-
The ability to focus attention on important things is a defining characteristic of intelligence.
~Robert J. Shiller
from Irrational Exuberance
-
The longest journey is the journey inward.
~Dag Hammarskjold
-
I detest life-insurance agents; they always argue that I shall some day die, which is not so.
~Stephen Leacock
-
Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.
~Eric Hoffer
-
People ask for criticism, but they only want praise.
~W. Somerset Maugham
-
Character - the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life - is the source from which self respect springs.
~Joan Didion
from "Slouching Towards Bethlehem"
-
Do it now. It is not safe to leave a generous feeling to the cooling influences of the world.
~Thomas Guthrie
-
Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.
~Bertrand Russell
from Conquest of Happiness (1930) ch. 12
-
If you want to catch something, running after it isn't always the best way.
~Lois McMaster Bujold
from "Borders of Infinity", 1989
-
The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as of the greatest virtues.
~Rene Descartes
from 'Le Discours de la Methode,' 1637
-
Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot.
~D. H. Lawrence
-
The time is now, the place is here. Stay in the present. You can do nothing to change the past, and the future will never come exactly as you plan or hope for.
~Dan Millman
-
Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.
~Robert Heinlein
from Time Enough For Love
-
Appetite, with an opinion of attaining, is called hope; the same, without such opinion, despair.
~Thomas Hobbes
-
No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expediency.
~Theodore Roosevelt
from 'The Strenuous Life,' 1900
-
The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.
~Carl Jung
-
God loved the birds and invented trees. Man loved the birds and invented cages.
~-- Jacques Deval
from Afin de vivre bel et bien
-
Pleasure is an important component of the quality of life, but by itself it does not bring happiness. Pleasure helps to maintain order, but by itself cannot create a new order in consciousness.
~Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
from Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, 1990
-
I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief.
~Gerry Spence
from 'How to Argue and Win Every Time'
-
I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.
~Thomas Jefferson
-
You wake me up early in the morning to tell me I am right? Please wait until I am wrong.
~Johann von Neumann
from on being phoned at 10:00 AM
-
If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.
~Mark Twain
-
Not merely an absence of noise, Real Silence begins when a reasonable being withdraws from the noise in order to find peace and order in his inner sanctuary.
~Peter Minard
-
Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.
~George S. Patton
-
Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.
~Arthur Schopenhauer