The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.
—Wilhelm Stekel (Austrian Physician)
In vain do they talk of happiness who never subdued an impulse in obedience to a principle. He who never sacrificed a present to a future good, or a personal to a general one, can speak of happiness only as the blind do of colors.
—Horace Mann (American Educator)
Youth, abundant wealth, high birth, and inexperience, are, each of them a source of ruin. What then must be the fate of those in whom all four are combined.
—Hitopadesha
Altogether too often, people substitute opinions for facts and emotions for analysis.
—Andrew Grove (Hungarian-born American Businessperson)
He is the wisest and happiest man, who, by constant attention of thought discovers the greatest opportunity of doing good, and breaks through every opposition that he may improve these opportunities.
—Philip Doddridge (English Nonconformist Religious Leader)
There’re two people in the world that are not likeable: a master and a slave.
—Nikki Giovanni (American Children’s Books Writer)
Considering the unforeseen events of this world, we should be taught that no human condition should inspire men with absolute despair.
—Henry Fielding (English Novelist)
Our conscious motivations, ideas, and beliefs are a blend of false information, biases, irrational passions, rationalizations, prejudices, in which morsels of truth swim around and give the reassurance albeit false, that the whole mixture is real and true. The thinking processes attempt to organize this whole cesspool of illusions according to the laws of plausibility. This level of consciousness is supposed to reflect reality; it is the map we use for organizing our life.
—Erich Fromm (German Psychologist)
It is more easy to get a favor from fortune than to keep it.
—Publilius Syrus (Syrian-born Latin Writer)
Men marry women with the hope they will never change. Women marry men with the hope they will change. Invariably they are both disappointed.
—Albert Einstein (German-born Theoretical Physicist)
When a subject is highly controversial… one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold. One can only give one’s audience the chance of drawing their own conclusions as they observe the limitations, the prejudices, the idiosyncrasies of the speaker.
—Virginia Woolf (English Novelist)