Learning carries within itself certain dangers because out of necessity one has to learn from one’s enemies.
—Leon Trotsky (Russian Revolutionary)
Hatred and fear blind us. We no longer see each other. We see only the faces of monsters, and that gives us the courage to destroy each other.
—Thich Nhat Hanh (Vietnamese Buddhist Religious Leader)
I hate when I read “Try that Jennifer Aniston Diet.” There was no diet!
—Jennifer Aniston (American Actress)
The pace of science forces the pace of technique. Theoretical physics forces atomic energy on us; the successful production of the fission bomb forces upon us the manufacture of the hydrogen bomb. We do not choose our problems, we do not choose our products; we are pushed, we are forced—by what? By a system which has no purpose and goal transcending it, and which makes man its appendix.
—Erich Fromm (German Social Philosopher)
Teach thy tongue to say “I do not know” and thou shalt progress.
—Moses Maimonides (Jewish Philosopher, Rabbinic Scholar)
Labor is the only prayer that Nature answers.
—Robert G. Ingersoll (American Lawyer, Orator, Agnostic)
Being born in a duck yard does not matter, if only you are hatched from a swan’s egg.
—Hans Christian Andersen (Danish Author)
In times of great stress or adversity, it’s always best to keep busy, to plow your anger and your energy into something positive.
—Lee Iacocca (American Businessperson)
There is no vice or folly that requires so much nicety and skill to manage as vanity; nor any which by ill management makes so contemptible a figure.
—Jonathan Swift (Irish Satirist)
An extreme rigor is sure to arm everything against it.
—Edmund Burke (British Philosopher, Statesman)
To those who despair of everything reason cannot provide a faith, but only passion, and in this case it must be the same passion that lay at the root of the despair, namely humiliation and hatred.
—Albert Camus (Algerian-born French Philosopher)
I had six honest serving men. They taught me all I knew. Their names were: Where, What, When, Why, How and Who.
—Rudyard Kipling (British Children’s Books Writer)
Half the misery in the world comes of want of courage to speak and to hear the truth plainly, and in a spirit of love.
—Harriet Beecher Stowe (American Abolitionist)
Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.
—James Baldwin (American Novelist, Social Critic)
The mind grows sicker than the body in contemplation of it’s suffering.
—Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso) (Roman Poet)