The habit of common and continuous speech is a symptom of mental deficiency. It proceeds from not knowing what is going on in other people’s minds.
—Walter Bagehot (English Economist, Journalist)
As if reasoning were any kind of writing or talking which tends to convince people that some doctrine or measure is true and right.
—Catharine Beecher ((1800–78) American Educationalist, Reformer)
Great people aren’t those who are happy at times of convenience and content, but of how they are in times of catastrophe and controversy.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)
Oppression involves a failure of the imagination: the failure to imagine the full humanity of other human beings.
—Margaret Atwood (Canadian Author)
Solvency is entirely a matter of temperament, not of income.
—Logan Pearsall Smith (American-British Essayist)
To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don’t grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.
—Alan Watts (British-American Philosopher)
I find I’m luckier when I work harder.
—Denton Cooley (American Surgeon)
If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian.
—Paul McCartney (British Pop Musician)
Given that external reality is a fiction, the writer’s role is almost superfluous. He does not need to invent the fiction because it is already there.
—J. G. Ballard (English Novelist)
He that has a penny in his purse, is worth a penny: Have and you shall be esteemed.
—Petronius (Roman Courtier)
Ignorance and obscurantism have never produced anything other than flocks of slaves for tyranny.
—Emiliano Zapata (Mexican Revolutionary)
It is not the weight of the future or the past that is pressing upon you, but ever that of the present alone. Even this burden, too, can be lessened if you confine it strictly to its own limits.
—Marcus Aurelius (Emperor of Rome, Stoic Philosopher)
Remember that there is a meaning beyond absurdity. Be sure that every little deed counts, that every word has power. Never forget that you can still do your share to redeem the world in spite of all absurdities and frustrations and disappointments.
—Abraham Joshua Heschel (American Jewish Rabbi)
If not excellence, what? If not excellence now, when?
—Tom Peters (American Management Consultant)
Our great men have written words of wisdom to be used when hardship must be faced. Life obliges us with hardship so the words of wisdom shouldn’t go to waste.
—Jerry Bock (American Composer)
In philosophy if you aren’t moving at a snail’s pace you aren’t moving at all.
—Iris Murdoch (British Novelist, Philosopher)