Quotes about something
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“You become like what you worship. When you gaze in awe, admiration, and wonder at something or someone, you begin to take on something of the character of the object of your worship.”

N.T. Wright (1948) Anglican bishop

Source: Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense

“If you are pissing people off, you know you are doing something right”

John Lydon book Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs

Source: Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs

People

“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

Source: Letters to a Young Poet

Love, Beauty, Courage, Waiting

“Nobody can teach me who I am. You can describe parts of me, but who I am - and what I need - is something I have to find out myself.”

Chinua Achebe (1930–2013) Nigerian novelist, poet, professor, and critic

Parting

“Death makes no sense except to people who have passionately loved life. How can one die without having something to part from? Detachment is a negation of both life and death. Whoever has overcome his fear of death has also triumphed over life. For life is nothing but another word for this fear.”

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

Tears and Saints (1937)

Love, Life, Death, People

“The will for victory which gives a commander the strength to see a grave crisis through is something very different from Hitler's will, which in the last analysis stemmed from a belief in his own 'mission'. Such a belief makes a man impervious to reason and leads him to think that his own will can operate even beyond the limits of hard reality - whether these consist in the presence of far superior enemy forces, in the conditions of space and time, or merely in the fact that the enemy also happens to have a will of his own.”

Erich von Manstein (1887–1973) German general

Lost Victories, Hitler As Supreme Commander

Thinking, Reality, Time, Victory

“It's so overwhelming. It's almost better than winning the lottery, because you worked for it. It's like something you want all your life, but you never thought it would happen, and all of a sudden it did.”

Ronnie Coleman (1964) American bodybuilder

On his reaction being named the top professional bodybuilder in the world — reported in Nancy Kruh (October 3, 1999) "Ronnie Coleman- Nobody messes with this Arlington cop, a.k.a. Mr. Olympia", The Dallas Morning News, p. 1E.

Life

“After a year and half Mamu told me if you see anything don’t talk about it. One night I was playing deep in meditation. I smelled something. It was an indescribable scent, something like sandalwood and jasmine. I thought it was the aroma of Ganges but the scent got more powerful. When I opened my eyes, there was Balaji standing right next to me, exactly as he is pictured. My door was locked from inside; nobody was allowed to enter when I did riyaz.”

Bismillah Khan (1916–2006) Indian musician

He said ‘play my son’ but I was sweating. I stopped playing.
Khan used to do riyaz (practice) before the temple of Balaji as advised by his mamu (maternal uncle) who had also told him not talk to any body about anything that might happen. But when he told his mamu about his seeing Balaji, mamu was annoyed and slapped him.
Quote, Power Profiles

Night

“I’d made a family friendly game about a beaver before this, when I went to put it online it got torn apart by a few prominent reviewers. People said that the main character looked like a scary animatronic animal. I was heartbroken and was ready to give up on game-making. Then one night something just snapped in me, and I thought to myself- I bet I can make something a lot scarier than that.”

Scott Cawthon (1971) American independent video game designer

People, Family, Game, Animals

“They're looking for something dirty in everything, and if you're looking for something, you'll find it. You have to put up some kind of face for them, and that's the only face they understand.”

Charles Manson (1934–2017) American criminal and musician

Rolling Stone interview (June 1970)

Understanding

“When anything is blocking my head or there's worry in my life, I just go sit on Mars or something and look back here at Earth. All you can see is this tiny speck. You don't see the fear. You don't see the pain. You don't see thought. It's just one solid speck. Then nothing really matters. It just doesn't.”

Heath Ledger (1979–2008) Australian actor

As quoted in an interview in Vanity Fair (August 2000).

Life, Pain, Fear

“Every day, you know, you learn something new about someone. I think that's what life is about, it's about learning something new every day. A partner for me that will be lifetime. She's just a great individual and incredibly powerful woman.”

Serena Williams (1981) American tennis player

usopen.org http://www.usopen.org/en_US/news/interviews/2014-08-30/201408301409438446669.html

Life, Thinking, Learning

“Such a one does not always know what he can do, but he nevertheless instinctively feels, I am good for something! My existence is not without reason!”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

1880s, 1880, Letter to Theo (Cuesmes, July 1880)
Context: There is a great difference between one idler and another idler. There is someone who is an idler out of laziness and lack of character, owing to the baseness of his nature. If you like, you may take me for one of those. Then there is the other kind of idler, the idler despite himself, who is inwardly consumed by a great longing for action who does nothing because his hands are tied, because he is, so to speak, imprisoned somewhere, because he lacks what he needs to be productive, because disastrous circumstances have brought him forcibly to this end. Such a one does not always know what he can do, but he nevertheless instinctively feels, I am good for something! My existence is not without reason! I know that I could be a quite a different person! How can I be of use, how can I be of service? There is something inside me, but what can it be? He is quite another idler. If you like you may take me for one of those.

Feeling

“It is decidedly frightfully difficult to make something complete in all respects, and I think that there are scarcely any but those who content themselves with the approximate.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

1850 - 1870
Context: My dear Frédéric Bazille, I ask myself what you can be doing in Paris during fine weather, for I suppose that it must also be very fine there. Here my dear fellow, it is is charming, and I discover every day always beautiful things. It is enough to become mad [fou], so much do I have the desire to do it all, my head is cracking. Damn it, here it is the sixteenth, put aside your cliques and your claques, and come spend a couple of weeks here, it would be the best thing that you could do, because in Paris it cannot be very easy to work.
This very day, I still have a month to stay in; furthermore my sketches are becoming finished, I have even set to work additionally [remis] on some others. In sum, I am content enough with my stay here, even though my studies are very far from what I would wish. It is decidedly frightfully difficult to make something complete in all respects, and I think that there are scarcely any but those who content themselves with the approximate. Very well, my dear fellow, I want to struggle, scrape, start over again [recommencer], because one can do what one sees and understands, and it seems to me, when I see nature, that I am going to do it all, write it all out, but them go try to do it.... when one is on the job..
All this proves that one must only think about this. It is by force of observation and reflection that one finds. So let us grind away and grind away constantly. Are you making any progress? Yes, I am sure of it, but what I am sure of is that you do not work enough and not in the right way. It is not with carefree guys like your Villa and others that you will be able to work. It would be better all alone, and yet, all alone there are plenty of things that one cannot make out. In the end all of this is terrible, and it is a rough task.
... It is frightening what I see in my head.

Thinking

“Everybody feels these moments of sadness and moments of loss and sometimes I think everybody can relate to sitting alone and feeling like crap and a friend of yours comes up and starts like, you know, 'Come on, feel happy,' and you don't want that. Sometimes its alright to let yourself be upset about something and so that you can show yourself that regardless of how low you feel, you can always rise out of it, but not at the moment. And so the song ends with the lyric, 'I believe we all fall down' but I don't say 'but we we get back up'. It's just, sometimes you fall down and sometimes you fell low, and that's okay.”

Andrew Biersack (1990) American singer-songwriter

Happiness, Sadness, Feeling, Thinking

“Why do you sow where the field is eager to destroy the fruit? Where there are medicines of sterility? Where there is murder before birth? You do not even let a harlot remain a harlot, but you make her a murderess as well. Do you see that from drunkenness comes fornication, from fornication adultery, from adultery murder? Indeed, it is something worse than murder and I do not know what to call it; for she does not kill what is formed but prevents its formation. What then? Do you contemn the gift of God, and fight with His laws? What is a curse, do you seek as though it were a blessing? Do you make the anteroom of birth the anteroom of slaughter? Do you teach the woman who is given to you for the procreation of offspring to perpetrate killing? That she may always be beautiful and lovable to her lovers, and that she may rake in more money, she does not refuse to do this, heaping fire on your head; and even if the crime is hers, you are the cause. Hence also arise idolatries. To look pretty many of these women use incantations, libations, philtres, potions, and innumerable other things. Yet after such turpitude, after murder, after idolatry, the matter still seems indifferent to many men–even to many men having wives. In this indifference of the married men there is greater evil filth; for then poisons are prepared, not against the womb of a prostitute, but against your injured wife. Against her are these innumerable tricks, invocations of demons, incantations of the dead, daily wars, ceaseless battles, and unremitting contentions.”

John Chrysostom (349–407) important Early Church Father

St. John Chrysostom, Homily 24 on the Epistle to the Romans [PG 60:626-27] https://www.patheos.com/blogs/davearmstrong/2017/10/contraception-early-church-teaching-william-klimon.html

Women, Men, Money, God

“There is no art more akin to mysticism than architecture. Abstract, geometrical, musical and yet dumb, passionless, it depends entirely upon symbolism, form and suggestion. Simple lies, and the harmonious combination and numerical relations between these, present something mysterious and at the same time incomplete.”

Alexander Herzen book My Past and Thoughts

My Past and Thoughts(1852-1870)

Art, Music, Relation ships, Time

“I need to have something besides a husband and children to devote myself to! I don't want to have lived in vain like most people. I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I've never met.”

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

Ik moet iets hebben naast man en kinderen waar ik me aan wijden kan! O ja, ik wil niet zoals de meeste mensen voor niets geleefd hebben. Ik wil van nut of plezier zijn voor de mensen, die om mij heen leven en die mij toch niet kennen.
5 April 1944
The Diary of a Young Girl (1942 - 1944)

Children, People

“You know something? There's been a lot of rumors lately about a certain band called Queen. The rumors are that... The rumors are that we're gonna split up. What do you think? [audience replies "No!"] [Pointing to his posterior] They're talking from here! [audience replies "Yes"!] My apologies, but I say what I want. You know what I mean? So forget those rumors. We’re gonna stay together until we fucking well die, I’m sure of it. I keep — I must tell you — I keep wanting to leave, but they won’t let me. Also, I suppose we’re not... We're not bad for four aging queens, are we? Really, what do you think?”

Freddie Mercury (1946–1991) British singer, songwriter and record producer

"Queen: Live at Wembley" (1986), shortly before performing "Who Wants To Live Forever." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GNJ1SQpxFI

Bad luck, Age, Thinking, Forgetting

“In India, people burn themselves when the soul leaves the body, at the same time they wish to reincarnate into something else while destroying the body part.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

People, Soul, Time, Parting

“When I'm away from you
I'm happier than ever
Wish I could explain it better
I wish it wasn't true.
Give me a day or two
To think of something clever
To write myself a letter
To tell me what to do.”

Billie Eilish (2001) American singer-songwriter

Source: "Happier Than Ever" · Official video at YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GJWxDKyk3A · Performance on Saturday Night Live (12 December 2021) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPfW6mGx1SA

Thinking

“Music is so important to us. We hear music from the moment we are born, often via lullabies, and through many of the most important occasions in our lives, from graduations to weddings to funerals. There is something about music that seems to bring us closer to each other and help us come together as a community.
Humans are wired for music. Researchers recently discovered that we have a dedicated part of our brain for processing music, supporting the theory that it has a special, important function in our lives.
Listening to music and singing together has been shown in several studies to directly impact neuro-chemicals in the brain, many of which play a role in closeness and connection. Now new research suggests that playing music or singing together may be particularly potent in bringing about social closeness through the release of endorphins.
Through singing, drumming, and dancing—all resulted in participants having higher pain thresholds (a proxy measure for increased endorphin release in the brain) in comparison to listening to music alone. In addition, the performance of music resulted in greater positive emotion, suggesting one pathway through which people feel closer to one another when playing music together is through endorphin release.”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Pain, People, Music, Feeling

“His rage passes description - the sort of rage that is only seen when rich folk that have more than they can enjoy suddenly lose something that they have long had but have never before used or wanted.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien book The Hobbit

Source: The Hobbit

Rage

“Something we were withholding made us weak, until we found it was ourselves.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

“Each time one prematurely teaches a child something he could have discovered himself, that child is kept from inventing it and consequently from understanding it completely.”

Jean Piaget (1896–1980) Swiss psychologist, biologist, logician, philosopher & academic

Understanding, Time

“My attitude is that if you push me towards something that you think is a weakness, then I will turn that perceived weakness into a strength.”

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

Thinking, Motivational, Attitude

“If we do not believe within ourselves this deeply rooted feeling that there is something higher than ourselves, we shall never find the strength to evolve into something higher.”

Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925) Austrian esotericist

Feeling

“When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

E quando você quer alguma coisa, todo o Universo conspira para que você realize seu desejo.
Variant: And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.
Source: The Alchemist (1988), p. 22; a variant of this has become attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson: "Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen" — but no occurrence of this a statement has been located prior to in The Gift of Depression : Twenty-one Inspirational Stories Sharing Experience, Strength, and Hope (2001) by John F. Brown, p. 56

Universe, Help, Motivational, Deep

“Everyone who has something is afraid of losing it, and people with nothing are worried they'll forever have nothing. Everyone is the same.”

Haruki Murakami book Hear the Wind Sing

Source: Hear the Wind Sing

People

“One loses, as one grows older, something of the lightness of one's dreams; one begins to take life up in both hands, and to care more for the fruit than the flower, and that is no great loss perhaps.”

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

Source: The Celtic Twilight: Faerie and Folklore

Life, Dreams, Flowers, Light

“A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.”

Douglas Adams book Mostly Harmless

Source: Mostly Harmless

People, Fools

“In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.”

Aristotle book Parts of Animals

Book I, 645a.16
Parts of Animals

Nature, Beauty, Peaceful

“You know how easily things grow out of nothing, when they pass through a mouth that smears them all over and makes something else out of them”

Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849) Polish composer

Source: Chopin's Letters

“If you love something so much let it go. If it comes back it was meant to be; if it doesn't it never was”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Love

“Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

As quoted in The Federal Career Service: A Look Ahead (1954)
1950s
Variant: Now I think, speaking roughly, by leadership we mean the art of getting someone else to do something that you want done because he wants to do it.

Art, Leadership, Business, For Team

“The victim should have the right to end his life, if he wants. But I think it would be a great mistake. However bad life may seem, there is always something you can do, and succeed at. While there's life, there is hope.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

On voluntary euthanasia as quoted in People's Daily Online (14 June 2006) http://english.people.com.cn/200606/14/eng20060614_273839.html

Life, Hope, Thinking

“If you care about something you have to protect it – If you’re lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it.”

John Irving book A Prayer for Owen Meany

Source: A Prayer for Owen Meany

Love, Life, Way, Courage

“That's the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.”

Charles Bukowski book Women

Source: Women

Drink, Problem, Forgetting

“I am always trying to convey something that can’t be conveyed, to explain something which is inexplicable, to tell about something I have in my bones, something which can be expressed only in the bones.”

Franz Kafka book Letters to Milena

Source: Letters to Milena

“They stick you with those names, those labels -- ‘rebel’ or whatever; whatever they like to use. Because they need a label; they need a name. They need something to put the price tag on the back of.”

Johnny Depp (1963) American actor, film producer, and musician

“There is something about spending Christmas alone, naked, sitting by the Christmas tree gripping a shotgun, that lets you know your life is spinning dangerously outta control.”

Nikki Sixx (1958) American musician

Source: The Heroin Diaries: A Year In The Life Of A Shattered Rock Star

Life, Tree, Christmas

“The first question I ask myself when something doesn't seem to be beautiful is why do I think it's not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason.”

John Cage (1912–1992) American avant-garde composer

Beauty, Question, Thinking

“For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

British Telecom advertisement (1993), part of which was used in Pink Floyd's Keep Talking (1994) and Talkin' Hawkin'<nowiki/> (2014)
Context: For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen. Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible. Mankind's greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn't have to be like this. Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future. With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.

Imagination, Learning, Animals

“I just hope I don't become so blissful I become boring. I think I'll always be neurotic enough to do something weird.”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

Hope, Thinking

“You can only lose something that you have, but you cannot lose something that you are.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

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

“Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It's not something you learn in school. But if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven't learned anything.”

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

Friendship, World, School, Learning

“The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.”

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

God, Faith, For Men

“It's easy to believe in something when you win all the time… The losses are what define a man's faith.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Well of Ascension

Faith, Loss, Time

“One of the consequences of such notions as ‘entitlements’ is that people who have contributed nothing to society feel that society owes them something, apparently just for being nice enough to grace us with their presence.”

Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author

People, Feeling

“There is no point in using the word 'impossible' to describe something that has clearly happened.”

Douglas Adams book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Source: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“Your calling isn’t something that somebody can tell you about. It’s what you feel. It is the thing that gives you juice. The thing that you are supposed to do. And nobody can tell you what that is. You know it inside yourself.”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

Feeling

“If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.”

John Cage (1912–1992) American avant-garde composer

“Rules for happiness: something to do, someone to love, something to hope for.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Love, Happiness, Hope

“We spend the first year of a child's life teaching it to walk and talk and the rest of its life to shut up and sit down. There's something wrong there.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1958) American astrophysicist and science communicator

Life, Funny

“You don't write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Crack-Up

Notebook E: Epigrams, Wisecracks, and Jokes https://books.google.com/books?id=NIhKY8SpAE4C&q=%22You%20don%27t%20write%20because%20you%20want%20to%20say%20something%3B%20you%20write%20because%20you%27ve%20got%20something%20to%20say.%22&pg=PA123#v=onepage, edited by Edmund Wilson (1945) Quoted, The Crack-Up (1936)

“Am I walking toward something I should be running away from?”

Shirley Jackson book The Haunting of Hill House

Source: The Haunting of Hill House

“Experience is what you get while looking for something else.”

Federico Fellini (1920–1993) Italian filmmaker

"Experience"
I'm a Born Liar (2003)

“Failure is a reality; we all fail at times, and it's painful when we do. But it's better to fail while striving for something wonderful, challenging, adventurous, and uncertain than to say, " I don't want to try because I may not succeed completely.”

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

Source: Sources of Strength: Meditations on Scripture for a Living Faith

Pain, Failure, Reality, Time

“I think computer viruses should count as life … I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

Speech at Macworld Expo in Boston, as quoted in The Daily News (4 August 1994) http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=bD8PAAAAIBAJ&sjid=IoYDAAAAIBAJ&pg=4837%2C5338590. A nearly identical quote can be found at the end of the second paragraph of his lecture Life in the Universe http://hawking.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=65 (1996).

Life, Nature, Thinking

“True beauty is something that attacks, overpowers, robs, and finally destroys.”

Yukio Mishima (1925–1970) Japanese author

Beauty

“Something that is loved is never lost.”

Toni Morrison book Beloved

Source: Beloved

Love, For Him, For Father, love

“If I had to tell you how humans made their way to Earth, it would go like this: In the beginning, there was nothing at all but the moon and the sun. And the moon wanted to come out during the day, but there was something so much brighter that seemed to fill up all those hours. The moon grew hungry, thinner and thinner, until she was just a slice of herself, and her tips were as sharp as a knife. By accident, because that is the way most things happen, she poked a hole in the night and out spilled a million stars, like a fountain of tears.

Horrified, the moon tried to swallow them up. And sometimes this worked, because she got fatter and rounder.. But mostly it didn't, because there were just so many. The stars kept coming, until they made the sky so bright that the sun got jealous. He invited the stars to his side of the world, where it was always bright. What he didn't tell them, though, was that in the daytime, they'd never be seen. So the stupid ones leaped from the sky to the ground, and they froze under the weight of their own foolishness.

The moon did her best. She carved each of these blocks of sorrow into a man or a woman. She spent the rest of her time watching out so that her other stars wouldn't fall. She spent the rest of her time holding onto whatever scraps she had left.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Stupidity, World, Way, Star

“Because sometimes you have to do something bad to do something good.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Source: The Complete Fairy Tales

“If you intend to create something that people will observe and listen to, you've got to listen to them first.”

Marilyn Manson (1969) American rock musician and actor

People

“When I'm hungry, I eat. When I'm thirsty, I drink. When I feel like saying something, I say it.”

Madonna (1958) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Feeling, Drink

“I don't like to discuss my marriage, but I will tell you something which may sound corny but which happens to be true. I have steak at home. Why should I go out for hamburger?”

Paul Newman (1925–2008) American actor and film director

Quoted in Paul and Joanne: A Biography of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward by Joe Morella and Edward Z. Epstein (1988), p. 157

Marriage, Home

“I'm nothing,
I'll always be nothing.
I can't even wish to be something.
Aside from that, I've got all the world's dreams inside me.”

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

Não sou nada.
Nunca serei nada.
Não posso querer ser nada.
À parte isso, tenho em mim todos os sonhos do mundo.
Álvaro de Campos (heteronym), Tabacaria ["The Tobacconist's" or "The Tobacco Shop"] (15 January 1928)
Variant translations:
I am nothing.
Never shall be anything.
Cannot will to be anything.
This apart, I have in me all the dreams of the world.
trans. Jonathan Griffin, in Selected Poems (Penguin Books, 1974), p. 111
I am not nothing.
I will never be nothing.
I cannot ever want to be nothing.
Apart from that, I have in me all the dreams of the world.
In Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations (2005), p. 649
I am nothing.
I shall never be anything.
I cannot even wish to be anything.
Apart from this, I have within me all the dreams of the world.
Variant: I am nothing.
I will never be anything.
I cannot wish to be anything.
Bar that, I have in me all the dreams of the world.

World, Dreams

“All alone! Whether you like it or not, alone is something you'll be quite a lot!”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

Source: Oh, the Places You'll Go! and The Lorax

Depressing

“Sometimes, if you aren't sure about something, you just have to jump off the bridge and grow your wings on the way down.”

Danielle Steel (1947) American author of romance novels

Way

“You almost create this infinite universe for the character that you’re playing and then you’re compromising it into the story that you’re doing. Whatever character you’re playing, you kind of explore endlessly more than what’s on the page. You use that exploration to do the performance that’s in the film, but hopefully, people will see all that work and preparation in those little glimpses of scenes and moments. Oh, there’s something there. There’s so much more happening with this character.”

Bill Skarsgård (1990) Swedish actor

Bill Skarsgard on ‘IT’ and Tapping into His Fears to Create a Terrifying New Pennywise http://collider.com/bill-skarsgard-pennywise-it-movie-interview/#images (July 28, 2017)

People, Universe

“Look, when you realize how fake it all is; the football, the basketball, the Lady Gaga, the Justin Bieber—you know, who gives you these carbon tax messages. They tell your kids they gotta love Justin Biebler [sic], and then Biebler [sic] says "hand in your guns", "pass the Cyber Security Act", and "the police state is good", and then your children are turned into a mindless vassals—who now, they look up to some twit, instead of looking up to Thomas Jefferson, or looking up to Nikola Tesla, or looking up to Magellan; I mean, kids, Magellan is a lot cooler than Justin Bieber! He circumnavigated with one ship the entire planet! He was killed by wild natives before they got back to Portugal! And when they got back there was only like eleven people alive of the two hundred and something crew and the entire ship was rotting down to the waterline! That's destiny! That's will! That's striving! That's being a trailblazer and explore! Going into space! Mathematics! Quantum mechanics! The secrets of the universe! It's all there! Life is fiery with its beauty! Its incredible detail! Tuning into it! They wanna shutter your mind, talking about Justin Bieber! It's pure evil! They're taking your intellect, your soul, and giving you Michael Jordan and Bieber. Unlock your human potential! Defeat the globalists who wanna shutter your mind!—Your doorways to perception!—I wanna see you truly live! I wanna see you truly be who you are!”

Alex Jones (1974) American radio host, author, conspiracy theorist and filmmaker

Alex Jones: The "Justin Biebler" Rant https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDMB0KyhPN8, 21 February 2011. 2011

Love, Life, Children, People

“I blame science! I blame technology! Domin! Myself! All of us! We, we are at fault! For the sake of our megalomania, for the sake of somebody's profits, for the sake of progress, I don't know, for the sake of some tremendous something we have murdered humanity! So now you can crash under the weight of all your greatness! No Genghis Khan has ever erected such an enormous tomb from human bones!”

Karel Čapek R.U.R.

R.U.R. (1920)

Science

“[Becoming a father] has changed everything. He [Thiago] comes first then everything else. It has also changed the way I see a match. Before if I lost or did something wrong I didn't talk to anyone for three or four days, until it passed. Now, I come home after a game, I see my son and everything is alright.”

Lionel Messi (1987) Argentine association football player

Interview with CONMEBOL, 2015 http://www.conmebol.com/en/04132015-2140/messi-being-father-has-helped-me-grow-and-think-life-there-are-other-things-besides

Way, Home, Game, Change

“Don't let it end like this tell them i said something”

Pancho Villa (1878–1923) Mexican revolutionary

“I’ve been in the business since I was 16, so I’ve had a 14-year career. I’ve always had acting in my blood. Doing this, whatever it is, was something I was drawn to since my earliest memories. Ironically, I lived in Hollywood, but never understood that all it took was getting an agent and being persistent.”

Leonardo DiCaprio (1974) American actor and film producer

http://www.popmonk.com/actors/leonardo-dicaprio/quotes-leonardo-dicaprio.htm

Business, Memory

“Essentially, we distinguish ourselves from the rest. If you want to win something, run the 100 meters. If you want to experience something, run a marathon.”

Emil Zátopek (1922–2000) Czech Olympic long-distance runner

Attributed in "Making a run at the Olympic dream", an unsigned article from The StarPhoenix, 9 May 2007, at canada.com (CanWest MediaWorks Publications Inc.) http://www.canada.com/saskatoonstarphoenix/news/sports/story.html?id=b111ee9e-182a-4cff-831a-f784cc7bb37e

“We decide on something, leave it lying around and wait and see what happens. If no one kicks up a fuss, because most people don't understand what has been decided, we continue step by step until there is no turning back.”

Jean-Claude Juncker (1954) Luxembourgian politician

referring to his colleagues in the European Council Jean-Claude Juncker, quoted by Dirk Von Kock 'Die Brüsseler Republik' http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-15317086.html in Der Spiegel (2000), then by Florian Eder 'Junckers Tricks in den langen Brüsseler Nächten' http://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article112948572/Junckers-Tricks-in-den-langen-Bruesseler-Naechten.html in Die Welt (2012). 1999

People, Lying, Understanding, Waiting

“Diego is Diego and for me he is the greatest player of all time. Even after a million years I am not even going to be close to Maradona. I have no intention of comparing myself with Maradona - I want to make my own history for something I have achieved.”

Lionel Messi (1987) Argentine association football player

Response to the Maradona comparisons, 2010 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/players/lionel-messi/7527633/Barcelonas-Lionel-Messi-says-he-will-never-be-as-good-as-Diego-Maradona.html

History, Time

“I am a feminist. I reject wholeheartedly the way we are taught to perceive women. The beauty of women, how a woman should act or behave. Women are strong and fragile. Women are beautiful and ugly. We are soft-spoken and loud, all at once. There is something mind-controlling about the way we're taught to view women. My work, both visually and musically, is a rejection of all those things. And most importantly a quest.”

Lady Gaga (1986) American singer, songwriter, and actress

SHOWstudio Interview. In Camera with Lady Gaga 30 May 2010. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmcxdZQCnT4&feature=PlayList&p=6DB0E6483F09B62E&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1.

Women, Beauty, Music, Way

“I hate speaking in front of a large audience. I don't know where it came from…but its just this gut-wrenching fear of slipping up and doing something horrible.”

Leonardo DiCaprio (1974) American actor and film producer

http://www.popmonk.com/actors/leonardo-dicaprio/quotes-leonardo-dicaprio.htm

Hate, Fear

“I don't really have an allowance. When I want to get something I just have to ask my mom.”

Justin Bieber (1994) Canadian singer-songwriter, record producer, and actor

Quoted in Stv entertainment "Justin Bieber's strict mother" http://entertainment.stv.tv/showbiz/176908-justin-biebers-strict-mother/, May 2010

Moms

“One does not have to be a Marxist to know there is something very wrong in this society.”

Michael Parenti (1933) American academic

4 POLITICAL THEORY AN CONSCIOUSNESS, Political Science Fiction, p. 231
Dirty truths (1996), first edition

“… I don't expect everyone to get something deep out of it. Some people can just listen to the music, or get their aggressions out, but I think with any great painting or movie, album or whatever it is, it's better if people can take what they need from it. That they're not forced to get some particular message.”

Marilyn Manson (1969) American rock musician and actor

As quoted in "Headbanger's Ball" (10 December 1996), MTV Europe.
1990s

People, Music, Thinking, Painting

“I'm very proud [to be part Italian] … Although I don't eat a lot of Italian things, because I'm vegan. … I love animals more than I love most people, not kidding. But I am a firm believer in eating a full plant-based, whole food diet that can expand your life length and make you an all-round happier person. It is tricky dining out, but I just stick to what I know – veggies, fruit and salad – then when I get home I'll have something else.”

Ariana Grande (1993) American singer-songwriter

"Ariana Grande: "I love animals more than I love most people, not kidding"" https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/ariana-grande-i-love-animals-4754625, interview with the Mirror (5 December 2014)

Love, Life, People, Food

“I think it is a mistake to hire huge numbers of people to get a complicated job done. Numbers will never compensate for talent in getting the right answer (two people who don't know something are no better than one), will tend to slow down progress, and will make the task incredibly expensive.”

Elon Musk (1971) South African-born American entrepreneur

Conversation: Elon Musk on Wired Science (2007)

People, Thinking

“They are a pretty amazing bunch… some people have been here for 18 hours, which is… unbelievable! I don't think I would ever wait 18 hours on something, not even an organ, that I needed. I don't think I would wait that long, I would be like, oh fine, never mind…”

Daniel Radcliffe (1989) English actor

Talking about the fans, on the red carpet of the premiere of Harry Potter and the Halfblood Prince "Interviewing Daniel Radcliffe" http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=nl-NL&vid=d4e31f2f-c0e1-486a-b69d-c25fa9bcc7f7

People, Thinking, Waiting

“I have given my life to try to alleviate the sufferings of Africa. There is something that all white men who have lived here like I must learn and know: that these individuals are a sub-race. They have neither the intellectual, mental, or emotional abilities to equate or to share equally with white men in any function of our civilization. I have given my life to try to bring them the advantages which our civilization must offer, but I have become well aware that we must retain this status: the superior and they the inferior. For whenever a white man seeks to live among them as their equals they will either destroy him or devour him. And they will destroy all of his work. Let white men from anywhere in the world, who would come to Africa, remember that you must continually retain this status; you the master and they the inferior like children that you would help or teach. Never fraternize with them as equals. Never accept them as your social equals or they will devour you. They will destroy you.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

This has usually been presented as something "said shortly before his death" without any definite source, but appears to be entirely spurious. The "FAQ about the life and thoughts of Albert Schweitzer" http://www.schweitzer.org/faq?lang=en#rasist asserts "This quote is utterly false and is an outrageously inaccurate picture of Dr. Schweitzer’s view of Africans. Dr. Schweitzer never said or wrote anything remotely like this. It does NOT appear in the book African Notebook." This refers to some citations of it being from Afrikanische Geschichten (1938), which was translated as From My African Notebook (1939) by Mrs. C. E. B Russell Misattributed

Life, Men, Children, World

“… And I, who timidly hate life, fear death with fascination. I fear this nothingness that could be something else, and I fear it as nothing and as something else simultaneously, as if gross horror and non-existence could coincide there, as if my coffin could entrap the eternal breathing of a bodily soul, as if immortality could be tormented by confinement. The idea of hell, which only a satanic soul could have invented seems to me to have derived from this sort of confusion - a mixture of two different fears that contradict and contaminate each other.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Ibid., number 168
The Book of Disquiet

Life, Death, Hate, Fear

“The Satanist shuns terms such as "hope" and "prayer" as they are indicative of apprehension. If we hope and pray for something to come about, we will not act in a positive way which will make it happen. The Satanist, realizing that anything he gets is of his own doing, takes command of the situation instead of praying to God for it to happen. Positive thinking and positive action add up to results. […] Just as the Satanist does not pray to God for assistance, he does not pray for forgiveness for his wrong doings. The Satanist knows that praying does no good, confessing to another human being, like himself, accomplishes even less - and is, furthermore, degrading.”

Anton LaVey book The Satanic Bible

The Satanic Bible (1969)

God, Hope, Way, Forgiveness

“I can better understand the inert blindness & defiant ignorance of the reactionaries from having been one of them. I know how smugly ignorant I was—wrapped up in the arts, the natural (not social) sciences, the externals of history & antiquarianism, the abstract academic phases of philosophy, & so on—all the one-sided standard lore to which, according to the traditions of the dying order, a liberal education was limited. God! the things that were left out—the inside facts of history, the rational interpretation of periodic social crises, the foundations of economics & sociology, the actual state of the world today … & above all, the habit of applying disinterested reason to problems hitherto approached only with traditional genuflections, flag-waving, & callous shoulder-shrugs! All this comes up with humiliating force through an incident of a few days ago—when young Conover, having established contact with Henneberger, the ex-owner of WT, obtained from the latter a long epistle which I wrote Edwin Baird on Feby. 3, 1924, in response to a request for biographical & personal data. Little Willis asked permission to publish the text in his combined SFC-Fantasy, & I began looking the thing over to see what it was like—for I had not the least recollection of ever having penned it. Well …. I managed to get through, after about 10 closely typed pages of egotistical reminiscences & showing-off & expressions of opinion about mankind & the universe. I did not faint—but I looked around for a 1924 photograph of myself to burn, spit on, or stick pins in! Holy Hades—was I that much of a dub at 33 … only 13 years ago? There was no getting out of it—I really had thrown all that haughty, complacent, snobbish, self-centred, intolerant bull, & at a mature age when anybody but a perfect damned fool would have known better! That earlier illness had kept me in seclusion, limited my knowledge of the world, & given me something of the fatuous effusiveness of a belated adolescent when I finally was able to get around more in 1920, is hardly much of an excuse. Well—there was nothing to be done … except to rush a note back to Conover & tell him I'd dismember him & run the fragments through a sausage-grinder if he ever thought of printing such a thing! The only consolation lay in the reflection that I had matured a bit since '24. It's hard to have done all one's growing up since 33—but that's a damn sight better than not growing up at all.”

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

Letter to Catherine L. Moore (7 February 1937), in Selected Letters V, 1934-1937 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 407-408
Non-Fiction, Letters

God, Age, World, Education

“When the common good of a society is regarded as something apart from and superior to the individual good of its members, it means that the good of some men takes precedence over the good of others, with those others consigned to the status of sacrificial animals.”

Ayn Rand book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966)

Men, Animals

“The meaning of the world is the separation of wish and fact. Wish is a force as applied to thinking beings, to realize something. A fulfilled wish is a union of wish and fact. The meaning of the whole world is the separation and the union of fact and wish.”

Kurt Gödel (1906–1978) logician, mathematician, and philosopher of mathematics

As quoted in The Outer Limits of Reason: What Science, Mathematics, and Logic Cannot Tell Us (MIT Press) 2013 by Yanofsky, Noson S

World, Thinking

“If you're trying to turn me into something else? It's easy to see, I'm not down with that.”

Avril Lavigne (1984) Canadian singer-songwriter and actress

"Nobody's Fool"
Let Go (2002)

“All I know is that I care about this problem. And I want to make it better.
And having seen what I’ve seen — and given the chance — I feel it is my responsibility to say something.”

Emma Watson (1990) British actress and model

The "Burke quote" she uses here is a common but disputed attribution.
UN Speech on the HeForShe campaign (2014)
Context: You might be thinking who is this Harry Potter girl? And what is she doing speaking at the UN. And it’s a really good question. I've been asking myself the same thing. All I know is that I care about this problem. And I want to make it better.
And having seen what I’ve seen — and given the chance — I feel it is my responsibility to say something. Statesman Edmund Burke said: “All that is needed for the forces of evil to triumph is for good men and women to do nothing.”
In my nervousness for this speech and in my moments of doubt I’ve told myself firmly — if not me, who, if not now, when. If you have similar doubts when opportunities are presented to you I hope that those words might be helpful.

Feeling, Problem, Chance

“Physics is to be regarded not so much as the study of something a priori given, but rather as the development of methods of ordering and surveying human experience.”

Niels Bohr (1885–1962) Danish physicist

"The Unity of Human Knowledge" (October 1960)
Context: Physics is to be regarded not so much as the study of something a priori given, but rather as the development of methods of ordering and surveying human experience. In this respect our task must be to account for such experience in a manner independent of individual subjective judgement and therefore objective in the sense that it can be unambiguously communicated in ordinary human language.

Study