Miscellaneous Quotations

The quotations found in this category do not quite fall into any other.

Showing 397 through 432 of 499 quotations in this category.

"Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men."

-Ayn Rand

"A leader or a man of action in a crisis almost always acts subconsciously and then thinks of the reasons for his action."

-Jawaharlal Nehru

"It may well be doubted whether human ingenuity can construct an enigma... which human ingenuity may not, by proper application, resolve."

-Edgar Allen Poe

"Stranger, if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me, why should you not speak to me? And why should I not speak to you?"

-Walt Whitman

"It is vain to do with more what can be done with less."

-William of Occam

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."

-Albert Einstein

"I feel that you are justified in looking into the future with true assurance, because you have a mode of living in which we find the joy of life and the joy of work harmoniously combined. Added to this is the spirit of ambition which pervades your very being, and seems to make the day's work like a happy child at play."

-Albert Einstein, referring to America

"One lives but once in the world."

-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it."

-Albert Einstein

"My views and feelings [are] in favor of the abolition of war -- and I hope it is practicable, by improving the mind and morals of society, to lessen the disposition to war; but of its abolition I despair."

-Thomas Jefferson

"It is not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that make horseraces."

-Mark Twain

"In a mad world, only the mad are sane."

-Akiro Kurosawa

"Genius is present in every age, but the men carrying it within them remain benumbed unless extraordinary events occur to heat up and melt the mass so that it flows forth."

-Denis Diderot

"Honest differences are often a healthy sign of progress."

-Mahatma Gandhi

"Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error."

-Thomas Jefferson

"We'll do all right if we can capitalize on our mistakes."

-Mickey Rivers

"Fame comes only when deserved, and then is as inevitable as destiny, for it is destiny."

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"There would be no society if living together depended upon understanding each other."

-Eric Hoffer

"Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side? And hain't that a big enough majority in any town?"

-Mark Twain, Huckelberry Finn

"Yield to temptation. It may not pass your way again."

-Robert Heinlein

"How idiotic civilization is! Why be given a body if you have to keep it shut up in a case like a rare, rare fiddle?"

-Katherine Mansfield

"It is so basic. A human being is an innocent part of nature. Our civilization has distorted this universal quality that allows us to feel at home in our skin. Other animals have coats that they accept, but the human race has yet to come to terms with being nude."

-Ruth Bernhard

"Art is the objectification of feeling and the subjectification of nature."

-Suzanne Langer

"See, when I paint, it is an experience that, at its best, is transcending reality. When it is working, you completely go into another place, you're tapping into things that are totally universal, completely beyond your ego and your own self. That's what it's all about."

-Keith Haring

"I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them."

-Pablo Picasso

"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."

-Henry David Thoreau

"No great genius is without an admixture of madness."

-Aristotle

"Modern man lives increasingly in the future and neglects the present."

-Loren Eiseley

"A team effort is a lot of people doing what I say."

-Michael Winner

"Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self."

-Jean-Luc Godard

"I don't wish to be everything to everyone, but I would like to be something to someone."

-Javan

"One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star."

-Friedrich Nietzsche

"An artist never really finishes his work, he merely abandons it."

-Paul Valery

"All a man can betray is his conscience."

-Joseph Conrad

"Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after."

-Anne Morrow Lindbergh

"People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles."

-Frank Herbert