The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognise that we ought to control our thoughts.
Charles Darwin 1809 - 1882
1809 - 1882
Entire Collection
When writing about oneself, one must strive to be truthful. Truth is more important than modesty.
1916 - 1990
Boy: Tales of Childhood
Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it.
1856 - 1950
As quoted in The World (15 November 1893)
A poet knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
Leonardo da Vinci 1452 - 1519
1452 - 1519
Example is always more efficacious than precept.
Samuel Johnson 1709 - 1784
1709 - 1784
There's not a liberal America and a conservative America - there's the United States of America.
Barack Obama born 1961
born 1961
I'm not a vegetarian because I love animals. I'm a vegetarian because I hate plants.
A. Whitney Brown born 1952
born 1952
Every time a child says ‘I don’t believe in fairies’ there is a little fairy somewhere that falls down dead.
1860 - 1937
Peter Pan Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
You insist that there is something that a machine can't do. If you will tell me precisely what it is that a machine cannot do, then I can always make a machine which will do just that.
John von Neumann 1903 - 1957
1903 - 1957
Art is meant to disturb, science reassures.
Georges Braque 1882 - 1963
1882 - 1963
At any rate, I am convinced that he does not play dice.
Albert Einstein 1879 - 1955
Refering to 'God' in a commentary on the validity of quantum indeterminism Knowles, E. (1999). The Oxford dictionary of quotations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
1879 - 1955
Refering to 'God' in a commentary on the validity of quantum indeterminism Knowles, E. (1999). The Oxford dictionary of quotations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by God one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying... it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity.
Carl Sagan 1934 - 1996
1934 - 1996
Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so.
1564 - 1642
Attributed
And why, after all, may not the world be so complex as to consist of many interpenetrating spheres of reality, which we can then approach… by using different conceptions and assuming different attitudes.
1842 - 1910
The Varieties of Religious Experience
Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.
1903 - 1950
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), part 1, ch. 5: Syme, on Newspeak
Tragedy is clean, it is restful, it is flawless.
The longer one is alone, the easier to hear the song of the earth.
Robert Anton Wilson 1932 - 2007
1932 - 2007
The end point of rationality is to demonstrate the limits of rationality.
Blaise Pascal 1623 - 1662
1623 - 1662
There are three stages in scientific discovery. First, people deny that it is true, then they deny that it is important; finally they credit the wrong person.
born 1951
A Short History of Nearly Everything
A man will fight harder for his interests than for his rights.
Napoleon 1769 - 1821
1769 - 1821
The whole question of evolution seems less momentous than it did, because, unlike the Victorians, we do not feel that to be descended from animals is degrading to human dignity.
1903 - 1950
As I Please (1943–1947)
When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other. Originality is deliberate and forced, and partakes of the nature of a protest.
Eric Hoffer 1902 - 1983
1902 - 1983
I never promised you a rose garden.
Hannah Green born 1932
Book title : Knowles, E. (1999). The Oxford dictionary of quotations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
born 1932
Book title : Knowles, E. (1999). The Oxford dictionary of quotations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
The moral flabbiness born of the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess success. That—with the squalid cash interpretation put on the word success—is our national disease.
William James 1842 - 1910
1842 - 1910
I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less travelled by, And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost 1874 - 1963
1874 - 1963