Some quotes I like.
It is the man of science, eager to have his every opinion regenerated,
his every idea rationalized, by drinking at the fountain of fact, and
devoting all the energies of his life to the cult of truth, not as he
understands it, but as he does not yet understand it, that ought
properly to be called a philosopher.
–Charles Sanders Peirce
Making your mark on the world is hard. If it were easy, everybody would do it. But it’s not. It takes patience, it takes commitment, and it comes with plenty of failure along the way. The real test is not whether you avoid this failure, because you won’t. It’s whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere.””
- Barack Obama
“The difference between school and life? In school, you’re taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you’re given a test that teaches you a lesson.”
–Tom Bodett
“I believe in intuition and inspiration. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research”
–Albert Enstein
“The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.”
– Hans Hofmann
“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”
–Leo Tolstoy
For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.”
–T.S. Eliot
To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has
already achieved, but what he aspires to.
–Khalil Gibran
I have always observed that to succeed in the world one should appear
like a fool but be wise.
–Charles de Montesquieu
All of us encounter, at least once in our life, some individual who
utters words that make us think forever. There are men whose phrases
are oracles; who condense in one sentence the secrets of life; who
blurt out an aphorism that forms a character or illustrates an
existence.
–Benjamin Disraeli
The obstacles to peace are in the minds and hearts of men.
In the study of matter we can be honest, impartial, true. That is why
we succeed in dealing with it. But about the things we care for — which
are ourselves, our desires and lusts, our patriotisms and hates — we
find a harder test of thinking straight and truly. Yet there is the
greater need. Only by intellectual rectitude and in that field shall we
be saved. There is no refuge but in truth, in human intelligence, in
the unconquerable mind of man.
–Norman Angell
I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and
reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I’ll believe anything,
no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The
wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more
solid the evidence will have to be.
–Isaac Asimov
The only way human beings can win a war is to prevent it.
–George Marshall
If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell
yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches.
–Rainer Maria Rilke
Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is
the torch which illuminates the world.
–Louis Pasteur
“Heaven helps those who help themselves” is a well-tried maxim,
embodying in a small compass the results of vast human experience. The
spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the
individual; and, exhibited in the lives of many, it constitutes the
true source of national vigour and strength. Help from without is often
enfeebling in its effects, but help from within invariably invigorates.
Whatever is done for men or classes, to a certain extent takes away the
stimulus and necessity of doing for themselves; and where men are
subjected to over-guidance and over-government, the inevitable tendency
is to render them comparatively helpless.
–Samuel Smiles
“Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words?”
–Oscar Wilde in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)
I have always lived in a world in which I’m just a spot in history. My
life is not the important point. I’m just part of the continuum, and
that continuum, to me, is a marvelous thing. The history of life, and
the history of the planet, should go on and on and on and on. I cannot
conceive of anything in the universe that has more meaning than that.
–Sheri S. Tepper
More quotes I like here.