Inspiration

Favorite Quotes

These quotes always come to my rescue!

A black would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa.  He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world.  He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American. – WEB DuBois

The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.  -Steve (Stephen Bantu) Biko of South Africa

Success is not always fame or fortune.  Success is picking up that burden and keep on walking and not letting the pain trip you up.  -Maya Angelou

The minute a person feels that he/she has done it, you end the process.  You stop learning. -Maya Angelou

It is human to go through negative experiences, disappointments and frustrations.  It is one of the ways leading us to maturity.   -Kunkel & Dickerson (paraphrase of Kierkegaard)

Affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it.  No man hath affliction enough that is not matured, ripened by it, and made fit for God by that affliction.  -John Donne

The elevator to success is out of order.  You’ll have to use the stairs…one step at a time. – Joe Girard

I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it…We are in charge of our attitudes. – Charles Swindoll

Happiness lies for those who cry, those who hurt, those who have searched and those who have tried. For only they can appreciate the importance of people who have touched their lives. – Victor Hugo

Power corrupts.  Absolute power corrupts absolutely. -Fanshen (Chinese play re: revolution)

Violence breeds violence. Liberty is the necessary foundation for the development of all true values. -Einstein

There’s no such as good writing – there’s only good rewriting. -Louis D. Brandeis (Supreme Court Justice)

When a writer or an artist tries to tell the truth and tries to tell it eloquently, it appeals to all people, regardless of race. -Maya Angelou

Change is the only constant.  -93XRT (Chg radio station’s motto)

Where there is no vision the people perish. -Bible paraphrase

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie – deliberate, contrived and dishonest – but the myth – persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. – JFK

For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine…instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear…they will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. – Bible

What currently insists on truth is disproved, because Lie or her younger sister, Deception, often hands over only the most acceptable part of a memory, the part that sounds plausible on paper. – Gunter Grass

The past may not repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme. – Mark Twain

What history teaches is that men have never learned anything from it.  – Hegel

The treatment creates the disease; the illness is doctor-made. Dr. Ganaway re: repressed memory therapy

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. – Friedrich Nietzsche

I don’t want to see the Republican Party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny – Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry and Smear. -Margaret Chase Smith (Republican senator in the 1950s McCarthy era)

God’s own country becomes stranger and stranger, but somehow they manage to return to normality. Everything – even lunacy – is massed produced here.  But everything goes out of fashion very quickly. – Einstein re McCarthyism

Subtle is the Lord, but he is not malicious. Nature hides her secret because of her essential loftiness, but not by means of ruse.  – Albert Einstein

The value of education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think. – Albert Einstein

To punish me for my contempt of authority, fate has made me an authority myself. – Einstein

Wisdom is better than weapons of war. – Bible

It seems to me an utterly futile task to prescribe rules and limitations for the conduct of war. War is not a game; hence one cannot wage war by rules as one would in playing games. – Einstein

Should we be unable to find a way to honest cooperation and honest pacts with the Arabs, then we have learned absolutely nothing during our 2,000 years of suffering. The two great Semitic peoples have a great common future. – Einstein

Nationalism is an infantile disease, the measles of mankind.  – Einstein

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.  – Theodore Roosevelt” The Man in the Arena” speech at the Sorbonne in Paris

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the one who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.  – Einstein

Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices, but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence and fulfills the duty to express the results of his thought in clear form. –  variation of Einstein

Old times…if you’re not careful, they’ll gut you like a fish. Rules of Civility by Amor Towles

It is a lovely oddity of nature that a person is more inclined to interrupt two people in conversation than one person alone with a book, even if it is a foolish romanceRules of Civility by Amor Towles

New York has such courage and enthusiasm that everything can be begun again, sent back to the building yard and made into something still greater.  Le Corbusier

Mildness governs more than anger. – Aesop

Ingratitude is a crime. – Aesop

Carelessness is a form of ingratitude. – Aesop

Notoriety is often mistaken for fame. – Aesop

Foolish love brings sorrow. – Aesop

Being busy doesn’t always mean being useful. – Aesop

Trust not fine promises. – Aesop

The most dangerous enemy is the one within. – Aesop

Death and love strike unexpectedly. – Aesop

Stoop to conquer. – Aesop

Learn to listen wisely. – Aesop

The remedy is often as bad as the disease. – Aesop

No plea will save the innocent against an unjust judge. – Aesop

Nothing so bad that it might not be worse. – Aesop

Prevention is better than cure. – Aesop

A crust with quietness is better than a feast eaten in fear. – Aesop

Be not forgetful of benefits. – Aesop

Thoughtless friends bring more hurt than profit. – Aesop

A poor excuse is a dangerous thing. – Aesop

Brooding over troubles increases them. – Aesop

The fulfillment of our wishes may lead to ruin. – Aesop

Double dealing is worse than open enmity. – Aesop

There is no parleying with the dishonest. – Aesop

Wealth and respectability are often at variance. – Aesop

Gossips are best answered by silence. – Aesop

Contempt is the best answer for scurrility. – Aesop

Small duties neglected become great perils. – Aesop

He who enters a business should see his way out of it. – Aesop

It is a common habit to talk of what is right and good, and to do what is quite the reverse. – Aesop

Remember your own infirmities when correcting those of others. – Aesop

If all prayers were answered, no one would be satisfied. – Aesop