Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.
W. H. Auden 1907 - 1973
1907 - 1973
Entire Collection
It is just as foolish to complain that people are selfish and treacherous as it is to complain that the magnetic field does not increase unless the electric field has a curl. Both are laws of nature.
John von Neumann 1903 - 1957
1903 - 1957
One should as a rule respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny, and is likely to interfere with happiness in all kinds of ways.
Bertrand Russell 1872 - 1970
1872 - 1970
Speak of the moderns without contempt, and of the ancients without idolatry.
Lord Chesterfield 1694 - 1773
1694 - 1773
Of course, analysis can sometimes give more accurate results than intuition but usually it’s just a lot of work. I normally do what my intuition tells me to do. Most of the time spent thinking is just to double-check.
Magnus Carlsen born 1990
born 1990
Innumerable twinkling of the waves of the sea.
Aeschylus c. 525 - c. 455 BC
c. 525 - c. 455 BC
In the torments of the intellect,... skepticism is the elegance of anxiety.
1911 - 1995
All Gall Is Divided (1952)
Life is one long process of getting tired.
If you still have to ask...shame on you.
Louis Armstrong 1901 - 1971
Response when asked to define 'Jazz' : Knowles, E. (1999). The Oxford dictionary of quotations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
1901 - 1971
Response when asked to define 'Jazz' : Knowles, E. (1999). The Oxford dictionary of quotations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
In the course of many centuries a few laboursaving devices have been introduced into the mental kitchen — alcohol, coffee, tobacco, Benzedrine, etc. — but these are very crude, constantly breaking down, and liable to injure the cook. Literary composition in the twentieth century A.D. is pretty much what it was in the twentieth century B.C.: nearly everything has still to be done by hand.
W. H. Auden 1907 - 1973
1907 - 1973
For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief.
Bible
Ecclesiastes 1:18
Ecclesiastes 1:18
Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me... Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.
Shel Silverstein 1930 - 1999
1930 - 1999
I love to think. I once considered taking drugs as an attempt to better understand an altered state of mind; however, I decided not to. I didn't want to chance ruining the machine.
Richard Feynman 1918 - 1988
1918 - 1988
All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
1903 - 1950
Animal Farm (1945)
If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face. And when that person has ugly thoughts every day, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier until you can hardly bear to look at it. A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts it will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.
Roald Dahl 1916 - 1990
1916 - 1990
It was a truism that all civilisations were basically neurotic until they made contact with everybody else and found their place within the ever-changing meta-civilisation of other beings, because, until then, during the stage when they honestly believed they might be entirely alone in existence, all solo societies were possessed of both an inflated sense of their own importance and a kind of existential terror at the sheer scale and apparent emptiness of the universe.
1954 - 2013
The Algebraist
His eyes are bulging like the belly of a hungry chaffinch.
1940 - 2012
Darts Commentary
Friendship… is not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything.
Muhammad Ali 1942 - 2016
1942 - 2016
The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.
Franklin D. Roosevelt 1882 - 1945
1882 - 1945
Only those who have known discrimination truly know its evil.
Noel Pearson born 1965
born 1965
We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness.
1903 - 1950
Orwell, G. (1949). Nineteen eighty-four. London: Secker & Warburg.
A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.
Roald Dahl 1916 - 1990
1916 - 1990
The worshiper is the father of the gods.
H. L. Mencken 1880 - 1956
1880 - 1956
We are only what we can convince other people that we are.
Alan Turing 1912 - 1954
1912 - 1954
Truth exists; only lies are invented.
Georges Braque 1882 - 1963
1882 - 1963