Quotes about real page 3
“Real men despise battle, but will never run from it.”
George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States
Billie Holiday book Lady Sings the Blues
Variant: Everyones got to be different. You can't copy anybody and end up with anything. If you copy, it means you're working without any real feeling. And without feeling, whatever you do amounts to nothing.
Source: Lady Sings the Blues
“Women who love themselves are threatening; but men who love real women, more so.”
Naomi Wolf book The Beauty Myth
Source: The Beauty Myth
“America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense… human rights invented America.”
Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)
Presidency (1977–1981), Farewell Address (1981)
Context: America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense, it is the other way round. Human rights invented America.
Ours was the first nation in the history of the world to be founded explicitly on such an idea.
Context: I have just been talking about forces of potential destruction that mankind has developed, and how we might control them. It is equally important that we remember the beneficial forces that we have evolved over the ages, and how to hold fast to them.
One of those constructive forces is enhancement of individual human freedoms through the strengthening of democracy, and the fight against deprivation, torture, terrorism and the persecution of people throughout the world. The struggle for human rights overrides all differences of color, nation or language.
Those who hunger for freedom, who thirst for human dignity, and who suffer for the sake of justice — they are the patriots of this cause.
I believe with all my heart that America must always stand for these basic human rights — at home and abroad. That is both our history and our destiny.
America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense, it is the other way round. Human rights invented America.
Ours was the first nation in the history of the world to be founded explicitly on such an idea. Our social and political progress has been based on one fundamental principle — the value and importance of the individual. The fundamental force that unites us is not kinship or place of origin or religious preference. The love of liberty is a common blood that flows in our American veins.
Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters
Variant: I want out of the labels. I don't want my whole life crammed into a single word. A story. I want to find something else, unknowable, some place to be that's not on the map. A real adventure.'
A spinx. A mystery. A blank. Unknown. Undefined.
Source: Invisible Monsters
“The real frienship is like fluorescence, it shines better when everything has darken.”
Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath
David Lynch (1946) American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor
Source: Lynch on Lynch
“Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced”
John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet
Even a proverb is no proverb to you till your Life has illustrated it.
Letter to George and Georgiana Keats (February 14-May 3, 1819)
Letters (1817–1820)
Variant: Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced
Richard Paul Evans (1962) American writer
Source: The Walk
Beatrix Potter (1866–1943) English children's writer and illustrator
Journal entry (1896-11-17), from the National Trust collection.
Source: The Complete Tales
“This time it is real — all must die, and where could mountaineer find a more glorious death!”
John Muir book My First Summer in the Sierra
Reprinted in The Wild Muir ISBN 0-939666-75-8 page 38, and Terry Gifford, EWDB, page 234
Source: 1860s, My First Summer in the Sierra, 1869
“The more real you get the more unreal the world gets.”
John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter
Marie Corelli (1855–1924) British writer
Source: The Sorrows of Satan or The Strange Experience of One Geoffrey Tempest, Millionaire
“What heaven can be more real than to retain the spirit-world of childhood?”
Beatrix Potter (1866–1943) English children's writer and illustrator
“Monsters are real. Ghosts are too. They live inside of us, and sometimes, they win.”
Stephen King book The Shining
Source: The Shining (1977)
“You'll never achieve real success unless you like what you're doing.”
Dale Carnegie (1888–1955) American writer and lecturer
“Unreal friendship may turn to real
But real friendship, once ended, cannot be mended”
T.S. Eliot Murder in the Cathedral
Source: Murder in the Cathedral
“I don't know where the artificial stops and the real starts.”
Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist
John Taylor Gatto (1935–2018) American teacher, book author
Source: A Different Kind of Teacher: Solving the Crisis of American Schooling, Berkeley Hills Books (2000) p. 178
“Eddie discovered one of his childhood's great truths. Grownups are the real monsters, he thought.”
Stephen King book It
Variant: And almost idly, in a kind of sidethought, Eddie discovered one of his childhood's great truths. Grownups are the real monsters, he thought.
Source: It (1986)
Haruki Murakami book South of the Border, West of the Sun
Source: South of the Border, West of the Sun
“You cannot let your parents anywhere near your real humiliations.”
Alice Munro book Open Secrets
Source: Open Secrets (1994)
“Legends are best left as legends and attempts to make them real are rarely successful”
Michael Moorcock book Elric of Melniboné
Source: Elric of Melniboné
Elizabeth George (1949) American woman mystery and thriller writer
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity
Cosmic Religion : With Other Opinions and Aphorisms (1931) by Albert Einstein, p. 97; also in Transformation : Arts, Communication, Environment (1950) by Harry Holtzman, p. 138. This may be an edited version of some nearly identical quotes from the 1929 Viereck interview below.
1930s
Context: I believe in intuition and inspiration. … At times I feel certain I am right while not knowing the reason. When the eclipse of 1919 confirmed my intuition, I was not in the least surprised. In fact I would have been astonished had it turned out otherwise. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research.
John O'Donohue (1956–2008) Irish writer, priest and philosopher
Source: Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom
Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer
Variant: You can't be a Real Country unless you have a BEER and an airline — it helps if you have some kind of a football team or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a BEER.
“I knew nothing but shadows and I thought them to be real.”
Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray
M. Scott Peck (1936–2005) American psychiatrist
Source: The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values, and Spiritual Growth
“Pain or love or danger makes you real again….”
Jack Kerouac book The Dharma Bums
Source: The Dharma Bums
“Hold up," Leo said. "You guys lost a dragon? A Real full size dragon?”
Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero
Source: The Lost Hero
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
As quoted in "Lincoln's Imagination" by Noah Brooks, in Scribner's Monthly (August 1879), p. 586 http://books.google.com/books?id=jOoGAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA586 <br class="br">Posthumous attributions <br class="br">Variant: Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.
“One's real life is so often the life that one does not lead.”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet
“The condition of women in a nation is the real measure of its progress.”
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o book Wizard of the Crow
Source: Wizard of the Crow
Luigi Pirandello (1867–1936) Italian dramatist, novelist, short story writer, and poet, Nobel Prize for Literature laureate
Christopher Morley book Parnassus on Wheels
Variant: When you sell a man a book you don’t sell him just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life. Love and friendship and humour and ships at sea by night - there’s all heaven and earth in a book, a real book I mean.
Source: Parnassus on Wheels
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
Misattributed to Lincoln by several authors since about 2000. Source of quote: General Douglas MacArthur is quoted as saying, "Like Abraham Lincoln, I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts" (John Gunther, The Riddle of MacArthur, New York: Harper, 1950, p. 61). By the 1970s, the phrase is quoted in several places without the words "Like Abraham Lincoln," and attributed directly to Lincoln. The additional phrase "and beer" first appears in a list of jokes published online in 1999.
Misattributed
“There's real poetry in the real world. Science is the poetry of reality”
Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author
The Enemies of Reason, "Slaves to Superstition" [1.01], 13 August 2007, timecode 00:38:16ff
The Enemies of Reason (August 2007)
Variant: Science is the poetry of reality.
Context: The word 'mundane' has come to mean boring and dull, and it really shouldn't. It should mean the opposite because it comes from the latin 'mundus', meaning the world, and the world is anything but dull; the world is wonderful. There's real poetry in the real world. Science is the poetry of reality.
“There's no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love.”
Christopher Morley (1890–1957) American journalist, novelist, essayist and poet
Variant: There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love.
Source: Pipefuls
John Powell (1645–1713) American Jesuit priest
Source: Will the Real Me Please Stand Up?: 25 Guidelines for Good Communication
“Real living is living for others.”
Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker
“Just tell yourself, Duckie, you're real quite lucky.”
Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books
“Real museums are places where Time is transformed into Space.”
Orhan Pamuk book The Museum of Innocence
Source: The Museum of Innocence
Daniel Goleman (1946) American psychologist & journalist
Source: Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ (1995), p. 8
