Search Results for: Albert Einstein

Kind words may be short… but their echoes are endless.
—Mother Teresa (Albanian Catholic Humanitarian)

Faith which does not doubt is dead faith.
—Miguel de Unamuno (Spanish Essayist)

Speech is power: speech is to persuade, to convert, to compel. It is to bring another out of his bad sense into your good sense.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

Nothing truly can be termed my own, but what I make my own by using well; those deeds of charity which we have done, shall stay forever with us; and that wealth which we have so bestowed, we only keep; the other is not ours.
—Conyers Middleton (English Clergyman)

Who is the wisest man? He who neither knows or wishes for anything else than what happens.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)

When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you don’t blame the lettuce. You look into the reasons it is not doing well. It may need fertilizer, or more water, or less sun. You never blame the lettuce. Yet if we have problems with our friends or our family, we blame the other person. But if we know how to take care of them, they will grow well, like lettuce. Blaming has no positive effect at all, nor does trying to persuade using reason and arguments. That is my experience. No blame, no reasoning, no argument, just understanding. If you understand, and you show that you understand, you can love, and the situation will change.
—Thich Nhat Hanh (Vietnamese Buddhist Religious Leader)

He that is overcautious will accomplish but very little.
—Friedrich Schiller (German Poet)

Knowledge is more than equivalent to force. The master of mechanics laughs at strength.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

The most common commodity in this country is unrealized potential.
—Calvin Coolidge (American Head of State)

He that opposes his own judgment against the consent of the times ought to be backed with unanswerable truths; and he that has truth on his side is a fool, as well as a coward, if he is afraid to own it because of other men’s opinions.
—Daniel Defoe (English Writer)

He who would be well taken care of must take care of himself.
—William Graham Sumner (American Polymath)

Dislodging a green nut from it’s shell is almost impossible, but let it dry and the lightest tap will do it.
—Ramakrishna Paramahamsa (Indian Hindu Philosopher)

All meaningful and lasting change starts first in your imagination and then works its way out. Imagination is more important than knowledge. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.
—Albert Einstein (German-born Theoretical Physicist)

Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.
—G. K. Chesterton (English Journalist)

In reading the lives of great men, I found that the first victory they won was over themselves … self-discipline with all of them came first.
—Harry S. Truman (American Head of State)

When you rise in the morning, form a resolution to make the day a happy one for a fellow creature.
—Sydney Smith (English Anglican Writer)

Solitude has a healing consoler, friend, companion: it is work.
—Berthold Auerbach (German Jewish Poet)

What men call knowledge, is the reasoned acceptance of false appearances. Wisdom looks behind the veil and sees.
—Sri Aurobindo (Indian Yogi, Nationalist)

Character is the result of hundreds and hundreds of choices you make that gradually turn who you are, at any given moment, into who you want to be.
—Jim Rohn (American Entrepreneur)

When life takes the wind out of your sails, it is to test you at the oars.
—Robert Brault

Show me a completely contented person and I’ll show you a failure.
—Thomas Edison (American Inventor)

Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude.
—Denis Waitley (American Motivational Speaker)

A good character is the best tombstone. Those who loved you, and were helped by you, will remember you when forget-me-nots are withered. Carve your name on hearts, and not on marble.
—Charles Spurgeon (British Baptist Preacher)

If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.
—C. S. Lewis (Irish-born British Children’s Books Writer)

Whatever bad awaits, don’t let it spoil the present moment.
—Marty Nemko (American Career Coach, Author)

If your heart acquires strength, you will be able to remove blemishes from others without thinking evil of them.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Education is the progressive realization of our ignorance.
—Albert Einstein (German-born Theoretical Physicist)

Money is always on its way somewhere. What you do with it while it is in your keeping and the direction you send it in say much about you. Your treatment of and respect for money, how you make it, and how you spend it, reflect your character.
—Gary Ryan Blair

Man’s mind stretched by a new idea, never goes back to its original dimensions.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (American Physician)

Character is much easier kept than recovered.
—Thomas Paine (American Nationalist)

The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.
—Wilhelm Stekel (Austrian Physician)

In vain do they talk of happiness who never subdued an impulse in obedience to a principle. He who never sacrificed a present to a future good, or a personal to a general one, can speak of happiness only as the blind do of colors.
—Horace Mann (American Educator)

Youth, abundant wealth, high birth, and inexperience, are, each of them a source of ruin. What then must be the fate of those in whom all four are combined.
—Hitopadesha

Altogether too often, people substitute opinions for facts and emotions for analysis.
—Andrew Grove (Hungarian-born American Businessperson)

He is the wisest and happiest man, who, by constant attention of thought discovers the greatest opportunity of doing good, and breaks through every opposition that he may improve these opportunities.
—Philip Doddridge (English Nonconformist Religious Leader)

There’re two people in the world that are not likeable: a master and a slave.
—Nikki Giovanni (American Children’s Books Writer)

Considering the unforeseen events of this world, we should be taught that no human condition should inspire men with absolute despair.
—Henry Fielding (English Novelist)

Our conscious motivations, ideas, and beliefs are a blend of false information, biases, irrational passions, rationalizations, prejudices, in which morsels of truth swim around and give the reassurance albeit false, that the whole mixture is real and true. The thinking processes attempt to organize this whole cesspool of illusions according to the laws of plausibility. This level of consciousness is supposed to reflect reality; it is the map we use for organizing our life.
—Erich Fromm (German Psychologist)

It is more easy to get a favor from fortune than to keep it.
—Publilius Syrus (Syrian-born Latin Writer)

Men marry women with the hope they will never change. Women marry men with the hope they will change. Invariably they are both disappointed.
—Albert Einstein (German-born Theoretical Physicist)

When a subject is highly controversial… one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold. One can only give one’s audience the chance of drawing their own conclusions as they observe the limitations, the prejudices, the idiosyncrasies of the speaker.
—Virginia Woolf (English Novelist)

When you can’t have anything else, you can have virtue.
—Don Marquis (American Humorist)

There are two modes of establishing our reputation—to be praised by honest men, and to be abused by rogues. It is best, however, to secure the former, because it will invariably be accompanied by the latter.
—Charles Caleb Colton (English Angelic Priest)

Your readiest desire is your path to joy even if it destroys you.
—Holbrook Jackson (British Journalist)

I think knowing what you cannot do is more important than knowing what you can do. In fact, that’s good taste.
—Lucille Ball (American Actor)

Right is its own defense.
—Bertolt Brecht (German Poet)

It is a truth but too well known, that rashness attends youth, as prudence does old age.
—Cicero (Roman Philosopher)

In the future, instead of striving to be right at a high cost, it will be more appropriate to be flexible and plural at a lower cost. If you cannot accurately predict the future then you must flexibly be prepared to deal with various possible futures.
—Edward de Bono (Maltese Physician)

Morale is the greatest single factor in successful wars.
—Dwight D. Eisenhower (American Head of State)

Honest differences are often a healthy sign of progress.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

A dog is not considered a good dog because he is a good barker. A man is not considered a good man because he is a good talker.
—Zhuang Zhou (Chinese Philosopher)

A man’s memory may almost become the art of continually varying and misrepresenting his past, according to his interest in the present.
—George Santayana (Spanish Philosopher)

There is no greater impediment to progress in the sciences than the desire to see it take place too quickly.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (German Scientist)

The search for truth is more precious than its possession.
—Albert Einstein (German-born Theoretical Physicist)

Absence of occupation is not rest; a mind quite vacant is a mind distressed.
—William Cowper (English Anglican Poet)

It has been a thousand times observed, and I must observe it once more, that the hours we pass with happy prospects in view are more pleasing than those crowned with fruition.
—Oliver Goldsmith (Irish Author)

The hallmark of courage in our age of conformity is the capacity to stand on one’s convictions not obstinately or defiantly (these are gestures of defensiveness, not courage) nor as a gesture of retaliation, but simply because these are what one believes.
—Rollo May (American Philosopher)

The only truly affluent are those who do not want more than they have.
—Erich Fromm (German Psychologist)

By nature man hates change; seldom will he quit his old home till it has actually fallen around his ears.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

It is understanding that gives us an ability to have peace. When we understand the other fellow’s viewpoint, and he understands ours, then we can sit down and work out our differences.
—Harry S. Truman (American Head of State)

Let every dawn of the morning be to you as the beginning of life. And let every setting of the sun be to you as its close. Then let everyone of these short lives leave its sure record of some kindly thing done for others; some good strength of knowledge gained for yourself.
—John Ruskin (English Art Critic)

Conflict is inevitable, but combat is optional.
—Max Lucado (American Christian Author)

No one has ever loved anyone the way everyone wants to be loved.
—Mignon McLaughlin (American Journalist)

Sum up at night what thou hast done by day, and in the morning what thou hast to do.—Dress and undress thy soul; mark the decay and growth of it.—If with thy watch, that too be down, then wind up both; since we shall be most surely judged, make thine accounts agree.
—George Herbert (Welsh Anglican Poet)

Your faith is what you believe, not what you know.
—John Lancaster Spalding (American Catholic Clergyman)

The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.
—Albert Einstein (German-born Theoretical Physicist)

The only real failure in life is one not learned from.
—Anthony J. D’Angelo

Do what you feel in your heart to be right—for you’ll be criticized anyway. You’ll be damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.
—Eleanor Roosevelt (American First Lady)

History is not the story of heroes entirely. It is often the story of cruelty and injustice and shortsightedness. There are monsters, there is evil, there is betrayal. That’s why people should read Shakespeare and Dickens as well as history—they will find the best, the worst, the height of noble attainment and the depths of depravity.
—David McCullough (American Historian)

Whenever I hear people talking about liberal ideas, I am always astounded that men should love to fool themselves with empty sounds. An idea should never be liberal; it must be vigorous, positive, and without loose ends so that it may fulfill its divine mission and be productive. The proper place for liberality is in the realm of the emotions.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)

You may delay, but time will not, and lost time is never found again.
—Benjamin Franklin (American Political leader)

Don’t be distracted by criticism. Remember, the only taste of success some people have is when they take a bite out of you.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

What is man but his passion?
—Robert Penn Warren (American Poet)

Friends and acquaintances are the surest passport to fortune.
—Arthur Schopenhauer (German Philosopher)

Skepticism becomes the mark and even the pose of the educated mind. It is no longer directed against this and that article of the older creeds but is rather a bias against any kind of far-reaching ideas, and a denial of systematic participation on the part of such ideas in the intelligent direction of affairs.
—John Dewey (American Philosopher)

We are happier in many ways when we are old than when we were young. The young sow wild oats. The old grow sage.
—Winston Churchill (British Head of State)

Nobody holds a good opinion of a man who has a low opinion of himself.
—Anthony Trollope (English Novelist)

If deeply based in wisdom, even anger is allowed.
—Hans Taeger

All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and prepared hearer.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

Knowledge dwells in heads replete with thoughts of other men; wisdom, in minds attentive to their own.
—William Cowper (English Anglican Poet)

Happiness lies, first of all, in health.
—George William Curtis (American Essayist)

Solitude is painful when one is young, but delightful when one is more mature.
—Albert Einstein (German-born Theoretical Physicist)

Experience isn’t interesting until it begins to repeat itself—in fact, till it does that, it hardly is experience.
—Elizabeth Bowen (Irish Novelist)

The purpose of human life is to serve and show compassion and the will to help others.
—Albert Schweitzer (French Theologian)

Treasure the memories of past misfortunes; they constitute our bank of fortitude.
—Eric Hoffer (American Philosopher)

Too often the strong, silent man is silent only because he does not know what to say, and is reputed strong only because he has remained silent.
—Winston Churchill (British Head of State)

Man can believe the impossible, but can never believe the improbable.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

Image is what people think we are; integrity is what we really are.
—John C. Maxwell (American Christian Professional Speaker)

Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks. Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools. And their grandchildren are once more slaves.
—D. H. Lawrence (English Novelist)

We cannot avoid using power, cannot escape the compulsion to afflict the world, so let us, cautious in diction and mighty in contradiction, love powerfully.
—Martin Buber

For you and me, today is all we have; tomorrow is a mirage that may never become reality.
—Louis L’Amour

Time is the wisest of all counselors.
—Plutarch (Ancient Greek Historian)

We may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion.
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Whatever your life’s work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)

Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.
—Albert Einstein (German-born Theoretical Physicist)

The critical opinions of a writer should always be taken with a large grain of salt. For the most part, they are manifestations of his debate with himself as to what he should do next and what he should avoid.
—W. H. Auden (British-born American Poet)

Before you agree to do anything that might add even the smallest amount of stress to your life, ask yourself: “What is my truest intention?” Give yourself time to let a yes resound within you. When it’s right, I guarantee that your entire body will feel it.
—Oprah Winfrey (American TV Personality)

One of the reasons mature people stop learning is that they become less and less willing to risk failure.
—John W. Gardner (American Government Official)

When you have a great and difficult task, something perhaps almost impossible, if you only work a little at a time, every day a little, suddenly the work will finish itself.
—Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen)

There is more to life than increasing its speed.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

I have feelings too. I am still human. All I want is to be loved, for myself and for my talent.
—Marilyn Monroe (American Actor)

To find out what one is fitted to do, and to secure an opportunity to do it, is the key to happiness.
—John Dewey (American Philosopher)

Probably no man ever had a friend he did not dislike a little; we are all so constituted by nature that no one can possibly entirely approve of us.
—E. W. Howe (American Novelist)

A man has generally the good or ill qualities which he attributes to mankind.
—William Shenstone (English Poet)

You can always tell a real friend; when you’ve made a fool of yourself he doesn’t feel you’ve done a permanent job.
—Laurence J. Peter (Canadian-born American Educator)

A budget tells us what we can’t afford, but it doesn’t keep us from buying it.
—William Feather (American Publisher)

Faith is a function of the heart. It must be enforced by reason. The two are not antagonistic as some think. The more intense one’s faith is, the more it whet’s one’s reason. When faith becomes blind it dies.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

If we put the emphasis upon the right things, if we live the life that is worth while and then fail, we will survive all disasters, we will out-live all misfortune. We should be so well balanced and symmetrical, that nothing which could ever happen could throw us off our center, so that no matter what misfortune should overtake us, there would still be a whole magnificent man or woman left after being stripped of everything else.
—Orison Swett Marden (American New Thought Writer)

If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things.
—Albert Einstein (German-born Theoretical Physicist)

The truth is found when men are free to pursue it.
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (American Head of State)

To live in the presence of great truths and eternal laws, to be led by permanent ideals—that is what keeps a man patient when the world ignores him, and calm and unspoiled when the world praises him.
—Honore de Balzac (French Novelist)

Knowledge cultivates your seeds and does not sow in you seeds.
—Khalil Gibran (Lebanese-born American Philosopher)

The underdog often starts the fight, and occasionally the upper dog deserves to win.
—E. W. Howe (American Novelist)

Love is the strongest force the world possesses, and yet it is the humblest imaginable.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

The future is an opaque mirror. Anyone who tries to look into it sees nothing but the dim outlines of an old and worried face.
—Jim Bishop (American Journalist)

In historic events, the so-called great men are labels giving names to events, and like labels they have but the smallest connection with the event itself. Every act of theirs, which appears to them an act of their own will, is in an historical sense involuntary and is related to the whole course of history and predestined from eternity.
—Leo Tolstoy (Russian Novelist)

A little neglect may breed great mischief. For want of a nail, the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe, the horse was lost; and for want of a horse, the rider was lost; being overtaken, and slain by the enemy. All for want of care about a horse-shoe nail.
—Benjamin Franklin (American Political leader)

There must be, not a balance of power, but a community of power; not organized rivalries, but an organized peace.
—Woodrow Wilson (American Head of State)

Manner is everything with some people, and something with everybody.
—Conyers Middleton (English Clergyman)

I believe that we are solely responsible for our choices, and we have to accept the consequences of every deed, word, and thought throughout our lifetime.
—Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
—Albert Einstein (German-born Theoretical Physicist)

Hate is not the opposite of love; apathy is.
—Rollo May (American Philosopher)

It is indolence… Indolence and love of ease; a want of all laudable ambition, of taste for good company, or of inclination to take the trouble of being agreeable, which make men clergymen. A clergyman has nothing to do but be slovenly and selfish; read the newspaper, watch the weather, and quarrel with his wife. His curate does all the work and the business of his own life is to dine.
—Jane Austen (English Novelist)

Most people have been brainwashed into believing that their job is to copyedit the world, not to design it.
—Seth Godin (American Entrepreneur)

It takes vision and courage to create; it takes faith and courage to prove.
—Owen D. Young (American Businessperson)

Reading is essential for those who seek to rise above the ordinary. We must not permit anything to stand between us and the book that could change our lives.
—Jim Rohn (American Entrepreneur)

Stressing output is the key to improving productivity, while looking to increase activity can result in just the opposite.
—Andrew Grove (Hungarian-born American Businessperson)

If we judge ourselves only by our aspirations and everyone else only by their conduct, we shall soon reach a very false conclusion.
—Calvin Coolidge (American Head of State)

Desire, ignorance, and inequality—this is the trinity of bondage.
—Swami Vivekananda (Indian Hindu Mystic)

How you think when you lose determines how long it will be until you win.
—G. K. Chesterton (English Journalist)

When a king asked Euclid, whether he could not explain his art to him in a more compendious manner, he was answered, that there was no royal way to geometry. Other things may be seized by might, or purchased with money, but knowledge is to be gained only by study, and study to be prosecuted only in retirement.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

No good work whatever can be perfect, and the demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art.
—John Ruskin (English Art Critic)

The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may not be going to prove one’s self a fool; the truest heroism is, to resist the doubt; and the profoundest wisdom, to know when it ought to be resisted, and when to be obeyed.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne (American Novelist)

Economy is the art of making the most of life. The love of economy is the root of all virtue.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

Though men pride themselves on their great actions, often they are not the result of any great design, but of chance.
—Francois de La Rochefoucauld

No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.
—Nelson Mandela (South African Political leader)

It is the cheerful mind that is persevering. It is the strong mind that hews its way through a thousand difficulties.
—Swami Vivekananda (Indian Hindu Mystic)

Doubt is uncomfortable, certainty is ridiculous.
—Voltaire (French Philosopher)

I reject any religious doctrine that does not appeal to reason and is in conflict with morality.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

All the greatest and most important problems of life are fundamentally insolvable. They can never be solved, but only outgrown.
—Carl Jung (Swiss Psychologist)

Every man who rises above the common level has received two educations: the first from his teachers; the second, more personal and important, from himself.
—Edward Gibbon (English Historian)

No man is happy unless he believes he is.
—Publilius Syrus (Syrian-born Latin Writer)

A man’s value to the community primarily depends on how far his feelings, thoughts, and actions are directed towards promoting the good of his fellows.
—Albert Einstein (German-born Theoretical Physicist)

If a person gets his attitude toward money straight, it will help straighten out almost every other area in his life.
—Billy Graham (American Baptist Religious Leader)

Life, we learn too late, is in the living, in the tissue of every day and hour.
—Stephen Leacock

No one can be a great thinker who does not recognize that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead.
—John Stuart Mill (English Philosopher, Economist)