"Famous Quotes By Topic"

—Stephen R. Covey (b. 1932), motivational writer

“Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before.”

—Audre Lorde (1934-1992), poet, equal rights activist

“Every civilization when it loses its inner vision and its cleaner energy, falls into a new sort of sordidness, more vast and more stupendous than the old savage sort.”

—D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930), novelist, literary critic

“The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency — the belief that the here and now is all there is.”

—Allan Bloom (1930-1992), educator, writer

“It is the small doubts of timid souls that accomplish their ruin. It is the narrow vision, the fear and trembling hesitation, that constitute defeat.”

—Alice Foote MacDougall (1867-1945), businesswoman, writer

“This insight, which expresses itself by what is called Imagination, is a very high sort of seeing.”

—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), poet, essayist, philosopher

“Life is unnecessarily long. Moments of insight, of fine personal relation, a smile, a glance -- what ample borrowers of eternity they are!”

—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), poet, essayist, philosopher

“The moment of truth, the sudden emergence of a new insight, is an act of intuition. Such intuitions give the appearance of miraculous flushes, or short-circuits of reasoning. In fact they may be likened to an immersed chain, of which only the beginning and the end are visible above the surface of consciousness. The diver vanishes at one end of the chain and comes up at the other end, guided by invisible links.”

—Arthur Koestler (1905-1983), novelist, essayist

“A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight and understanding.”

—Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980), scholar, philosopher, theorist

“There is a tendency to mistake data for wisdom, just as there has always been a tendency to confuse logic with values, intelligence with insight. Unobstructed access to facts can produce unlimited good only if it is matched by the desire and ability to find out what they mean and where they lead. Facts are terrible things if left sprawling and unattended. They are too easily regarded as evaluated certainties rather than as the rawest of raw materials crying to be processed into the texture of logic.”

—Norman Cousins (1912-1990), writer, editor

“Begin with the end in mind.”

—Stephen R. Covey (b. 1932), motivational writer, famous quotes

“We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.”

—George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), playwright, critic

“If you wish, wish for more.”

—Arabic proverb

“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.”

—Helen Keller (1880-1968)

“You have to believe in yourself, that's the secret. Even when I was in the orphanage, when I was roaming the street trying to find enough to eat, even then I thought of myself as the greatest actor in the world. I had to feel the exuberance that comes from utter confidence in yourself. Without it, you go down to defeat.”

—Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977), comic actor, filmmaker, writer

“Promises are the uniquely human way of ordering the future, making it predictable and reliable to the extent that this is humanly possible.”

—Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), political philosopher, writer, educator

“If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.”

—George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950), Irish dramatist, novelist and critic

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