Our visions begin with our desires.
—Audre Lorde (American Poet, Feminist)
There is no fatigue so wearisome as that which comes from lack of work.
—Charles Spurgeon (English Baptist Preacher)
Conceit is incompatible with understanding.
—Leo Tolstoy (Russian Novelist)
Outside every fat man there was an even fatter man trying to close in.
—Kingsley Amis (English Novelist, Poet)
How disturbing it is that our illusions are often our most important beliefs.
—Hanif Kureishi (British Novelist, Screenwriter)
Wicked thoughts and worthless efforts gradually set their mark on the face, especially the eyes.
—Arthur Schopenhauer (German Philosopher)
A man never reaches that dizzy height of wisdom that he can no longer be lead by the nose.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)
Nations without a past are contradictions in terms. What makes a nation is the past, what justifies one nation against others is the past, and historians are the people who produce it.
—Eric Hobsbawm (British Historian)
Think for yourself, question authority.
—Timothy Leary (American Psychologist)
True faith is belief in the reality of absolute values.
—William Motter Inge (American Playwright)
Children are tough, though we tend to think of them as fragile. They have to be tough. Childhood is not easy. We sentimentalize children, but they know what’s real and what’s not. They understand metaphor and symbol. If children are different from us, they are more spontaneous. Grown-up lives have become overlaid with dross.
—Maurice Sendak (American Writer, Illustrator)
If you’ve got it, flaunt it. If you do not, pretend.
—Wally Phillips (American Radio Personality)
Power is the recognition of necessity.
—Abraham Rotstein (Canadian Economist)
If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play.
—John Cleese (British Comic Actor, Writer)
Call for the grandest of all earthly spectacles, what is that? It is the sun going to his rest.
—Thomas de Quincey (English Essayist, Critic)
I have often repented speaking, but never of holding my tongue.
—Xenocrates (Greek Philosopher, Scientist)
I suppose the basic intuition that I have about it is very simply, this is a world in which there is a possibility of things going extraordinarily well or extraordinarily badly, where both the good things and the bad things are bigger than people think.
—Peter Thiel (American Entrepreneur)
Laughter is the corrective force which prevents us from becoming cranks.
—Henri Bergson (French Philosopher)
When you’re dying of thirst it’s too late to think about digging a well.
—Japanese Proverb
To govern is always to choose among disadvantages.
—Charles de Gaulle (French General, Statesman)