"Philosophy is the goal toward which religion was only a helplessly blind groping."
~~ Ayn Rand [1905-82]
"An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics."
~~ Plutarch [46?–127 C.E.]
"Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears."
~~ motivational speaker Leslie C. 'Les' Brown
"Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else."
~~ James M. Barrie [1860-1937]
"Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work."
~~ Aristotle [384-322 B.C.E.]
"Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming.”
~~ U.C.L.A. coach John R. Wooden [1910-2010]
"Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs."
~~ Farrah Gray
"I would rather die of passion than of boredom."
~~ Vincent van Gogh [1853-90]
"The federal budget deficit isn't the nation's major economic problem and deficit reduction shouldn't be our major goal. Our problem is lack of good jobs and sufficient growth, and our goal must be to revive both."
~~ Robert Reich, in 2013
"There has never been an American tragedy. There have only been great failures."
~~ F. Scott Fitzgerald [1896-1940], in 1927
"There is no such thing as 'away'. When we throw anything away, it must go somewhere."
~~ Annie Leonard
"Courage is contagious."
~~ Julian Assange
"Men go faster these days, but I do not believe [that] they go anywhere better."
~~ Gertrude Stein [1874-1946]
"The [N.S.A.] invasion of human rights and American privacy has gone too far ... America has no functioning democracy at this moment."
~~ former President Jimmy Carter, in July 2013
"These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest."
~~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. [1929-68]
“Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering – and it’s all over much too soon.”
~~ Woody Allen
“If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very innovative.”
~~ Woody Allen
"Rights only exist when they apply to everyone. When only some people are accorded a so-called 'right', then it is privilege and subjugation."
~~ G.E. Nordell
"All politicians operate within an Orwellian nimbus where words don't mean what they normally mean, but Rovism posits that there is no objective, verifiable reality at all."
~~ Neal Gabler, in 2004
"I'm hoping for a return to at least partial sanity someday, but I'm not optimistic."
~~ writer & dog rescuer David Rosenfelt
"As long as politics is the shadow cast on society by big business, the attenuation of the shadow will not change the substance."
~~ John Dewey [1859-1952]
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and the poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." (Le Lys Rouge)
~~ Anatole France [1844-1924]
"Sooner or later we all quote our mothers."
~~ Bern Williams
"When men stop believing in God they don't believe in nothing: they believe in anything."
~~ often attributed to G.K. Chesterton [1874-1936]
"A woman's dress should be like a barbed-wire fence: serving its purpose without obstructing the view."
~~ Sophia Loren
"Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul."
~~ Joyce Carol Oates
"Industry pays debts, despair increases them."
~~ Benjamin Franklin [1706-90]
"The ideal scientist thinks like a poet and works like a bookkeeper."
~~ biologist E.O. Wilson
"The trouble with this country is that there are too many people going about saying 'The trouble with this country is ...'."
~~ Sinclair Lewis [1885-1951]
"Tolerance is the virtue of a man without conviction."
~~ G.K. Chesterton [1874-1936]
"We all have our time machines. Those that take us back are memories. Ans those that carry us forward are dreams."
~~ H.G. Wells [1866-1946]
"Being slightly paranoid is like being slightly pregnant – it tends to get worse."
~~ journalist Molly Ivins [1944-2007]
"Love yourself first and everything else falls into line."
~~ Lucille Ball [1911-89]
"Human beings have an extraordinary capacity to ignore risks that threaten their livelihood, as though this will make them go away."
~~ statistician Nate Silver
"A pessimist gets nothing but pleasant surprises."
~~ author Rex Stout [1886-1975]
"The greater the obstacle, the more glory [in] overcoming it."
~~ Molière [1622-73]
"It took me seventeen years to get 3,000 hits in baseball. I did it in one afternoon on the golf course."
~~ Hank Aaron
"If you attack the establishment long enough, they will make you a member of it."
~~ Art Buchwald [1925-2007]
"There must be some narrowness of the soul that compels one to keep secrets."
~~ Henry David Thoreau [1817-62]
"When you lavish praise on people, they flourish; criticize and they shrivel up."
~~ Richard Branson
"Had I abided by good advice I might have been saved from some of my most valuable mistakes."
~~ Edna St. Vincent Millay [1892-1950]
"Many people die with their music still in them. Why is this so? Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it, time runs out."
~~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
"If you think [that] going to the moon is hard, try staying at home."
~~ astronaut wife Barbara White Cernan
"Every time [that] I think I know where it's at, it's usually somewhere else."
~~ Blake Edwards [1922-2010]
"A book is a gift [that] you can open again and again."
~~ Garrison Keillor
"You don't have to be great to start, but you do have to start to be great."
~~ Zig Ziglar [1926-2012]
"The most effective way to manage change successfully is to create it."
~~ Peter F. Drucker [1909-2005]
"If you have to ask the cost of owning a yacht, you can't afford it."
~~ banker J.P. Morgan [1837-1913]
"Of the many imprisonments possible in this world, one of the worst must be to be inarticulate – to be unable to tell another person what you really feel."
~~ Roger Ebert [1942-2013]
"Rules cannot take the place of character."
~~ Alan Greenspan
"Be the first to not do what nobody has ever thought of not doing before."
~~ Brian Eno
"With knowledge comes more doubt."
~~ Goethe [1749-1832]
"No matter what side of an argument you're on, you always find some people on your side that you wish were on the other side."
~~ violinist Jascha Heifetz [1901-87]
"The nearest thing to eternal life [that] we will ever see on this earth is a government program."
~~ Ronald Reagan [1911-2004]
"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one."
~~ George R.R. Martin
"You've got to work like it's your first day on the job every day."
~~ Nicki Minaj
"We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it."
~~ Abraham Lincoln [1809-65]
"A good film is when the price of the dinner, the theatre admission, and the babysitter were worth it."
~~ Alfred Hitchcock [1899-1980]
"The self is not something ready-made, but something in continuous formation through choice of action."
~~ John Dewey [1859-1952]
"A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking."
~~ comedian Steven Wright
{each set of posted quotations are then posted at the Working Minds website, alphabetical by author}
