Nagesh Belludi

History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.
—David McCullough (American Historian)

The most striking quality that humans and animals have in common is the capacity to experience suffering. Why do we still blind ourselves, now at the beginning of the twenty-first century, to the immeasurable suffering that we inflict on animals, knowing that a great part of the pain that we cause them is neither necessary nor unavoidable? Certainly we should know that there is no moral justification for inflicting needless pain and death on any being.
—Matthieu Ricard (French Buddhist Monk)

The hero’s choice is made in a flash. To him the larger vision is closer than the near. Within an instant, he strikes for eternity, strikes and is done.
—Sister Nivedita (Irish-born Indian Social Worker)

I don’t know anything, but I do know that everything is interesting if you go into it deeply enough.
—Richard Feynman (American Physicist)

Technical knowledge is not enough. One must transcend techniques so that the art becomes an artless art, growing out of the unconscious.
—D. T. Suzuki (Japanese Buddhist Philosopher)

When you first start to study a field, it seems like you have to memorize a zillion things. You don’t. What you need is to identify the core principles—generally three to twelve of them—that govern the field. The million things you thought you had to memorize are simply various combinations of the core principles.
—John Reed (American Journalist, Poet)

In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.
—Aeschylus (Greek Poet)

All the way to heaven is heaven.
—Teresa of Avila (Spanish Carmelite Nun, Mystic)

I’ve always felt ideas were a dime a dozen. If you had one that didn’t work out, you should not fight too hard to save it, just go find another.
—Daniel Kahneman (American-Israeli Psychologist, Economist)

Blessed is he who has been able to win knowledge of the causes of things.
—Virgil (Roman Poet)

It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet, I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever-approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.
—Anne Frank (German Holocaust Victim)

You have enemies? Why, it is the story of every man who has done a great deed or created a new idea. It is the cloud which thunders around everything that shines. Fame must have enemies, as light must have gnats. Do not bother yourself about it; disdain. Keep your mind serene as you keep your life clear.
—Victor Hugo (French Novelist)

It is truth that liberates, not your effort to be free.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti (Indian Philosopher)

If you go looking for a friend, you’re going to find they’re scarce. If you go out to be a friend, you’ll find them everywhere.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

Truth is not a crystal one can put in one’s pocket, but an infinite fluid into which one falls headlong.
—Robert Musil (Austrian Novelist)

There is nothing more silly than a silly laugh.
—Catullus (Roman Latin Poet)

Most men are individuals no longer so far as their business, its activities, or its moralities are concerned. They are not units but fractions; with their individuality and independence of choice in matters of business they have lost all their individual choice within the field of morals.
—Woodrow Wilson (American Head of State)

People do not get what they want or what they expect from the [stock] markets; they get what they deserve.
—Bill Bonner (American Finance Author)

What I’ve learned about being angry with people is that it generally hurts you more than it hurts them.
—Oprah Winfrey (American TV Personality)

Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence—whether much that is glorious—whether all that is profound—does not spring from the disease of thought—from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect.
—Edgar Allan Poe (American Poet)

Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do, and how you do it.
—Rudy Giuliani (American Politician)

Hard work and a proper frame of mind prepare you for the lucky breaks that come along—or don’t.
—Harrison Ford (American Actor)

That is the true season of love, when we believe that we alone can love, that no one could ever have loved so before us, and that no one will love in the same way after us.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)

Men are alike in their promises. It is only in their deeds that they differ.
—Moliere (French Playwright)

Like other practicing historians, I am often asked what the “lessons of history” are. I answer that the only lesson I have learnt from studying the past is that there are no permanent winners and losers.
—Ramachandra Guha (Indian Historian)

To tell the truth is the same as to be a good tailor, or to be a good farmer, or to write beautifully. To be good at any activity requires practice: no matter how hard you try, you cannot do naturally what you have not done repeatedly. In order to get accustomed to speaking the truth, you should tell only the truth, even in the smallest of things.
—Leo Tolstoy (Russian Novelist)

No act of kindness, however small, is ever wasted.
—Aesop (Greek Fabulist)

The notion of a universality of human experience is a confidence trick and the notion of a universality of female experience is a clever confidence trick.
—Angela Carter (English Novelist, Short Story Writer)

The difference between a simpleton and an intelligent man, according to the man who is convinced that he is of the latter category, is that the former wholeheartedly accepts all things that he sees and hears while the latter never admits anything except after a most searching scrutiny. He imagines his intelligence to be a sieve of closely woven mesh through which nothing but the finest can pass.
—R. K. Narayan (Indian Novelist, Short-story Writer)

From a management standpoint, it is very important to know how to unleash people’s inborn creativity. My concept is that anybody has creative ability, but very few people know how to use it.
—Akio Morita (Japanese Entrepreneur, Engineer)

The effect of having other interests beyond those domestic works well. The more one does and sees and feels, the more one is able to do, and the more genuine may be one’s appreciation of fundamental things like home, and love, and understanding companionship.
—Amelia Earhart (American Aviator)

Bromidic though it may sound, some questions don’t have answers, which is a terribly difficult lesson to learn.
—Katharine Graham (American Publisher)

If you find many people who are hard and indifferent to you in a world that you consider to be unhospitable and cruel—as often, indeed, happens to a tender-hearted, stirring young creature—you will also find there are noble hearts who will look kindly on you, and their help will be precious to you beyond price.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

A very rich person should leave his kids enough to do anything but not enough to do nothing.
—Warren Buffett (American Investor)

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict everything you said today… Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

You’ll never find rainbows if you’re looking down.
—Charlie Chaplin (British Actor)

The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his client to plant vines—so they should go as far as possible from home to build their first buildings.
—Frank Lloyd Wright (American Architect)

When you have got an elephant by the hind legs and he is trying to run away, it’s best to let him run.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

Men cannot for long live hopefully unless they are embarked upon some great unifying enterprise, one for which they may pledge their lives, their fortunes and their honor.
—C. A. Dykstra (American Government Administrator)

The many troubles in your household will tend to your edification, if you strive to bear them all in gentleness, patience, and kindness. Keep this ever before you, and remember constantly that God’s loving eyes are upon you amid all these little worries and vexations, watching whether you take them as He would desire. Offer up all such occasions to Him, and if sometimes you are put out, and give way to impatience, do not be discouraged, but make haste to regain your lost composure.
—Francis de Sales (French Catholic Saint)

The secret of action is to get established in equanimity, renouncing all egocentric attachments, and forgetting to worry over our successes and failures.
—Swami Chinmayananda (Indian Hindu Teacher)

A critic is a man who knows the way but can’t drive the car.
—Kenneth Tynan (English Theatre Critic, Writer)

The simplest explanation is that it doesn’t make sense.
—William Buechner (American Nuclear Physicist)

A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the “why” for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any “how”.
—Viktor Frankl (Austrian Physician)

Right now a moment is fleeting by! Capture its reality in paint! To do that we must put all else out of our minds. We must become that moment, make ourselves a sensitive recording plate. Give the image of what we actually see, forgetting everything that has been seen before our time.
—Paul Cezanne (French Painter)

All men are sculptors, constantly chipping away the unwanted parts of their lives, trying to create their idea of a masterpiece.
—Eddie Murphy (American Actor)

Animals are such agreeable friends—they ask no questions; they pass no criticisms.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) (English Novelist)

To be liberated, woman must feel free to be herself, not in rivalry to man but in the context of her own capacity and her personality.
—Indira Gandhi (Indian Head of State)

You are a fool if you do just as I say. You are a greater fool if you don’t do as I say. You should think for yourself and come up with better ideas than mine.
—Taiichi Ohno (Japanese Manufacturing Engineer)

People who have become so precious that they go out of their way to try and be sensitive in the most unpromising situations, trying to capture every moment of interest, are bound to look ridiculous and superficial.
—Murasaki Shikibu (Japanese Diarist, Novelist)

Fortune is a prize to be won. Adventure is the road to it. Chance is what may lurk in the shadows at the roadside.
—O. Henry (William Sydney Porter) (American Writer of Short Stories)

Tell the truth boldly, whether it hurts or not. Never pander to weakness. If truth is too much for intelligent people and sweeps them away, let them go; the sooner the better.
—Swami Vivekananda (Indian Hindu Mystic)

A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimensions.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (American Physician)