A Curated Selection of Quotes (May 2025)

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“We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.”

— William James

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"What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we lead."

— Nelson Mandela

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"When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn't become a king. The palace turns into a circus."

— Turkish Proverb

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“It’s the job of an artist to go down but also to get back up.”

— Donna Hilbert

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"No matter what happens, if I get pushed down, I’m going to come right back up."

- Doris Day

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“We survived. You and I. And those who survive have a duty. Our duty is to do our best to keep on living. Even if our lives are not perfect.”

— Haruki Murakami

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“One cannot be deeply responsive to the world without being saddened very often.”

— Erich Fromm

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“I don’t think people should be taking medical advice from me.”

- RFK Jr.

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“A person needs a little madness, or else they never dare cut the rope and be free.”

— Nikos Kazantzakis

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“One does not decide the truth of a thought according to whether it is right-wing or left-wing.”

— Albert Camus

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“The truth isn't always beauty, but the hunger for it is.”

— Nadine Gordimer

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“Only the skilled can judge the skillfulness, but that is not the same as judging the value of the result.”

— C. S. Lewis

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“Memories, even your most precious ones, fade surprisingly quickly. But I don’t go along with that. The memories I value most, I don’t ever see them fading.”

— Kazuo Ishiguro

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"Most people would throw away their cynicism if they could. The majority just never get the chance.”

— Alain de Botton

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"If you always do what interests you, at least one person is pleased."

— Katharine Hepburn

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"There's great value in being able to step back and laugh at yourself, at life, and at attitudes. Laughter helps you put everything into perspective."

— Jim Henson

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"U.S. healthcare is a $4.9t corrupt cop."

— Scott Galloway

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“Never wear socks that are funnier than you.”

— Tim Little

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“Buy a nice big bowl, put it near your front door, and drop your phone in the bowl when you get home. Leave it there. Enjoy your evening of freedom.”

— Michael Sebastian

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"One day, as I began my umpteenth trip, pulling the same classic pieces out of my suitcase to get dressed, I realized that my personal style is what I pack.”

— Jeremy Kirkland

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"We do a lot with our eyes these days. I am constantly amazed by the greater understanding of life and what is possible that comes from listening.”

— Zane Lowe

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“Anything you buy you should plan to own and wear for the rest of your life.”

— David Casavant

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“You can tell if somebody is comfortable in what they’re wearing just by their mannerisms, which is why it’s really important that you just be you.”

— Matt Zingler

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“Decisiveness, intention, and repetition create the structure for your ideas to become a reality.”

— Stephanie Perez

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“If you’re struggling creatively, go to the movies. But not a theme-park movie. Get Mubi Go. Watch something weird. Take what you see back to your practice, whatever it is.”

— James Emmerman

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“Finding balance in life often involves stepping into green spaces, particularly botanical gardens, to reset and reconnect."

— Bradley Seymour & Fabrizio Taliani

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“Kill the part of you that thinks you’re cringe.”

— Annie Bercy

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“Have a first-evening ritual. [...] It’s nice to have some familiar habits during a trip away.”

— Michael Hill

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“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

— MLK

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“Printer's ink has been running a race against gunpowder these many, many years. Ink is handicapped, in a way, because you can blow up a man with gunpowder in half a second, while it may take twenty years to blow him up with a book. But the gunpowder destroys itself along with its victim, while a book can keep on exploding for centuries.”

— Christopher Morley

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“Remember one thing about democracy. We can have anything we want and at the same time, we always end up with exactly what we deserve.”

— Edward Albee

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"More Americans are united in their desire to purchase property than brush their teeth twice a day."

- Scott Galloway

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"Within National Parks is room—glorious room—in which to find ourselves, in which to think and hope, to dream and plan, to rest and resolve."

- Naturalist Enos Mills

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"You want to beat him, and that’s a problem for me, because I want to win."

— The West Wing

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"Voting is a form of self care."

— Mary Gay Scanlon

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"I needed to my real life to be bigger than my online life."

— Jia Tolentino

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“If swindling pays, then it will not stop. The definition of the good society is one in which virtue pays. I can now add a slight variation on this; you cannot have a good society unless virtue pays.”

— Abraham Maslow

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“I am filled with hatred for money, for battleships, for industry, for factories, for the grind, grind, grind of the machine on all our creative instincts.”

— Dora Russell

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"Before you're willing to make wise decisions, you avoid wise friends."

— Glennon Doyle

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"If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?”

— Anton Chigurh (No Country for Old Men)

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“If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”

— Toni Morrison

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“If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.”

— Virginia Woolf

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"If you talk about it, it’s a dream. If you envision it, it’s possible. If you schedule it, it’s real."

— Tony Robbins

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"You can't be suspicious of a tree, or accuse a bird or a squirrel of subversion or challenge the ideology of a violet."

— Hal Borland

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“New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.”

— John Locke

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“All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.”

— Borges

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“Some day you will know for yourself that it is almost as true to say that one recovers from all things as that there is nothing which does not leave its scar.”

— Paul Bourget

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"Compassion is not weakness and concern for the unfortunate is not socialism."

- Hubert Humphrey

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"If there is poetry in my book about the sea, it is not because I deliberately put it there, but because no one could write truthfully about the sea and leave out the poetry."

- Rachel Carson

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"Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve and from which he cannot escape. He cannot go back to the prehuman state of harmony with nature; he must proceed to develop his reason until he becomes the master of nature, and of himself."

- Erich Fromm

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