Quotes about story
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“When a man's stories are remembered, then he is immortal.”

Daniel Wallace book Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions

Variant: Remembering a man's stories makes him immortal.
Source: Big Fish

“A happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

Happiness

“When asked for advice by beginners. Know your ending, I say, or the river of your story may finally sink into the desert sands and never reach the sea.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

Source: I. Asimov

Sea

“So here is my story, may it bring
Some smiles and a tear or so,
It happened once upon a time,
Far away, and long ago,
Outside the night wind keens and wails,
Come listen to me, the Teller of Tales!”

Brian Jacques book Lord Brocktree

Source: Lord Brocktree

Smile, Tear, Time, Night

“Tell the story as if it were only of interest to the small circle of your characters, of which you may be one. There is no other way to put life into the story.”

Horacio Quiroga (1878–1937) Uruguayan playwright, poet, and short story writer

Life, Way

“I fell in love with her when we were together, then fell deeper in love with her in the years we were apart. Our story has three parts: a beginning, a middle, and an end. And although this is the way all stories unfold, I still can't believe that ours didn't go on forever.”

Nicholas Sparks book Dear John

John Tyree, Prologue, p. 4
Source: 2000s, Dear John (2006)

Love, Way, Parting

“The story of terrorism is written by the state and it is therefore highly instructive… compared with terrorism, everything else must be acceptable, or in any case more rational and democratic.”

Guy Debord book The Society of the Spectacle

Source: The Society of the Spectacle

“It's no longer enough to teach our children Bible stories; they need doctrine and apologetics.”

William Lane Craig (1949) American Christian apologist and evangelist

Children

“I see things, that's all. Write enough stories and every shadow on the floor looks like a footprint; every line in the dirt like a secret message.”

Stephen King book Bag of Bones

Source: Bag of Bones

Secret

“You have yet to understand, my friends, that the shortest distance between a human being and truth is a story.”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

Source: Anthony De Mello : Writings (1999), p. 8
Context: A master was once unmoved by the complaints of his disciples that, though they listened with pleasure to his parables and stories, they were also frustrated for they longed for something deeper. To all their objections he would simply reply: "You have yet to understand, my friends, that the shortest distance between a human being and truth is a story."

Truth, Understanding

“A story about family, first loves, second chances, and the moments in life that leads you back home”

Nicholas Sparks book The Last Song

Source: The Last Song

Love, Life, Family, Home

“I regard the afterlife to be a fairy story for people that are afraid of the dark”

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

People

“For never was a story of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo.”

William Shakespeare book Romeo and Juliet

Source: Romeo and Juliet

“I'll give you the whole secret to short story writing. Here it is. Rule 1: Write stories that please yourself. There is no Rule 2.”

O. Henry (1862–1910) American short story writer

Secret

“Death is the sanction of everything the story-teller can tell. He has borrowed his authority from death.”

Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) German literary critic, philosopher and social critic (1892-1940)

Source: Illuminations: Essays and Reflections

Death

“The telling of a story, like virtually everything in this life, was always made all the easier by a cup of tea.”

Alexander McCall Smith book The Miracle at Speedy Motors

Source: The Miracle at Speedy Motors

Life, Tea

“Quite, quite,' she thought with a little sigh. 'It's always like this in their adventures. To save and be saved. I wish somebody would write a story sometime about the people who warm up the heroes afterward.”

Tove Jansson book Moominland Midwinter

Source: Moominland Midwinter

People

“A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film.”

Lorrie Moore (1957) American writer

Love, Marriage

“I have always had such sincere love for truth, that I have often begun by telling stories for the purpose of getting truth to enter the heads of those who could not appreciate its charms.”

Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice

Memoirs (trans. Machen 1894), book 1, Preface http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/c/casanova/c33m/preface2.html <br class="br">Referenced

Love, Truth, Sincerity

“Every artist is an unhappy lover. And unhappy lovers want to tell their story.”

Iris Murdoch book The Black Prince

Source: The Black Prince

Lovers

“It might seem strange to start a story with an ending. But all endings are also beginnings. We just don’t know it at the time.”

Mitch Albom book The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Source: The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Time

“In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.”

Barack Obama Remarks of Senator Barack Obama on New Hampshire Primary Night

Remarks of Senator Barack Obama on New Hampshire Primary Night (8 January 2008)
2008
Context: We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics who will only grow louder and more dissonant in the weeks to come. We've been asked to pause for a reality check. We've been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope. But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope. For when we have faced down impossible odds; when we've been told that we're not ready, or that we shouldn't try, or that we can't, generations of Americans have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes we can.
Context: We know the battle ahead will be long, but always remember that no matter what obstacles stand in our way, nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change. We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics. They will only grow louder and more dissonant in the weeks and months to come. We've been asked to pause for a reality check; we've been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope. But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope. For when we have faced down impossible odds; when we've been told we're not ready, or that we shouldn't try, or that we can't, generations of Americans have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes we can.

Hope, Falseness, Hope

“If I want a long boring story with no point to it, I have my life.”

Jerry Seinfeld (1954) American comedian and actor

Life

“It's precisely the disappointing stories, which have no proper ending and therefore no proper meaning, that sound true to life.”

Max Frisch (1911–1991) Swiss playwright and novelist

Life, Disappointment

“Nobody had noticed, nobody had paid attention, but, as usual, the essential part of the matter had been settled before the story had begun, and by then it was too late.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

Parting

“In those days I learned that nothing is more frightening than a hero who lives to tell his story, to tell what all those who fell at his side will never be able to tell.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

Learning

“If you don't turn your life into a story, you just become a part of someone else's story.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Source: The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

Life, Parting

“If you've a story, make sure it's a whole one, with details close to hand. It's the difference between a good lie and getting caught.”

Tamora Pierce (1954) American writer of fantasy novels for children

Source: Trickster's Choice

Lie

“I long to hear the story of your life, which must captivate the ear strangely.”

William Shakespeare The Tempest

Source: The Tempest

Life

“A story is not finished, until it has taken the worst turn.”

Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990) Swiss author and dramatist

In Elyse Sommer, CurtainUp Reviews http://www.curtainup.com/wtf07.html, Williamstown Theatre Festival (Summer 2007) <br class="br">Source: Physicists

“Without stories we would go mad. Life would lose its moorings or lose its orientations. even in silence we are living our stories”

Ben Okri (1959) Nigerian writer

Source: Birds of Heaven

Life, Silence, Madness

“That is my story, simply told. Please do not ask again. I have told you in order to issue a warning. I have been damaged. Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive.”

Josephine Hart book Damage

Source: Damage

People

“Stories are compasses and architecture, we navigate by them, we build our sanctuaries and our prisons out of them, and to be without a story is to be lost in the vastness of a world that spreads in all directions like arctic tundra or sea ice.”

Rebecca Solnit book The Faraway Nearby

Source: The Faraway Nearby

World, Sea

“I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.”

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

People

“Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Truth, Way

“There are two stories for every life; the one you live & the one others tell”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Source: The First Phone Call from Heaven

Life

“Warning: Do not read this story right after eating. In fact, don't read it right before eating either. In fact, just to be safe, don't read this story if you're ever planning to eat again.”

Louis Sachar (1954) American writer of children's books

Source: Wayside School Is Falling Down

Reading

“True love stories never have endings.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Love, Relationship, Cute, Powerful

“The thing about stories is you have to pick the ones that last.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Source: The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

“The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

“The reason for evil in the world is that people are not able to tell their stories.”

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

People, World, Evil

“In the light, we read the inventions of others; in the darkness we invent our own stories.”

Alberto Manguel (1948) writer

Source: The Library at Night

Light, Reading

“It's like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore (2002)

Happiness

“Find the story, Granny Weatherwax always said. She believed that the world was full of story shapes. If you let them, they controlled you. But if you studied them, if you found out about them… you could use them, you could change them.”

Terry Pratchett book Witches Abroad

Source: Witches Abroad

World, Study, Change

“No story is a straight line. The geometry of a human life is too imperfect and complex, too distorted by the laughter of time and the bewildering intricacies of fate to admit the straight line into its system of laws.”

Pat Conroy book Beach Music

Source: Beach Music

Life, Fate, Law, Laughter

“The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (1977) Nigerian writer

Source: https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/15-quotes-from-chimamanda-adichie-that-have-change/

Problem

“Lesson no. 5: Sometimes happiness is not knowing the whole story”

François Lelord book Hector and the Search for Happiness

Variant: Sometimes happiness is not knowing the whole story.
Source: Hector and the Search for Happiness

Happiness

“Every great love starts with a great story…”

Nicholas Sparks book The Notebook

Source: The Notebook

Love, Romantic

“When everyone is determined to present someone as a monster, there are two possibilities: either he’s a saint or they themselves are not telling the whole story.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

“A good writer is basically a story teller, not a scholar or a redeemer of mankind.”

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902–1991) Polish-born Jewish-American author

“My process is thinking, thinking and thinking - thinking about my stories for a long time.”

Hayao Miyazaki (1941) Japanese animator, film director, and mangaka

Thinking, Time

“There was a point to this story, but it has temporarily escaped the chronicler's mind.”

Douglas Adams book So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Source: So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

“All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them.”

Karen Blixen (1885–1962) Danish writer

As quoted in The Human Condition (1958) by Hannah Arendt. This appears as part of a statement in a 1957 interview where she speaks of a friend's comments about her:
I am not a novelist, really not even a writer; I am a storyteller. One of my friends said about me that I think all sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them, and perhaps this is not entirely untrue. To me, the explanation of life seems to be its melody, its pattern. And I feel in life such an infinite, truly inconceivable fantasy.
Interview with Bent Mohn in The New York Times Book Review (3 November 1957)
Paraphrased variant : All suffering is bearable if it is seen as part of a story.

“This moment will just be another story someday.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Sad

“In life, finding a voice is speaking and living the truth. Each of you is an original. Each of you has a distinctive voice. When you find it, your story will be told. You will be heard.”

John Grisham (1955) American lawyer, politician, and author

Life, Truth

“It’s a story of love, of hatred, and of the dreams that live in the shadow of the wind.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

Love, Dreams

“A visiting pastor at our church in Plains once told a story about a priest from New Orleans. Father Flanagan’s parish lay in the central part of the city, close to many taverns. One night he was walking down the street and saw a drunk thrown out of a pub. The man landed in the gutter, and Father Flanagan quickly recognized him as one of his parishioners, a fellow named Mike. Father Flanagan shook the dazed man and said, “Mike!” Mike opened his eyes and Father Flanagan said, “You’re in trouble. If there is anything I can do for you, please tell me what it is.ℍ “Well, Father,” Mike replied, “I hope you’ll pray for me.” “Yes,” the priest answered, “I’ll pray for you right now.” He knelt down in the gutter and prayed, “Father, please have mercy on this drunken man.ℍ At this, a startled Mike woke up fully and said, “Father, please don’t tell God I’m drunk.ℍ Sometimes we don’t feel much of a personal relationship between God and ourselves, as though we have a secret life full of failures and sins that God knows nothing about. We want to involve God only when we plan to give thanks or when we’re in trouble and need help. But the rest of our lives, we’d rather keep to ourselves.”

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, Secret, Hope

“Love's stories written in love's richest books.
To fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes.”

William Shakespeare A Midsummer Night's Dream

Source: A Midsummer Night's Dream

Love, Books, Sleep

“The most important things to remember about back story are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn’t very interesting.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

History

“Because some stories end, but old stories go on, and you gotta dance to the music if you want to stay ahead”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Source: The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

Music, Dance

“The past is just a story we tell ourselves.”

Spike Jonze (1969) American director and actor

Source: her

Past

“Real life is not quite as it is in stories. In the old tales, bad things happen, and when the tale has unfolded and come to its triumphant conclusion, it is as if the bad things had never been. Life is not as simple as that, not quite.”

Juliet Marillier book Daughter of the Forest

Source: Daughter of the Forest

Life

“All true stories begin and end in a cemetery" - The Shadow of the Wind”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

“People wanted the world to be a story, because stories had to sound right and they had to make sense. People wanted the world to make sense.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

People, World, Sense

“Sometimes when she told stories about the past her eyes would get teary from all the memories she had, but they weren't tears. She wasn't crying. They were just the memories, leaking out.”

Ruth Ozeki book A Tale for the Time Being

Source: A Tale for the Time Being

Tear, Memory, Past, Cry

“If you ever find yourself in the wrong story, leave.”

Mo Willems (1968) American children's illustrator and writer

Source: Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs

For women

“My mother wanted us to understand that the tragedies of your life one day have to potential to be the comic stories the next.”

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

Life, Understanding

“People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact, it's the other way around.”

Terry Pratchett book Witches Abroad

Source: Witches Abroad

People, Way, Thinking

“Stories are the creative conversion of life itself into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience. They are the currency of human contact.”

Robert McKee (1941) American academic specialised in seminars for screenwriters

Life

“But there was more to it than that. As the Amazing Maurice said, it was just a story about people and rats. And the difficult part of it was deciding who the people were, and who were the rats.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Source: The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

People, Parting

“There are many ways of breaking a heart. Stories were full of hearts broken by love, but what really broke a heart was taking away its dream -- whatever that dream might be.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

Love, Dreams, Way, Heart

“And ever, as the story drained
The wells of fancy dry,
And faintly strove that weary one
To put the subject by,
"The rest next time--" "It is next time!"
The Happy voice cry.

Thus grew the tale of Wonderland”

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

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

Happiness, Time, Cry

“My father taught me to work, but not to love it. I never did like to work, and I don't deny it. I'd rather read, tell stories, crack jokes, talk, laugh -- anything but work.”

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

Love, Reading, For Father

“I do believe in the power of story. I believe that stories have an important role to play in the formation of human beings, that they can stimulate, amaze and inspire their listeners.”

Hayao Miyazaki (1941) Japanese animator, film director, and mangaka

“There's always a story. It's all stories, really. The sun coming up every day is a story. Everything's got a story in it. Change the story, change the world.”

Terry Pratchett book A Hat Full of Sky

Source: A Hat Full of Sky

World, Change, Sun

“It's a damn good story. If you have any comments, write them on the back of a check.”

Erle Stanley Gardner (1889–1970) Lawyer, novelist, travel writer

“What people are ashamed of usually makes a good story.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

People

“I have heard it said that a complicated childhood can lead to a life in the arts. I tell you this story of my father and me to let you know I am qualified to be a comedian.”

Steve Martin (1945) American actor, comedian, musician, author, playwright, and producer

Source: Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life

Life, Art, Childhood

“She had to find her own story, and she could make it whatever shape she thought best.”

Tad Williams book River of Blue Fire

Source: River of Blue Fire

“To hell with facts! We need stories!”

Ken Kesey (1935–2001) novelist

Hell

“Stories don't care who takes part in them. All that matters if that the story gets told, that the story repeats. Or, if you prefer to think of it like this: stories are a parasitical life form, warping lives in the service only of the story itself.”

Terry Pratchett book Witches Abroad

Source: Witches Abroad

Life, Thinking, Parting

“There is no story that is not true.”

Chinua Achebe book Things Fall Apart

Source: Things Fall Apart

“And all the stories had, somewhere, the witch. The wicked old witch.
And Tiffany had thought: Where's the evidence?”

Terry Pratchett book The Wee Free Men

Source: The Wee Free Men

“The history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.”

Virginia Woolf book A Room of One's Own

Ch. 3, p. 72) http://books.google.com/books?id=CoP1GxjoNnsC&q=&quot;The+history+of+men's+opposition+to+women's+emancipation+is+more+interesting+perhaps+than+the+story+of+that+emancipation+itself&quot;&pg=PA72#v=onepage <br class="br">Source: A Room of One's Own (1929)

Women, Men, History

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

Karen Blixen (1885–1962) Danish writer

Feeling

“No subject is terrible if the story is true, if the prose is clean and honest, and if it affirms courage and grace under pressure.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Courage

“All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel.”

Margaret Atwood book The Blind Assassin

Source: The Blind Assassin (2000)
Context: All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel. …Think about it. There's escaping from the wolves, fighting the wolves, capturing the wolves, taming the wolves. Being thrown to the wolves, or throwing others to the wolves so the wolves will eat them instead of you. Running with the wolf pack. Turning into a wolf. Best of all, turning into the head wolf. No other decent stories exist.

“The story of life is quicker than the wink of an eye, the story of love is hello and goodbye… until we meet again”

Jimi Hendrix (1942–1970) American musician, singer and songwriter

Love, Life, Goodbye

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

Stephen King (1947) American author

Hope, Forgetting

“The sieges of Gvozdansko (1578) and Alamo (1836) tell the true stories of the small bands of the heroes who stood against the massive armies to defend their homelands. They echo innate human devotion to the idea of fighting for freedom.”

Vinko Vrbanić (1951)

Freedom

Idea, Freedom, Fight

“The story of how anti-Hindu laws were enacted… is long. In summary form, it consists of 1) banishing Brahmins on pain of being made prisoners on the galleys; 2) confiscating the properties of those Hindus who sent their families to neighbouring lands for fear of conversion; 3) prohibiting the performance of Hindu rites and ceremonies; 4) banning Hindu priests and preachers from doing their religious duties; 5) compelling Hindus to attend church services and listen to Christian doctrines; 6) depriving Hindus of their traditional rights and privileges in village communities; 7) forcing the baptism of Hindu orphans; and 8) ordering Hindus not to ride on horseback or in palanquins. The laws were so designed as to humiliate the Hindus in every conceivable manner… Missionary records, however, refer to many famous Hindu temples being converted into churches at these places… Even private temples in Hindu homes were prohibited and “transgressors” were severely punished…”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

St. Francis Xavier: The man and his mission. 1985.

Pain, Fear, Family, Law

“The stories we love best do live in us forever. So, whether you come back by page or by the big screen, Hogwarts will always be there to welcome you home.”

Joanne K. Rowling (1965) British novelist, author of the Harry Potter series

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 London Premiere (July 2011)
2010s

Love, Home

“I am thankful, of course, for the prize and thankful to God for each story, each idea, each word, each day.”

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902–1991) Polish-born Jewish-American author

On winning the Nobel Prize, TIME magazine (16 October 1978)

God, Idea

“For a story which is nat pleynli told,
But constreynyd undir woordes fewe
For lak off trouthe, wher thei be newe or olde,
Men bi report kan nat the mater shewe.”

John Lydgate (1370–1450) monk and poet

Prologue, line 92.
The Fall of Princes

Men

“However—the crucial thing is my lack of interest in ordinary life. No one ever wrote a story yet without some real emotional drive behind it—and I have not that drive except where violations of the natural order… defiances and evasions of time, space, and cosmic law… are concerned. Just why this is so I haven't the slightest idea—it simply is so. I am interested only in broad pageants—historic streams—orders of biological, chemical, physical, and astronomical organisation—and the only conflict which has any deep emotional significance to me is that of the principle of freedom or irregularity or adventurous opportunity against the eternal and maddening rigidity of cosmic law… especially the laws of time…. Hence the type of thing I try to write. Naturally, I am aware that this forms a very limited special field so far as mankind en masse is concerned; but I believe (as pointed out in that Recluse article) that the field is an authentic one despite its subordinate nature. This protest against natural law, and tendency to weave visions of escape from orderly nature, are characteristic and eternal factors in human psychology, even though very small ones. They exist as permanent realities, and have always expressed themselves in a typical form of art from the earliest fireside folk tales and ballads to the latest achievements of Blackwood and Machen or de la Mare or Dunsany. That art exists—whether the majority like it or not. It is small and limited, but real—and there is no reason why its practitioners should be ashamed of it. Naturally one would rather be a broad artist with power to evoke beauty from every phase of experience—but when one unmistakably isn't such an artist, there's no sense in bluffing and faking and pretending that one is.”

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

Letter to E. Hoffmann Price (15 August 1934) , quoted in Lord of a Visible World: An Autobiography in Letters edited by S.T. Joshi, p. 268
Non-Fiction, Letters, to E. Hoffmann Price

Life, Law, Beauty, Art

“I spent a lot of time on my — in my farewell address talking about the state of our democracy. It goes without saying that essential to that is a free press. That is part of how this place, this country, this grand experiment of self-government has to work. It doesn’t work if we don’t have a well-informed citizenry, and you are the conduit through which they receive the information about what’s taking place in the halls of power. So America needs you and our democracy needs you. We need you to establish a baseline of facts and evidence that we can use as a starting point for the kind of reasoned and informed debates that ultimately lead to progress. And so my hope is is that you will continue with the same tenacity that you showed us, to do the hard work of getting to the bottom of stories and getting them right and to push those of us in power to be the best version of ourselves and to push this country to be the best version of itself.”

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

On the role of the press in a democracy
2017, Final News Conference as President (January 2017)

Hope, Democracy, Time, Parting

“Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they're supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who's been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he's there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, "I am here because of Ashley."
"I'm here because of Ashley." By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.
But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.”

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

2008, A More Perfect Union (March 2008)

War, Children, Health, Education

“Hopefully, more and more people will begin to feel their story is somehow part of this larger story of how we're going to reshape America in a way that is less mean-spirited and more generous.”

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

on sexism and racism, in * 1990-05-03
Harvard Student Tackles Racism At Core
Illinois Daily Herald
Allison J.
Pugh
Section 3, Page 2
quoted in * 2012-03-14
Obama 1990 Interview: ‘We’re Going To Reshape Mean Spirited Selfish America, I Hope To Be Part Of Transformation’
velvethammer
Ironic Surrealism
http://ironicsurrealism.com/2012/03/14/obama-1990-interview-were-going-to-reshape-mean-spirited-america
2012-03-20; and * 2012-03-18
Rachel Maddow Asks Why Both Presidents George Bush ‘Hate America’ Like Barack Obama
Tommy
Christopher
Mediaite
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/rachel-maddow-asks-why-both-presidents-george-bush-hate-america-like-barack-obama/
2012-03-20
1990s

People, Way, Feeling, Parting

“Sometimes you're just happy playing. Some people, some media, unfortunately, don't understand that it's okay just to play tennis and enjoy it. They always think you have to win everything, it always needs to be a success story, and if it's not, obviously, what is the point? Maybe you have to go back and think, Why have I started playing tennis? Because I just like it. It's actually sort of a dream hobby that became somewhat of a job. Some people just don't get that, ever.”

Roger Federer (1981) Swiss tennis player

Tennis - ATP World Tour - Shanghai 2012 Thursday - Federer Recalls First Time At No. 1 http://www.atpworldtour.com/News/Tennis/2012/10/41/Shanghai-Thursday-Federer-Recalls-Rise-To-Top.aspx

Happiness, People, Dreams, Understanding

“In this connection I call to mind Genesis, chapter xlvii…the pathetic story of the years of plenty and the years of famine in Egypt, and how Joseph, with that opportunity, made a corner in broken hearts, and the crusts of the poor, and human liberty--a corner whereby he took a nation's money all away, to the last penny…then took the nation itself, buying it for bread, man by man, woman by woman, child by child, till all were slaves…and it was a disaster so crushing that its effects have not wholly disappeared from Egypt to-day… Was Joseph establishing a character for his race which would survive long in Egypt? and in time would his name come to be familiarly used to express that character--like Shylock's? It is hardly to be doubted. Let us remember that this was centuries before the Crucifixion.”

Mark Twain book Concerning the Jews

Concerning the Jews (Harper's Magazine, Sept. 1899)

Money, Time, Heart

Quotes about story page 2

Quotes about story
page 2