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Quotes

some of my favorite quotes

in no particular order
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"No matter where you go, there you are."

~ Buckaroo Bonzai

"Love isn’t a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now."

~ Fred Rogers

"When someone else's happiness is your happiness, that is love."

~ Lana Del Ray

"We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are."

~ Anaïs Nin

"If something burns your soul with purpose and desire, it’s your duty to be reduced to ashes by it. Any other form of existence will be yet another dull book in the library of life."

~ Charles Bukowski

"Act without expectation."

~ Lao Tzu

"See failure as a beginning."

~ Richard Feynman

"A ship in harbor is safe, but that's not what ships are built for."

~ John A. Shedd

"Never be limited by other people's limited imaginations."

~ Dr. Mae Jemison

"Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything."

~ George Bernard Shaw

"Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible."

~ Frank Zappa

"When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change."

~ Max Planck

"To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you."

~ Lewis B. Smedes

"If it can be destroyed by the truth, it deserves to be destroyed by the truth."

~ Carl Sagan

"You cannot fix what you will not face."

~ James Baldwin

"If nothing saves us from death, at least love should save us from life."

~ Pablo Neruda

"Never love anybody who treats you like you're ordinary."

~ Oscar Wilde

"People can only meet you as deeply as they've met themselves."

~ Matt Kahn

"If you remember me, then I don't care if everyone else forgets."

~ Haruki Murakami

"You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness."

~ Jonathan Safran Foer

"When people are ready to, they change. They never do it before then, and sometimes they die before they get around to it. You can't make them change if they don't want to. Just like when they do want to, you can't stop them."

~ Andy Warhol

"Never be so focused on what you're looking for that you overlook the thing you actually find."

~ Ann Patchett

"The only thing that is ultimately real about your journey is the step that you are taking at this moment. That’s all there ever is."

~ Eckhart Tolle

"A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor."

~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

"I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned."

~ Richard Feynman

"Listen. I wish I could tell you it gets better. But, it doesn't get better. You get better."

~ Joan Rivers

"The really sad thing about stupidity is that you can do absolutely nothing about it."

~ Anon

"Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up."

~ Thomas Edison

"The first step towards getting somewhere is to decide that you are not going to stay where you are."

~ J.P. Morgan

"If you want something you've never had, you must be willing to do something you've never done."

~ Thomas Jefferson

"Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching."

~ C.S. Lewis

"Expectation is the root of all heartache."

~ William Shakespeare

"No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted."

~ Aesop

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."

~ Maya Angelou

"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate."

~ Carl Jung

"If you wanted to, you would."

~ John Servidio

"Those who cannot begin do not finish."

~ Robert Henri

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

~ George Bernard Shaw

"How you do anything is how you do everything."

~ Zen Buddhist adage

"How you spend your days is how you spend your life."

~ Annie Dillard

"The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places."

~ Ernest Hemingway

"Make yourself sheep and the wolves will eat you."

~ Benjamin Franklin

"Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist."

~ Pablo Picasso

"It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop."

~ Confucius

"Perception is reality."

~ John Servidio

"Whether you think you can, or you think you can't… you're right."

~ Henry Ford

"We forge the chains we wear in life."

~ Charles Dickens

"It always seems impossible until it's done."

~ Nelson Mandela

"It's only hopeless when you give up."

~ Sylvia Earle

"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back."

~ Carl Sagan

"If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything."

~ Gordon A. Eadie (paraphrased)

"Sunshine all the time makes a desert."

~ Arabic Proverb

"If you really want to do something, you'll find a way. If you don't, you'll find an excuse."

~ Jim Rohn

"You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are, and change the ending."

~ C.S. Lewis

"I crave a love so deep, the ocean would be jealous."

~ Pablo Neruda

"My alone feels so good, I’ll only have you if you’re sweeter than my solitude."

~ Warsan Shire

"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take."

~ Wayne Gretsky

"No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character."

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

"You can sway a thousand men by appealing to their prejudices quicker than you can convince one man by logic."

~ Robert A. Heinlein

"Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles."

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The most difficult thing in life is to know yourself."

~ Thales of Miletus

"The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it."

~ Michelangelo

"There is no remedy for love, but to love more."

~ Henry David Thoreau

"Be alone, that is the secret of invention; be alone, that is when ideas are born."

~ Nikola Tesla

"Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck"

~ Dalai Lama

"Do not whine… Do not complain. Work harder. Spend more time alone."

~ Joan Didion

"We were together. I forget the rest."

~ Walt Whitman

"You can't do it unless you imagine it."

~ George Lucas

"Action is the foundational key to all success."

~ Pablo Picasso

"We are our choices."

~ Jean Paul Sartre

"Those who don't believe in magic will never find it."

~ Roald Dahl

"Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world."

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

"You don't need to see the whole staircase, just take the first step."

~ Martin Luther King Jr.

"A wonderful gift may not be wrapped as you expect."

~ Jonathan Lockwood Huie

"I hope you do not let anyone else’s expectations direct the course of your life."

~ Julianne Donaldson

"How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours."

~ Wayne W. Dyer

"I only go out to get me a fresh appetite for being alone."

~ Lord Byron

"They deem him their worst enemy who tells them the truth."

~ Plato

"Things do not happen. Things are made to happen."

~ John F. Kennedy

"I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude."

~ Henry David Thoreau

"Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame."

~ Benjamin Franklin

"Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will."

~ Suzy Kassem

"If you can change your mind, you can change your life."

~ William James

"I have had recurring nightmares
That I was loved for who I am.
And missed the opportunity
To be a better man. "

~ Muse (Hoodoo)

"There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind."

~ C.S. Lewis

"Hang in there. It is astonishing how short a time it can take for very wonderful things to happen."

~ Frances Hodgson Burnett

"Comparison is the thief of joy."

~ Theodore Roosevelt

"To find yourself, think for yourself."

~ Socrates

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

~ Upton Sinclair

"Always make new mistakes."

~ Esther Dyson

"The most effective way to do it is to do it."

~ Amelia Earhart

"You can't have it all at once."

~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg

"The worst distance between two people is misunderstanding."

~ Neetesh Dixit

"Many people lose the small joys in the hope for the big happiness."

~ Pearl S. Buck

"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored."

~ Aldous Huxley

"Truth is confirmed by inspection and delay; falsehood by haste and uncertainty."

~ Tacitus

"The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion."

~ Arthur C. Clarke

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

~ Richard Feynman

"You must do the thing you think you cannot do."

~ Eleanor Roosevelt

"Nothing is more permanent than a temporary solution."

~ Russian Proverb

"If you find yourself in a hole… stop digging."

~ The First Law of Holes

"If you get tired, learn to rest, not to quit."

~ Banksy

"Find out where the line is drawn, and cross it deliberately."

~ George Carlin

"A mistake repeated more than once is a decision."

~ Paulo Coelho

"The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails."

~ William Arthur Ward

"That’s the good thing about science: It’s true whether or not you believe in it. That’s why it works. "

~ Neil deGrasse Tyson

"I demolish my bridges behind me... then there is no choice but to move forward."

~ Fridtjof Nansen

"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor."

~ Desmond Tutu

"The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions."

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

"We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented."

~ Elie Wiesel

"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent."

~ Edmund Burke

"Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others’?"

~ Martin Luther King Jr.

"The electric light did not come from the continuous improvement of candles."

~ Oren Harari

"You can tell how smart people are by what they laugh at"

~ Tina Fey

"The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts while the stupid ones are full of confidence."

~ Charles Bukowski

"We don't make mistakes; we have happy accidents."

~ Bob Ross

"A bird sitting on a tree is never afraid of the branch breaking because its trust is not on the branch but on its own wings."

~ Unknown

"Stop measuring days by degree of productivity and start experiencing them by degree of presence."

~ Alan Watts

"You may always have a second chance; for this thing we call failure is not the falling down, but the staying down."

~ Mary Pickford

"We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us."

~ Joseph Campbell

"A lie has speed, but truth has endurance."

~ Edgar J. Mohn

"What you do is more important than what you say."

~ Mark Twain (paraphrased)

"The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is."

~ Winston Churchill

"Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can."

~ Arthur Ashe

"Crawl inside this body, find me where I am most ruined – love me there."

~ Rune Lazuli

"When you know your worth, you don't waste time waiting for other people to affirm it for you."

~ Michell C. Clark

"A candle loses nothing by lighting another candle."

~ James Keller

"現場現物現実"

"Go to the actual place and see the actual thing and you shall learn the actual truth."

~ Japanese Proverb

"A half truth is a whole lie."

~ Yiddish Proverb

"Who lies for you, will lie against you."

~ Bosnian Proverb

"The truth has no defense against a fool determined to believe a lie."

~ Mark Twain

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."

~ Martin Luther King Jr.

"Every storm runs out of rain."

~ Maya Angelou

"If you find yourself arguing with an idiot... you've lost!"

~ Bill Liao

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

~ Hanlon's razor

"The things you own end up owning you. It's only after you lose everything that you're free to do anything."

~ Chuck Palahniuk ('Fight Club')

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

~ Carl Sagan

"What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."

~ Christopher Hitchens

"Mistakes are almost always of a sacred nature. Never try to correct them. On the contrary: rationalize them, understand them thoroughly."

~ Salvador Dali

"Normal is an illusion. What is normal for the spider is chaos for the fly."

~ Charles Addams

"Don't surrender all your joy for an idea you used to have about yourself that isn't true anymore."

~ Cheryl Strayed

"The problem is, we look for someone to grow old together, while the secret is to find someone to stay a child with."

~ Charles Bukowski

"Creative people need time to just sit around and do nothing."

~ Austin Kleon

"It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they’ve been fooled."

~ Mark Twain

"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

~ Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

"You must be the change you want to see in the world."

~ (Not) Gandhi

"The one unchangeable certainty is that nothing is certain or unchangeable."

~ John F. Kennedy

"Everything in moderation... including moderation."

~ Julia Child

"To whom much is given, much is expected."

~ John F. Kennedy

"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."

~ Martin Luther King Jr.

"The most expensive thing you will ever do is spend time with the wrong people."

~ Anon

"Only those who risk going too far, can find out how far one can go."

~ T.S. Elliot

"It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important."

~ Arthur Conan Doyle

"It takes a great deal of courage to stand up to your enemies, but even more to stand up to your friends."

~ J.K. Rowling

"If you care about what other people think, you will always be their prisoner."

~ James Frey

"You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks."

~ Winston Churchill

"The best way out is always through."

~ Robert Frost

"Tell me what company thou keepest, and I'll tell thee what thou art."

~ Miguel de Cervantes

"It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves."

~ Sir Edmund Hillary

"Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen."

~ Winston Churchill

"There is no way to happiness; happiness is the way."

~ The Buddha

"Assumptions are the termites of relationships."

~ Henry Winkler

"To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved."

~ George MacDonald

"If you hit a wrong note, the next note determines if it’s good or bad."

~ Miles Davis

"Seduce my mind and you can have my body."

~ Henry Rollins

"We owe almost all our knowledge not to those who have agreed, but to those who have differed."

~ Charles Caleb Colton

"Quiet people have the loudest minds."

~ Stephen Hawking

"They don't think it be like it is, but it do."

~ Oscar Gamble

"Less but better."

~ Dieter Rams

"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."

~ Martin Luther King Jr.

"I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time."

~ Blaise Pascal

"Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."

~ Mohandas Gandhi

"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds."

~ Albert Einstein

"If you're not willing to learn, no one can help you. If you're determined to learn, no one can stop you."

~ Zig Ziglar

"Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people."

~ Eleanor Roosevelt

"When you arrive at a fork in the road, take it."

~ Yogi Berra

"An evil enemy will burn his own nation to the ground to rule over the ashes."

~ Sun Tzu

"You can tell a lot about someone by the people he or she admires."

~ Ken Segall

"There is no limit to the amount of good you can do if you don't care who gets the credit."

~ Ronald Regan

"If you would attain greatness, think no little thoughts."

~ Anon

"Art is the highest form of hope."

~ Gerhard Richter

"The behavior of some creatures is irrepressible, no matter how they are treated and no matter what the consequences."

~ 'The Scorpion and the Frog'

"The best things in life are free; the second best are very expensive."

~ Coco Chanel

"Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends, fads and popular opinion."

~ Jack Kerouac

"Mediocrity is excellent to the eyes of mediocre people."

~ Joseph Joubert

"Say what you want and be who you are because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind."

~ Dr. Seuss

"Each of us is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts."

~ James R. Schlesinger

"It is never too late to be what you might have been."

~ George Eliot

"And in the end, the love you take, is equal to the love you make."

~ Lennon & McCartney

"I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you."

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

"If you marry a woman who cheated on her husband, you're married to a woman who cheats on her husband."

~ Ann Landers

"You can observe a lot, just by watching."

~ Yogi Berra

"It's better to live one day as a lion, than a thousand years as a lamb."

~ Anon

"The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them."

~ Ernest Hemingway

"To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction."

~ Newton's Third Law

"When a person can't find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure."

~ Viktor Frankl

"A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be."

~ Wayne Gretzky

"Take your broken heart, make it into art."

~ Carrie Fisher

"Secrets have a cost; they're not free. Not now, not ever."

~ Aunt May

"We will encourage you to develop the three great virtues of a programmer: laziness, impatience, and hubris."

~ Larry Wall

"Live life like you're gonna die. Because you're gonna."

~ William Shatner

"Life finds a way."

~ Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jurrasic Park)

"You've got to be careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there."

~ Yogi Berra

"You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have."

~ Maya Angelou

"Science. It works, bitches."

~ Richard Dawkins

"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

~ Isaac Asimov

"Profanity is the verbal crutch of the ignorant mother fucker."

~ Anon

"I realize I use the word 'fuck' a lot, and I'd apologize for that, but I don't give a shit."

~ Lewis Black

"…I see that the elementary laws never apologize."

~ Walt Whitman

"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know."

~ Ernest Hemingway

"I don't hate people. I just feel better when they aren't around."

~ Charles Bukowski

"The limit of my language is the limit of my understanding."

~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

"One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them."

~ Aldous Huxley

"It is difficult to find happiness within oneself, but it is impossible to find it anywhere else."

~ Arthur Schopenhauer

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage."

~ Anaïs Nin

"When you can't look on the bright side, I will sit with you in the dark."

~ The Mad Hatter

"You have to be odd to be number one."

~ Dr. Seuss

"The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed."

~ Steve Biko

"Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty."

~ Henry David Thoreau

"I can only connect deeply or not at all."

~ Anis Nin

"The heart wants what it wants - or else it does not care."

~ Emily Dickinson

"Whosoever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god."

~ Francis Bacon

"Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion."

~ Oscar Wilde

"When stupidity is considered patriotism, it is unsafe to be intelligent."

~ Isaac Asimov

"Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups."

~ George Carlin

"To live alone is the fate of all great souls."

~ Arthur Schopenhauer

"Even when you heal, you’re never what you were before."

~ Cassandra Clare

"You have to die a few times before you can really live."

~ Charles Bukowski

"People think being alone makes you lonely, but I don't think that's true. Being surrounded by the wrong people is the loneliest thing in the world."

~ Kim Culbertson

"There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself."

~ Raymond Chandler

"When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time."

~ Maya Angelou

"Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things."

~ Robert Brault

"Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working."

~ Pablo Picasso

"I don't know where I'm going from here, but I promise it won't be boring."

~ David Bowie

"Endeavor to persevere."

~ Abraham Lincoln

"Inspiration is for amateurs — the rest of us just show up and get to work."

~ Chuck Close

"Waiting is painful. Forgetting is painful. But not knowing which to do is the worst kind of suffering."

~ Paulo Coelho

"It takes nothing to join the crowd. It takes everything to stand alone."

~ Hans F. Hansen

"Normality is a paved road; it's comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow."

~ Vincent Van Gogh

"There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing."

~ Aristotle

"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all."

~ Oscar Wilde

"The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek."

~ Joseph Campbell

"Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves."

~ Haruki Murakami

"Without great solitude no serious work is possible."

~ Pablo Piccaso

"Saying nothing… sometimes says the most."

~ Emily Dickinson

"Most of us are genuinely unaware that it is possible to change our minds."

~ Sam Harris

"Fall down seven times; get up eight."

~ Japanese Proverb

"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: It goes on."

~ Robert Frost

"The moment of waking is an incredible opportunity, and it's quite a tragedy if you go straight to your to-do list."

~ David Whyte

"Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time."

~ Marthe Troly-Curtin

"Birds born in cages think flying is an illness."

~ Alejandro Jodorowski

"Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?"

~ George Carlin

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

~ Turkish Proverb

"The best thing to hold onto in life is each other."

~ Audrey Hepburn

"Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time."

~ Maya Angelou

"It is never overreacting to ask for what you want and need."

~ Amy Poehler

"Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth."

~ Mike Tyson

"If everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough."

~ Mario Andretti

"I am not like other people.
I am burning in hell.
The hell of myself."

~ Charles Bukowski

"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."

~ Isaac Asimov

"You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore."

~ André Gide

"Everything you've ever wanted is on the other side of fear."

~ George Addair

"When you grow up you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money. That's a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it… Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again."

~ Steve Jobs

"If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery–isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you’ll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you’re going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It’s the only good fight there is."

~ Charles Bukowski

"My dear,

Find what you love and let it kill you.

Let it drain you of your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness.

Let it kill you and let it devour your remains.

For all things will kill you, both slowly and fastly, but it’s much better to be killed by a lover."

~ Kinky Friedman