The Quotation Index — Philosophy

“When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind, unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. It is an old and a true maxim, that a drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.”

Abraham Lincoln · Temperance Address, 1842 · Primary source

“We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead.”

Thomas Jefferson · Letter to William Roscoe, 1820 · Primary source

“With malice toward none; with charity for all.”

Abraham Lincoln · Second Inaugural Address, 1865 · Primary source

“Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time; for that’s the stuff life is made of.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Surround yourself with human beings, my dear James. They are easier to fight for than principles.”

Ian Fleming · Casino Royale, 1953 · Primary source

“The search for truth is more precious than its possession.”

Albert Einstein · Ideas and Opinions , 1954 · Primary source

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Self-Reliance, 1841 · Primary source

“One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike—and yet it is the most precious thing we have.”

Albert Einstein · Relativity: The Special and the General Theory, 1920 · Primary source

“In skating over thin ice, our safety is in our speed.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Prudence, 1841 · Primary source

“So you have to figure out what your own aptitudes are. If you play games where other people have the aptitudes and you don’t, you’re going to lose. And that’s as close to certain as any prediction you can make. You have to figure out where you’ve got an edge. And you’ve got to play within your own circle of competence.”

Charlie Munger · Poor Charlie’s Almanack, 2005 · Primary source

“I think that to keep trying new solutions is the way to do everything.”

Richard Feynman · The Meaning of It All, 1998 · Primary source

“A man is worthy of praise or blame solely on account of those actions which lie within his power to do or not to do.”

Leonardo da Vinci · The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, 1888 · Primary source

“The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.”

Jack London · Jack London’s Tales of Adventure, 1906 · Secondary source

“Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement; nothing can be done without hope.”

Helen Keller · Optimism, 1903 · Primary source

“I simply experiment, an endless seeker, with no Past at my back.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Circles, 1841 · Primary source

“Doing an injury puts you below your enemy; revenging one makes you but even with him; forgiving, it sets you above him.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“A Truth thats told with bad intent
Beats all the Lies you can invent.”

William Blake · Auguries of Innocence, 1803 · Primary source

“The reward of a thing well done, is to have done it.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · New England Reformers, 1844 · Primary source

“It was for beauty that the world was made.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · No reliable source

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.

William Blake · Auguries of Innocence, 1803 · Primary source

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Thomas Jefferson · Declaration of Independence, 1776 · Primary source

“God helps them that help themselves.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Do not make the mistake of the ignorant who think that an individualist is a man who says: I’ll do as I please at everybody else’s expense. An individualist is a man who recognizes the inalienable individual rights of man—his own and those of others.

Ayn Rand · The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z, 1986 · Primary source

“Build, therefore, your own world. As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its law, and conduct you to a higher degree of power. You must obey your heart.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Nature, 1836 · Primary source

“Who will let you? That’s not the point. The point is, who will stop me?”

Ayn Rand · The Fountainhead, 1943 · Primary source

“Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action.”

Ian Fleming · Goldfinger, 1959 · Primary source

“In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”

Benjamin Franklin · Letter to French scientist Jean-Baptiste Leroy, 1789 · Primary source

“The belief in an external world independent of the perceiving subject is the basis of all natural science.”

Albert Einstein · Ideas and Opinions , 1954 · Primary source

“The law of nature is, do the thing, and you shall have the power: but they who do not the thing have not the power.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Compensation, 1841 · Primary source

“Don’t ever get angry at a man for stating the truth.”

Ayn Rand · Atlas Shrugged, 1957 · Primary source

“Wisdom is the daughter of experience.”

Leonardo da Vinci · The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, 1888 · Primary source

“If Jack’s in love, he’s no judge of Jill’s beauty.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Every thing impossible, until we see a success.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Experience, 1844 · Primary source

“I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.”

Henry David Thoreau · Resistance to Civil Government, 1849 · Primary source

“The test of all beliefs is their practical effect in life. It be true that optimism compels the world forward, and pessimism retards it, them it is dangerous to propagate a pessimistic philosophy.”

Helen Keller · Optimism, 1903 · Primary source

“Truth was the only daughter of Time.”

Leonardo da Vinci · The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, 1888 · Primary source

“The only sin is limitation.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Circles, 1841 · Primary source

“It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself.”

Eleanor Roosevelt · My Day, 1935-1962 · Primary source

“A man does what he must—in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures—and that is the basis of all human morality.”

John F. Kennedy · Profiles in Courage, 1956 · Primary source

“There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive.”

Jack London · The Call of the Wild, 1903 · Primary source

“If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.”

William Blake · The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1790 · Primary source

“The true method of knowledge is experiment.”

William Blake · All Religions are One, 1788 · Primary source

“Hitch your wagon to a star.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Civilization, 1870 · Primary source

“Life achieves its summit when it does to the uttermost that which it was equipped to do.”

Jack London · White Fang, 1906 · Primary source

“Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.”

Ayn Rand · Atlas Shrugged, 1957 · Primary source

“Wish not so much to live long as to live well.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“The life of Darwin demonstrates how a turtle may outrun a hare, aided by extreme objectivity, which helps the objective person end up like the only player without a blindfold in a game of Pin the Tail on the Donkey.”

Charlie Munger · Poor Charlie’s Almanack, 2005 · Primary source

“Most problems in real life are poorly understood, in that the real problem is often something different from what it is orginally thought to be.”

Tony Hoare · Computer Science, 1971 · Primary source

“With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Self-Reliance, 1841 · Primary source

“Being able to recognize that you are wrong is a godsend.”

Charlie Munger · Daily Journal Corporation Annual Meeting, 2020 · Primary source

“There’s actually very little distinction between an artist and a scientist or engineer of the highest calibre.”

Steve Jobs · Smithsonian Oral and Video Histories: Steve Jobs, 1995 · Primary source

“I have never felt that anything really mattered but the satisfaction of knowing that you stood for the things in which you believed, and had done the very best you could.”

Eleanor Roosevelt · My Day, 1935-1962 · Primary source

“Altogether too often, people substitute opinions for facts and emotions for analysis.”

Andrew S. Grove · Only the Paranoid Survive, 1996 · Primary source

“It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.”

Leonardo da Vinci · The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, 1888 · Primary source

“You did not kill the fish only to keep alive and to sell for food, he thought. You killed him for pride and because you are a fisherman. You loved him when he was alive and you loved him after. It you love him, it is not a sin to kill him. Or is it more?”

Ernest Hemingway · The Old Man and the Sea, 1952 · Primary source

“All our knowledge has its origin in our perceptions.”

Leonardo da Vinci · The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, 1888 · Primary source

“I have adhered to my rule of never criticizing any measure of war or policy after the event unless I had before expressed publicly or formally my opinion or warning about it.”

Winston Churchill · The Second World War, 1948-1953 · Primary source

“A lake is the landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth’s eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.”

Henry David Thoreau · Walden, 1849 · Primary source

“Looking back at the worst times, it always seems that they were times in which there were people who believed with absolute faith and absolute dogmatism in something.”

Richard Feynman · The Meaning of It All, 1998 · Primary source

“When the wine enters, out goes the truth.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“The bell calls others to church, but itself never minds the sermon.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · No reliable source

“Every ship is a romantic object, except that we sail in.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Experience, 1844 · Primary source

“In the development of our understanding of complex phenomena, the most powerful tool available to the human intellect is abstraction. Abstraction arises from a recognition of similarities between certain objects, situations, or processes in the real world, and the decision to concentrate on these similarities, and to ignore for the time being the differences.”

Tony Hoare · Structured Programming, 1972 · Primary source

“Real enjoyment consists not in what one enjoys but in the idea.”

Søren Kierkegaard · Either/Or, 1843 · Primary source

“I’m afraid that’s the way it [reality] is. If there are twenty factors and they interact some, you’ll have to learn to handle it—because that’s the way the world is. But you won’t find it that hard if you go at it Darwin-like, step by step with curious persistence. You’ll be amazed at how good you can get.”

Charlie Munger · Poor Charlie’s Almanack, 2005 · Primary source

“I pass with relief from the tossing sea of Cause and Theory to the firm ground of Result and Fact.”

Winston Churchill · The Story of the Malakand Field Force, 1898 · Primary source

“For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: what is once well done is done for ever.”

Henry David Thoreau · Resistance to Civil Government, 1849 · Primary source

“The gain to the winner is, in some odd way, always less than the loss to the loser.”

Ian Fleming · Moonraker, 1955 · Primary source

“Hold your council before dinner; the full belly hates thinking as well as acting.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor liberty to purchase power.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Virtue and happiness are mother and daughter.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume, is to do at any time what I think right.”

Henry David Thoreau · Resistance to Civil Government, 1849 · Primary source

“We cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individual. Toward this end, each of us must work toward his own highest development, accepting at the same time his share of responsibility in the general life of humanity—our particular duty being to help those to whom we feel we can be most useful.”

Marie Curie · Madame Curie: A Biography, 1938 · Secondary source

“Our problems are manmade—therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.”

John F. Kennedy · Commencement address at American University, 1963 · Primary source

“Our spontaneous action is always the best.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Intellect, 1841 · Primary source

“The golden age never was the present age.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“The noblest question in the world is, what good may I do in it?”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Take a simple idea and take it seriously.”

Charlie Munger · Poor Charlie’s Almanack, 2005 · Primary source

“You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.”

William Blake · The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1790 · Primary source

“All things truly wicked start from an innocence.”

Ernest Hemingway · A Moveable Feast, 1964 · Primary source

“Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“The fact that I am neither a Greek nor a Turk perhaps creates little presumption of my being fair-minded, for Western partisans of non-Western peoples are often more fanatical than their favourites.”

Arnold J. Toynbee · The Western Question in Greece and Turkey, 1922 · Primary source

“For of those to whom much is given, much is required.”

John F. Kennedy · The City Upon a Hill Speech, 1961 · Primary source

“Any man more right than his neighbors, constitutes a majority of one already.”

Henry David Thoreau · Resistance to Civil Government, 1849 · Primary source

“The life of man is a self-evolving circle, which, from a ring imperceptibly small, rushes on all sides outwards to new and larger circles, and would embrace at last the universal sphere.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Circles, 1841 · Primary source

“There is no outside, no inclosing wall, no circumference to us.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Circles, 1841 · Primary source

“That Beauty is the normal state, is shown by the perpetual effort of Nature to attain it.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · No reliable source

“In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness.”

Henry David Thoreau · Walden, 1849 · Primary source

“To speak well of a base man is much the same as speaking ill of a good man.”

Leonardo da Vinci · The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, 1888 · Primary source

“There is neither honor nor gain got in dealing with a villian.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Do not do that which you would not have known.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“An innocent plowman is more worthy than a vicious prince.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him, who has never yet forsaken this favored land, are still competent to adjust, in the best way, all our present difficulty.”

Abraham Lincoln · First Inaugural Address, 1861 · Primary source

“The one thing in the world of value is the active soul.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · The American Scholar, 1837 · Primary source

“If you see smoke, there must be fire.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Compensation, 1841 · Primary source

“But genius always looks forward. The eyes of man are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead. Man hopes. Genius creates. To create—to create—is the proof of a divine presence.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · The American Scholar, 1837 · Primary source

“Standing on the bare ground—my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space—all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Nature, 1836 · Primary source

“For what are we born if not to aid one another?”

Ernest Hemingway · For Whom the Bell Tolls, 1940 · Primary source

“You will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Self-Reliance, 1841 · Primary source

“You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than live as slaves.”

Winston Churchill · The Second World War, 1948-1953 · Primary source

“Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Nature, 1836 · Primary source

“If you would keep your secret from an enemy, tell it not to a friend.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“I would study, I would know, I would admire forever.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Harvard Divinity School Address, 1838 · Primary source

“People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I’ve learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one’s reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one’s master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person’s view requires to be faked.”

Ayn Rand · Atlas Shrugged, 1957 · Primary source

“Bad gains are truly losses.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools, that have not wit enough to be honest.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Do good to thy friend to keep him, to thy enemy to gain him.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Without justice courage is weak.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“You may be too cunning for one, but not for all.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“The world is not enough.”

Ian Fleming · On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, 1963 · Primary source

“’Tis easy to see, hard to foresee.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“As we must account for every idle word, so we must for every idle silence.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Devotion to the truth is the hallmark of morality; there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.”

Ayn Rand · Atlas Shrugged, 1957 · Primary source

“Don’t misinform your doctor nor your lawyer.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Every thing has two sides, a good and an evil. Every advantage has its tax.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Compensation, 1841 · Primary source

“To whom thy secret thou dost tell, to him thy freedom thou dost sell.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“A long life may not be good enough, but a good life is long enough.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Self-Reliance, 1841 · Primary source

“So convenient a thing is it to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.”

Benjamin Franklin · The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, 1771-1790 · Primary source

“Half the truth is often a great lie.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Fear always springs from ignorance.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · The American Scholar, 1837 · Primary source

“There is no little enemy.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“A lie stands on one leg, truth on two.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“It is better to take many injuries, than to give one.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“When you’re good to others, you are best to yourself.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“If you put a chain around the neck of a slave, the other end fastens itself around your own.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Compensation, 1841 · Primary source

“Nothing so popular as goodness.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“The law holds with equal sureness for all right action. Love, and you shall be loved. All love is mathematically just, as much as the two sides of an algebraic equation.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Compensation, 1841 · Primary source

“Vice knows she’s ugly, so puts on her mask.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Lost time is never found again.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Don't throw stones at your neighbors, if your own windows are glass.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“It’s common for men to give pretended reasons instead of one real one.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.”

William Blake · The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1790 · Primary source

“Distrust and caution are the parents of security.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Desire in our age is simultaneously sinful and boring, because it desires what belongs to the neighbor.”

Søren Kierkegaard · Either/Or, 1843 · Primary source

“The honest man takes pains, and then enjoys pleasures; the knave takes pleasures, and then suffers pains.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“ As human beings, we are endowed with this freedom of choice, and we cannot shuffle off our responsibility upon the shoulders of God or nature. We must shoulder it ourselves. It is up to us. ”

Arnold J. Toynbee · Civilization on Trial, 1948 · Primary source

“Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence.”

William Blake · The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1790 · Primary source

“And I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter,—we never need read of another. One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications?”

Henry David Thoreau · Walden, 1849 · Primary source

“An egg today is better than a hen tomorrow.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Why is it immoral for you to desire, but moral for others to do so? Why is it immoral to produce a value and keep it, but moral to give it away? And if it is not moral for you to keep a value, why is it moral for others to accept it? If you are selfless and virtuous when you give it, are they not selfish and vicious when they take it?”

Ayn Rand · Atlas Shrugged, 1957 · Primary source

“I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is so far as I can tell. It doesn’t frighten me.”

Richard Feynman · Horizon: The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, 1981 · Primary source

“Take counsel in wine, but resolve afterwards in water.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“When it is useful to them, men can believe a theory of which they know nothing more than its name.”

Vilfredo Pareto · Manual of Political Economy, 1906 · Primary source

“This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · The American Scholar, 1837 · Primary source

“If you don’t get elementary probability into your repertoire, you go through a long life like a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.”

Charlie Munger · Poor Charlie’s Almanack, 2005 · Primary source

“I have never seen the philosopher’s stone that turns lead into gold, but I have known the pursuit of it turn a man’s gold into lead.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Self-Reliance, 1841 · Primary source

“Ask advice of him who governs himself well.”

Leonardo da Vinci · The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, 1888 · Primary source

“You will be careful, if you are wise; how you touch men’s religion, or credit, or eyes.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men—that is genius.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Self-Reliance, 1841 · Primary source

“Power is the goal of all ambition.”

Ian Fleming · Live and Let Die, 1954 · Primary source

“The soul refuses limits, and always affirms an Optimism, never a Pessimism.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Compensation, 1841 · Primary source

“The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.”

William Blake · The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1790 · Primary source

“Threats alone are the weapons of the threatened man.”

Leonardo da Vinci · The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, 1888 · Primary source

“We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution.”

John F. Kennedy · Civil Rights Address, 1963 · Primary source

“Any one who in discussion relies upon authority uses, not his understanding, but rather his memory.”

Leonardo da Vinci · The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, 1888 · Primary source

“Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then all things are at risk.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Circles, 1841 · Primary source

“The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next.”

Helen Keller · Optimism, 1903 · Primary source

“There is no knowledge that is not power.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Old Age, 1870 · Primary source

“Things do not change; we change.”

Henry David Thoreau · Walden, 1849 · Primary source

“The paradox is only a conflict between reality and your feeling of what reality ought to be.”

Richard Feynman · The Feynman Lectures on Physics, 1961-1964 · Primary source

“He who thinks little, errs much.”

Leonardo da Vinci · The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, 1888 · Primary source

I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England’s green and pleasant land.

William Blake · And did those feet in ancient time (Jerusalem), 1808 · Primary source

“My time I divide as follows: the one half I sleep; the other half I dream. I never dream when I sleep; that would be a shame, because to sleep is the height of genius.”

Søren Kierkegaard · Either/Or, 1843 · Primary source

“The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.”

Leonardo da Vinci · The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, 1888 · Primary source

“Recollection is more richly satisfying than all actuality.”

Søren Kierkegaard · Either/Or, 1843 · Primary source

“Gibraltar may be strong, but ideas are impregnable, and bestow on the hero their invincibility.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Civilization, 1870 · Primary source

“The rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.”

John F. Kennedy · Inaugural Address of President John F. Kennedy, 1961 · Primary source

“You don’t need to take the last dollar.”

Charlie Munger · Poor Charlie’s Almanack, 2005 · Primary source

“It was a reaction I learned from my father: have no respect whatsoever for authority; forget who said it and instead look at what he starts with, where he ends up, and ask yourself, Is it reasonable?”

Richard Feynman · What Do You Care What Other People Think?, 1986 · Primary source

“A problem thoroughly understood is half solved.”

Charlie Munger · Daily Journal Corporation Annual Meeting, 2020 · Primary source

“The absence of romance in my history will, I fear, detract somewhat from its interest; but if it be judged useful by those inquirers who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the interpretation of the future, which in the course of human things must resemble if it does not reflect it, I shall be content. In fine, I have written my work, not as an essay which is to win the applause of the moment, but as a possession for all time.”

Thucydides · History of the Peloponnesian War, 431 BC · Primary source

“I think the two things most opposed to good counsel are haste and passion; haste usually goes hand in hand with folly, passion with coarseness and narrowness of mind.”

Thucydides · History of the Peloponnesian War, 431 BC · Primary source

“Truth is our element of life, yet if a man fasten his attention on a single aspect of truth, and apply himself to that alone for a long time, the truth becomes distorted and not itself, but falsehood.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Intellect, 1841 · Primary source

“Since then I never pay any attention to anything by experts. I calculate everything myself.”

Richard Feynman · Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, 1985 · Primary source

“Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.”

Henry David Thoreau · Resistance to Civil Government, 1849 · Primary source

“The first wealth is health.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Power, 1860 · Primary source

“So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand.”

Thucydides · History of the Peloponnesian War, 431 BC · Primary source

“Beauty is the form under which the intellect prefers to study the world.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · No reliable source

“Men follow their sentiments and their self-interest, but it pleases them to imagine that they follow reason. And so they look for, and always find, some theory which, a posteriori, makes their actions appear to be logical. If that theory could be demolished scientifically, the only result would be that another theory would be substituted for the first one, and for the same purpose.”

Vilfredo Pareto · Manual of Political Economy, 1906 · Primary source

“If you have competence, you pretty much know its boundaries already. To ask the question [of whether you are past the boundary] is to answer it.”

Charlie Munger · Poor Charlie’s Almanack, 2005 · Primary source

“Nothing is beneath you, if it is in the direction of your life: nothing is great or desirable, if it is off from that.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Wealth, 1860 · Primary source

“Pleasure disappoints; possibility does not.”

Søren Kierkegaard · Either/Or, 1843 · Primary source

“All successful men have agreed in one thing—they were causationists.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Power, 1860 · Primary source

“A little integrity is better than any career.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Behavior, 1841 · Primary source

“What is the hardest task in the world? To think.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Intellect, 1841 · Primary source

“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.”

Henry David Thoreau · Walden, 1849 · Primary source

“Don’t be pushed by your problems. Be led by your dreams.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · No reliable source

“Having the ability also means accepting the duty”

A.P. Møller · No reliable source

“No kind action ever stops with itself. One kind action leads to another. Good example is followed. A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees. The greatest work that kindness does to others is that it makes them kind themselves.”

Amelia Earhart · No reliable source

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.”

Marie Curie · No reliable source

“I prefer to talk with children, for one may still dare to hope that they may become rational beings; but those who have become that—good Lord!”

Søren Kierkegaard · Either/Or, 1843 · Primary source

“How unreasonable people are! They never use the freedoms they have but demand those they do not have; they have freedom of thought—they demand freedom of speech.”

Søren Kierkegaard · Either/Or, 1843 · Primary source

“Marry, and you will regret it. Do not marry, and you will also regret it. Marry or do not marry, you will regret it either way.”

Søren Kierkegaard · Either/Or, 1843 · Primary source

“White Fang knew the law well: to oppress the weak and obey the strong.”

Jack London · White Fang, 1906 · Primary source

“Life is a journey, not a destination.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · No reliable source

“Think in the morning, act in the noon, eat in the evening, sleep in the night.”

William Blake · The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1790 · Primary source

“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”

Henry David Thoreau · Walden, 1849 · Primary source

“The prize is the pleasure of finding the thing out.”

Richard Feynman · Horizon: The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, 1981 · Primary source

“Education is that which remains, if one has forgotten everything he learned in school.”

Albert Einstein · Ideas and Opinions , 1954 · Primary source

“Experience keeps a dear school, yet fools will learn in no other.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Circles, 1841 · Primary source

“Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Self-Reliance, 1841 · Primary source

“Human felicity is produced not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen, as by little advantages that occur every day.”

Benjamin Franklin · The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, 1771-1790 · Primary source

“Diligence is the mother of good luck.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“But man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”

Ernest Hemingway · The Old Man and the Sea, 1952 · Primary source

“Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.”

John F. Kennedy · Inaugural Address of President John F. Kennedy, 1961 · Primary source

“There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.”

Tony Hoare · The Emperor’s Old Clothes, 1981 · Primary source

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

George Orwell · Nineteen Eighty-Four, 1949 · Primary source

“Courage is the price that Life exacts for granting peace.”

Amelia Earhart · 20 Hrs. 40 Min., 1928 · Primary source

“Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

Steve Jobs · Stanford Commencement Address, 2005 · Primary source

“Anticipation, I suppose, sometimes exceeds realization.”

Amelia Earhart · Last Flight, 1937 · Primary source

“It is interesting that human relationships, if there is an independent way of judging truth, can become unargumentative.”

Richard Feynman · The Meaning of It All, 1998 · Primary source

“I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”

Henry David Thoreau · Walden, 1849 · Primary source

“Diligence overcomes difficulties, sloth makes them.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.”

Winston Churchill · The Second World War, 1948-1953 · Primary source

“Nothing fails like success.”

Arnold J. Toynbee · A Study of History, 1934-1961 · Primary source

“Life starts in the sea. There it attains to an extraordinary efficiency. The fishes give rise to types which are so successful (such for instance as the sharks) that they have lasted on unchanged until to-day. The path of ascending evolution did not however lie in this direction. In Evolution Dr. Inge’s aphorism is probably always right: ‘Nothing fails likes success.’ A creature which has become perfectly adapted to its environment, an animal whose whole capacity and vital force is concentrated and expended in succeeding here and now, has nothing left over with which to respond to any radical change. Age by age it becomes more perfectly economical in the way its entire resources meet exactly its current and customary opportunities. In the end it can do all that is necessary to survive without any conscious striving or unadapted movement. It can therefore beat all competitors in the special field but equally on the other hand should that field change it must become extinct. It is this success of efficiency which seems to account for the extinction of an enormous number of species. Climatic conditions altered. They had used up all their resources of vital energy in adapting to things as they were. Like unwise virgins they had no oil left over for further adaptations. They were committed, could not readjust and so they vanished.”

Gerald Heard · The Source of Civilization, 1935 · Primary source

“The time to worry is three months before a flight. Decide then whether or not the goal is worth the risks involved. If it is, stop worrying. To worry is to add another hazard. It retards reactions, makes one unfit. Hamlet would have been a bad aviator. He worried too much.”

Amelia Earhart · Last Flight, 1937 · Primary source

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

Theodore Roosevelt · Citizenship in a Republic, 1910 · Primary source

“But I have found out that though the ways in which I can make myself useful are few, yet the work open to me is endless.”

Helen Keller · Optimism, 1903 · Primary source

“Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”

Benjamin Franklin · Letter to the Abbés Chalut and Arnoux, 1787 · Primary source

“Every day above earth is a good day.”

Ernest Hemingway · The Old Man and the Sea, 1952 · Primary source

“The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”

Thucydides · History of the Peloponnesian War, 431 BC · Primary source

“Most people rush after pleasure so fast that they rush right past it.”

Søren Kierkegaard · Either/Or, 1843 · Primary source

“A theory is the more impressive the greater the simplicity of its premises is, the more different kinds of things it relates, and the more extended is its area of applicability.”

Albert Einstein · Autobiographical Notes, 1949 · Primary source

“Civilization, as we know it, is a movement and not a condition, a voyage and not a harbour.”

Arnold J. Toynbee · Civilization on Trial, 1948 · Primary source

“When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.”

Helen Keller · We Bereaved, 1929 · Primary source

“It is easier to forgive an Enemy than to forgive a Friend.”

William Blake · Jerusalem: The Emanation of The Giant Albion, 1804 · Primary source

“A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.”

Ayn Rand · The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z, 1986 · Primary source

“The absolute balance of Give and Take, the doctrine that every thing has its price—and if that price is not paid, not that thing but something else is obtained, and that it is impossible to get any thing without its price—is not less sublime in the columns of a ledger than in the budgets of states.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Compensation, 1841 · Primary source

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”

Steve Jobs · Stanford Commencement Address, 2005 · Primary source

“The motive of science was the extension of man, on all sides, into Nature, till his hands should touch the stars.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · No reliable source

“A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Friendship, 1841 · Primary source

“Little strokes fell great oaks.”

Benjamin Franklin · The Way to Wealth, 1758 · Primary source

“Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst and cold.”

Thomas Jefferson · Letter to Thomas Jefferson Smith, 1825 · Primary source

“I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.”

Ian Fleming · You Only Live Twice, 1964 · Primary source

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.”

Richard Feynman · Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, 1985 · Primary source

“It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself but at some more ambitious goal behind it.”

Arnold J. Toynbee · A Study of History, 1934-1961 · Primary source

“Moreover, I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men’s lives.”

Henry David Thoreau · Walden, 1849 · Primary source

“A life which does not go into action is a failure.”

Arnold J. Toynbee · A Study of History, 1934-1961 · Primary source

“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”

Henry David Thoreau · Walden, 1849 · Primary source

“Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.”

John F. Kennedy · Inaugural Address of President John F. Kennedy, 1961 · Primary source

“For, in a democracy, every citizen, regardless of his interest in politics, ‘holds office’ every one of us is in a position of responsibility; and, in the final analysis, the kind of government we get depends upon how we fulfill those responsibilities. We, the people, are the boss, and we will get the kind of political leadership, be it good or bad, that we demand and deserve.”

John F. Kennedy · Profiles in Courage, 1956 · Primary source

“He that falls in love with himself, will have no rivals.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“There are particular occasions when one may be most painfully moved to see a person standing utterly alone in the world. The other day I saw a poor girl walking utterly alone to church to be confirmed.”

Søren Kierkegaard · Either/Or, 1843 · Primary source

“The thing to do is not to get scared, but to learn.”

Ayn Rand · Atlas Shrugged, 1957 · Primary source

“Knowledge is of no real value if all you can tell me is what happened yesterday. It is necessary to tell what will happen tomorrow.”

Richard Feynman · The Meaning of It All, 1998 · Primary source

“But we must not forget that when radium was discovered no one knew that it would prove useful in hospitals. The work was one of pure science. And this is a proof that scientific work must not be considered from the point of view of the direct usefulness of it. It must be done for itself, for the beauty of science, and then there is always the chance that a scientific discovery may become like the radium a benefit for humanity.”

Marie Curie · The Discovery of Radium, 1921 · Primary source

“The imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man.”

Richard Feynman · The Meaning of It All, 1998 · Primary source

“There never has been security. No man has ever known what he would meet around the next corner; if life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor.”

Eleanor Roosevelt · Tomorrow is Now, 1963 · Primary source

“I may not be as strong as I think. But I know many tricks and I have resolution.”

Ernest Hemingway · The Old Man and the Sea, 1952 · Primary source

“Now civilizations, I believe, come to birth and proceed to grow by successfully responding to successive challenges. They break down and go to pieces if and when a challenge confronts them which they fail to meet.”

Arnold J. Toynbee · Civilization on Trial, 1948 · Primary source

“The way to win is to work, work, work, work and hope to have a few insights. And you’re probably not going to be smart enough to find thousands in a lifetime. And when you get a few, you really load up. It’s just that simple.”

Charlie Munger · Poor Charlie’s Almanack, 2005 · Primary source

“Every scientific law, every scientific principle, every statement of the results of an observation is some kind of a summary which leaves out details.”

Richard Feynman · The Meaning of It All, 1998 · Primary source

“You never get real adventures without a bit of risk somewhere.”

Ian Fleming · Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang, 1964 · Primary source

“In science we must be interested in things, not in persons.”

Marie Curie · Madame Curie: A Biography, 1938 · Secondary source

“If you would be loved, love and be lovable.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Without imagination not much can be done.”

Winston Churchill · Never give in, never, 1941 · Primary source

“Half Friendship is the bitterest Enmity”

William Blake · Jerusalem: The Emanation of The Giant Albion, 1804 · Primary source

“I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.”

Richard Feynman · What Do You Care What Other People Think?, 1986 · Primary source

“We talk of choosing our friends, but friends are self-elected.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Friendship, 1841 · Primary source

“The American lives even more for his goals, for the future, than the European. Life for him is always becoming, never being.”

Albert Einstein · Ideas and Opinions , 1954 · Primary source

“I heartily accept the motto,—‘That government is best which governs least;’ and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically.”

Henry David Thoreau · Resistance to Civil Government, 1849 · Primary source

“The most important thing in any relationship is not what you get but what you give.”

Eleanor Roosevelt · The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt, 1961 · Primary source

“I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.”

Henry David Thoreau · Walden, 1849 · Primary source

“Up, sluggard, and waste not life; in the grave will be sleeping enough.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“We are by nature observers, and thereby learners. This is our permanent state.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Love, 1841 · Primary source

“Man cannot live by technology alone.”

Arnold J. Toynbee · Civilization on Trial, 1948 · Primary source

“’Tis easier to prevent bad habits than to break them.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Reprove your friend in secret and praise him openly.”

Leonardo da Vinci · The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, 1888 · Primary source

“Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.”

Henry David Thoreau · Walden, 1849 · Primary source

“Why do old men wake so early? Is it to have one longer day?”

Ernest Hemingway · The Old Man and the Sea, 1952 · Primary source

“You may delay, but time will not.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“The essence of friendship is entireness, a total magnanimity and trust.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Friendship, 1841 · Primary source

“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes.”

Thomas Jefferson · Declaration of Independence, 1776 · Primary source

“A life of leisure, and a life of laziness, are two things.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“The end does not justify the means. No one’s rights can be secured by the violation of the rights of others.”

Ayn Rand · The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z, 1986 · Primary source

“I think it’s the same with all relationships between a man and a woman. They can survive anything so long as some kind of basic humanity exists between the two people. When all kindness has gone, when one person obviously and sincerely doesn’t care if the other is alive or dead, then it’s just no good.”

Ian Fleming · For Your Eyes Only, 1960 · Primary source

“There will never be a really free and enlightened State, until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.”

Henry David Thoreau · Resistance to Civil Government, 1849 · Primary source

“History, in the objective meaning of the word, is the process of change; in the subjective meaning, it is the study of how and why one situation changes into another.”

Arnold J. Toynbee · Change and Habit, 1966 · Primary source

“If the government is cruel, the governor’s life is not safe.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Compensation, 1841 · Primary source

“All would live long, but none would be old.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Let him think I am more man than I am and I will be so.”

Ernest Hemingway · The Old Man and the Sea, 1952 · Primary source

“Promises may get thee friends, but non-performance will turn them into enemies.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“I have thought a sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Civilization, 1870 · Primary source

“Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a heaven in hell’s despair”

William Blake · Songs of Experience, 1794 · Primary source

“No man ever was glorious who was not laborious.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free.”

John F. Kennedy · Ich bin ein Berliner speech, 1963 · Primary source

“You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It’s their mistake, not my failing.”

Richard Feynman · Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, 1985 · Primary source

“Patience in a market, is worth pounds in a year.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Honor thy father and mother, i.e., live so as to be an honor to them when they are dead.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“If you look out far enough the computer will eventually learn to reason in somewhat the same way that humans do, so called ‘artificial intelligence’. If you take that far enough you can imagine an evolution, essentially, moving over to silicon-based life and carbon-based life, playing a much more limited role than it does today.”

Bill Gates · Smithsonian Interview: Bill Gates, 1993 · Primary source

“The value of the goal lies in the goal itself; and therefore the goal cannot be attained unless it is pursued for its own sake.”

Arnold J. Toynbee · A Study of History, 1934-1961 · Primary source

“A good example is the best sermon.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“No gains without pains.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened!”

Thomas Jefferson · Letter to Thomas Jefferson Smith, 1825 · Primary source

“Let every new year find you a better man.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Pardoning the bad, is injuring the good.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Happy is the house that shelters a friend!”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Friendship, 1841 · Primary source

“All things are easy to industry, all things difficult to sloth.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“My life is for itself and not for a spectacle.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Self-Reliance, 1841 · Primary source

“Tears can only be cured by vision.”

Helen Keller · We Bereaved, 1929 · Primary source

“Anger is never without a reason, but seldom with a good one.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Have you felt it, too? Have you seen how your best friends love everything about you—except the things that count? And your most important is nothing to them, nothing, not even a sound they can recognize.”

Ayn Rand · The Fountainhead, 1943 · Primary source

“Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.”

Eleanor Roosevelt · The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt, 1961 · Primary source

“Observation is the ultimate and final judge of the truth of an idea.”

Richard Feynman · The Meaning of It All, 1998 · Primary source

“If you want to change behaviors, you have to change motivations.”

Charlie Munger · Poor Charlie’s Almanack, 2005 · Primary source

“Character is higher than intellect.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · The American Scholar, 1837 · Primary source

“Take this remark from Richard, poor and lame, whatever is begun in anger, ends in shame.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Fools multiply folly.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“No man had ever a point of pride that was not injurious to him, so no man had ever a defect that was not somewhere made useful to him.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Compensation, 1841 · Primary source

“It is better to be alone than in bad company.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · The Transcendentalist, 1842 · Primary source

“Experience never errs; it is only your judgments that err by promising themselves effects such as are not caused by your experiments.”

Leonardo da Vinci · The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, 1888 · Primary source

“The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Harvard Divinity School Address, 1838 · Primary source

“We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · The American Scholar, 1837 · Primary source

“The only way to have real success in science, the field I’m familiar with, is to describe the evidence very carefully without regard to the way you feel it should be. If you have a theory, you must try to explain what’s good and what’s bad about it equally. In science, you learn a kind of standard integrity and honesty.”

Richard Feynman · What Do You Care What Other People Think?, 1986 · Primary source

“The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.”

Henry David Thoreau · Walden, 1849 · Primary source

“Those whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first make bored.”

Ian Fleming · From Russia, with Love, 1957 · Primary source

“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 · Self-Reliance, 1841 · Primary source

“No, that is the great fallacy; the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful.”

Ernest Hemingway · A Farewell to Arms, 1929 · Primary source

“The only way to have a friend is to be one.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Friendship, 1841 · Primary source

“A false friend and a shadow attend only while the sun shines.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”

Thomas Jefferson · Declaration of Independence, 1776 · Primary source

“Life wastes itself while we are preparing to live.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Prudence, 1841 · Primary source

“Thou wilt go now, rabbit. But I go with thee. As long as there is one of us there is both of us.”

Ernest Hemingway · For Whom the Bell Tolls, 1940 · Primary source

“True conquest is the causing the calamity to fade and disappear, as an early cloud of insignificant result in a history so large and advancing.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Circles, 1841 · Primary source

“Insist on yourself; never imitate.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Self-Reliance, 1841 · Primary source

“Nature suffers nothing to remain in her kingdoms which cannot help itself.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Self-Reliance, 1841 · Primary source

“As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well used brings happy death.”

Leonardo da Vinci · The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, 1888 · Primary source

“He touched her for the last time and then they turned away from each other and walked off into their different lives.”

Ian Fleming · Moonraker, 1955 · Primary source

“Approve not of him that commends all you say.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Perhaps if the American people more fully comprehended the terrible pressures which discourage acts of political courage, which drive a Senator to abandon or subdue his conscience, then they might be less critical of those who take the easier road—and more appreciative of those still able to follow the path of courage.”

John F. Kennedy · Profiles in Courage, 1956 · Primary source

“I must Create a System, or be enslav’d by another Mans
I will not Reason & Compare: my business is to Create”

William Blake · Jerusalem: The Emanation of The Giant Albion, 1804 · Primary source

“Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.”

Henry David Thoreau · Walden, 1849 · Primary source

“Love the day.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Behavior, 1841 · Primary source

“’'Tis easier to suppress the first desire, than to satisfy all that follow it.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“A full belly makes a dull brain.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Self-Reliance, 1841 · Primary source

“He who does not punish evil commands it to be done.”

Leonardo da Vinci · The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, 1888 · Primary source

“No one comes back from the dead; no one has come into the world without weeping. No one asks when one wants to come in; no one asks when one wants to go out.”

Søren Kierkegaard · Either/Or, 1843 · Primary source

“Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Compensation, 1841 · Primary source

“All our science lacks a human side.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · No reliable source

“Every path but your own is the path of fate. Keep on your own track, then.”

Henry David Thoreau · Walden, 1849 · Primary source

“We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its ends; which stands related to all things; which is the mean of many extremes. It is the most enduring quality and the most ascending quality.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · No reliable source

“The most beautiful time is the first period of falling in love, when, from every encounter, every glance, one fetches home something new to rejoice over.”

Søren Kierkegaard · Either/Or, 1843 · Primary source

“We must be our own [friend] before we can be another’s.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Friendship, 1841 · Primary source

“In my life I had come to realize that when things were going very well indeed it was just the time to anticipate trouble. And, conversely, I learned from pleasant experience that at the most despairing crisis, when all looked sour beyond words, some delightful break was apt to lurk just around the corner.”

Amelia Earhart · Last Flight, 1937 · Primary source

“Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Friendship, 1841 · Primary source

“One today is worth two tomorrows.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“He who has put forth his total strength in fit actions has the richest return of wisdom.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · The American Scholar, 1837 · Primary source

“Love your neighbor; yet don’t pull down your hedge.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail.”

Henry David Thoreau · Walden, 1849 · Primary source

“You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.”

Ernest Hemingway · The Sun Also Rises, 1926 · Primary source

“Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage—the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors.”

Ayn Rand · The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z, 1986 · Primary source

“The sting of a reproach is the truth of it.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“He who wishes to be rich in a day will be hanged in a year.”

Leonardo da Vinci · The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, 1888 · Primary source

“To be great is to be misunderstood.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Self-Reliance, 1841 · Primary source

“It is compromise that prevents each set of reformers from crushing the group on the extreme opposite end of the political spectrum.”

John F. Kennedy · Profiles in Courage, 1956 · Primary source

“The extinction of race consciousness as between Muslims is one of the outstanding moral achievements of Islam, and in the contemporary world there is, as it happens, a crying need for the propagation of this Islamic virtue.”

Arnold J. Toynbee · Civilization on Trial, 1948 · Primary source

“The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth.”

Albert Einstein · Ideas and Opinions , 1954 · Primary source

“No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is, he feels that happiness is his indisputable right.”

Helen Keller · Optimism, 1903 · Primary source

“Of my mental cycles, I devote maybe ten percent to business thinking. Business isn’t that complicated. I wouldn’t want to put it on my business card.”

Bill Gates · Playboy Interview: Bill Gates, 1994 · Primary source

“Not all Senators would agree—but few would deny that the desire to be re-elected exercises a strong brake on independent courage.”

John F. Kennedy · Profiles in Courage, 1956 · Primary source

“Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · No reliable source

“The second vice is lying; the first is running in debt.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“‘Tomorrow!’ What possibilities there are in that word.”

Helen Keller · We Bereaved, 1929 · Primary source

“There was never a good knife made of bad steel.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“I have no luck anymore. But who knows? Maybe today. Every day is a new day. It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready.”

Ernest Hemingway · The Old Man and the Sea, 1952 · Primary source

“Follow your genius closely enough, and it will not fail to show you a fresh prospect every hour.”

Henry David Thoreau · Walden, 1849 · Primary source

“One loses everything when one loses one’s sense of humor.”

Ayn Rand · The Fountainhead, 1943 · Primary source

“The man who is good at making an excuse, is seldom good at any thing else.”

Benjamin Franklin · Liber Facetiarum: Being a Collection of Curious and Interesting Anecdotes, 1809 · Secondary source

“Words may show a man’s wit, but actions his meaning.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“He that can have patience can have what he will.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names.”

Henry David Thoreau · Walden, 1849 · Primary source

“Tim was so learned, that he could name a horse in nine languages. So ignorant, that he bought a cow to ride on.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Life is our dictionary.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · The American Scholar, 1837 · Primary source

“Any system of government will work when everything is going well. It’s the system that functions in the pinches that survives.”

John F. Kennedy · Why England Slept, 1940 · Primary source

“This was omitted on my new theory that you could omit anything if you knew that you omitted and the omitted part would strengthen the story and make people feel something more than they understood.”

Ernest Hemingway · A Moveable Feast, 1964 · Primary source

“Be slow in choosing a friend, slower in changing.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Compensation, 1841 · Primary source

“That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Self-Reliance, 1841 · Primary source

“I desire that there may be as many different persons in the world as possible; but I would have each one be very careful to find out and pursue his own way, and not his father’s or his mother’s or his neighbor’s instead. The youth may build or plant or sail, only let him not be hindered from doing that which he tells me he would like to do.”

Henry David Thoreau · Walden, 1849 · Primary source

“For every friend whom he loses for truth, he gains a better.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Circles, 1841 · Primary source

“All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.”

John F. Kennedy · Inaugural Address of President John F. Kennedy, 1961 · Primary source

“Drunkenness, that worst of evils, makes some men fools, some beasts, some devils.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Thou canst not joke an enemy into a friend; but thou may’st a friend into an enemy.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Grief too will make us idealists.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Experience, 1844 · Primary source

“Would you live with ease, do what you ought, and not what you please.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“He that builds before he counts the cost, acts foolishly; and he that counts before he builds, finds he did not count wisely.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“The most obvious way of reconciling oneself to death is to make sure of enjoying life before death snatches it from us. The catchwords Carpe diem and Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we shall die are notorious, and Herodotus has preserved an Egyptian folktale in which the Pharaoh Mycerinus, when the gods had sentenced him to die after enjoying only six more years of life, successfully doubled the term arbitrarily allotted to him by turning night into day. This hedonistic solution of the problem of death is, of course, illusory.”

Arnold J. Toynbee · Man’s Concern with Death, 1968 · Primary source

“Sloth (like rust) consumes faster than labor wears. The used key is always bright.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“One reason why mathematics enjoys special esteem, above all other sciences, is that its propositions are absolutely certain and indisputable, while those of all other sciences are to some extent debatable and in constant danger of being overthrown by newly discovered facts.”

Albert Einstein · Ideas and Opinions , 1954 · Primary source

“I realised that both verification and testing were using the same technology—assertions—on a common goal of improving software products in their speed of delivery, their quality, and their reliability.”

Tony Hoare · Theories of Programming: The Life & Works of Tony Hoare, 2021 · Primary source

“If a man owns land, the land owns him.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Wealth, 1860 · Primary source

“Our experience tends to confirm a long-held notion that being prepared, on a few occasions in a lifetime, to act promptly in scale, in doing some simple and logical thing, will often dramatically improve the financial results of that lifetime.”

Charlie Munger · Poor Charlie’s Almanack, 2005 · Primary source

“Things are pretty, graceful, rich, elegant, handsome, but, until they speak to the imagination, not yet beautiful.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · No reliable source

“Time is an herb that cures all diseases.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“I do not hesitate to read all the books I have named, and all good books, in translations. What is really best in any book is translatable—any real insight or broad human sentiment.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Books, 1870 · Primary source

“Necessity is the mistress and guide of nature.”

Leonardo da Vinci · The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, 1888 · Primary source

“The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, an almost fanatical love of justice and the desire for personal independence—these are the features of the Jewish tradition which make me thank my stars that I belong to it.”

Albert Einstein · Ideas and Opinions , 1954 · Primary source

“The bird that sits, is easily shot.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Be always ashamed to catch thyself idle.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Patience serves us against insults precisely as clothes do against the cold. For if you multiply your garments as the cold increases, that cold cannot hurt you; in the same way increase your patience under great offences, and they cannot hurt your feelings.”

Leonardo da Vinci · The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, 1888 · Primary source

“We’ve learned from experience that the truth will come out. Other experimenters will repeat your experiment and find out whether you were wrong or right. Nature’s phenomena will agree or they’ll disagree with your theory. And, although you may gain some temporary fame and excitement, you will not gain a good reputation as a scientist if you haven’t tried to be very careful in this kind of work.”

Richard Feynman · Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, 1985 · Primary source

“Having been poor is no shame, but being ashamed of it, is.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“There is no sense in calculating the probability or the chance that something happens after it happens.”

Richard Feynman · The Meaning of It All, 1998 · Primary source

“Nature is full of infinite causes that have never occured in experience.”

Leonardo da Vinci · The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, 1888 · Primary source

“This is a delicious evening, when the whole body is one sense, and imbibes delight through every pore.”

Henry David Thoreau · Walden, 1849 · Primary source

“When I look back on all these worries, I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which had never happened.”

Winston Churchill · The Second World War, 1948-1953 · Primary source

“But life isn’t hard to manage when you’ve nothing to lose.”

Ernest Hemingway · A Farewell to Arms, 1929 · Primary source

“Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid you.”

William Blake · The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1790 · Primary source

“Grace under pressure.”

Ernest Hemingway · The Artist’s Reward, 1929 · Secondary source

“The most important property of a program is whether it accomplishes the intentions of its user.”

Tony Hoare · An Axiomatic Basis for Computer Programming, 1969 · Primary source

“If you stop complaining and asking for what you never will get, you will have a good life. A good life is not measured by any biblical span.”

Ernest Hemingway · For Whom the Bell Tolls, 1940 · Primary source

“Just as iron rusts unless it is used, and water putrifies or, in cold, turns to ice, so our intellect spoils unless it is kept in use.”

Leonardo da Vinci · The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, 1888 · Primary source

“By honest I don’t mean that you only tell what’s true. But you make clear the entire situation. You make clear all the information that is required for somebody else who is intelligent to make up their mind.”

Richard Feynman · The Meaning of It All, 1998 · Primary source

“I don’t know what’s the matter with people: they don’t learn by understanding; they learn by some other way—by rote, or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!”

Richard Feynman · Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, 1985 · Primary source

“Finally, I said that I couldn’t see how anyone could he educated by this self-propagating system in which people pass exams, and teach others to pass exams, but nobody knows anything.”

Richard Feynman · Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, 1985 · Primary source

“If you know how to spend less than you get, you have the philosopher’s stone.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“A plowman on his legs is higher than a gentleman on his knees.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Wealth is the product of man’s capacity to think.”

Ayn Rand · Atlas Shrugged, 1957 · Primary source

“Observe all men; thyself most.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.”

Steve Jobs · Stanford Commencement Address, 2005 · Primary source

“The proud hate pride—in others.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“I am reminded of the professor who in his declining hours was asked by his devoted pupils for his final counsel. He replied, Verify your quotations.”

Winston Churchill · The Second World War, 1948-1953 · Primary source

“Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.”

Ernest Hemingway · The Old Man and the Sea, 1952 · Primary source

“To be intimate with a foolish friend, is like going to bed with a razor.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Well done is better than well said.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Drink does not drown care, but waters it, and makes it grow faster.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Adventure is worthwhile in itself.”

Amelia Earhart · No reliable source

“Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.”

Arnold J. Toynbee · No reliable source

“The joy of anticipation is the greatest.”

Søren Kierkegaard · No reliable source

“The most difficult thing is the decision to act. The rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life and the procedure. The process is its own reward.”

Amelia Earhart · No reliable source

“Everything should be as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

Albert Einstein · No reliable source

“Learning never exhausts the mind.”

Leonardo da Vinci · No reliable source

“There are, as is known, insects that die in the moment of fertilization. So it is with all joy: life’s highest, most splendid moment of enjoyment is accompanied by death.”

Søren Kierkegaard · Either/Or, 1843 · Primary source

“Oh, Jake,” Brett said, “we could have had such a damned good time together.”
Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The car slowed suddenly pressing Brett against me.
“Yes,” I said. “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”

Ernest Hemingway · The Sun Also Rises, 1926 · Primary source

“Understanding is a two-way street.”

Eleanor Roosevelt · No reliable source

“Invert, always invert.”

Carl Jacobi · No reliable source

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