Quotes about other
page 12

“My choice of Muhammad to lead the list of the world's most influential persons may surprise some readers and may be questioned by others, but he was the only man in history who was supremely successful on both the religious and secular level.”

Michael H. Hart (1932) American astronomer

Muhammad
Source: About Muhammad, The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History, p.3

Question, History, World, Success

“Love is like any other luxury. You have no right to it unless you can afford it.”

Anthony Trollope book The Way We Live Now

Source: The Way We Live Now, ch. 84. (1875)

Love

“There is no other world. Nor even this one. What, then, is there? The inner smile provoked in us by the patent nonexistence of both.”

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

World, Smile

“Morality in sexual relations, when it is free from superstition, consists essentially in respect for the other person, and unwillingness to use that person solely as a means of personal gratification, without regard to his or her desires.”

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

Personality

“No matter which way we go, it is no better than any other. It is all the same whether you achieve something or not, have faith or not, just as it is all the same whether you cry or remain silent.”

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

Source: On the Heights of Despair (1934)
Context: Everything is possible, and yet nothing is. All is permitted, and yet again, nothing. No matter which way we go, it is no better than any other. It is all the same whether you achieve something or not, have faith or not, just as it’s all the same whether you cry or remain silent. There is an explanation for everything, and yet there is none. Everything is both real and unreal, normal and absurd, splendid and insipid. There is nothing worth more than anything else, nor any idea better than any other. Why grow sad from one’s sadness and delight in one’s joy? What does it matter whether our tears come from pleasure or pain? Love your unhappiness and hate your happiness, mix everything up, scramble it all! Be a snowflake dancing in the air, a flower floating downstream! Have courage when you don’t need to, and be a coward when you must be brave! Who knows? You may still be a winner! And if you lose, does it really matter? Is there anything to win in this world? All gain is loss, all loss is gain. Why always expect a definite stance, clear ideas, meaningful words? I feel as if I should spout fire in response to all the questions which were ever put, or not put, to me.

Faith, Way, Cry

“Someone got killed up here…. It was outside. A tall man. He had one leg longer’n the other. And a beard. He was probably a hunter."
"How’d you know all that?"
"I just trod on ‘im.”

Terry Pratchett book Lords and Ladies

Source: Lords and Ladies

“Since 2001, the U. S. government has abandoned its role as a champion of human rights and has perpetrated terrible and illegal abuses in prisons in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, sent prisoners secretly to other nations to be tortured, denied the applicability of the Geneva Convention restraints, and severely restricted time-honored civil liberties within our own country. Certain political leaders of other nations, who are inclined to perpetrate human rights abuses to quiet dissenting voices and were previously restrained by positive influence from Washington, now feel free to emulate or exceed the abuses approved by American leaders.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Source: Beyond the White House: Waging Peace, Fighting Disease, Building Hope

Feeling, Time, Country

“If a man is to shed the light of the sun upon other men, he must first of all have it within himself.”

Romain Rolland (1866–1944) French author

Men, Light, Sun

“This is how philosophers should salute each other: ‘Take your time.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Time

“I dreamed about you baby.
It was just the other night.
Most of you was naked
Ah, but some of you was light.”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

Dreams, Light, Baby, Night

“Numbers written on restaurant bills within the confines of restaurants do not follow the same mathematical laws as numbers written on any other pieces of paper in any other parts of the Universe. This single fact took the scientific world by storm.”

Douglas Adams Life, the Universe and Everything

Source: Life, the Universe and Everything

World, Law, Mathematics, Universe

“If we're always guided by other people's thoughts, what's the point in having our own?”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

People

“I spent half my money on gambling, alcohol and wild women. The other half I wasted.”

W.C. Fields (1880–1946) actor

Women, Money, Alcohol

“Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun.”

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

Sun

“Tears shed for self are tears of weakness, but tears shed for others are a sign of strength.”

Billy Graham (1918–2018) American Christian evangelist

Moving On, Tear

“Heroes are those who can somehow resist the power of the situation and act out of noble motives, or behave in ways that do not demean others when they easily can.”

Philip G. Zimbardo (1933) American social psychologist, author of Stanford Prison Experiment

Way, Motivation

“I manage because I have to. Because I've no other way out. Because I've overcome the vanity and pride of being different, I've understood that they are a pitiful defense against being different. Because I've understood that the sun shines differently when something changes. The sun shines differently, but it will continue to shine, and jumping at it with a hoe isn't going to do anything.”

Andrzej Sapkowski book The Last Wish

Source: The Last Wish

Way, Change, Sun

“Believe something and the Universe is on its way to being changed. Because you've changed, by believing. Once you've changed, other things start to follow. Isn't that the way it works?”

Diane Duane book So You Want to Be a Wizard

Source: So You Want to Be a Wizard

Way, Universe, Change

“We can never judge the lives of others, because each person knows only their own pain and renunciation.”

Paulo Coelho book By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

Source: By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

Pain, Personality

“Many of us lead family lives. At most, the members of a family stay together for the duration of a lifetime, often much less. While that fleeting moment of being together still lasts, we should try to remain in perfect harmony with each other, while observing the Dharma as much as possible. Night and day, let us turn our minds toward goodness, love, and compassion.”

Dilgo Khyentse (1910–1991) Bhutanese Buddhist Lama

Source: The Hundred Verses of Advice: Tibetan Buddhist Teachings on What Matters Most

Love, Family, Perfection, Night

“Comfort me from wherever you are–alone, we are quickly worn out; if I place my head on the road, let it seem softened by you. Could it be that even from afar we offer each other a gentle breath?”

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

“I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men.”

William Shakespeare Henry IV, Part 2

Source: Henry IV, Part 2

Men

“We need, in love, to practice only this: letting each other go. For holding on comes easily; we do not need to learn it.”

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

Source: Translations from the Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke

Love, Learning

“When one is in town one amuses oneself. When one is in the country one amuses other people. It is excessively boring.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Source: The Importance of Being Earnest

People, Country

“Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing”

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) French painter

People, Beauty

“In your life there are a few places, or maybe only the one place, where something happened, and then there are all the other places.”

Alice Munro book Too Much Happiness

Source: "Too Much Happiness", in Too Much Happiness (2009)

Life

“If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been due more to patient attention, than to any other talent”

Isaac Newton (1643–1727) British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics

“I’m not in favor of the government mandating a prayer in school because our country was founded on the fact that no particular religious faith would have ascendance over or preferential treatment over any other.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

School, Faith, Country

“It was always himself that the coward abandoned first. After this all other betrayals came easily.”

Cormac McCarthy book All the Pretty Horses

Source: All the Pretty Horses

Betrayal

“The first rule that a geisha is taught, at the age of nine, is to be charming to other women… Every girl in the world should have geisha training.”

Diana Vreeland (1903–1989) American magazine editor

Women, Age, World, Girl

“Men in plural […] can experience meaningfulness only because they can talk with and make sense to each other and themselves.”

Hannah Arendt book The Human Condition

Source: The Human Condition

Men, Sense

“What we would like to do is change the world--make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do. And, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, the poor, of the destitute--the rights of the worthy and the unworthy poor, in other words--we can, to a certain extent, change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world. We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever widening circle will reach around the world. We repeat, there is nothing we can do but love, and, dear God, please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy as our friend.”

Dorothy Day (1897–1980) Social activist

Love, God, People, World

“The reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves. The basis of optimism is sheer terror.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Optimism, Thinking

“If a person loves only one other person and is indifferent to all others, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism.”

Erich Fromm book The Art of Loving

The Art of Loving (1956)

Love, Personality, Indifference

“Knowledge is only one half. Faith is the other.”

Novalis (1772–1801) German poet and writer

Faith, Knowledge

“Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinion of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.”

Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923) New Zealand author

Source: Journal entry (14 October 1922), published in The Journal of Katherine Mansfield (1927)

Truth

“I will heighten my life by helping others heighten theirs”

Les Brown (1945) American politician

Source: Live Your Dreams

Life, Help

“Never has our future been more unpredictable, never have we depended so much on political forces that cannot be trusted to follow the rules of common sense and self-interest—forces that look like sheer insanity, if judged by the standards of other centuries. It is as though mankind had divided itself between those who believe in human omnipotence (who think that everything is possible if one knows how to organize masses for it) and those for whom powerlessness has become the major experience of their lives.”

Hannah Arendt book The Origins of Totalitarianism

Source: The Origins of Totalitarianism

Thinking, Sense, Future, Dependency

“Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Country

“Fear prophets, Adso, and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them.”

Umberto Eco book The Name of the Rose

Temi, Adso, i profeti e coloro disposti a morire per la verità, ché di solito fan morire moltissimo con loro, spesso prima di loro, talvolta al posto loro. <br class="br"> William of Baskerville http://books.google.com/books?id=XY2vXKsHbzIC&q=&quot;Fear+prophets+adso+and+those+prepared+to+die+for+the+truth+for+as+a+rule+they+make+many+others+die+with+them+often+before+them+at+times+instead+of+them&quot;&pg=PA549#v=onepage <br class="br">Source: The Name of the Rose (1980)

Truth, Fear, Time

“How can I keep my soul in me, so that it doesn't touch your soul? How can I raise it high enough, past you, to other things?”

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

Soul, Past

“But many of us seek community solely to escape the fear of being alone. Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.”

Bell Hooks book All About Love: New Visions

Source: All About Love: New Visions

Love, Fear, Art, Communication

“I believe in teaching people to be individuals, and to understand other individuals.”

E.M. Forster book A Passage to India

Source: A Passage to India

People, Understanding

“she loved to walk down the street with a book under her arm. It had the same significance for her as an elegant cane for the dandy a century ago. It differentiated her from others.”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Love, Books

“Well, now that we have seen each other," said the unicorn, "if you'll believe in me, I'll believe in you.”

Lewis Carroll book Through the Looking-Glass

Source: Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There

“it’s important to make sure that we’re talking with each other in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds.”

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

Way

“Let others praise ancient times; I am glad I was born in these.”

Ovid (-43–17 BC) Roman poet

Time

“To you I belong. My heart beats only for you. No other will tempt me, from this day and beyond. To you I belong.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: Heart of the Dragon

Heart

“I regard the Klan, the Anglo-Saxon clubs and White American societies, as far as the Negro is concerned, as better friends of the race than all other groups of hypocritical whites put together.”

Marcus Garvey (1887–1940) Jamaica-born British political activist, Pan-Africanist, orator, and entrepreneur

“I think reading is a gift. It was a gift that was given to me as a child by many people, and now as an adult and a writer, I'm trying to give a little of it back to others. It's one of the greatest pleasures I know.”

Ann M. Martin (1955) American writer of children's literature

People, Pleasure, Thinking, Reading

“Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

To the Young People's Society, Greenpoint Presbyterian Church, Brooklyn (February 16, 1901).
Variant: Always do right. This will gratify some people, and astonish the rest.

“no one ever gossips about the virtues of others”

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

1920s
Variant: No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.
Source: On Education, Especially in Early Childhood (1926), Ch. 2: The Aims of Education, p. 50
Context: The instinctive foundation of the intellectual life is curiosity, which is found among animals in its elementary forms. Intelligence demands an alert curiosity, but it must be of a certain kind. The sort that leads village neighbours to try to peer through curtains after dark has no very high value. The widespread interest in gossip is inspired, not by a love of knowledge but by malice: no one gossips about other people's secret virtues, but only about their secret vices. Accordingly most gossip is untrue, but care is taken not to verify it. Our neighbour's sins, like the consolations of religion, are so agreeable that we do not stop to scrutinise the evidence closely.

“I've found that there is always some beauty left — in nature, sunshine, freedom, in yourself; these can all help you. Look at these things, then you find yourself again, and God, and then you regain your balance. A person who's happy will make others happy; a person who has courage and faith will never die in misery!”

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

7 May 1944
(1942 - 1944)
Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

God, Faith, Beauty, Courage

“The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can only clarify in paint. … I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way — things I had no words for.”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

1970 - 1986, Some Memories of Drawings (1976)
Context: It is surprising to me to see how many people separate the objective from the abstract. Objective painting is not good painting unless it is good in the abstract sense. A hill or tree cannot make a good painting just because it is a hill or a tree. It is lines and colours put together so that they say something. For me that is the very basis of painting. The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can only clarify in paint. … I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way — things I had no words for.<!-- Also quoted in Georgia O’Keeffe: Nature and Abstraction (2007), edited by Richard Marshall, p. 13

Color, Way, Painting

“All that matters is what we do for each other.”

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

“For me, living means I can be responsive to the other person. It means I can show my emotions and my feelings. Talk to them. Feel with them …”

Morrie Schwartz (1916–1995) American sociologist

Feeling, Personality

“Since a time has come, Mademoiselle, when the severe laws of men no longer prevent women from applying themselves to the sciences and other disciplines, it seems to me that those of us who can should use this long-craved freedom to study and to let men see how greatly they wronged us when depriving us of its honor and advantages. And if any woman becomes so proficient as to be able to write down her thoughts, let her do so and not despise the honor, but rather flaunt it instead of fine clothes, necklaces, and rings. For these may be considered ours only by use, whereas the honor of being educated is ours entirely.”

Louise Labé (1524–1566) female French poet of the Renaissance, born in Lyon

Women, Men, Education, Law

“What we have loved
Others will love
And we will teach them how.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Love

“Time takes it all whether you want it to or not, time takes it all. Time bares it away, and in the end there is only darkness. Sometimes we find others in that darkness, and sometimes we lose them there again.”

Stephen King book The Green Mile

Variant: Time takes it all, whether you want it to or not. Time takes it all, time bears it away, and in the end there is only darkness. Sometimes we find others in that darkness, and sometimes we lose them there again.
Source: The Green Mile

Time

“Daja: "He and Rosethorn work together? They hate each other."
Lark: "I didn't say they liked it.
- Daja and Lark referring to Rosethorn and Crane's cooperation on finding the cures for new diseases”

Tamora Pierce Briar's Book

Source: Briar's Book

Hate, Disease

“and I ask myself and you, which of our visions will claim us
which will we claim
how will we go on living
how will we touch, what will we know
what will we say to each other.”

Adrienne Rich (1929–2012) American poet, essayist and feminist

“Let me try once more," Milo said in an effort to explain. "In other words--"
"You mean you have other words?" cried the bird happily. "Well, by all means, use them. You're certainly not doing very well with the ones you have now.”

Norton Juster book The Phantom Tollbooth

Source: The Phantom Tollbooth

Bird, Effort

“Power over others is weakness disguised as strength.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

“When you blame others, you give up your power to change.”

Robert Anthony (1982) professional wrestler

Change

“Each sex has a relation to madness. Every desire has a relation to madness. But it would seem that one desire has been taken as wisdom, moderation, truth, leaving to the other sex the weight of a madness that cannot be acknowledged or accommodated.”

Luce Irigaray (1930) feminist, philosopher, linguist, psychoanalyst, sociologist and cultural theorist

Wisdom, Truth, Sex, Madness

“… there was cement in her soul. It had been there for a while, an early morning disease of fatigue, shapeless desires, brief imaginary glints of other lives she could be living, that over the months melded into a piercing homesickness.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie book Americanah

Source: Americanah

Disease, Soul

“"Do you know a cure for me?" "Why yes," he said, "I know a cure for everything. Salt water." "Salt water?" I asked him. "Yes," he said, "in one way or the other. Sweat, or tears, or the salt sea."”

Karen Blixen book Seven Gothic Tales

"The Deluge at Norderney"
Source: Seven Gothic Tales (1934)

Way, Tear, Water, Sea

“Others may know pleasure, but pleasure is not happiness. It has no more importance than a shadow following a man.”

Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) African American boxer, philanthropist and activist

Happy, Pleasure, Happiness

“We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

Per Amica Silentia Lunae (1918): Anima Hominis, part v

“Time is more complex near the sea than in any other place, for in addition to the circling of the sun and the turning of the seasons, the waves beat out the passage of time on the rocks and the tides rise and fall as a great clepsydra.”

John Steinbeck book Tortilla Flat

Source: Tortilla Flat

Time, Sun, Sea, Season

“No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side.

Or you don't.”

Stephen King book The Stand

Source: The Stand

Hell, Change, Personality

“The IQ and the life expectancy of the average American recently passed each other in opposite directions.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Life

“The most common sort of lie is that by which a man deceives himself: the deception of others is a relatively rare offense.”

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

Source: The Anti-Christ

Lie

“No passion is stronger in the breast of man than the desire to make others believe as he believes. Nothing so cuts at the root of his happiness and fills him with rage as the sense that another rates low what he prizes high.”

Virginia Woolf book Orlando: A Biography

Source: Orlando: A Biography (1928), Ch. 3
Context: No passion is stronger in the breast of man than the desire to make others believe as he believes. Nothing so cuts at the root of his happiness and fills him with rage as the sense that another rates low what he prizes high. Whigs and Tories, Liberal party and Labour party — for what do they battle except their own prestige?

Sense, Rage, Passion, Happiness

“Honestly," she sighed, "I don't know what kind of life we'll have together, with me always flying off in one direction and you in the other."
I smiled. "It's a good thing the world's round," I said.”

Kenneth Oppel (1967) Canadian children's writer

Life, World, Smile, Flying

“I remained standing in the middle of the room, swaying on my feet as though I had received a blow. I thought of my life and saw what it had been. No one could swim against such a current of mud. I had been a man so horrible that he could have no friend. But wasn't that, I asked myself, because I had always been incapable of wearing a disguise? If all men went through life with unmasked faces, as I had done for half a century, one might be surprised to find how little difference there was between them. But, in fact, no one lives with his face uncovered, no one. Most men ape greatness or nobility. Though they do not know it, they conform to certain fixed types, literary or other. This the saints know, and they hate and despise themselves because they see themselves with unclouded eyes. I should not have been so universally condemned had I not been so defenseless, so open, and so naked.”

Francois Mauriac (1885–1970) French author

Source: Viper's Tangle

Life, Men, Hate, Universe

“When you read a book as a child, it becomes a part of your identity in a way that no other reading in your whole life does.”

Nora Ephron (1941–2012) Film director, author screenwriter

Life, Books, Way, Reading

“There are two motives for reading a book: one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.”

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

1930s, The Conquest of Happiness (1930)

Books, Motivation, Reading, Funny

“Forgiveness is the better part of valor. (Acheron)
I always thought it was ‘discretion.’ (Thanatos)
Discretion is easy. It’s finding the courage to forgive yourself and others that is hard. (Acheron)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon book Dance with the Devil

Source: Dance with the Devil

Forgiveness, Courage, Parting

“I am the happiest creature in the world. Perhaps other people have said so before, but not one with such justice. I am happier even than Jane; she only smiles, I laugh.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

People, World, Justice, Smile

“One must speak in such a way that although someone else, or many others, or an infinite number of people have said it before, it seems as though you said it first.”

Juan Ramón Jimenéz (1881–1958) Spanish poet

Source: The Complete Perfectionist

People, Way

“I knew that there had been times in the past-terrible times-when people had destroyed others in haste, in fear, and had brought about their own destruction”

Lois Lowry book The Giver

Source: The Giver

People, Fear, Time, Past

“It is foolish to wish for beauty. Sensible people never either desire it for themselves or care about it in others. If the mind be but well cultivated, and the heart well disposed, no one ever cares for the exterior.”

Anne Brontë book Agnes Grey

Source: Agnes Grey

People, Beauty, Heart

“Books have led some to learning and others to madness, when they swallow more than they can digest.”

Francesco Petrarca (1304–1374) Italian scholar and poet

As quoted in "Lifetime Speaker's Encyclopedia" (1962) by Jacob Morton Braude, p. 75

Books, Learning, Madness

“Look, sir, I know Angua. She's not the useless type. She doesn't stand there and scream helplessly. She makes other people do that.”

Terry Pratchett book Jingo

Source: Jingo

People

“When you can flatten entire cities at a whim, a tendency towards quiet reflection and seeing-things-from-the-other-fellow's-point- of-view is seldom necessary.”

Terry Pratchett book Small Gods

Source: Small Gods

“Mistakes,’ he said with effort, ‘are also important to me. I don’t cross them out of my life, or memory. And I never blame others for them.”

Andrzej Sapkowski book Blood of Elves

Source: Blood of Elves

Life, Effort, Memory

“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

“Optimism is the one quality more associated with success and happiness than
any other.”

Brian Tracy (1944) American motivational speaker and writer

Motivational, Wise, Deep, Success

“I never set out to be weird. It was always other people who called me weird.”

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

People

“No man becomes rich unless he enriches others.”

Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919) American businessman and philanthropist

“The absolutist begins a work, others take it up and try to spread it. Our problems stem from our acceptance of this filthy, rotten system.”

Dorothy Day (1897–1980) Social activist

As quoted in Women on War : Essential Voices for the Nuclear Age (1988), by Daniela Gioseffi, p. 103
Variant: A pebble cast into a pond causes ripples that spread in all directions. Each one of our thoughts, words and deeds is like that. No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There's too much work to do.
As quoted in Singing the Living Tradition (1993) by the Unitarian Universalist Association, p. 560
Context: What I want to bring out is how a pebble cast into a pond causes ripples that spread in all directions. And each one of our thoughts, words and deeds is like that. Going to jail for distributing leaflets advocating war tax refusal causes a ripple of thought, of conscience among us all. And of remembrance too. …. There may be ever improving standards of living in the U. S., with every worker eventually owning his own home and driving his own car; but our modern economy is based on preparation for war. … The absolutist begins a work, others take it up and try to spread it. Our problems stem from our acceptance of this filthy, rotten system.

Problem

“In his early twenties, a man started collecting paintings, many of which later became famous: Picasso, Van Gogh, and others. Over the decades he amassed a wonderful collection. Eventually, the man’s beloved son was drafted into the military and sent to Vietnam, where he died while trying to save his friend. About a month after the war ended, a young man knocked on the devastated father’s door. “Sir,” he said, “I know that you like great art, and I have brought you something not very great.” Inside the package, the father found a portrait of his son. With tears running down his cheeks, the father said, “I want to pay you for this.ℍ “No,” the young man replied, “he saved my life. You don’t owe me anything.ℍ The father cherished the painting and put it in the center of his collection. Whenever people came to visit, he made them look at it. When the man died, his art collection went up for sale. A large crowd of enthusiastic collectors gathered. First up for sale was the amateur portrait. A wave of displeasure rippled through the crowd. “Let’s forget about that painting!” one said. “We want to bid on the valuable ones,” said another. Despite many loud complaints, the auctioneer insisted on starting with the portrait. Finally, the deceased man’s gardener said, “I’ll bid ten dollars.ℍ Hearing no further bids, the auctioneer called out, “Sold for ten dollars!” Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. But then the auctioneer said, “And that concludes the auction.” Furious gasps shook the room. The auctioneer explained, “Let me read the stipulation in the will: “Sell the portrait of my son first, and whoever buys it gets the entire art collection. Whoever takes my son gets everything.ℍ It’s the same way with God Almighty. Whoever takes his Son gets everything.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Source: Through the Year with Jimmy Carter: 366 Daily Meditations from the 39th President

Life, God, War, People

“What kills us isn't one big thing, but thousands of tiny obligations we can't turn down for fear of disappointing others.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Fear, Disappointment

“We tell lies when we are afraid… afraid of what we don't know, afraid of what others will think, afraid of what will be found out about us. But every time we tell a lie, the thing that we fear grows stronger.”

Tad Williams (1957) novelist

Lie, Fear, Thinking, Time

“Mendacity is a system that we live in," declares Brick. "Liquor is one way out an'death's the other.”

Tennessee Williams Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Source: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Way

“Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.”

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

People, Communication, Loneliness

“If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

Attributed to Orwell by John H. Bunzel, president of San Jose State University, as reported in Phyllis Schlafly, The Power of the Positive Woman (1977), p. 151; but not found in Orwell's works or in reports contemporaneous with his life. Possibly a paraphrase of Orwell's description of the rationale behind Newspeak in 1984.
Disputed

People, Thinking

“My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Death, Fight

“I mean, it's impossible to fake anything if you've already seen the other person in a way they'd never choose for you to. You can't go back from that.”

Sarah Dessen book What Happened to Goodbye

Source: What Happened to Goodbye

Way, Personality

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Quotes about other
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