A Curated Selection of Quotes (August 2024)
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“Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.”
— Arthur Schopenhauer
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“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
— Haruki Murakami
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“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for?”
— Franz Kafka
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“Most men are a little better than their circumstances give them a chance to be.”
— William Faulkner
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"There is no such thing as a "self-made" man. We are made up of thousands of others. Everyone who has ever done a kind deed for us, or spoken one word of encouragement to us, has entered into the make-up of our character and of our thoughts."
- George Matthew Adams
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“Do not be afraid of spending quality time by yourself.”
— Albert Camus
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“I like people who dream or talk to themselves interminably; I like them, for they are double. They are here and elsewhere.”
— Albert Camus
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What if everything in the world were a misunderstanding, what if laughter were really tears?”
— Soren Kierkegaard
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“The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.”
— Albert Camus
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"Only the stupid steal from the rich. The clever steal from the poor. The law usually protects the rich."
- Carsten Jensen
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"I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually."
— James Baldwin
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“It's better to get lost in the passion than to lose the passion.”
— Søren Kierkegaard
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“War is what happens when language fails.”
— Margaret Atwood
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“Every kid starts out as a natural-born scientist, and then we beat it out of them. A few trickle through the system with their wonder and enthusiasm for science intact.”
— Carl Sagan
(not just science...)
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“We live in a society absolutely dependent on science and technology and yet have cleverly arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. That's a clear prescription for disaster.”
— Carl Sagan
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“People will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.”
— Aldous Huxley
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“The older I get, the more I find that you can only live with those who free you, who love you with an affection that is as light to bear as it is strong to feel.”
— Albert Camus
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"One of the primary tests of the mood of a society at any given time is whether its comfortable people tend to identify, psychologically, with the power and achievements of the very successful or with the needs and sufferings of the underprivileged."
– Richard Hofstadter
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“Glory, ambition, armies, fleets, thrones, crowns: playthings of grown children.”
— Victor Hugo
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"You can get excited about the future. The past won’t mind"
— Hillary Depiano
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“When the soul suffers too much, it develops a taste for misfortune.”
— Albert Camus
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“I realized either I was crazy or the world was crazy; and I picked on the world. And of course I was right.”
— Jack Kerouac
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“The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.”
— William James
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“The minority is always stronger than the majority, because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion.”
— Søren Kierkegaard
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“We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking.”
— Albert Camus
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“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.”
— Alice Walker
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“The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche
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“Today as always, men fall into two groups: slaves and free men. Whoever does not have two-thirds of his day for himself, is a slave, whatever he may be: a statesman, a businessman, an official, or a scholar.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche
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"By shaping the menus we pick from, technology hijacks the way we perceive our choices and replaces them with new ones. But the closer we pay attention to the options we’re given, the more we’ll notice when they don’t actually align with our true needs."
- Tristan Harris
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"The average person checks their phone 150 times a day. Why do we do this? Are we making 150 conscious choices? One major reason why is the #1 psychological ingredient in slot machines: intermittent variable rewards."
- Tristan Harris
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"We've created a world in which online connection has become primary. Especially for younger generations. And yet, in that world, anytime two people connect, the only way it's financed is through a sneaky third person who's paying to manipulate those two people."
- Tristan Harris
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"Poetry and imagination begin life."
- Florence Nightingale
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"Don’t believe every worried thought you have. Worried thoughts are notoriously inaccurate."
- Renee Jain
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"Independence is happiness."
- Susan B. Anthony
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“Don’t let anybody tell you you are ever past your prime.”
- Michelle Yeoh
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"I have no respect for people who deliberately try to be weird to attract attention, but if that's who you honestly are, you shouldn't try to "normalize" yourself."
- Alicia Witt
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“I hope there’s mystery and poetry in your life—not even poems, but patterns. I hope you can see them. Often these patterns will wake you up, and you will know that you are alive, again and again.”
- Eileen Myles
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"Without goals, training has no direction."
- Natalie Coughlin
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“There can be no greater gift than that of giving one’s time and energy to help others without expecting anything in return.”
- Nelson Mandela
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“Love isn't something natural. Rather it requires discipline, concentration, patience, faith, and the overcoming of narcissism. It isn't a feeling, it is a practice.”
— Erich Fromm
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“The highest and most beautiful things in life are not to be heard about, nor read about, nor seen but, if one will, are to be lived.”
— Søren Kierkegaard
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“That's what makes a view so sad. And so beautiful. It'll be there when we're not.”
— Virginia Woolf
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“After silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”
— Aldous Huxley
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"And then there was the moment at Sundance when I looked up and ten lesbians were taking pictures of me on their cell phones. That's when I knew I had truly arrived." — Alice Wu
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"There is as much difference between us and ourselves as between us and others."
— Michel de Montaigne
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“Better to know a few things which are good and necessary than many things which are useless and mediocre.”
— Leo Tolstoy
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“The test of a democracy is not the magnificence of buildings or the speed of automobiles or the efficiency of air transportation, but rather the care given to the welfare of all the people.”
— Helen Keller
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“So long as you can sweeten another's pain, life is not in vain.”
— Helen Keller
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“To study and not think is a waste. To think and not study is dangerous.”
— Confucius
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"For many years, I thought a poem was a whisper overheard, not an aria heard."
- Rita Dove
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"Getting old is like climbing a mountain; you get a little out of breath, but the view is much better!"
- Ingrid Bergman
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I love this! What a wonderful gift of quotes to open.