Inspirational Quotations

Conflict… is a theme that has occupied the thinking of man more than any other, save only God and love.
—Anatol Rapoport (American Mathematical Psychologist)

Don’t tell a woman she’s pretty; tell her there’s no other woman like her, and all roads will open to you.
—Jules Renard (French Author, Diarist)

A population weakened and exhausted by battling against so many obstacles—whose needs are never satisfied and desires never fulfilled—is vulnerable to manipulation and regimentation. The struggle for survival is, above all, an exercise that is hugely time-consuming, absorbing and debilitating. If you create these “anti-conditions,” your rule is guaranteed for a hundred years.
—Ryszard Kapuscinski (Polish Journalist)

The fact that there is a general belief in a future life is no evidence of its truth.
—Clarence Darrow (American Lawyer)

People are never free of trying to be content.
—Murray Bookchin (American Political Thinker)

Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.
—Thomas Merton (American Trappist Monk)

We pass our life in deliberation, and we die upon it.
—Pasquier Quesnel (French Theologian)

You should talk to people who disagree with you and you should talk to people who are not in the same emotional situation you are.
—Daniel Kahneman (American-Israeli Psychologist, Economist)

The noble title of ‘dissident’ must be earned rather than claimed; it connotes sacrifice and risk rather than mere disagreement.
—Christopher Hitchens (Anglo-American Social Critic)

Vicissitude of fortune which spares neither man nor the proudest of his works, but buries empires and cities in a common grave.
—Edward Gibbon (English Historian)

True courage is more a matter of intellect than of feeling.
—Steve Pavlina (American Motivational Speaker)

The anguish of the neurotic individual is the same as that of the saint. The neurotic, the saint are engaged in the same battle. Their blood flows from similar wounds. But the first one gasps and the other one gives.
—Georges Bataille (French Essayist, Intellectual)

He who loses money, loses much; He who loses a friend, loses much more; He who loses faith, loses all.
—Eleanor Roosevelt (American Humanitarian)

The universe appears to me like an immense, inexorable torture-garden. Passions, greed, hatred, and lies; law, social institutions, justice, love, glory, heroism, and religion: these are its monstrous flowers and its hideous instruments of eternal human suffering.
—Octave Mirbeau (French Author)

The ultimate Path is without difficulty. Just avoid picking and choosing.
—Jianzhi Sengcan (Chinese-Buddhist Monk)

Modern society will find no solution to the ecological problem unless it takes a serious look at its lifestyle.
—Pope John Paul II (Polish Catholic Religious Leader)

There is an increasing awareness of the interrelatedness of things. We are becoming less prone to accept an immediate solution without questioning its larger implications.
—Arthur Erickson (Canadian Architect)

Good timber does not grow with ease:
The stronger wind, the stronger trees.
—Douglas Malloch (American Poet, Short-story Writer)

For, although he didn’t know it, to him work was a sort of intoxication which gave him a glowing health and plenty of easy sleep.
—Mulk Raj Anand (Indian Novelist, Critic)

A few heart-whole, sincere, and energetic men and women can do more in a year than a mob in a century.
—Swami Vivekananda (Indian Hindu Monk, Mystic)

There comes with old age a time when the heart is no longer fusible or malleable, and must retain the form in which it has cooled down.
—Sheridan Le Fanu (Irish Novelist)

If the mind loves solitude, it has thereby acquired a loftier character, and it becomes still more noble when the taste is indulged in.
—Wilhelm von Humboldt (German Statesman, Scholar)

All our religion is but a false religion, and all our virtues are mere illusions and we ourselves are only hypocrites in the sight of God, if we have not that universal charity for everyone—for the good, and for the bad, for the poor and for the rich, and for all those who do us harm as much as those who do us good.
—John Vianney (French Catholic Priest)

Life is short and often stingy; feast the heart with what it craves, short of cruelty, and let the world wonder.
—Reynolds Price (American Novelist)

There are philosophies which are unendurable not because men are cowards, but because they are men.
—Ludwig Lewisohn (American Novelist, Essayist)

There are things that happen and leave no discernible trace, are not spoken of or written of, though it would be wrong to say that subsequent events go on indifferently, all the same, as though such things had never been.
—A. S. Byatt (English Novelist, Poet)

Gossip’s a nasty thing, but it’s sickly, and if people of good intentions will let it entirely alone, it will die, ninety-nine times out of a hundred.
—Booth Tarkington (American Novelist)

Ethical religion can be real only to those who are engaged in ceaseless efforts at moral improvement. By moving upward we acquire faith in an upward movement, without limit.
—Felix Adler (American Philosopher, Educator)

The most reliable way to anticipate the future is by understanding the present.
—John Naisbitt (American Trend Analyst)

There are many To-morrows, my Love, my Love, –
There is only one To-day.
—Joaquin Miller (American Poet)

This is a confusing and uncertain period, when a thousand wise words can go completely unnoticed, and one thoughtless word can provoke an utterly nonsensical furor.
—Vaclav Havel (Czech Dramatist, Statesman)

Kissin’ wears out. Cookin’ don’t.
—Pennsylvania Dutch Proverb

Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best; it removes all that is base.
—George S. Patton (American Military Leader)

Since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes which see reality.
—Nikos Kazantzakis (Greek Novelist, Statesman)

All science requires mathematics. The knowledge of mathematical things is almost innate in us. This is the easiest of sciences, a fact which is obvious in that no one’s brain rejects it; for laymen and people who are utterly illiterate know how to count and reckon.
—Roger Bacon (English Philosopher)

It is rude to silence a fool, and cruelty to let him go on.
—Indian Proverb

Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven’t committed.
—Anthony Powell (English Novelist)

Fashion is the science of appearances, and it inspires one with the desire to seem rather than to be.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin (American Preacher, Poet)

What difference is there, do you think, between those in Plato’s cave who can only marvel at the shadows and images of various objects, provided they are content and don’t know what they miss, and the philosopher who has emerged from the cave and sees the real things?
—Desiderius Erasmus (Dutch Humanist, Scholar)

I don’t think the human mind can comprehend the past and the future. They are both just illusions that can manipulate you into thinking there’s some kind of change.
—Bob Dylan (American Musician)

God has given us two hands, one to receive with and the other to give with.
—Billy Graham (American Baptist Religious Leader)

Happiness is the light on the water. The water is cold and dark and deep.
—William Keepers Maxwell Jr. (American Novelist, Editor)

To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace.
—Tacitus (Roman Orator, Historian)

If you can actually count your money, then you’re not a rich man.
—J. Paul Getty (American Business Person)

How I wish we lived in a time when laws were not necessary to safeguard us from discrimination.
—Barbra Streisand (American Musician)

There are too many idiots in this world. And having said it, I have the burden of proving it.
—Frantz Fanon (Algerian Political Theorist)

I took a deep breath and listened to the old bray of my heart: I am, I am, I am.
—Sylvia Plath (American Poet, Novelist)

If we do not lay out ourselves in the service of mankind, whom should we serve?
—Abigail Adams (American First Lady)

Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music.
—Sergei Rachmaninoff (Russian Musician)

We have to constantly confront our deepest anxieties, our emptiness, our despair, our doubts; and there is nowhere for us to escape and hide from them. It is impossible to ever turn back, and at times it seems impossible to ever make any further progress.
—Stephen Batchelor (British Buddhist Author, Teacher)

Be thou incapable of change in that which is right, and men will rely upon thee. Establish unto thyself principles of action; and see that thou ever act according to them. First know that thy principles are just, and then be thou.
—Akhenaten (Egyptian Monarch)

Science fiction is no more written for scientists than ghost stories are written for ghosts.
—Brian Aldiss (English Novelist)

Keeping hatred inside makes you get mean and evil inside. And when you forgive you feel sorry for the one that hurt you; you return love for hate, and good for evil. And that stretches your heart and makes you bigger inside. Now when you hate you shrink up inside and get littler, and you squeeze your heart tight, and you stays so mad with peoples you feel sick all the time like you need the doctor. Folks with a loving heart don’t never need no doctor.
—Margaret Walker (American Author, Poet)

A newspaper is of necessity something of a monopoly, and its first duty is to shun the temptations of monopoly. Its primary office is the gathering of news. At the peril of its soul it must see that the supply is not tainted. Neither in what it gives, nor in what it does not give, nor in the mode of presentation must the unclouded face of truth suffer wrong. Comment is free, but facts are sacred.
—C. P. Scott (British Journalist, Editor)

It’s not what you are; it’s what you don’t become that hurts.
—Oscar Levant (American Musician)

Time ain’t for savin’, no there’s no time for that.
—Jimmy Buffett (American Singer-Songwriter)

To God, thy country, and thy friend be true, then thou’lt ne’er be false to any one.
—Henry Vaughan (Anglo-Welsh Poet)

The existence of inherent limits of experience in no way settles the question about the subordination of facts of the human world to our knowledge of matter.
—Wilhelm Dilthey (German Philosopher)

If ease of use was the only requirement, everybody would still be riding tricycles.
—Douglas Engelbart (American Inventor)

Sympathy is two hearts tugging at one load.
—Charles Henry Parkhurst (American Clergyman)

‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson (British Poet)

What is conceived well is expressed clearly.
—Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux (French Literary Critic)

An ordinary man can surround himself with two thousand books and thenceforward have at least one place in the world in which it is possible to be happy.
—Augustine Birrell (English Politician, Essayist)

Waiting with hope is very difficult, but true patience is expressed when we must even wait for hope. I will have reached the point of greatest strength once I have learned to wait for hope.
—George Matheson (Scottish Theologian)

Flattery is like chewing gum. Enjoy it but don’t swallow it.
—Hank Ketcham (American Cartoonist)

The most worthwhile form of education is the kind that puts the educator inside you, as it were, so that the appetite for learning persists long after the external pressure for grades and degrees has vanished. Otherwise you are not educated; you are merely trained.
—Sydney J. Harris (American Essayist, Drama Critic)

Say not that this or that thing came to thwart you; it only came to test you.
—Muriel Strode (American Author, Businesswoman)

A specialist is someone who does everything else worse.
—Ruggiero Ricci (American Violinist)

Three outstanding qualities make for success: judgement, industry, health. And the greatest of these is judgement.
—Max Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook (British Politician, Journalist)

The life of the creative man is lead, directed and controlled by boredom. Avoiding boredom is one of our most important purposes.
—Saul Steinberg (American Cartoonist)

I think we have to own the fears that we have of each other, and then, in some practical way, some daily way, figure out how to see people differently than the way we were brought up to.
—Alice Walker (American Novelist, Activist)

The superior man is aware of Righteousness, the inferior man is aware of advantage.
—Confucius (Chinese Philosopher)

To insist on purity is to baptize instinct, to humanize art, and to deify personality.
—Guillaume Apollinaire (Italian-born French Poet)

I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.
—E. B. White (American Essayist, Humorist)

It’s the willing horse they saddle the most.
—Jamaican Proverb

As insanity in a higher sense, is the beginning of all wisdom, so is schizophrenia the beginning of all art, all fantasy.
—Hermann Hesse (Swiss Novelist, Poet)

I would like to see a state of society in which every man and woman preferred the old Scottish Sunday to the modern French one. We should then find solid and eternal foundations of character and self-command.
—Ramsay MacDonald (British Head of State)

The advantage of taking an instant dislike to somebody is that it saves time.
—Spike Milligan (Irish Humorist)

Creative minds have always been known to survive any kind of bad training.
—Anna Freud (Austrian-British Psychoanalyst)

Americans will listen, but they do not care to read. War and Peace must wait for the leisure of retirement, which never really comes: meanwhile it helps to furnish the living room. Blockbusting fiction is bought as furniture. Unread, it maintains its value. Read, it looks like money wasted. Cunningly, Americans know that books contain a person, and they want the person, not the book.
—Anthony Burgess (English Novelist, Critic)

If you have formed the habit of checking on every new diet that comes along, you will find that, mercifully, they all blur together, leaving you with only one definite piece of information: french-fried potatoes are out.
—Jean Kerr (Irish-American Writer)

What was the duty of the teacher if not to inspire?
—Bharati Mukherjee (Indian-American Novelist)

Only when one has lost all curiosity about the future has one reached the age to write an autobiography.
—Evelyn Waugh (British Novelist, Satirist)

The bird that would soar above the plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings.
—Kate Chopin (American Novelist, Short-Story Writer)

My way of learning is to heave a wild and unpredictable monkey-wrench into the machinery.
—Dashiell Hammett (American Crime Writer)

Capitalism inevitably and by virtue of the very logic of its civilization creates, educates and subsidizes a vested interest in social unrest.
—Joseph Schumpeter (Austrian-American Economist)

All beings desire happiness; therefore to all extend your benevolence.
—Mahavamsa (Sri Lankan Narrative History)

Only mediocrity can be trusted to be always at its best.
—Max Beerbohm (British Humorist)

Good lies need a leavening of truth to make them palatable.
—William McIlvanney (Scottish Novelist, Poet)

The very essence of leadership is [that] you have a vision. It’s got to be a vision you articulate clearly and forcefully on every occasion. You can’t blow an uncertain trumpet.
—Theodore Hesburgh (American Catholic Educator)

Anyone who moved through those years [of the Second World War] without understanding that man produces evil as a bee produces honey, must have been blind or wrong in the head.
—William Golding (English Novelist)

We grew up founding our dreams on the infinite promise of American advertising. I still believe that one can learn to play the piano by mail and that mud will give you a perfect complexion.
—Zelda Fitzgerald (American Writer, Artist)

Love that stammers, that stutters, is apt to be the love that loves best.
—Gabriela Mistral (Chilean Poet)

In case of doubt, do a little more than you have to.
—Warren Mitchell (English Actor)

When you react to a situation, do not re-enact it. Wait until the emotional nature has completely composed itself, then study your reaction.
—Sivaya Subramuniyaswami (American Hindu Teacher)

If thou suffer injustice, console thyself; the true unhappiness is in doing it.
—Democritus (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

Without ethics, everything happens as if we were all five billion passengers on a big machinery and nobody is driving the machinery. And it’s going faster and faster, but we don’t know where.
—Jacques Cousteau (French Underwater Explorer)

There is a silence, the child of love, which expresses everything, and proclaims more loudly than the tongue is able to do.
—Vittorio Alfieri (Italian Poet, Dramatist)

The diversity of the phenomena of nature is so great, and the treasures hidden in the heavens so rich, precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh nourishment.
—Johannes Kepler (German Astronomer)

Writing is not only a reflection of what one thinks and feels but a rope one weaves with words that can lower you below or hoist you above the surface of your life, enabling you to go deeper or higher than you would otherwise go. What excites me about his metaphor is that is makes writing much more than a lifesaving venture.
—Phyllis Theroux (American Journalist, Author)

Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.
—W. Somerset Maugham (British Novelist)

The land is a mother that never dies.
—Maori Proverb

I never paint dreams or nightmares. I paint my own reality.
—Frida Kahlo (Mexican Painter)

How selfhood begins with a walking away, and love is proved in the letting go.
—Cecil Day-Lewis (British Poet, Critic)

When an idea that’s constitutionally right for you, an idea that’s an expression of your own heart, comes to mind, it’s very hard to deny it. It comes with a risk. You will always remember it like a lost love, a love that didn’t pan out, if you choose to deny it.
—Charles A. Garfield (American Psychologist)

There is nothing respecting which a man may be so long unconscious, as of the extent and strength of his prejudices.
—Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey (Scottish Judge, Critic)

It is God who is the ultimate reason of things, and the knowledge of God is no less the beginning of science than his essence and will are the beginning of beings.
—Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (German Philosopher, Mathematician)

The angel of the Family is Woman. Mother, wife, or sister, Woman is the caress of life, the soothing sweetness of affection shed over its toils, a reflection for the individual of the loving providence which watches over Humanity. In her there is treasure enough of consoling tenderness to allay every pain. Moreover for every one of us she is the initiator of the future. The mother’s first kiss teaches the child love; the first holy kiss of the woman he loves teaches man hope and faith in life; and love and faith create a desire for perfection and the power of reaching towards it step by step; create the future, in short, of which the living symbol is the child, link between us and the generations to come. Through her the Family, with its divine mystery of reproduction, points to Eternity.
—Giuseppe Mazzini (Italian Revolutionary)

A style is not a matter of camera angles or fancy footwork, it’s an expression, an accurate expression of your particular opinion.
—Karel Reisz (Czech-British Film Director)

There are two kinds of writers—the great ones who can give you truths, and the lesser ones, who can only give you themselves.
—Clifton Fadiman (American Intellectual)

Great men are rarely isolated mountain-peaks; they are the summits of ranges.
—Thomas Wentworth Higginson (American Reformer, Editor)

The best armor of old age is a well-spent life preceding it.
—Charlie Munger (American Investor, Philanthropist)

Man can never escape pleasure or pain, because his body, which is a product of his good or bad actions, is by nature transient. After pleasure pain, after pain pleasure: creatures cannot escape these two, as they cannot the succession of day and night….It is, therefore, that the Sages knowing that all is but illusion, remain steadfast and neither are aggrieved nor joyous for events unhappy or happy.
—Adhyatma Ramayana (Hindu Religious Text)

An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support.
—John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir (Scottish Novelist)

The only criterion for what is a fact is what it is rational to accept.
—Hilary Putnam (American Philosopher)

Steady as a clock, busy as a bee, and cheerful as a cricket.
—Martha Washington (American First Lady)

Everything you want is out there waiting for you to ask. Everything you want also wants you. But you have to take action to get it.
—Jack Canfield (American Self-Help Author)

He who seeks vengeance must dig two graves: one for his enemy and one for himself.
—Chinese Proverb

It’s precisely when people can’t see what it is that could make things turn down that risk is highest, since they tend not to price in risks they can’t see.
—Howard Marks (American Investor)

Time will always follow its rules. It will never transgress those boundaries it imposes on itself. Nobody can harm time. Hence, nobody can change what fate has in store for them.
—The Ramayana (Hindu Religious Text)

Equal opportunity is good, but special privilege is better.
—Anna Chennault (American Journalist)

Expecting good things to last and unwanted things to stay away forever is simply unrealistic, even when we are amid good karma and bounty aplenty.
—Lama Surya Das (American Buddhist Scholar)

The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world. That’s what poetry does.
—Allen Ginsberg (American Poet)

There is no greater impediment to the advancement of knowledge than the ambiguity of words.
—Thomas Reid (Scottish Philosopher)

I suppose that everyone of us hopes secretly for immortality; to leave, I mean, a name behind him which will live forever in this world, whatever he may be doing, himself, in the next.
—A. A. Milne (British Humorist, Children’s Writer)

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.
—Galileo Galilei (Italian Astronomer)

The most important, the most fundamental and the deepest investigations are those that affect human life and activities most profoundly. Only those scientists who have laboured, not with the aim of producing this or that, but with the sole desire to advance knowledge ultimately prove to be the greatest benefactors of humanity.
—C. V. Raman (Indian Physicist)

Love, you are eternal like springtime.
—Juan Ramon Jimenez (Spanish Lyric Poet)

Drastic action can be costly, but it can be less expensive than continuing inaction.
—Richard Neustadt (American Historian)

The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.
—William James (American Philosopher)

If Fortune calls, offer him a seat.
—Yiddish Proverb

There is just one rule for politicians all over the world. Don’t say in Power what you say in Opposition: if you do you only have to carry out what the other fellows have found impossible.
—John Galsworthy (English Novelist, Playwright)

Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal.
—Philip Massinger (English Playwright)

Love, friendship and respect do not unite people as much as a common hatred for something.
—Anton Chekhov (Russian Short Story Writer)

Better one word less than one too many.
—Maltese Proverb

A cherefull look makes a dish a feast.
—George Herbert (Welsh Anglican Poet)

Enlightenment must come little by little—otherwise it would overwhelm.
—Idries Shah (Indian-born Sufi Author)

Whatever your grade or position, if you know how and when to speak, and when to remain silent, your chances of real success are proportionately increased.
—Ralph C. Smedley (Founder of Toastmasters)

The kindest and the happiest pair, will find occasion to forbear; find something every day they live, to pity, and perhaps forgive.
—William Cowper (English Anglican Poet)

The winning team has a dedication. It will have a core of veteran players who set the standards. They will not accept defeat.
—Merlin Olsen (American Sportsman)

Don’t simply retire from something; have something to retire to.
—Harry Emerson Fosdick (American Baptist Minister)

The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly.
—Michael Faraday (British Physicist, Chemist)

The moral virtues, without religion, are but cold, lifeless, and insipid; it is only religion which opens the mind to great conceptions, fills it with the most sublime ideas, and warns the soul with more than sensual pleasures.
—Joseph Addison (English Poet, Playwright, Politician)

One swallow does not make a summer, but one skein of geese, cleaving the murk of March thaw, is the Spring.
—Aldo Leopold (American Conservationist)

Happy is he who still loves something he loved in the nursery: he has not been broken in two by time; he is not two men, but one, and he has saved not only his soul but his life.
—G. K. Chesterton (English Journalist)

If you’re in the luckiest 1 per cent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 per cent.
—Warren Buffett (American Investor)

Inspiration is a slender river of brightness leaping from a vast and eternal knowledge, it exceeds reason more perfectly than reason exceeds the knowledge of the senses.
—Sri Aurobindo (Indian Mystic, Philosopher, Poet)

He who is prepared for the future and he who deals cleverly with any situation that may arise are both happy; but the fatalistic man who wholly depends on luck is ruined.
—Chanakya Neeti (Anthology of Indian Aphorisms)

Hard work is the key to success, so work diligently on any project you undertake. If you truly want to be successful, be prepared to give up your leisure time and work past 5 PM and on weekends. Also, have faith in yourself. If you come up with a new idea that you believe in, don’t allow other people to discourage you from pursuing it.
—Charles Lazarus (American Entrepreneur)