Quotes about use
page 10

Ricky Gervais photo

“What’s the point in having humor? Humor is to get us over terrible things.”

Ricky Gervais (1961) English comedian, actor, director, producer, musician, writer, and former radio presenter
Jonathan Sacks photo
Isaac Newton photo
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn photo
Nathuram Godse photo

“I used to think that top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought that thirty years of good science could address these problems. I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy, and to deal with these we need a cultural and spiritual transformation.”

Quoted by Daniel crockett
Source: [Crockett, Daniel, http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/daniel-crockett/nature-connection-will-be-the-next-big-human-trend_b_5698267.html/Nature, Connection Will Be the Next Big Human Trend, Huffington Post, Aug 22, 2014, https://web.archive.org/web/20160105052014/http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/daniel-crockett/nature-connection-will-be-the-next-big-human-trend_b_5698267.html, January 5, 2016, yes]

James Eastland photo
George Orwell photo
Ivo Andrič photo
I. K. Gujral photo

“Each of these five propositions is intrinsically sound. Each is wise. Each is capable of implementation. Taken collectively, they constitute a practical and principled foundation for regional cooperation and security. I endorse them without reservation and I express the hope, the fervent hope of all of us in other five countries of the region, that India and Pakistan will see in these principles the way forward for them on the path of friendship and peace.”

I. K. Gujral (1919–2012) Indian politician

Lakshman Kadirgamar's observations on Gujral Dictrine as Minister of Foreign Affairs of Sri Lanka, at his Krishna Menon Memorial lecture delivered at Kota, Rajasthan in December 1996 quoted in :Democracy, Sovereignty and Terror: Lakshman Kadirgamar on the Foundations of International Order"

Virginia Woolf photo
Wilhelm II, German Emperor photo

“England, France, and Russia have conspired...to wage a war of annihilation against us.”

Wilhelm II, German Emperor (1859–1941) German Emperor and King of Prussia

30 July, 1924, quoted in World War I: The Definitive Visual History (United States: Smithsonian, 2014), p. 20
1920s

Teal Swan photo
Jacque Fresco photo

“What has been handed down to us does not seem to be working for the majority of people. With the advances in science and technology over the last two hundred years, you may be asking: “does it have to be this way?””

Jacque Fresco (1916–2017) American futurist and self-described social engineer

With the observable fact that scientific knowledge makes our lives better when applied with concern for human welfare and environmental protection, there is no question that science and technology can produce abundance so that no one has to go without... Hopes for divine intervention by mythical characters are delusions that cannot solve the problems of our modern world. The future of the world is our responsibility and it depends upon decisions we make today. We are our own salvation or damnation.
Source: Designing the Future (2007), p. 10

Harvey Milk photo

“I don't think we have a right to take the people who raised us, who made us strong and healthy, and toss them away like a can of beer.”

Harvey Milk (1930–1978) American politician who became a martyr in the gay community

On supporting the elderly, who he called the most oppressed group in America. From Flashback: Meet San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9iYasWREzE, NBC News, November 27, 2018, taken from a report in 1978, and Forty years after his death, Harvey Milk's legacy still lives on https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/forty-years-after-his-death-harvey-milk-s-legacy-still-n940356, NBC News, November 27, 2018.

Lynn Compton photo

“Secrets have power over us. Only when secrets are revealed can truth be known and freedom brought about.”

Lynn Compton (1921–2012) Easy Company soldier turned noted jurist

Source: Call of Duty: My Life Before, During and After the Band of Brothers (2008), p. 107

Paul Kruger photo

“If the Dear Lord would decide to help and bless us, and we would succeed in recovering our country, that the citizens would annually come to celebrate at this exact cairn, honouring our vow to the Lord. And this cairn serves as eternal witness to it.”

Paul Kruger (1825–1904) President of the South African Republic

On 13 December 1880, when some 6 000 to 8 000 armed SAR citizens were adjured by Kruger to add stones to a cairn, marking their resolution to restore the Transvaal's independence. The Paardekraal Monument of 1890 still marks the spot, though the cairn was removed by British forces in 1901.

Alphonsus Maria de' Liguori photo

“Let us examine in what true wisdom consists, and we shall see, in the first point, that sinners are truly foolish, and, in the second, that the saints are truly wise.”

Alphonsus Maria de' Liguori (1696–1787) Italian Catholic bishop, spiritual writer, composer, musician, artist, poet, lawyer, scholastic philosopher…

Liguori, A. M. (1882). Sunday within the Octave of the Nativity: In What True Wisdom Consists. In N. Callan (Trans.), Sermons for All the Sundays in the Year (Eighth Edition, p. 43). Dublin; London: James Duffy & Sons.

Joaquin Phoenix photo

“I think, whether we’re talking about gender inequality or racism or queer rights or indigenous rights or animal rights, we’re talking about the fight against injustice. We’re talking about the fight against the belief that one nation, one people, one race, one gender, one species, has the right to dominate, use and control another with impunity. I think we’ve become very disconnected from the natural world. Many of us are guilty of an egocentric world view, and we believe that we’re the centre of the universe. We go into the natural world and we plunder it for its resources. We feel entitled to artificially inseminate a cow and steal her baby, even though her cries of anguish are unmistakeable. Then we take her milk that’s intended for her calf and we put it in our coffee and our cereal. We fear the idea of personal change, because we think we need to sacrifice something; to give something up. But human beings at our best are so creative and inventive, and we can create, develop and implement systems of change that are beneficial to all sentient beings and the environment.”

Joaquin Phoenix (1974) American actor, music video director, producer, musician, and social activist

"Joaquin Phoenix's Oscars speech in full: 'We feel entitled to artificially inseminate a cow and steal her baby'" https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/feb/10/joaquin-phoenixs-oscars-speech-in-full, The Guardian (February 10, 2020).

Jane Goodall photo

“The greatest danger to our future is apathy. We cannot expect those living in poverty and ignorance to worry about saving the world. For those of us able to read this magazine, it is different. We can do something to preserve our planet.”

Jane Goodall (1934) British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist

"The Power of One", TIME Magazine (26 August 2002) http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1003125,00.html

Theodore Roszak photo

“The joy of this quest is not in triumph over others, but in the search for the qualities we share with them and for our uniqueness, which raises us above all competition.”

Theodore Roszak (1933–2011) American social historian, social critic, writer

Quoted in The Aquarian Conspiracy, by Marilyn Ferguson, (1980)

William Blum photo

“Title 18 of the US Code declares it to be a crime to launch a "military or naval expedition or enterprise" from the United States against a country with which the United States is not (officially) at war.”

William Blum (1933–2018) American author and historian

Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Chapter 30. Cuba 1959 to 1980s: The unforgivable revolution

John Ruskin photo

“God is a kind Father. He sets us all in the place where He wishes us to be employed; and that employment is truly "our Father's business."”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

He chooses work for every creature which will be delightful to them, if they do it simply and humbly. He gives us always strength enough, and sense enough, for what He wants us to do; if we either tire ourselves, or puzzle ourselves, it is our own fault. And we may always be sure, whatever we are doing, that we cannot be pleasing Him, if we are not happy ourselves.

P. 123
Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

Alexis Karpouzos photo
Alexis Karpouzos photo

“In our brief life,
so many roads,
so many miracles
and blessings and glories,
but also so many curses and denials,
grief and contempt,
continuous waves on the planetary seas
that come and go,
and they crawl us into the vast heavens,
n that quiet rhythm universe
listen to your heart beat.”

The film ''We are the conversation'', gathers together the most famous poems and poets from all over the world. It is a celebration of our linguistic diversity and a reminder of our commonalities and the fundamental role verbal art plays in human life around the world.
Alexis karpouzos

Alexis Karpouzos photo
Alexis Karpouzos photo
George Orwell photo

“As to a pseudonym, a name I always use when tramping etc is P. S. Burton, but if you don't think this sounds a probable kind of name, what about Kenneth Miles, George Orwell, H. Lewis Allways. I rather favour George Orwell.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

Letter to Leonard Moore (19 November 1932)
Source: The Collected Essays, Journalism & Letters, George Orwell: An Age Like This, 1920–1940, Editors: Sonia Orwell, Ian Angus.  p. 106.

George Orwell photo
Trevor Noah photo

“That's what I always loved about comedy, it is a way for us to just, you know, to numb the pain, to process what we're going through.”

Trevor Noah (1984) South African comedian

Source: Trevor Noah Was Low Key In Black Panther https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wC6V4gLAat4, June 2018

Benjamin Disraeli photo
Tamora Pierce photo

“Cats aren't special advisers. They advise us all the time, whether we want them to or no.”

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

Veralidaine "Daine" Sarrasri

Pope Francis photo
Pope Francis photo
Attila photo

“Foresight, energy, commitment to a single goal, the choice and use of Huns, and commitment to a goal worth the effort become the characteristics of an excellent commander.”

Attila (406–453) King of the Hunnic Empire

Turkish Wikipedia
https://quotestats.com/topic/attila-hun-quotes/

Alexis Karpouzos photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo

“We like to be out in nature so much because it has no opinion about us.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist
Gautama Buddha photo
Marcel Proust photo
Pema Chödron photo
Barack Obama photo
Barack Obama photo

“We also know that populism can take dangerous turns -– from the extremism of those who would use democracy to deny minority rights, to the nationalism that left so many scars on this continent in the 20th century.”

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

2011, Remarks by the President to Parliament in London, United Kingdom (May 2011)

Epicurus photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Rumi photo

“We carry inside us the wonders we seek outside us.”

Rumi (1207–1273) Iranian poet

Misattributed
Source: Frequently quoted on social media, but appears to be a misquote of Thomas Browne's "We carry within us the wonders we seek without us: there is all Africa and her prodigies in us" in Religio Medici (1643) pt. 1, sect. 15.

Benjamin Disraeli photo
Joseph De Maistre photo
Neale Donald Walsch photo
Harrison Ford photo
Thomas Hobbes photo
Joel Osteen photo
Rabindranath Tagore photo
Oscar Wilde photo
Anne Frank photo

“Ordinary people simply don't know what books mean to us, shut up here. Reading, learning, and the radio are our amusements.”

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

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

Oscar Wilde photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo

“And as long as you are in any way ashamed before yourself, you do not yet belong with us.”

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

Source: The Gay Science

C.G. Jung photo
William Gibson photo
Douglas Adams photo
Jonathan Safran Foer photo
E.M. Forster photo
C.G. Jung photo
Erich Maria Remarque photo

“Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony—Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?”

Paul to the corpse of a French man he has just killed, Ch. 9
Source: All Quiet on the Western Front (1929)
Context: I thought of your hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony — Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?

Vladimir Nabokov photo
Fulton J. Sheen photo
Anne Frank photo
Dorianne Laux photo

“Maybe it's what we don't say/that saves us.”

Dorianne Laux (1952) American poet

Source: What We Carry

Etty Hillesum photo
Mark Twain photo
Oscar Wilde photo
Abraham Lincoln photo

“Lets have faith that right makes might; and in that faith let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.”

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

1860s, Cooper Union speech (1860)
Context: Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.
Context: Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government, nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might; and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty, as we understand it.

Joan Didion photo
Carlos Ruiz Zafón photo
Barack Obama photo

“We may not be able to stop evil in the world, but how we treat one another is entirely up to us.”

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

2011, Tucson Memorial Address (January 2011)
Context: We may not be able to stop all evil in the world, but I know that how we treat one another is entirely up to us. I believe that for all our imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness, and that the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us.
Context: I believe we can be better. Those who died here, those who saved lives here — they help me believe. We may not be able to stop all evil in the world, but I know that how we treat one another is entirely up to us. I believe that for all our imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness, and that the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us.

Corrie ten Boom photo
Rainer Maria Rilke photo

“Make ethical choices in what we buy, do, and watch. In a consumer-driven society our individual choices, used collectively for the good of animals and nature, can change the world faster than laws.”

Marc Bekoff (1945) American biologist

Source: Animals Matter: A Biologist Explains Why We Should Treat Animals with Compassion and Respect

Orhan Pamuk photo
Louise L. Hay photo
Richard Wurmbrand photo

“God will judge us not according to how much we endured, but how much we could love”

Richard Wurmbrand (1909–2001) Romanian Christian minister of Jewish descent

Source: Tortured for Christ N/E

Terry Pratchett photo
Anthony de Mello photo

“the greatest learning of the ages lies in accepting life exactly as it comes to us.”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

Source: The Prayer Of The Frog, Vol. 1

Fernando Pessoa photo