Quotes

If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.
― John Locke?

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.
“Serenity Prayer”, Reinhold Niebuhr

My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me.
― Henry Ford

Negative people make positive people sick.
— Roger Ailes

Be the change that you wish to see in the world.
― Mahatma Gandhi

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.
― Plato

Those who matter don’t mind and those who mind don’t matter.
― Folk Wisdom

Be as you wish to seem.
― Socrates

To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.
— Winston Churchill

Eighty percent of success is showing up.
— Woody Allen

Well done is better than well said.
— Benjamin Franklin

Give me liberty, or give me death!
— Patrick Henry

In the long run we are all dead.
— John Maynard Keynes

Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.
— Albert Einstein

I like my way of doing it better than your way of not doing it.
— DL Moody

Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.
— George Bernard Shaw

To err is human, to forgive divine.
— Alexander Pope, Essay on Criticism

Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.
— Mark Twain

Blessed is the man who can laugh at himself, for he will never cease to be amused.
— The Old Sourdough, Chicago Daily Tribune, March 9, 1955

For great achievements, two things are needed: a plan and not quite enough time.
— Leonard Bernstein

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
— Benjamin Franklin

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.
— Carl Jung

You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube.
— H.R. Haldeman

You’ve got to break a few eggs to make an omelet.
— English proverb

What a world. It could be so wonderful if it wasn’t for certain people.
— Woody Allen

The bad artists imitate, the great artists steal.
Pablo Picasso Banksy

The unexamined life is not worth living.
— Socrates

To a worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish.
— Howard Moskowitz

Beware the barrenness of a busy life.
— Socrates

There’s a right way to do it, a wrong way to do it, and this is a dangerous way to do it.
— Lindsey Graham

If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.
— Woody Allen

You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.
— Wayne Gretzky

Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you.
— Saint Augustine

We become what we think about.
— Earl Nightingale

Men will not always die quietly.
— John Maynard Keynes

I am a slow walker, but I never walk back.
— Abraham Lincoln

The best revenge is massive success.
— Frank Sinatra

I work for a Government I despise for ends I think criminal.
— John Maynard Keynes

Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?
— Abraham Lincoln

You are not a human being in search of a spiritual experience. You are a spiritual being immersed in a human experience.
— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, French Jesuit

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great ones make you feel that you too can become great.
— Mark Twain

To know is to know that you know nothing.
― Socrates

All I can do is wait for it.
— Woody Allen

The power to become habituated to his surroundings is a marked characteristic of mankind.
— John Maynard Keynes

An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.
— Benjamin Franklin

Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.
— Napoleon Hill

If you owe your bank a hundred pounds, you have a problem. But if you owe a million, it has.
— John Maynard Keynes, The Economist (13 February 1982), p. 11

If you always do what you’ve always done, you always get what you’ve always gotten.
— Jessie Potter

Life is routine and routine is resistance to wonder.
— Joshua Abraham Heschel

Life is about making an impact, not making an income.
— Kevin Kruse

If you’re going through hell, keep going.
— Winston Churchill

Be sure to put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.
— Abraham Lincoln

I am thankful for laughter, except when milk comes out of my nose.
— Woody Allen

The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.
— Margaret Thatcher

I’m not sure what leverage there is in refraining from sending us something we do not want.
— Mitch McConnell

Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking.
— John Maynard Keynes

I know that I am intelligent because I know that I know nothing.
― Socrates

It figures you’ve got to hate yourself if you’ve got any integrity at all.
— Woody Allen

I have made this longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter.
(lit: Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.)
— Blaise Pascal

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.
— Winston Churchill

No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.
— Abraham Lincoln

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.
— Anais Nin

If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.
— Abraham Lincoln

I have already made this paper too long, for which I must crave pardon, not having now time to make it shorter.
— Benjamin Franklin

But the dreams of designing diplomats do not always prosper, and we must trust the future.
— John Maynard Keynes

The danger lies in only considering the risk of proceeding without considering the risk of not.
– Lynn Derrick

You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.
― Plato

The talent for being happy is appreciating and liking what you have, instead of what you don’t have.
— Woody Allen

The old saying holds. Owe your banker £1000 and you are at his mercy; owe him £1 million and the position is reversed.
— John Maynard Keynes, Collected Writings volume 24, p. 258

Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.
— Benjamin Franklin

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.
— Benjamin Franklin

We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.
— Benjamin Franklin

False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.
― Socrates

The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.
― Socrates

Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something.
― Plato

Our prayers should be for blessings in general, for God knows best what is good for us.
― Socrates

Talent is luck. The important thing in life is courage.
— Woody Allen

‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
― Alfred Lord Tennyson

Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.
― Plato

By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.
― Socrates

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.
― Plato

One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.
― Plato

Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.
— Albert Einstein

That depends on the length of the speech. If it is a ten-minute speech it takes me all of two weeks to prepare it. If it is a half-hour speech it takes me a week. If I can talk as long as I want to it requires no preparation at all; I am ready now.
— Woodrow Wilson

We are like dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of giants. We see more, and things that are more distant, than they did, not because our sight is superior or because we are taller than they, but because they raise us up, and by their great stature add to ours.
― John of Salisbury, Metalogicon Of John Salisbury

Bessie Braddock: Winston, you are drunk, and what’s more you are disgustingly drunk.
Winston Churchill: Bessie, my dear, you are ugly, and what’s more, you are disgustingly ugly. But tomorrow I shall be sober and you will still be disgustingly ugly.
― Winston Churchill

But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task, if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us, that when the storm is long past, the ocean is flat again.
— John Maynard Keynes

Every heart sings a song, incomplete until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.
― Plato

There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.” All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened.
— CS Lewis

You see, the difficulty of it is this: you cannot teach a selfish person to be unselfish by any means. That is to say, whatever a selfish person does—whether it be giving his body to be burned, or giving all that he possesses to the poor—he will still do it in a selfish way of feeling. And, he will be able to do this with extreme cunning and marvelous self-deception and deception of others besides. But, the consequences of fake love are almost invariably destructive because they build up resentment on the part of the person who does the fake loving as well as on the part of those who are its recipients. This is why the foreign aid program has been such a dismal failure.
— Alan Watts, Spectrum of Love, November 1969

The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, the education, the money, than circumstances, than failure, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company…a church…a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past…we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. And so it is with you. We are in charge of our attitudes.
― Charles Swindoll