March 2024 Collected Quotes
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“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”
— Ludwig Wittgenstein
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"I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
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"Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold."
— Zelda Fitzgerald
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“There are questions that you don't ask because you're afraid of the answers to them.”
— Agatha Christie
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“Painful is the stress when one cannot reproduce or convey vividly to others, however hard he tries, what he's experienced so intensely.”
— Haruki Murakami
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“Even if you don’t have all the things you want, be grateful for the things you don’t have that you don’t want.”
— Bob Dylan
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"Everything is habit-forming, so make sure what you do is what you want to be doing."
- Wilt Chamberlain
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“The choice before human beings, is not, as a rule, between good and evil but between two evils. You can let the Nazis rule the world: that is evil; or you can overthrow them by war, which is also evil. There is no other choice before you, and whichever you choose you will not come out with clean hands.”
— George Orwell
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"We should not be simply fighting evil in the name of good, but struggling against the certainties of people who claim always to know where good and evil are to be found."
- Tzvetan Todorov
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"The understanding of art depends finally upon one's willingness to extend one's humanity and one's knowledge of human life."
- Ralph Ellison
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"You take people as far as they will go, not as far as you would like them to go."
- Jeannette Rankin
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"All mankind love a lover."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
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"Creativity -- like human life itself -- begins in darkness. We need to acknowledge this. All too often, we think only in terms of light: "And then the lightbulb went on and I got it!" It is true that insights may come to us as flashes. It is true that some of these flashes may be blinding. It is, however, also true that such bright ideas are preceded by a gestation period that is interior, murky, and completely necessary."
- Julia Cameron
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"If you can't do it with feeling— don't."
- Patsy Cline
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"When you’re righteous, you don’t have to tell people that you’re righteous."
- Shaquille O'Neal
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“Violence, sexism, and general nastiness are biological since they represent one subset of a possible range of behaviors. But peacefulness, equality and kindness are just as biological—and we may see their in uence increase if we can create social structures that permit them to ourish.”
- Stephen Jay Gould
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"Long after people forget the details, they’ll remember your kindness."
- Seth Godin
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"I was much too far out all my life / And not waving but drowning."
- Stevie Smith
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“Even the tiniest joyful gestures add up over time, and before we know it, we have not just a few happier people but a truly joyful world.”
- Ingrid Fetell Lee
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"The very meaninglessness of life forces man to create his own meaning."
- Stanley Kubrick
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“Enlightenment is man’s leaving his self-caused immaturity. Immaturity is the incapacity to use one's intelligence without the guidance of another.”
— Immanuel Kant
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"Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answers."
- William S. Burroughs
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"Everything we do is infused with the energy with which we do it. If we’re frantic, life will be frantic. If we’re peaceful, life will be peaceful."
- Marianne Williamson
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"You cannot perceive beauty, but with a serene mind."
- Henry David Thoreau
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"The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives."
- Albert Einstein
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“The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.”
— George Orwell
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“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
— George Orwell
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"Real change, enduring change, happens one step at a time."
- Ruth Bader Ginsburg
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“Admire those who admire others.”
- Simon Sinek
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"Art is like baby shoes. When you coat them with gold, they can no longer be worn."
- John Updike
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"All that we don't know is astonishing. Even more astonishing is what passes for knowing."
- Philip Roth
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"The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy."
- Camus
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"Humans think they are smarter than dolphins because we build cars and buildings and start wars etc., and all that dolphins do is swim in the water, eat fish and play around. Dolphins believe that they are smarter for exactly the same reasons."
— Douglas Adams
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"We are always getting ready to live but never living."
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
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"Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your mind."
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
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"You ever wish that fireworks were incredibly quiet and also didn't disappear so quickly and also you could keep them in your home and also you could hold them in your hands? Because if so, I'd love to introduce you to, flowers."
— Jonny Sun
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"Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you."
— Ruth Bader Ginsburg
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“Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
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“What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual & in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness & meanness. It is the harder because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
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"We are by nature observers, and thereby learners. That is our permanent state."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
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“It is a hard thing to leave any deeply routined life, even if you hate it.”
— John Steinbeck
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“The transitory nature of the seasons — the changing trees, the behavior of birds and animals, the turning of the globe, the cycle of life in one year — can also be a reminder that time passes and things heal.”
– Lucy Jones
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"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance."
- Derek Bok
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"I feel very adventurous. There are so many doors to be opened, and I'm not afraid to look behind them."
- Elizabeth Taylor
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“Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man.”
— David Hume
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“The only immediate utility of all sciences, is to teach us, how to control and regulate future events by their causes.”
— David Hume
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“It is terrible to destroy a person's picture of himself in the interests of truth or some other abstraction.”
— Doris Lessing
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“Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so.”
— Doris Lessing
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“All political movements are like this — we are in the right, everyone else is in the wrong. The people on our own side who disagree with us are heretics, and they start becoming enemies. With it comes an absolute conviction of your own moral superiority. There's oversimplification in everything, and a terror of flexibility.”
— Doris Lessing
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“Do you know what people really want? Everyone, I mean. Everybody in the world is thinking: I wish there was just one other person I could really talk to, who could really understand me, who'd be kind to me. That's what people really want, if they're telling the truth.”
— Doris Lessing
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“That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way.”
— Doris Lessing
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“The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.”
— J. D. Salinger
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“In university they don't tell you that the greater part of the law is learning to tolerate fools.”
— Doris Lessing
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“Resist much, obey little.”
— Walt Whitman
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"The rough side of the mountain that’s the easiest to climb; the smooth side doesn’t have anything for you to hang on to."
- Aretha Franklin
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“We must either learn to live together as brothers or we are all going to perish together as fools.”
— Martin Luther King Jr.
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“Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
— Martin Luther King Jr.
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“Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.”
— Martin Luther King Jr.
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"Words form the thread on which we string our experiences."
- Aldous Huxley
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"It's only possible to live happily ever after on a day-to-day basis."
- Margaret Wander Bonanno
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“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”
— T. S. Eliot
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“Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.”
— T. S. Eliot
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“Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.”
— T. S. Eliot
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“A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest.”
— T. S. Eliot
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“The number of people with any criteria for distinguishing between good and evil is very small.”
— T. S. Eliot
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"The mind is the effect, not the cause."
- Daniel Dennett
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"One cannot grow fine flowers in a thin soil."
- Virginia Woolf
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“One of the miseries of life is that everybody names things a little bit wrong, and so it makes a little bit harder to understand things than it would have been if they had been named differently.”
— Richard Feynman
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“A very great deal more truth can become known than can be proven.”
— Richard Feynman
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“Fulfillment comes when we live our lives on purpose.”
- Simon Sinek
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"To survive trauma, one must be able to tell a story about it."
- Natasha Trethewey
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"When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary. The people we trust with that important talk can help us know that we’re not alone."
- Fred Rogers
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"We may not be responsible for the world that created our minds, but we can take responsibility for the mind with which we create our world."
- Gabor Maté
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"As every therapist will tell you, healing involves discomfort — but so does refusing to heal. And, over time, refusing to heal is always more painful."
- Resmaa Menakem
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"One of the hardest things was learning I was worth recovery."
- Demi Lovato
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"Someone who has experienced trauma also has gifts to offer all of us — in their depth, their knowledge of our universal vulnerability, and their experience of the power of compassion."
- Sharon Salzberg
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Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.”
— T. S. Eliot
I never knew who said this and now I do.