Right Attitudes

We have a problem. “Congratulations.” But it’s a tough problem. “Then double congratulations.”
—W. Clement Stone (American Self-help Guru)

Why are we born? We’re born eventually to die, of course. But what happens between the time we’re born and we die? We’re born to live. One is a realist if one hopes.
—Studs Terkel (American Oral Historian)

Does history repeat itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce? No, that’s too grand, too considered a process. History just burps, and we taste again that raw-onion sandwich it swallowed centuries ago.
—Julian Barnes (British Novelist, Critic)

Make good use of bad rubbish.
—Elisabeth Beresford (British Children’s Writer)

What we think of as our sensitivity is only the higher evolution of terror in a poor dumb beast. We suffer for nothing. Our own death wish is our only real tragedy.
—Mario Puzo (American Novelist)

The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides. Accept life, and you must accept regret.
—Henri Frederic Amiel (Swiss Philosopher, Writer)

Men freely believe that which they desire.
—Julius Caesar (Roman Ruler)

We’ve made great medical progress in the last generation. What used to be merely an itch is now an allergy.
—Modern Proverb

Weary the path that does not challenge. Doubt is an incentive to truth and patient inquiry leadeth the way.
—Hosea Ballou (American Theologian)

He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery.
—Harold Wilson (British Political Leader)

Until the rise of American advertising, it never occurred to anyone anywhere in the world that the teenager was a captive in a hostile world of adults.
—Gore Vidal (American Novelist)

Magic becomes art when it has nothing to hide.
—Ben Okri (Nigerian Novelist, Poet)

Virtue is more clearly shown in the performance of fine actions than in the non-performance of base ones.
—Aristotle (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

Turning away from the world and toward your own happiness is the path of authenticity.
—Sarah Ban Breathnach (American Self-help Author)

The individual activity of one man with backbone will do more than a thousand men with a mere wishbone.
—William J. H. Boetcker (American Presbyterian Minister)

You don’t understand anything until you learn it more than one way.
—Marvin Minsky (American Computer Scientist)

The horse does abominate the camel; the mighty elephant is afraid of a mouse; and they say that the lion, which scorneth to turn his back upon the stoutest animal, will tremble at the crowing of a cock.
—Increase Mather (American Theologian)

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 (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)

Let him who neglects to raise the fallen, fear lest, when he falls, no one will stretch out his hand to lift him up.
—Sa’Di (Musharrif Od-Din Muslih Od-Din) (Persian Poet)

If country life be healthful to the body, it is no less so to the mind.
—Giovanni Ruffini (Italian Writer)

The original writer is not he who does not imitate others, but he who can be imitated by none.
—Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand (French Writer, Statesman)

The substance of the mind is revealed through its tranquility and its function through its activity.
—Wang Yangming (Chinese Philosopher)

The very first right of every animal is the right to live. As you cannot give life to a dead creature, you do not have the right to take life away from a living one.
—Dada J. P. Vaswani (Indian Hindu Philosopher)

People entering marriage [must] enter it with a proper understanding of marriage as a God-given gift to help people grow in the virtues of love, faith and charity and to grow in unselfishness.
—A. J. Reb Materi (Canadian Clergyman)

Highly educated bores are by far the worst; they know so much, in such fiendish detail, to be boring about.
—Louis Kronenberger (American Literary Critic)

Riches are a good hand maiden, but a poor mistress.
—Francis Bacon (English Philosopher)

Dream is not a revelation. If a dream affords the dreamer some light on himself, it is not the person with closed eyes who makes the discovery but the person with open eyes lucid enough to fit thoughts together. Dream—a scintillating mirage surrounded by shadows—is essentially poetry.
—Michel Leiris (French Surrealist Writer, Ethnographer)

The lowest form of popular culture—lack of information, misinformation, disinformation, and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people’s lives—has overrun real journalism. Today, ordinary Americans are being stuffed with garbage.
—Carl Bernstein (American Journalist)

All men’s impulses, when motivated by legitimate self-interest, fall into a harmonious social pattern.
—Frederic Bastiat (French Political Economist)

We rarely like the virtues we have not.
—William Shakespeare (British Playwright)

The punishment of desire is the agony of unfulfillment.
—Hermes Trismegistus (Greek-Egyptian Author)

Families are nothing other than the idolatry of duty.
—Ann Oakley (English Sociologist, Feminist)

Only the mediocre are always at their best.
—Jean Giraudoux (French Novelist, Playwright)

The wisdom of the ignorant somewhat resembles the instinct of animals; it is diffused only in a very narrow sphere, but within the circle it acts with vigor, uniformity, and success.
—Oliver Goldsmith (Anglo-Irish Novelist, Poet)