Quotes to inspire and reflect

And in knowing that you know nothing, that makes you the smartest of all.

True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.

I consider it useless and tedious to represent what exists, because nothing that exists satisfies me. Nature is ugly, and I prefer the monsters of my fancy to what is positively trivial.

Poetry and progress are like two ambitious men who hate one another with an instinctive hatred, and when they meet upon the same road, one of them has to give place.

We are weighed down, every moment, by the conception and the sensation of Time. And there are but two means of escaping and forgetting this nightmare: pleasure and work. Pleasure consumes us. Work strengthens us. Let us choose.

There are two kinds of light--the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures.

The world only goes round by misunderstanding.

Human Dignity has gleamed only now and then and here and there, in lonely splendor, throughout the ages, a hope of the better men, never an achievement of the majority.

Why do you have to be a nonconformist like everybody else?

He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.

Statistically the probability of any one of us being here is so small that you would think the mere possibility of existence would keep us all in a contented dazzlement of surprise.

Thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative.

There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don’t know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.

I call upon the scientific community in our country, those who gave us nuclear weapons, to turn their great talents now to the cause of mankind and world peace: to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete.

One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us.

To sit back hoping that someday, someway, someone will make things right is to go on feeding the crocodile, hoping he will eat you last--but eat you he will.

The ultimate determinant in the struggle now going on for the world will not be bombs and rockets but a test of wills and ideas-a trial of spiritual resolve: the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish and the ideals to which we are dedicated.

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents--except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

Say what you have to say, not what you ought. any truth is better than make-Believe!

How sweet it would be to treat men and things, for an hour, for just what they are!

Do what nobody else can do for you. Omit to do anything else.

Spring is the time of the year, when it is summer in the sun and winter in the shade.

Wine is bottled poetry.

As you enter positions of trust and power, dream a little before you speak.

Blessed are the weak who think that they are good because they have no claws.

The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants beyond everything else is safety

Necessity makes even the timid brave.

We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life.

A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, in each government, in each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elites...

Too much rest is rust.

Pride grows in the human heart like lard on a pig.

We are all travelers in the wilderness of the World, and the best that we can find in our travels is an honest friend.

Common looking people are the best in the world: that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them.

Courage is the power of the mind to overcome fear.

The first wealth is health.

There are no great limits to growth because there are no limits of human intelligence, imagination, and wonder.

The greatest mistake a man can make is to be afraid of making one.

The secret of success is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.

To keep the body in good health is a duty otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear.

Wisdom born of experience should tell us that war is obsolete. There may have been a time when war served as a negative good by preventing the spread and growth of an evil force... If we assume that life is worth living, if we assume that mankind has the right to survive, then we must find an alternative to war.

When one is in town one amuses oneself. When one is in the country one amuses other people. It is excessively boring.

Daylight, in my mind, the night faded.

The most painful state of living is remembering the future.

I require myself not to be equal to the best, but to be better than the bad.

It is only the inferior thinker who hastens to explain the singular and the complex by the primitive shortcut of supernaturalism. H. P.

This Rock has become an object of veneration in the United States. I have seen bits of it carefully preserved in several towns in the Union. Does this sufficiently show that all human power and greatness is in the soul of man? Here is a stone which the feet of a few outcasts pressed for an instant; and the stone becomes famous; it is treasured by a great nation; its very dust is shared as a relic.

He is a fool that cannot conceal his wisdom.

I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer. F.