Archives for August 2025

Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue.
—Scott Adams (American Cartoonist)

You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

The world is shrinking together; it is finding itself neighbor to itself in strange, almost magic degree.
—W. E. B. Du Bois (American Sociologist, Activist)

I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn’t wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine.
—Bertrand A. Russell (British Philosopher, Mathematician)

Empathy frequently informs our earliest days with our infants as we try to figure out what they need, how to comfort and satisfy them
—Katherine Ellison (American Journalist)

Man’s great misfortune is that he has no organ, no kind of eyelid or brake, to mask or block a thought, or all thought, when he wants to.
—Paul Valery (French Critic, Poet)

We can teach ourselves to see things the way they ARE. Only with vision can we begin to see things the way they CAN BE.
—Max De Pree (American Businessman)

The camera cannot lie, but it can be an accessory to untruth.
—Harold Evans (British-American Journalist)

You treat a disease, you win, you lose. You treat a person, and I guarantee you’ll win no matter the outcome.
—Robin Williams (American Actor, Comedian)

Fame is but the breath of people, and that often unwholesome.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau (French Philosopher)

Neither man nor nation can exist without a sublime idea.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Russian Novelist)

Gratitude is one of the least articulate of the emotions, especially when it is deep.
—Felix Frankfurter (Austrian-Born Jurist)

Over the years your bodies become walking autobiographies, telling friends and strangers alike of the minor and major stresses of your lives.
—Marilyn Ferguson (American Author)

Real education should educate us out of self into something far finer—into a selflessness which links us with all humanity.
—Nancy Astor, Viscountess Astor (British Politician)

Country people tend to consider that they have a corner on righteousness and to distrust most manifestations of cleverness, while people in the city are leery of righteousness but ascribe to themselves all manner of cleverness.
—Edward Hoagland (American Essayist)

A man is usually more careful of his money than of his principles.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (American Jurist, Author)

There is something beautiful about all scars of whatever nature. A scar means the hurt is over, the wound is closed and healed, done with.
—Harry Crews (American Novelist, Critic)

There is no insanity so devastating in man’s life as utter sanity.
—William Allen White (American Journalist)

When a great man has some one object in view to be achieved in a given time, it may be absolutely necessary for him to walk out of all the common roads.
—Edmund Burke (British Philosopher, Statesman)

Lies are essential to humanity. They are perhaps as important as the pursuit of pleasure and moreover are dictated by that pursuit.
—Marcel Proust (French Novelist)

A friend you have to buy; enemies you get for nothing.
—Yiddish Proverb

The ideal society would enable every man and woman to develop along their individual lines, and not attempt to force all into one mould, however admirable.
—J. B. S. Haldane (British Scientist)

He teaches me to be good who does me good.
—Thomas Fuller (English Cleric, Historian)

No change in musical style will survive unless it is accompanied by a change in clothing style. Rock is to dress up to.
—Frank Zappa (American Rock Guitarist, Singer, Composer)

Power does not satisfy, on the contrary it is like a drug and always requires greater doses.
—Luciano De Crescenzo (Italian Film Actor, Director, Engineer)

It’s only a thought, and a thought can be changed.
—Louise Hay (American Self-Help Author)

Creation is a better means of self-expression than possession; it is through creating, not possessing, that life is revealed.
—Vida Dutton Scudder (American Social Activist)

We lay aside letters never to read them again, and at last we destroy them out of discretion, and so disappears the most beautiful, the most immediate breath of life, irrecoverable for ourselves and for others.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)

Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.
—B. F. Skinner (American Psychologist)

What is the opposite of two? A lonely me, a lonely you.
—Richard Wilbur (American Poet, Translator)

It is the public scandal that offends; to sin in secret is no sin at all.
—Moliere (French Playwright)

Sloppy thinking gets worse over time.
—Jenny Holzer (American Conceptual Artist)

True, a little learning is a dangerous thing, but it still beats total ignorance.
—Pauline Phillips (Abigail van Buren) (American Advice Columnist)

I can’t remember the names of all the clubs we went to.
—Shaquille O’Neal (American Sportsperson)

Optimism and self-pity are the positive and negative poles of modern cowardice.
—Cyril Connolly (British Literary Critic)