To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)
We have found that our great philosophers and our great men of action are optimists. So, too, our most potent men of letters have been optimists in their books and in their lives. No pessimist ever won an audience commensurately wide with his genius.
—Helen Keller (American Author)
Come what may, time and the hour runs through the roughest day.
—William Shakespeare (British Playwright)
Change has no constituency—and a perceived revolution has even less.
—Jack Welch (American Businessperson)
We have every right to dream heroic dreams. Those who say that we’re in a time when there are no heroes, they just don’t know where to look.
—Ronald Reagan (American Head of State)
Every valuable human being must be a radical and a rebel, for what he must aim at is to make things better than they are.
—Niels Bohr (Danish Physicist)
Across the gulfs and barriers that now divide us, we must remember that there are no permanent enemies. Hostility today is a fact, but it is not a ruling law. The supreme reality of our time is our indivisibility as children of God and our common vulnerability on this planet.
—John F. Kennedy (American Head of State)
Man—being made reasonable, and so a thinking creature, there is nothing more worthy of his being than the right direction and employment of his thoughts, since upon this depends both his usefulness to the public and his own present and future benefit in all respects.
—William Penn (American Entrepreneur)
There is beauty everywhere. Just put your heart into your eyes.
—Hans Taeger
Action is greater than writing. A good man is a nobler object of contemplation than a great author. There are but two things worth living for: to do what is worthy of being written; and to write what is worthy of being read; and the greater of these is the doing.
—Albert Pike (American Military Leader)
We must distinguish between spirituality in general terms, which aims to make us better people, and religion. Adopting a religion remains optional, but becoming a better human being is essential.
—Matthieu Ricard (French Buddhist Monk)