Famous Quotations
Abraham Lincoln (1809 to 1865)
- A child is a person who is going to carry on what you have started….the fate of humanity is in his hands.
- Just as I would not like to be a slave, so I would not like to be a master.
- A Government is of the people, by the people, and for the people.
Admiral Nelson (1758 to 1805)
- Thank God. I have done my duty.
- England expects every man to do his duty.
Albert Einstein (1879 to 1955)
For us physicists, the distinction between past, present, and future is only an illusion.
- It should be possible to explain the laws of physics to a barmaid.
- The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.
- Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocre minds.
- Only strong characters can resist the temptation of superficial analysis.
- Never stop questioning.
- The grand aim of all science is to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms.
Albert Gyorgyi (1893 to 1986)
- Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.
Aldons Huxley (1894 to 1963)
- Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant, and interesting.
Alexander, the Great (356 to 323 BCE)
- I am dying with the help of too many physicians.
Anatole France (1844 to 1924)
- An education isn’t how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It’s being able to differentiate between what you know and what you don t.
Ancient Indian Proverb
- Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our Children.
Archimedes (287 to 212 BCE)
- Eureka! Eureka! (I have found it.)
Aristotle (384 to 322 BCE)
- Man is, by nature, a political animal.
- Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is, truth.
- The goal of war is peace; of business, leisure.
- Virtue is a mean state between two vices, the one of excess and other deficiency.
- The roots of education are bitter, but fruit is sweet.
Balgangadhar Tilak (1856 to 1920)
- Swaraj is my birthright and I will have it.
Benjamin D’Israeli (1804 to 1881)
- The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages are perpetuated by quotations.
- The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages may be preserved by quotation.
Benjamin Franklin (1706 to 1790)
- Power, Poetry, and new Titles of Honour, make Men ridiculous.
Bismarck (1815 to 1898)
- Blood and iron.
Carl Schurz (1829 to 1906)
- Ideas are like stars: you will not succeed in touching them with your hands. But like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you will reach your destiny.
Charles W. Eliot (1834 to 1926)
- The efficient man is the man who thinks for himself, and is capable of thinking hard and long.
Christopher Wren (1632 to 1723)
- A time will come when men will stretch out their eyes. They should see planets like our Earth.
Cicero (106 to 43 BCE)
- The good of the people is the chief law.
David Thoreau Henry (1817 to 62)
- It takes two to speak the truth—one to speak and the other to hear.
Democritus, 460 BCE
- Opinion says hot and cold, but the reality is atoms and empty space.
Dr Beverly Crusher, from Star Trek
- If there is nothing wrong with me, maybe there’s something wrong with the universe.
Dr John G. Hibben (1916 to 1995)
- Education is the ability to meet life’s situations.
Edwin Aldrin (b. 1930)
- We have come to the conclusion that this has been far more than three men on the voyage to the moon. We feel that this stands as a symbol of the insatiable curiosity of all mankind to explore the unknown.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 to 1882)
- Genius always finds itself a century too early.
Epictetus
- Only the educated are free.
Francis Bacon (1561 to 1626)
- Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.
- Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed and some few to be chewed and digested.
Frank Tyger (1929 to 2011)
- Discoveries are often made by not following instructions; by going off the main road; by trying the untried.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 to 1900)
- Belief in truth begins with doubting all that has hitherto been believed true.
Galileo Galilei (1564 to 1642)
- In question of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth that humble reasoning of a single individual.
- Nevertheless, it moves (referring to the earth).
George Arnold (1834 to 1865)
- The living need charity more than the dead.
George Bernard Shaw (1856 to 1950)
- We must always think about things, and we must think about things as they are, and not as they are said to be.
- I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.
- The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.
- The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.
George Santayana (1863 to 1952)
- Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
Goldsmith (1730 to 1774)
- Where wealth accumulates, men decay.
- Wisdom makes but a slow defence against trouble, though at last a sure one.
Greek Proverb
- Be led by reason.
- W. Crane
- There is no future in any job; the future lies in the man who holds the job.
Hobbes (1588 to 1679)
- Knowledge is power.
Immanuel Kant (1724 to 1804)
- Happiness is not an ideal of reason but of imagination.
Jackie Robinson (1919 to 1972)
- Life is not a spectator sport…If you’re going to spend your whole life in the grandstand just watching what goes on, in my opinion you’re wasting your life.
Jacob Neusner (b. 1932)
- You do not need to justify asking questions. But if you think you have found answers, you do not have the right to remain silent.
James Madison (1751 to 1839)
- Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: and people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.
Jawaharlal Nehru (1889 to 1964)
- Freedom is in peril. Defend it with all your might.
- Play the game in the spirit of the game.
- … the light that shone in this country was an ordinary light … for that light represented the living truth…
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 to 1778)
- Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.
Jean Riboud (1919 to 1985)
- Think for yourself. Whatever is happening at the moment, try to think for yourself.
Jesus Christ (at the time of crucifixion)
- Eli, Eli Lamma Sabcathani (My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me)
Jesse Lee Bennett (1885 to 1931)
- Books are the compass and telescopes and sextants and charts which other men have prepared to help us navigate the dangerous seas of human life.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749 to 1834)
- Take care of your body with steadfast fidelity. The soul must see through these eyes alone, and if they are dim, the whole world is clouded.
John Keats (1795 to 1821)
- A thing of beauty is a joy forever.
- Beauty is truth, truth beauty. That is all you know on earth, and all ye need to know.
- I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest.
John Locke (1724 to 1804)
- No man’s knowledge here can go beyond his experience.
John Stuart Mill (1805 to 1873)
- Liberty consists in doing what one desires.
Jonathan Swift (1667 to 1745)
- When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, the dunces are all against him.
- W. von Goethe (1749 to 1834)
- Man errs so long as he strives.
- Mediocrity has no greater consolation than in the thought that genius is not immortal.
Kahlil Gibran (1883 to 1931)
- Yes, there is a nirvana: it is in leading your sheep to a green pasture, and in putting your child to sleep, and in writing the last line of your poem.
Karl Marx (1818 to 1883)
- Religion is the opium of the people.
- The class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat.
- The workers have nothing to lose but their chance. They have a world to gain. The workers of the world unite.
La Bruyere (1645 to 1696)
- Logic is the art of making the truth prevai1.
Lai Bahadur Shastri (1904 to 1966)
- Jai Jawan Jai Kisan.
- We have now to fight for peace with the same courage and determination as we fought against aggression.
Lord Byron (1788 to 1824)
- Whom the gods love die young.
Mahatma Gandhi (1869 to 1948)
- You may never know what results come of your action, but if you do nothing there will be no result.
- Throughout the history of mankind there have been murderers and tyrants; and while it may seem momentarily that they have the upper hand, they have always fallen. Always.
- You must be the change you wish to see in the world.
- Truth and non-violence are my God.
- Untouchability is a crime against God and mankind.
- Swaraj had ‘stunk in the nostrils’ and that without adequate discipline and restraint on the part of the people the movement had proved to be a ‘Himalayan Task’.
- Do or die.
Mao Tse Tung (1893 to 1976)
- Let a hundred flowers bloom and let a thousand schools of thought contend.
Michael Corleone, in The Godfather
- Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.
Milton (1608 to 1674)
- Better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven.
- Peace Hath her victorious, no less renowned than war.
- Opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making.
Mohd Ali Jinnah (1879 to 1948)
- Direct Action.
Napoleon (1769 to 1821)
- Give us good mothers, and I shall give you a good nation.
Neil Armstrong (1930 to 2012)
- One small step for men, giant leap for mankind (On stepping on the moon).
- Big, bright, and beautiful (Describing the view of the earth from the space).
- The responsibility for this flight lies from with history and with the giants of science who proceeded this effort (Farewell telecast from space).
Niccolo Machiavelli (Florentine Diplomat, died in 1527)
- I desire to go to hell and not to heaven. In the former place I shall enjoy the company of popes, kings, and princes while in latter are only beggars, monks, and apostles.
Niles Eldridge (b. 1943)
- If you want to be original, question all truths handed down to you.
Norbert Weiner (1894 to 1964)
- To live life effectively is to live with adequate information.
Orville Wright (1871 to 1948)
- If we all worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true is really true, there would be little hope of advance.
Paul Valery (1871 to 1945)
- That which has been believed by everyone, always and everywhere, has every chance of being false.
Pope (1688 to 1744)
- Know them thyself, presume not God to scan.
- The proper study of mankind is man.
- For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
Rabindranath Tagore (1861 to 1941)
- I am restless, I thirst for the distant, the far away.
Rudyard Kipling (1865 to 1936)
- East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet.
- Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great judgment seat.
Sam Houston (1793 to 1863)
- The benefits of education and of useful knowledge, generally diffused through a community, are essential to the preservation of a free government.
Samuel Butler (1835 to 1902)
- The most important service rendered by the press and the magazines is that of educating people to approach printed matter with distrust.
Sir Winston Churchill (1874 to 1965)
- I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.
- It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.
- I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.
- This was their finest hour (British airmen after the Battle of Britain).
- Give us tools and we will finish the job.
Socrates (469 to 399 BCE)
- For all our misfortunes were laid in one common heap, whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be content to take their own and depart.
- I know nothing except that facet of my ignorance.
- The unexamined life is not worth living.
St. Andrews
- The nearer to the Church, the farther from God.
Shelley (1792 to 1822)
- Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought (Ode to a Skylark).
Sir Isaac Newton (1642 to 1727)
- I don’t know what I may seem to the world. But as to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
Stephen W. Hawking (b. 1942)
- The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired.
Subhash Chandra Bose (1897 to 1945)
- Give me blood, I will give you freedom.
Tennyson (1802 to 1892)
- More things are wrought by prayers than this world dreams of.
Thomas Carlyle (1795 to 1881)
- The true university these days is a collection of books.
Thomas Edison (1847 to 1931)
- If we all did the things we are capable of, we would astound ourselves.
Thomas Hobbes (1588 to 1679)
- If I had read as much as other men, I would have known no more than they.
- The life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
Voltaire (1694 to 1778)
- It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
- The instinct of a man is to pursue everything that flies from him, and to fly from all that pursue him.
- If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.
- I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to death your right to say it.
- Marriage is the only adventure open to the timid.
Walter Lipsman (1859 to 1974)
- Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.
Wiliam Butler Yeats (1865 to 1939)
- Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.
William Wordsworth (1770 to 1850)
- My heart leaps up – The Child is the father of a man.
- The Best portion of a good men’s life, his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.