A Curated Selection of Quotes (June 2024)

“One thing we can always control is how we treat ourselves. And that one thing can change everything.”

– Leeana Tankersley

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"Slowing down reminds you that the journey is supposed to be fun."

- Anne Bancroft

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"Don't worry that children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you."

- Robert Fulghum

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"It's impossible to be loyal to your family, your friends, your country, and your principles, all at the same time."

- Mignon McLaughlin

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"Truth-tellers are not always palatable. There is a preference for candy bars."

- Gwendolyn Brooks

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"A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading it."

- William Styron

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“We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.”

— George Orwell

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“People hasten to judge in order not to be judged themselves.”

— Albert Camus

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“Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.”

— Leo Tolstoy

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“It is the search for the truth, not possession of the truth which is the way of philosophy. Its questions are more relevant than its answers, and every answer becomes a new question.”

— Karl Jaspers

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"I’ve lived my whole life without having goals, and I think that’s very valuable, because then I never am in a state of anxiety or dissatisfaction. I never feel I haven’t achieved something. I never feel there is something yet to be accomplished. I feel like goals are quite counterproductive. They give you a target, and until the moment you reach that target, you are stressed and unsatisfied, and at the moment you reach that specific target you are aimless and have lost the lodestar of your existence. I’ve always tried to see everything as a process. I want to do things in a certain way that I can be proud of that is sustainable and is fair and equitable to everybody that I interact with. If I can do that, then that’s a success, and success means that I get to do it again tomorrow.”

— Steve Albini

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“Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.”

– Marcus Aurelius

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“You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.”

— Colette

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“We only do well the things we like doing.”

— Colette

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"You have to train your mind as much as your body."

- Venus Williams

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“A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.”

— Helen Keller

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"The only people who see the whole picture are the ones who step outside the frame."

- Salman Rushdie

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“War: first, one hopes to win; then one expects the enemy to lose; then, one is satisfied that the enemy too is suffering; in the end, one is surprised that everyone has lost.”

— Karl Kraus

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"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."

– Blaise Pascal

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"The sum of wisdom is that time is never lost that is devoted to work."

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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All idealization makes life poorer. To beautify it is to take away its character of complexity — it is to destroy it.”

— Joseph Conrad

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“It's only those who do nothing that make no mistakes, I suppose.”

— Joseph Conrad

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“If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.”

— Carl Jung

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“We are always in the position of beginning again.”

- Michel Foucault

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“One thing I am convinced more and more is true and that is this: the only way to be truly happy is to make others happy. When you realize that and take advantage of the fact, everything is made perfect.”

— William Carlos Williams

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“It's a strange world made up of disappointments for the most part.”

— William Carlos Williams

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“It takes time to live. Like any work of art, life needs to be thought about.”

— Albert Camus

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"I want to perceive and understand the hidden powers and laws of things, in order to have it in my power."

- Salvador Dali

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge."

- Charles Darwin

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"History is a vast early warning system."

- Norman Cousins

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"Once you hear the details of victory, it is hard to distinguish it from a defeat."

- Jean-Paul Sartre

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“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.”

— Anaïs Nin

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“People seldom do what they believe in. They do what is convenient, then repent.”

— Bob Dylan

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“Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.”

— Viktor Frankl

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“When we are no longer able to change a situation we are challenged to change ourselves.”

— Viktor Frankl

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“Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.”

— Viktor Frankl

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"Skills can be taught. Character you either have or you don’t have."

- Anthony Bourdain

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"If you win through bad sportsmanship, that's no real victory."

- Babe Didrikson Zaharias

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“Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.”

— Sigmund Freud (ironic?)

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“What did you do as a child that made the hours pass like minutes? Herein lies the key to your earthly pursuits.”

- Carl Jung

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“Do you think that I count the days? There is only one day left, always starting over: it is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

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“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.”

— Thomas Pynchon

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“The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”

- John Stuart Mill

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“Don't be too hard on the envious. Be glad you have, or had in the past, something enviable.”

— Susan Sontag

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“All modern wars, even when their aims are the traditional ones, such as territorial aggrandizement or the acquisition of scarce resources, are cast as clashes of civilizations — culture wars — with each side claiming the high ground, and characterizing the other as barbaric.”

— Susan Sontag

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“Not all violence is equally reprehensible; not all wars are equally unjust.”

— Susan Sontag

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“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”

— Bertrand Russell

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