Quotes about thousand
A collection of quotes on the topic of thousand, year, people, time.
Quotes about thousand
Carl Sagan book Pale Blue Dot
Source: Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994), p. 8, Supplemental image at randi.org http://www.randi.org/images/122801-BlueDot.jpg
Jane Goodall (1934) British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist
The Ten Trusts (2003), p. xv
Joachim Peiper (1915–1976) SS officer
Parker, Hitler's Warrior, chapter 18, citing La Libre Belgigue in note 61.
Sophie Scholl (1921–1943) White Rose member
As quoted by Else Gebel, in letter to Robert Scholl (November, 1946). Original German text. http://www.mythoselser.de/texts/scholl-gebel.htm
William Shakespeare Julius Caesar
Variant: Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.
Source: Julius Caesar
George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist
"As I Please," Tribune, (31 December 1943)
As I Please (1943–1947)
“Cowards die a thousand deaths, but the brave only die once.”
Ernest Hemingway book A Farewell to Arms
Source: A Farewell to Arms
“I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.”
Harriet Tubman (1820–1913) African-American abolitionist and humanitarian
Attributed to Tubman in Dorothy Winbush Riley, My Soul Looks Back 'Less I Forget https://books.google.com/books?id=KpcLAQAAMAAJ&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=%22c.+1865%22 p. 148 (1993). Riley gives a date of "c. 1865" but offers no citation. No source from earlier than 1993 is known. Quoted in Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience (1999) by Henry Louis Gates and Kwame Anthony Appiah, p. 299. Tubman specialists like Jean H. Humez and Kate Clifford Larson deem this one completely spurious. See "Bogus Tubman," by Steve Perisho http://liberlocorumcommunium.blogspot.com/2014/03/bogus-tubman-i-freed-thousands-of.html.<!-- Someone cited this as being in Harriet, The Moses of Her People (1886) by Sarah H. Bradford, but it does not occur in the editions available online. --> <br class="br">Disputed <br class="br">Variant: I freed thousands of slaves. I could have freed thousands more, if they had known they were slaves.
“A thousand Dreams within me softly burn”
Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891) French Decadent and Symbolist poet
“I have to see a thing a thousand times before I see it once.”
Thomas Wolfe book You Can't Go Home Again
Source: You Can't Go Home Again
“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher
Laozi in the Tao Te Ching, Chapter 64
Misattributed, Chinese
Shams-i Tabrizi (1185–1248) 1185-1248, spiritual instructor of Mewlānā Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhi.
Me & Rumi (2004)
Bk. 3, ch. 2; pp. 88-89.
Anabasis
Context: On making prisoners of our generals, they expected that we should perish from want of direction and order. It is incumbent, therefore, on our present commanders to be far more vigilant than our former ones, and on those under command to be far more orderly, and more obedient to their officers, at present than they were before…On the very day that such resolution is passed, they will see before them ten thousand Clearchuses instead of one.
Marcus Aurelius book Meditations
Meditations. iv. 17.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Herman Melville (1818–1891) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet
Though this statement and a few other variants of it have been widely attributed to Herman Melville, it is actually a paraphrase of one found in a sermon of Henry Melvill, "Partaking in Other Men's Sins", St. Margaret's Church, Lothbury, England (12 June 1855), printed in Golden Lectures (1855) :
: There is not one of you whose actions do not operate on the actions of others—operate, we mean, in the way of example. He would be insignificant who could only destroy his own soul; but you are all, alas! of importance enough to help also to destroy the souls of others. ...Ye cannot live for yourselves; a thousand fibres connect you with your fellow-men, and along those fibres, as along sympathetic threads, run your actions as causes, and return to you as effects.
Misattributed
Franz Brentano (1838–1917) Austrian philosopher
Was klein ist im Beginn wird oft am Ende überaus groß sein. Und so geschieht es, das wer im Anfange auch nur um ein Weniges von der Wahrheit abweicht, im Verlauf immer weiter und weiter und zu tausendmal größern Irrthümer fortgeführt wird.
On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle (1862)
Michael Parenti (1933) American academic
2 MEDIA AND CULTURE, Giving Labor The Business, p. 122
Dirty truths (1996), first edition
Jane Goodall (1934) British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist
In response to: "If chimps are so much like us, why are they endangered while humans dominate the globe?" Discover Magazine interview with Virginia Morell (28 March 2007)
“Each progressive spirit is opposed by a thousand mediocre minds appointed to guard the past.”
Maurice Maeterlinck (1862–1949) Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist
As quoted in Optimum Sports Nutrition (1993) by Michael Colgan, p. 144
Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945) Nazi officer, Commander of the SS
Our concern, our duty, is our people and our blood. We can be indifferent to everything else. I wish the S.S. to adopt this attitude towards the problem of all foreign, non-Germanic peoples, especially Russians....
The Posen speech to SS officers (6 October 1943)
1940s
Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)
1960s, A Time for Choosing (1964)
Context: You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness. We will keep in mind and remember that Barry Goldwater has faith in us. He has faith that you and I have the ability and the dignity and the right to make our own decisions and determine our own destiny.
Scipio Africanus (-235–-183 BC) Roman general in the Second Punic War
Context: I am mindful of human weakness, and I reflect upon the might of Fortune and know that everything that we do is exposed to a thousand chances. But, just as I should admit that I were acting with arrogance and violence if, before I had crossed over to Africa, I were to reject you when you were voluntarily withdrawing from Italy and, while your army was already on shipboard, you were coming in person to sue for peace, so now, when I have dragged you to Africa, resisting and shifting ground as we almost came to blows, I am under no obligation to respect you. Therefore, if to the terms upon which peace was formerly about to be made, as it seemed, you are adding some kind of compensation for the ships loaded with supplies that were taken by force during the armistice, and for violence done to my envoys, I have reason to bring it before the council. But if that addition also seems too severe, prepare for war, since you have been unable to endure a peace [bellum parate, quoniam pacem pati non potuistis].<br><br>Reply to Hannibal's attempt to set terms for peace, prior to the Battle of Zama, as quoted in Livy. Books XXVIII-XXX With An English Translation (1949), Book 30, Ch. 31 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0159%3Abook%3D30%3Achapter%3D31<br>Variant translation:<br>I am aware of the frailty of man, I think about the power of fortune, and I know that all our actions are at the mercy of a thousand vicissitudes. Now I admit that it would have been arrogant and headstrong reaction on my part if you had come to sue for peace before I crossed to Africa, and I had rejected your petition when you were yourself voluntarily quitting Italy, and had your troops embarked on your ships. But, as it is, I have forced you back to Africa, and you are reluctant and resisting almost to the point of fighting, so that I feel no need to show you any consideration. Accordingly, if something is actually added to the terms on which it seems probable that a peace could be concluded — some sort of indemnity for the forceful appropriation of our ships, along with their cargoes, during truce and for the violation of our envoys — then I have something to take to my council. But if you consider even that to be excessive, prepare for war, for you have found peace intolerable.<br>Hannibal's War : Books Twenty-one to Thirty by Livy, as translated by John Yardley (2006), p. 600<br>Prepare to fight — for, evidently, you have found peace intolerable.<br>Let us make war, since evidently, you have found peace intolerable.
Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876) Russian revolutionary, philosopher, and theorist of collectivist anarchism
Rousseau's Theory of the State (1873)
Context: We are firmly convinced that the most imperfect republic is a thousand times better than the most enlightened monarchy. In a republic, there are at least brief periods when the people, while continually exploited, is not oppressed; in the monarchies, oppression is constant. The democratic regime also lifts the masses up gradually to participation in public life--something the monarchy never does. Nevertheless, while we prefer the republic, we must recognise and proclaim that whatever the form of government may be, so long as human society continues to be divided into different classes as a result of the hereditary inequality of occupations, of wealth, of education, and of rights, there will always be a class-restricted government and the inevitable exploitation of the majorities by the minorities.
The State is nothing but this domination and this exploitation, well regulated and systematised.
Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation
An Introduction to St. Paul's Letter to the Romans from<cite>Dr. Martin Luthers Vermischte Deutsche Schriften</cite>. Johann K. Irmischer, ed. Vol. 63(Erlangen: Heyder and Zimmer, 1854), pp.124-125. (EA 63:124-125) http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/luther/luther-faith.txt <br class="br">Context: Faith is a living, bold trust in God's grace, so certain of God's favor that it would risk death a thousand times trusting in it. Such confidence and knowledge of God's grace makes you happy, joyful and bold in your relationship to God and all creatures. The Holy Spirit makes this happen through faith. Because of it, you freely, willingly and joyfully do good to everyone, serve everyone, suffer all kinds of things, love and praise the God who has shown you such grace.
Chuck Jones (1912–2002) American animator, cartoon artist, screenwriter, producer, and director of animated films
“We meet ourselves time and again in a thousand disguises on the path of life.”
C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author
"Colonies in space may be only hope, says Hawking" by Roger Highfield in Daily Telegraph (16 October 2001).
“One Book is enough, but a thousand books is not too many!”
Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation
Adeline Yen Mah book Chinese Cinderella and the Secret Dragon Society
Source: Chinese Cinderella and the Secret Dragon Society
John Ruskin book Modern Painters
Volume III, part IV, chapter XVI (1856).
Modern Painters (1843-1860)
“Christ could be born a thousand times in Bethlehem – but all in vain until He is born in me.”
Angelus Silesius (1624–1677) German writer
As quoted in Messenger Of The Heart: The Book Of Angelus Silesius, With Observations By Frederick Franck (2005)
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity
From Cosmic Religion: with Other Opinions and Aphorisms (1931), Albert Einstein, pub. Covici-Friede. Quoted in The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton University Press; 2nd edition (May 30, 2000); Page 208, ISBN 0691070210
1930s
Matka Tereza (1910–1997) Roman Catholic saint of Albanian origin
1970s
Source: Malcolm Muggeridge, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, A Gift For God: Prayers and Meditations, New York: Harper & Row, 1975. p. 61; Cited in: M. Dhavamony. "Mother Teresa's mission of love for the poor" in: Studia missionalia, Vol 39. (1990), p. 137
Ian Smith (1919–2007) Prime Minister of Rhodesia
Nigel Rees, "Sayings of the Century", Unwin paperbacks, 1984, p. 247.
Radio broadcast, March 20, 1976.
Peter Godwin, Comment in the Guardian(UK) Newspaper http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/nov/25/comment.zimbabwe.
Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America
2014, Statement on Cuban policy (December 2014)
Jean-Dominique Bauby book The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Le scaphandre et le papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: A Memoir of Life in Death), trans. Jeremy Leggatt (Vintage, 1998, ISBN 0-375-70121-4), p. 82
“The illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths.”
Aleksandr Pushkin (1799–1837) Russian poet
The Hero ll. 64-65, quoted in Gooseberries by Anton Chekhov
Dante Alighieri book Paradiso
Canto XIX, lines 79–81 (tr. Longfellow).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Paradiso
Augusto Pinochet (1915–2006) Former dictator of the republic of Chile
Interview (1989) quoted in " "Ego sum Pinochet" 1989, Inteview to Augusto Pinochet, authors Raquel Correa and Elizabeth Subercaseaux. http://www.guerraeterna.com/archives/2006/12/pinochet_y_hitl.html" <br class="br">1980s
Narges Mohammadi (1972) Iranian human rights activist
Letter Accepting 2018 Andrei Sakharov Prizefrom (2018)
Clifford Geertz book The Interpretation of Cultures
Source: The Interpretation of Cultures (1973), p. 45
Zakir Hussain (politician) (1897–1969) 3rd President of India
Source: Uniqueness of Zakir Husain and His Contributions (1997), p. 25.
Greta Garbo (1905–1990) Swedish-American actress
Screen Secrets: Greta Garbo Breaks her Silence (1928)
Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist
What US leaders have never understood about Iran http://nypost.com/2015/07/19/what-us-leaders-have-never-understood-about-iran/, New York Post (July 19, 2015). <br class="br">New York Post
Erich Fromm (1900–1980) German social psychologist and psychoanalyst
Jewish Newsletter [New York] (19 May 1959); quoted in Prophets in Babylon (1980) by Marion Woolfson, p. 13
Kuvempu (1904–1994) Kannada novelist, poet, playwright, critic, and thinker
He stated when he deviated from the Valmiki Ramayana epic story and was criticized for the changes made. Quoted in [Mandakranta Bose Director of the Center for India and South Asia Research and the Institute of Asian Research University of British Columbia, The Ramayana Revisited, http://books.google.com/books?id=F_vuoXvAUfQC&pg=PA140, 1 September 2004, Oxford University Press, 978-0-19-803763-7, 140–]
Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030) Sultan of Ghazni
About the defeat of Jaipal. Tarikh Yamini (Kitabu-l Yamini) by Al Utbi, in Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. p. 27 Also quoted (in part) in Jain, Meenakshi (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts.
Quotes from Tarikh Yamini (Kitabu-l Yamini) by Al Utbi
“At no time has the world been without war. Not in seven or ten or twenty thousand years.”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn The Red Wheel
"Father Severyan", in November 1916: The Red Wheel: Knot II (1984; translation 1999).
Context: At no time has the world been without war. Not in seven or ten or twenty thousand years. Neither the wisest of leaders, nor the noblest of kings, nor yet the Church — none of them has been able to stop it. And don't succumb to the facile belief that wars will be stopped by hotheaded socialists. Or that rational and just wars can be sorted out from the rest. There will always be thousands of thousands to whom even such a war will be senseless and unjustified. Quite simply, no state can live without war, that is one of the state's essential functions. … War is the price we pay for living in a state. Before you can abolish war you will have to abolish all states. But that is unthinkable until the propensity to violence and evil is rooted out of human beings. The state was created to protect us from evil. In ordinary life thousands of bad impulses, from a thousand foci of evil, move chaotically, randomly, against the vulnerable. The state is called upon to check these impulses — but it generates others of its own, still more powerful, and this time one-directional. At times it throws them all in a single direction — and that is war.
Francis William Bourdillon (1852–1921) British poet
"Light" (popularly known as "The Night has a Thousand Eyes"), published in The Spectator (October 1873).
Context: p>The Night has a thousand eyes,
And the Day but one;
Yet the light of the bright world dies
With the dying sun.The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one;
Yet the light of a whole life dies
When love is done.</p
Friedrich Hölderlin book Hyperion
Hyperion
Context: What is all that men have done and thought over thousands of years, compared with one moment of love. But in all Nature, too, it is what is nearest to perfection, what is most divinely beautiful! There all stairs lead from the threshold of life. From there we come, to there we go.
W.E.B. Du Bois book Black Reconstruction
Source: Black Reconstruction in America (1935), p. 727
Context: The most magnificent drama in the last thousand years of human history is the transportation of ten million human beings out of the dark beauty of their mother continent into the new-found Eldorado of the West. They descended into Hell; and in the third century they arose from the dead, in the finest effort to achieve democracy for the working millions which this world had ever seen. It was a tragedy that beggared the Greek; it was an upheaval of humanity like the Reformation and the French Revolution. Yet we are blind and led by the blind. We discern in it no part of our labor movement; no part of our industrial triumph; no part of our religious experience. Before the dumb eyes of ten generations of ten million children, it is made mockery of and spit upon; a degradation of the eternal mother; a sneer at human effort; with aspiration and art deliberately and elaborately distorted. And why? Because in a day when the human mind aspired to a science of human action, a history and psychology of the mighty effort of the mightiest century, we fell under the leadership of those who would compromise with truth in the past in order to make peace in the present and guide policy in the future.
Laozi book Tao Te Ching
Source: Tao Te Ching, Ch. 1, as interpreted by Ursula K. LeGuin (1998)
Context: The way you can go
isn't the real way.
The name you can say
isn't the real name.
Heaven and earth
begin in the unnamed:
name's the mother
of the ten thousand things.
So the unwanting soul
sees what's hidden,
and the ever-wanting soul
sees only what it wants.
Two things, one origin,
but different in name,
whose identity is mystery.
Mystery of all mysteries!
The door to the hidden.
George Orwell book England Your England
Part I : England Your England, § III
The Lion and the Unicorn (1941)
Jeff Foster (1980) Spiritual teacher
Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/B-16fjMHi5o/
“It's like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife.”
Alanis Morissette (1974) Canadian-American singer-songwriter
"Ironic"
Jagged Little Pill (1995)
“Acquire a peaceful spirit and then thousands of others around you will be saved.”
Seraphim of Sarov (1754–1833) Russian saint
As quoted in The Inner Kingdom (2000) by Kallistos Ware, p. 133.
As quoted in The Folly of Prayer : Practicing the Presence and Absence of God (2009) by Matt Woodley, p. 156.
Variant: Acquire a peaceful spirit, and then thousands around you will be saved.
Variant: Acquire a peaceful spirit, and around you thousands will be saved.
Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) Italian mathematician, physicist, philosopher and astronomer
Third letter on sunspots (December 1612) to Mark Wesler (1558 - 1614), as quoted in Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo (1957) by Stillman Drake, p. 134 - 135; Italian text online at Liber Liber http://www.liberliber.it/biblioteca/g/galilei/lettere/html/lett08c.htm, also from IntraText http://www.intratext.com/IXT/ITA0188/_PQ.HTM.<br>Variant translation: In questions of science the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.<br>As quoted in Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men (1859) by François Arago, as translated by Baden Powell, Robert Grant, and William Fairbairn, p. 365 <br class="br">Other quotes <br class="br">Variant: In the sciences, the authority of thousands of opinions is not worth as much as one tiny spark of reason in an individual man. <br class="br">Context: for in the sciences the authority of thousands of opinions is not worth as much as one tiny spark of reason in an individual man. Besides, the modern observations deprive all former writers of any authority, since if they had seen what we see, they would have judged as we judge.
John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author
Variant: God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot save them from fool
Source: 1900s, Our National Parks (1901), chapter 10: The American Forests <!-- Terry Gifford, EWDB, pages 604-605 -->
Context: Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away; and if they could, they would still be destroyed — chased and hunted down as long as fun or a dollar could be got out of their bark hides, branching horns, or magnificent bole backbones. Few that fell trees plant them; nor would planting avail much towards getting back anything like the noble primeval forests. … It took more than three thousand years to make some of the trees in these Western woods — trees that are still standing in perfect strength and beauty, waving and singing in the mighty forests of the Sierra. Through all the wonderful, eventful centuries … God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand straining, leveling tempests and floods; but he cannot save them from fools — only Uncle Sam can do that.
“Life is a book and there are a thousand pages I have not yet read.”
Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess
Source: Clockwork Princess
William Makepeace Thackeray book The History of Henry Esmond
Bk. II, ch. 1.
The History of Henry Esmond (1852)
Source: The History of Henry Esmond, Esq.
Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005), p. 153
“My heart has joined the Thousand, for my friend stopped running today.”
Richard Adams book Watership Down
Source: Watership Down
Friedrich Nietzsche God is dead
Gott ist tot! aber so wie die Art der Menschen ist, wird es vielleicht noch Jahrtausende lang Höhlen geben, in denen man seinen Schatten zeigt.
Und wir — Wir müssen auch noch seinen Schatten besiegen.
Sec. 108
Quotes about quotes: see also God is dead.
The Gay Science (1882)
Source: The Portable Nietzsche
Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author
Source: Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
“Even if you rise up a thousand times, your side will never achieve victory.
~Ulquiorra”
Tite Kubo (1977) Japanese manga artist
Horace Walpole (1717–1797) English art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and Whig politician
As quoted in The Christian Leader, Vol. 37, Issue 7 (17 February 1934)