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Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Political speech558 quotes
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. — Martin Luther King, Jr. · 1963The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. — Franklin D. Roosevelt · 1933With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations. — Abraham Lincoln · 1865Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. — Abraham Lincoln · 1863We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature. — Abraham Lincoln · 1861And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country. — John F. Kennedy · 1961All 558 quotes →Commencement address24 quotes
You don't ever have to do anything sensational for people to love you. — Fred Rogers · 2002Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. — Steve Jobs · 2005Our world hangs like a magnificent jewel in the vastness of space. Every one of us is a part of that jewel, a facet of that jewel. And in the perspective of infinity, our differences are infinitesimal. We are intimately related. — Fred Rogers · 2002A society based on the letter of the law and never reaching any higher fails to take advantage of the full range of human possibilities. The letter of the law is too cold and formal to have a beneficial influence on society. Whenever the tissue of life is woven of legalistic relationships, this creates an atmosphere of spiritual mediocrity that paralyzes man’s noblest impulses. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn · 1978The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty, unsexy ways, every day. — David Foster Wallace · 2005It's not the honors and the prizes and the fancy outsides of life which ultimately nourish our souls. It's the knowing that we can be trusted, that we never have to fear the truth, that the bedrock of our lives, from which we make our choices, is very good stuff. — Fred Rogers · 2002All 24 quotes →Philosophical literature10 quotes
The unexamined life is not worth living. — Socrates · 399 BCI know that I do not know. — Socrates · 399 BCSocrates, he says, breaks the law by corrupting young men and not recognizing the gods that the city recognizes, but some other new deities. — Socrates · 399 BCTo fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise, without being wise: for it is to think that we know what we do not know. — Socrates · 399 BCVirtue does not come from money, but from virtue comes money and all other good things to man, both to the individual and to the state. — Socrates · 399 BCLiberty is liberty, not equality or fairness or justice or culture, or human happiness or a quiet conscience. — Isaiah Berlin · 1958All 10 quotes →Historical literature6 quotes
We are lovers of beauty without extravagance, and lovers of wisdom without unmanliness. Wealth is to us is not mere material for vainglory but an opportunity for achievement; and poverty we think it no disgrace to acknowledge but a real degradation to make no effort to overcome. — Pericles · 430 BCBut the bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding go out to meet it. — Pericles · 430 BCOur constitution is named a democracy, because it is in the hands not of the few but of the many. But our laws secure equal justice for all in their private disputes, and our public opinion welcomes and honors talent in every branch of achievement, not for any sectional reason but on grounds of excellence alone. And as we give free play to all in our public life, so we care the same spirit into our daily relations with one another... Open and friendly in our private intercourse, in our public acts we keep strictly within the control of law. We acknowledge the restraint of authority, and to the laws, more especially to those which offer protection to the oppressed and those unwritten ordinances whose transgression brings admitted shame. — Pericles · 430 BCFix your eyes on the greatness of Athens as you have it before you day by day, fall in love with her, and when you feel her great, remember that this greatness was won by men with courage, with knowledge of their duty, and with a sense of honor in action... So they gave their bodies to the commonwealth and received each for his own memory, praise that will never die, and with it the grandest of all memorials, not that in which their mortal bones are laid, but a home in the minds of men, where their glory remains fresh to stir to speech or action as the occasion comes fresh to stir to speech or action as the occasion comes by. For the whole earth is the memorial of famous men; and their story is not graven only on stone over their native earth, but lives on far away, without visible symbol, woven into the stuff of other men's lives. — Pericles · 430 BCWe secure our friends not by accepting favors, but by doing them. — Pericles · 430 BCFor famous men have the whole earth as their memorial. — Pericles · 430 BCMilitary speech6 quotes
Wars may be fought with weapons, but they are won by men. It is the spirit of the men who follow and of the man who leads that gains the victory. — General George S. Patton · 1933Think of it, soldiers; from the summit of these pyramids, forty centuries look down upon you. — Napoleon Bonaparte · 1823Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best; it removes all that is base. — General George S. Patton · 1944If men are to be precluded from offering their sentiments on a matter, which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences, that can invite the consideration of Mankind; reason is of no use to us—the freedom of Speech may be taken away—and, dumb & silent we may be led, like sheep, to the Slaughter. — George Washington · 1783The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own... The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; this is all we can expect-We have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or die. — George Washington · 1776Here we will stand and fight; there will be no further withdrawal. I have ordered that all plans and instructions dealing with further withdrawal are to be burnt, and at once. We will stand and fight here. If we can't stay here alive, then let us stay here dead. — Bernard Montgomery · 1942Scientific literature2 quotes
We are, perhaps, uniquely among the earth's creatures, the worrying animal. We worry away our lives, fearing the future, discontent with the present, unable to take in the idea of dying, unable to sit still. — Lewis Thomas · 1978The science of Pure Mathematics, in its modern developments, may claim to be the most original creation of the human spirit. — Alfred North Whitehead · 1925TED Talk2 quotes
Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes-including you. — Anne Lamott · 2017The problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie · 2009Autobiography and memoir1 quote
Life does not consist mainly—or even largely—of facts and happenings. It consists mainly of the storm of thoughts that is forever blowing through one's head. — Mark Twain · 1910Courtroom speech1 quote
Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence. — John Adams · 1770Funeral oration1 quote
First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen. — Henry Lee III · 1799Political literature1 quote
Liberty is liberty, not equality or fairness or justice or culture, or human happiness or a quiet conscience. — Isaiah Berlin · 1958War speech1 quote
The war is over-the rebels are our countrymen again. — Ulysses S. Grant · 1865