have made it.

World, Support, Thinking, Effort

“When fate hands us a lemon, let's try to make lemonade.”

Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919) American businessman and philanthropist

Fate

“What once bound him
Will make him flee
Place of power-joining of five

Night
Spirit
Blood
Humanity
Earth

Joined not to conquer,
Instead to overcome
Night leads to Spirit
Blood binds Humanity
And Earth completes.”

Kristin Cast book Hunted

Source: Hunted

Night

“The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.”

Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer

Variant: The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.
Source: A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living

Life, Nature, Universe, Beauty

“In all our searching, the only thing we've found that makes the emptiness bearable is each other.”

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

“Well-behaved women seldom make history.”

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich (1938) American historian

Source: Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History

Women, History, For women, Graduation

“One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes.”

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

Foreword (January 1960)
You Learn by Living (1960)
Context: One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes. In stopping to think through the meaning of what I have learned, there is much that I believe intensely, much I am unsure of. In the long run, we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And, the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.

Leadership

“The best way to make children good is to make them happy.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Variant: The best way to make children good is to make them happy.

Happiness, Children, Way, For Parents

“The darkening of the world makes the irrationality of art rational: radically darkened art.”

Theodor W. Adorno book Aesthetic Theory

Source: Aesthetic Theory

World, Art

“It is impossible not to love someone who makes toast for you.”

Nigel Slater (1958) English food writer, journalist and broadcaster

Love

“Yes, faith; it is my cousin's duty to make curtsy and say 'Father, as it please you.' But yet for all that, cousin, let him be a handsome fellow, or else make another curtsy and say 'Father, as it please me.”

William Shakespeare book Much Ado About Nothing

Source: Much Ado About Nothing

Faith

“Our world will not die as the result of the bomb, as the papers say, it will die of laughter, of banality, or making a joke of everything, and a lousy joke at that.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

World, Laughter

“Georgian film is a completely unique phenomenon, vivid, philosophically inspiring, very wise, childlike. There is everything that can make me cry and I ought to say that it (my crying) is not an easy thing.”

Federico Fellini (1920–1993) Italian filmmaker

Cry

“In the long run, we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And, the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.”

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

“Death does that: it makes everyone feel sentimental. When we stand in front of a coffin, we all see only what is good or what we want to see.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

Death, Feeling

“You can choose your friends but you sho' can't choose your family, an' they're still kin to you no matter whether you acknowledge 'em or not, and it makes you look right silly when you don't.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

Family

“I love hearing my relations abused. It is the only thing that makes me put up with them at all. Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven't got the remotest knowledge of how to live nor the smallest instinct about when to die.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Source: The Importance of Being Earnest

Love, People, Knowledge

“… But if a mirror ever makes
you sad

you should know
that it does
not know
you.”

Kabir (1440–1518) Indian mystic poet

Sadness

“Success is relative. It is what we make of the mess we have made of things.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Success

“Conscience makes egotists of us all.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

“It's hard to make strangers care about the good things in your life.”

Stephen King book The Body

Source: The Body

Life

“Talking to people makes me feel like sleeping. Only my ghostly and imaginary friends, only the conversations I have in my dreams, are genuinely real and substantial.”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

People, Dreams, Feeling, Sleep

“Knowledge would be fatal. It is the uncertainty that charms one. A mist makes things wonderful.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Knowledge

“Oh, ’tis love, ’tis love, that makes the world go round!”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

Source: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass

Love, World

“You learn eventually that, while there are no villains, there are no heroes either. And until you make the final discovery that there are only human beings, who are therefore all the more fascinating, you are liable to miss something.”

Paul Gallico (1897–1976) American writer and journalist

Learning

“Have regular hours for work and play; make each day both useful and pleasant, and prove that you understand the worth of time by employing it well. Then youth will bring few regrets, and life will become a beautiful success.”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women

Life, Youth, Beauty, Understanding

“The important thing about adventures, thought Mr. Bunnsy, was that they shouldn't be so long as to make you miss mealtimes.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Source: The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

“Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

More Maxims of Mark (1927) edited by Merle Johnson
Variant: Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.

People, Clothes, Funny

“They'd smash up the world if they thought it would make a pretty noise.”

Terry Pratchett book Lords and Ladies

Source: Lords and Ladies

World

“I hope you liked them, Reader; that they did for you what any good story should do--make you forget the real stuff weighing on your mind for a little while and take you away to a place you've never been. It's the most amiable sort of magic I know.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Hope, Forgetting

“Make sure when you fall you land on your back if you can see you can get up.”

Les Brown (1945) American politician

Source: Live Your Dreams

“I can't listen to music too often. It affects your nerves, makes you want to say stupid nice things and stroke the heads of people who could create such beauty while living in this vile hell.”

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

From a personal conversation, quoted from memory by Maxim Gorky in "V.I. Lenin" (1924) http://www.marxists.org/archive/gorky-maxim/1924/01/x01.htm  Attributions Context: I know of nothing better than the Appassionata and could listen to it every day. What astonishing, superhuman music! It always makes me proud, perhaps with a childish naiveté, to think that people can work such miracles! … But I can’t listen to music very often, it affects my nerves. I want to say sweet, silly things, and pat the little heads of people who, living in a filthy hell, can create such beauty. These days, one can’t pat anyone on the head nowadays, they might bite your hand off. Hence, you have to beat people's little heads, beat mercilessly, although ideally we are against doing any violence to people. Hm — what a devillishly difficult job!

People, Stupidity, Beauty, Music

“That, lad," he said proudly, "was some of the worst poetry I have heard for a long time. It was offensive to the ear and a torrrture to the soul…. We'll make a gonnagle out of ye yet!”

Terry Pratchett book The Wee Free Men

Source: The Wee Free Men

Soul, Time

“A quick temper will make a fool of you soon enough.”

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

Fools, Deep, Attitude

“I only want sweet peace and kindliness when I awaken -- but there's always some finger pointing, telling me some terrible deed I committed during the night. It seems I make a lot of mistakes and it seems that I am not allowed any.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Peace, Night

“Don't you worry your pretty little mind. People throw rocks at things that shine and life makes love look hard”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Love, Life, People, Making love

“Humans don’t mind hardship, in fact they thrive on it; what they mind is not feeling necessary. Modern society has perfected the art of making people not feel necessary. It's time for that to end.”

Sebastian Junger (1962) American author, journalist and documentarian

Source: Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging

People, Art, Feeling, Time

“It is difficult to make a man miserable while he feels worthy of himself and claims kindred to the great God who made him.”

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

God, Feeling

“What is this thing called life? I believe
That the earth and the stars too, and the whole glittering universe, and rocks on the mountains have life,
Only we do not call it so--I speak of the life
That oxidizes fats and proteins and carbo-
Hydrates to live on, and from that chemical energy
Makes pleasure and pain, wonder, love, adoration, hatred and terror: how do these things grow
From a chemical reaction?
I think they were here already, I think the rocks
And the earth and the other planets, and the stars and the galaxies
have their various consciousness, all things are conscious;
But the nerves of an animal, the nerves and brain
Bring it to focus; the nerves and brain are like a burning-glass
To concentrate the heat and make it catch fire:
It seems to us martyrs hotter than the blazing hearth
From which it came. So we scream and laugh, clamorous animals
Born howling to die groaning: the old stones in the dooryard
Prefer silence; but those and all things have their own awareness,
As the cells of a man have; they feel and feed and influence each other, each unto all,
Like the cells of a man's body making one being,
They make one being, one consciousness, one life, one God.”

Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962) American poet

Source: The Selected Poetry

Love, Life, God, Pain

“The future will be what it will, and fretting about it will only make your fears more likely to come true.”

Christopher Paolini book Inheritance

Source: Inheritance

Fear, Future

“Peace is not something you wish for, it is something you make, something you are, something you do, and something you give away.”

Robert Fulghum (1937) American writer

Peace, Peaceful

“Ah, grief makes us precise!”

Leonard Cohen book Beautiful Losers

Source: Beautiful Losers

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular.”

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

Imagination, Light

“Let us make a special effort to stop communicating with each other, so we can have some conversation.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Communication, Effort

“You cannot make a revolution with silk gloves.”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

"omlets are not made without breaking eggs" first appeared in English in 1796. It is from the French, "on ne saurait faire d'omelette sans casser des œufs" (1742 and earlier), attributed to François de Charette. In the context of the Soviet Union, Time magazine http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,753448-2,00.html attributes it to Lazar Kaganovich. Walter Duranty associated with Stalin in the New York Times. "But – to put it brutally – you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs, and the Bolshevist leaders are just as indifferent to the casualties that may be involved in their drive toward socialization as any General during the World War who ordered a costly attack in order to show his superiors that he and his division possessed the proper soldierly spirit. In fact, the Bolsheviki are more indifferent because they are animated by fanatical conviction." Walter Duranty, Special Cable to The New York Times http://www.artukraine.com/old/famineart/duranty.htm, The New York Times, New York, March 31, 1933, page 13. Misattributed Variant: You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs.

“To sin by silence, when we should protest,
Makes cowards out of men.”

Ella Wheeler Wilcox Protest

Protest, contained in "Poems of Problems", pp. 154–55 (1914). This quotation is often misattributed to Abraham Lincoln.
Poetry quotes, New Thought Pastels (1913)

Men, Silence

“The real secret of magic is that the world is made of words, and that if you know the words that the world is made of you can make of it whatever you wish.”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

"Alien Dreamtime" a multimedia event recorded live. (27 February 1993)

Secret, World

“What a silly thing love is! It is not half as useful as logic, for it does not prove anything and it is always telling one things that are not going to happen, and making one believe things that are not true.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Love

“The simplicity of your character makes you exquisitely incomprehensible to me.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Source: The Importance of Being Earnest

“Make a list of what is really important to you. Embody it.”

Jon Kabat-Zinn (1944) American academic

Source: Wherever You Go, There You Are - Mindfulness Meditation In Everyday Life

“If you will focus on meeting other people’s needs, God will always make sure your needs are supplied. God will take care of your problems for you.”

Joel Osteen (1963) American televangelist and author

Source: Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential

God, People, Problem

“The root of joy is gratefulness… It is not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful.”

David Steindl-Rast (1926) American theologian

Joy, Gratitude

“You are the master of your destiny. You can influence, direct and control your own environment. You can make your life what you want it to be.”

Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) American author

Source: Think and Grow Rich: The Landmark Bestseller - Now Revised and Updated for the 21st Century

Life

“It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine, and murder; for the belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man.”

Thomas Paine book The Age of Reason

1790s Source: "A Letter: Being an Answer to a Friend, on the publication of The Age of Reason" (12 May 1797), published in an 1852 edition of The Age of Reason, p. 205 http://books.google.com/books?id=2PgRAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA205

God, Learning

“Hope is cruel. Hope reminds me of what almost was. Hope makes the physical ache return.”

Harlan Coben book Six Years

Source: Six Years

Hope

“Ignorant people think it is the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain't so; it is the sickening grammar that they use.”

Mark Twain book A Tramp Abroad

A Tramp Abroad (1880)
Context: You may say a cat uses good grammar. Well, a cat does -- but you let a cat get excited once; you let a cat get to pulling fur with another cat on a shed, nights, and you'll hear grammar that will give you the lockjaw. Ignorant people think it's the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain't so; it's the sickening grammar they use.

People, Cats, Thinking, Fight

“Why not make a daily pleasure out a daily necessity.”

Peter Mayle (1939–2018) British writer

Pleasure

“The end-of-summer winds make people restless.”

Sebastian Faulks book Engleby

Source: Engleby

People, Summer

“When I was a boy a farmer's wife who lived five miles from our village had great fame as a faith-doctor—that was what she called herself. Sufferers came to her from all around, and she laid her hand upon them and said, "Have faith—it is all that is necessary," and they went away well of their ailments. She was not a religious woman, and pretended to no occult powers. She said that the patient's faith in her did the work. Several times I saw her make immediate cures of severe toothaches. My mother was the patient. In Austria there is a peasant who drives a great trade in this sort of industry, and has both the high and the low for patients. He gets into prison every now and then for practising without a diploma, but his business is as brisk as ever when he gets out, for his work is unquestionably successful and keeps his reputation high. In Bavaria there is a man who performed so many great cures that he had to retire from his profession of stage-carpentering in order to meet the demand of his constantly increasing body of customers. He goes on from year to year doing his miracles, and has become very rich. He pretends to no religious helps, no supernatural aids, but thinks there is something in his make-up which inspires the confidence of his patients, and that it is this confidence which does the work, and not some mysterious power issuing from himself.”

Mark Twain Christian Science

Source: Christian Science (1907), Ch. 4

Faith, Confidence, Boy, Business

“It seemed that at the end of the lecture Dr. Krokowski was making propaganda for psycho-analysis; with open arms he summoned all and sundry to come unto him. "Come unto me," he was saying, though not in those words, " come unto me, all ye who are weary and heavy-laden." And he left no doubt of his conviction that all those present were weary and heavy-laden. He spoke of secret suffering, of shame and sorrow, of the redeeming power of the analytic. He advocated the bringing of light into the unconscious mind and explained how the abnormality was metamorphosed into the conscious emotion; he urged them to have confidence; he promised relief.”

Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain

Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 4

Secret, Confidence, Light, Suffering

“But as long as we stay true to our democratic principles, as long as elections have integrity, as long as we respect freedom of speech, freedom of religion, as long as there are checks and balances in our governments so that the people have the ability to not just make judgments about how well government is serving them but also change governments if they're not serving them well -- then I have confidence that over the long term, progress will continue.”

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

2016, News Conference With Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany (November 2016)

People, Religion, Confidence, Freedom

“I knew that many things were wrong… I witnessed a great many injustices… But it was my revolutionary duty at the time not to criticize and not to help alien propaganda against [the Soviet Union], for at that time it was the only country where a revolution had been carried out and where Socialism had been built. I considered that propaganda should not be made against that country; that my duty was to make propaganda in my own country for Socialism.”

Josip Broz Tito (1892–1980) Yugoslav revolutionary and statesman

Jasper Ridley, Tito: A Biography (Constable and Company Ltd., 1994), p. 142.
Other

Time, Help, Country

“These rules are of use only in correcting the figures; since every man makes some mistakes in his first compositions and he who knows them not, cannot amend them. But you, knowing your errors, will correct your works and where you find mistakes amend them, and remember never to fall into them again. But if you try to apply these rules in composition you will never make an end, and will produce confusion in your works.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), I Prolegomena and General Introduction to the Book on Painting

Error

“May she be granted beauty and yet not
Beauty to make a stranger’s eye distraught,
Or hers before a looking-glass, for such,
Being made beautiful overmuch,
Consider beauty a sufficient end,
Lose natural kindness and maybe
The heart-revealing intimacy
That chooses right, and never find a friend.”

W.B. Yeats book Michael Robartes and the Dancer

St. 3 Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), A Prayer For My Daughter http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1421/

Beauty, Nature, Heart

“Teach your children to work, teach your daughters modesty, teach all the virtue of economy. And if not make them saints, at least make them Christians.”

António de Oliveira Salazar (1889–1970) Prime Minister of Portugal

Quoted in Salazar: biographical study - page 285; of Franco Nogueira - Published by Atlantis Publishing, 1977

Children, Daughters

“…when I had gone through the whole, and saw what a plain, simple, reason able thing Christianity was, suited to all conditions and capacities; and in the morality of it now, with divine authority, established into a legible law, so far surpassing all that philosophy and human reason had attained to, or could possibly make effectual to all degrees of man kind; I was flattered to think it might be of some use in the world; especially to those, who thought either that there was no need of revelation at all, or that the revelation of our Saviour required the belief of such articles for salvation, which the settled notions, and their way of reasoning in some, and want of understanding in others, made impossible to them. Upon these two topics the objections seemed to turn, which were with most assurance made by deists, against Christianity; but against Christianity misunderstood. It seemed to me, that there needed no more to show them the weakness of their exceptions, but to lay plainly before them the doctrine of our Saviour and his apostles, as delivered in the scriptures, and not as taught by the several sects of Christians.”

John Locke (1632–1704) English philosopher and physician

Preface to the Reader
The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695)

World, Law, Way, Understanding

“We shall have [a complete theory] only when the laws of Physics shall be extended enough, generalized enough, to make known beforehand all the effects of heat acting in a determined manner on any body.”

Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot (1796–1832) French physicist, the "father of thermodynamics" (1796–1832)

p, 125
Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat (1824)

Law

“In all of history, we have found just one cure for error—a partial antidote against making and repeating grand, foolish mistakes, a remedy against self-deception. That antidote is criticism.”

David Brin book The Transparent Society

Source: The Transparent Society (1998), Ch. 1

Error, History

“The point that all of you are trying to make is that Hindus should not stand up and speak in defence of their own religion and culture, that Hindus should not try to analyse and understand the factors and forces in the field around them, in short, that Hindus should remain at the receiving end for all time to come. We are sorry we have to reject your advice.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

History of Hindu-Christian Encounters (1996)

Religion, Understanding, Time

“I receive letters every day asking me to write a manifesto and make a speech; that I am the only man who could do so with effect; and all that. Why should I? I warned the country about Ireland before the General Election and told them to be vigilant, or there would be something happen there, "worse even than famine or pestilence". It has happened. And there have been elections since the Irish Revolution in England, Wales and Scotland, and they have supported the policy of imbecility and treason that has brought about all this disaster.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Letter to Lady Chesterfield (22 December 1880), quoted in the Marquis of Zetland (ed.), The Letters of Disraeli to Lady Bradford and Lady Chesterfield. Vol. II, 1876 to 1881 (London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1929), p. 305.
1880s

Support, Country

“Everything in life that deviates from the straight and, so to speak, normal line, makes people first curious and then indignant.”

Stefan Zweig book Beware of Pity

Beware of Pity (1939)

Life, People

“But what we can do is make sure that at least some of the waste that exists in the system that's not making anybody's mom better, that is loading up on additional tests or additional drugs that the evidence shows is not necessarily going to improve care, that at least we can let doctors know and your mom know, that you know what, maybe this isn't going to help, maybe you're better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller.

And those kinds of decisions between doctors and patients, and making sure that our incentives are not preventing those good decisions and that the doctors and hospitals all are aligned for patient care — that's something we can achieve.”

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

2009-06-24
Questions for the President: Prescription for America
ABC News
TV
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/HealthCare/story?id=7920012
2009

Moms, Decision, Help

“But at a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized — at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do — it's important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.”

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

2011, Tucson Memorial Address (January 2011)

World, Way, Thinking, Time

“Christ came to give us a justifying righteousness, and He also came to make us holy — not chiefly for the purpose of evidencing here our possession of a justifying righteousness — but for the purpose of forming and fitting us for a blessed eternity.”

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

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 317.

Christ

“I can make affirmation; I can say "So help me God, I will tell the truth."”

William Jennings Bryan (1860–1925) United States Secretary of State

Scopes Trial (1925), Day 7

God, Truth, Help

“[…] despite how hard sometimes the world seems to be, and all you see on television is war and conflict and poverty and violence, the truth is that if you had to choose when to be born, not knowing where or who you would be, in all of human history, now would be the time. Because the world is less violent, it is healthier, it is wealthier, it is more tolerant and it offers more opportunity than any time in human history for more people than any time in human history. Now, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t still terrible things happening around the world or in this region. We still have things like human trafficking. And we still have terrible abuse of children. And there are conflicts. And so these are things that we’re going to have to tackle and deal with. But you should know that with each successive generation things have improved just a little bit. And over time, that little bit adds to a lot. And it’s now up to you, the next generation, to make sure that 20 years from now, or 30 years from now, people look back and say, wow, things are a lot better now than they were back then. And there will still be problems 20 or 30 years from now also. But they will be different problems, because you will have solved many of the problems that exist today.”

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

2014, Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative Town Hall (April 2014)

War, Children, People, Truth

“We spend over a trillion dollars, and pass countless laws, and devote entire agencies to preventing terrorist attacks on our soil, and rightfully so. And yet, we have a Congress that explicitly blocks us from even collecting data on how we could potentially reduce gun deaths. How can that be?
This is a political choice that we make to allow this to happen every few months in America. We collectively are answerable to those families who lose their loved ones because of our inaction.”

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

2015, Remarks after the Umpqua Community College shooting (October 2015)

Love, Death, Family, Law

“[In what way would you have us bury you? ] In any way that you like; only you must get hold of me, and take care that I do not walk away from you. …I cannot make Crito believe that I am the same Socrates who have been talking and conducting the argument; he fancies that I am the other Socrates whom he will soon see, a dead body… And though I have spoken many words in the endeavor to show that when I have drunk the poison I shall leave you and go to the joys of the blessed—these words of mine, with which I comforted you and myself, have had, I perceive, no effect upon Crito. …you should be my surety to him that I shall not remain, but go away and depart; and then he will suffer less at my death, and not be grieved when he sees my body being burned or buried.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

Death, Way, Suffering, Joy

“Gail has said in interviews that one of the things that makes our relationship work is the fact that we hardly ever get to talk to each other.”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer

The Real Frank Zappa Book (1989)

“It is absolutely critical that we understand this is not just a challenge, it's an opportunity, because if we create a new energy economy, we can create five million new jobs, easily, here in the United States.
It can be an engine that drives us into the future the same way the computer was the engine for economic growth over the last couple of decades.
And we can do it, but we're going to have to make an investment. The same way the computer was originally invented by a bunch of government scientists who were trying to figure out, for defense purposes, how to communicate, we've got to understand that this is a national security issue, as well.
And that's why we've got to make some investments and I've called for investments in solar, wind, geothermal.”

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

Comments on energy and environmental policies, in the Second Presidential Debate (7 October 2008) http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/07/presidential.debate.transcript 2008

Way, Communication, Understanding, Future

“It should, it seems to me, be our pleasure and duty to make those people [the Filipinos] free, and let them deal with their own domestic questions in their own way. And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

New York Herald, October 15, 1900, quoted in A Pen Warmed Up In Hell:Mark Twain in Protest, edited by Frederick Anderson, Harper & Row, 1979

People, Pleasure, Way, Question

Quotes about making page 17

Quotes about making
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