Quotes to inspire and reflect

Zuckerman, sucker though he was for seriousness, was still not going to be drawn into a discussion about agents and editors. If ever there was a reason for an American writer to seek asylum in Red China, it would be to put ten thousand miles between himself and those discussions.

A presentation copy, reader,—if haply you are yet innocent of such favours—is a copy of a book which does not sell, sent you by the author.

What are the publications that succeed? Those that pretend to teach the public that the persons they have been accustomed unwittingly to look up to as the lights of the earth are no better than themselves.

I am happy to exhibit, but not to put myself on exhibition.

In oratory the greatest art is to hide art.

There is a photographer in every bush, going about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.

An orator can hardly get beyond commonplaces: if he does, he gets beyond his hearers.

What orators lack in depth they make up to you in length.

All the great speakers were bad speakers at first.

Nothing is so unbelievable that oratory cannot make it acceptable.

It fell to me in these coming days and months to express their sentiments on suitable occasions. This I was able to do, because they were mine also. There was a white glow, overpowering, sublime, which ran through our island from end to end.

There is no group in America that can withstand the force of an aroused public opinion,

With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it, nothing can succeed. Consequently he who molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions.

A government can be no better than the public opinion which sustains it.

About things on which the public thinks long it commonly attains to think right.

A universal leeling, whether well or ill founded, cannot be safely disregarded.

According to the experience of all but the most accomplished jugglers, it is easier to keep one ball in the air than many.

The idea of what the public will think prevents the public from ever thinking at all, and acts as a spell on the exercise of private judgment.

When the multitude detests a man, inquiry is necessary; when the multitude likes a man, inquiry is equally necessary.

What we call public opinion is generally public sentiment.

Your public servants serve you right; indeed often they serve you better than your apathy and indifference deserve.

Nothing is more dangerous in wartime than to live in the temperamental atmosphere of a Gallup Poll, always feeling one’s pulse and taking one’s temperature.

As soon as public service ceases to be the chief business of the citizens, and they would rather serve with their money than with their persons, the State is not far from its fall.

In our democracy officers of the government are the servants, and never the masters of the people.

A situation in a public office is secure, but laborious and mechanical, and without the two great springs of life, Hope and Fear.

He that puts on a public gown must put off a private person.

A man ain’t got no right to be a public man, unless he meets the public views.

Nowadays, for the sake of the advantage which is to be gained from the public revenues and from office, men want to be always in office.

It is not easy for a person to do any great harm when his tenure of office is short, whereas long possession begets tyranny.

The object of psychology is to give us a totally different idea of the things we know best.

Paradoxically, only journeying backward in time and reentering the home we once knew allows us to go forward to the home we’ve always wanted.

Until a man can quit talking loudly to himself in order to shout down the memories of blunderings and gropings, he is in no shape for the painstaking examination of distress.

To understand oneself is the classic form of consolation; to elude oneself is the romantic.

Let us not seek our disease out of ourselves; ’tis in us, and planted in our bowels; and the mere fact that we do not perceive ourselves to be sick, renders us more hard to be cured.

Every life is, more or less, a ruin among whose debris we have to discover what the person ought to have been.

To have known how to change the past into a few saddened smiles—is this not to master the future?

There were 117 psychoanalysts on the Pan Am flight to Vienna and I'd been treated by at least six of them. And married a seventh.

Why do analysts always answer a question with a question?

It might be said of psychoanalysis that if you give it your little finger it will soon have your whole hand.

Look into the depths of your own soul and learn first to know yourself, then you will understand why

Once read thy own breast right, / And thou hast done with fears.

All cases are unique, and very similar to others.

Do you not know, Prometheus, that words are healers of the sick temper?

Prudery is a kind of avarice, the worst of all.

Decency, not to dare to do that in public which it is decent enough to do in private.

A private sin is not so prejudicial in this wrorld as a public indecency.

So soon a? prudence has begun to grow up in the brain, like a dismal fungus, it finds its first expression in a paralysis of generous acts.

The prudent man does himself good; the virtuous one does it to other men.