Sourced and curated.

2003

★ 7.0

Remembering 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.

I'd rather sing one wild song and burst my heart with it, than live a thousand years watching my digestion and being afraid of the wet.

2005

★ 6.9

Short story

There are no atheists in the fox holes.

1916

★ 6.9

William Thomas Cummings

1943

★ 6.9

You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.

Anne Lamott

1994

★ 6.9

I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.

What little girls learn is not the desire for the other, but the desire to be desired.

1916

★ 6.7

Sociology

Naomi Wolf

The Beauty Myth · 1990

★ 6.1

Supreme Court opinion · Legal opinion · Legal writing

These men and women...ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.

Anthony Kennedy

Obergefell v. Hodges · 2015

★ 6.1

Lighthouses don't go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.

Anne Lamott

1994

★ 6.0

I live in a rather special world. I know only one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don't know. They're outside my ken. But sometimes when I'm in a theater I can feel them.

Pauline Kael

1972

★ 6.0

That's the trouble, a sex symbol becomes a thing. I just hate to be a thing.

Marilyn Monroe

1962

★ 5.5

It's more fun to be a pirate than to join the Navy.

Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?

1987

★ 5.5

People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along?

1983

★ 5.4

Rodney King

1992

★ 5.4

There ain't any answer, there ain't going to be any answer, there never has been any answer, that’s the answer.

Gertrude Stein

1946

★ 5.3

Supreme Court opinion · Legal opinion · Legal writing

To separate them from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone... We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of "separate but equal" has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.

Earl Warren

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka · 1954

★ 5.3

I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise, they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4 a. M. Of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends.

Americans traditionally love to fight. All real Americans love the sting of battle.

On Keeping a Notebook · 1968

★ 5.3

Film · Biography (film) · War (film) · Biography · War

George S. Patton

Patton · 1969

★ 5.3

Speech

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.

Philip K. Dick

1978

★ 5.3

What matters most is how well you walk through the fire.

Charles Bukowski

1994

★ 5.3

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, They have to take you in.

Which is more musical, a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school?

1914

★ 5.2

John Cage

1961

★ 5.2

Some folks are born made to wave the flag, Ooh, that red, white, and blue. And when the band plays "Hail to the Chief," Ooh, they point the cannon at you, Lord, It ain't me, it ain't me I ain't no senator's son, no. It ain't me, it ain't me I ain't no fortunate one.

Creedence Clearwater Revival

Fortunate Son · 1969

★ 5.2

It'll play in Peoria.

John Ehrlichman

1969

★ 5.2

Much of modern art is devoted to lowering the threshold of what is terrible. By getting us used to what, formerly, we could not bear to see or hear, because it was too shocking, painful, or embarrassing, art changes morals.

"Beauty" is a currency system like the gold standard. Like any economy, it is determined by politics, and in the modern age in the West it is the last, best belief system that keeps male dominance intact.

Freak Show · 1973

★ 5.2

Sociology

Naomi Wolf

The Beauty Myth · 1990

★ 5.2

TV program

If you just run through somebody face, a lot of people ain't going to be able to take that over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. They're just not gonna want that.

Marshawn Lynch

60 Minutes · 2016

★ 5.2

And were an epitaph to be my story I'd have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I have a lovers quarrel with the world.

The Lesson for Today · 1941

★ 5.1

Fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention.

Amy Tan

The Joy Luck Club · 1989

★ 4.7

Stay hungry, stay foolish.

1974

★ 4.6

Justice is love on legs, spilling over into the public sphere.

Cornel West

2009

★ 4.6

Rock music

I'm a loser, baby, so why don't you kill me?

Beck

Loser · 1993

★ 4.5

Play · Comedy (play)

The best part of married life is the fights. The rest is merely so-so.

When the moon is in the seventh house, And Jupiter aligns with Mars, Then peace will guide the planets, And love will steer the stars; This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius.

1954

★ 4.5

Song · Pop music

The 5th Dimension

Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In · 1967

★ 4.5

Longing, we say, because desire is full of endless distances.

Robert Hass

1979

★ 4.4

I would just like to say that no one ever asked me to lie and I was never promised a job for my silence. And that I'm sorry. I'm really sorry for everything that's happened. And I hate Linda Tripp.

Monica Lewinsky

1998

★ 4.4

And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.

East of Eden · 1952

★ 3.8

We tell ourselves stories in order to live.

The White Album · 1979

★ 3.8

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.

North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that.

2005

★ 3.8

Speech · Political speech

1969

★ 3.7

What a long, strange trip it's been.

The Grateful Dead

Truckin' · 1970

★ 3.7

Personal journal

Get up quickly-just switch on the white light of the will.

1973

★ 3.7

Well, when the president does it…that means that it is not illegal.

I can’t make you love me if you don’t. You can’t make your heart feel something it won’t.

1977

★ 3.7

Song · Pop music

Bonnie Raitt

I Can't Make You Love Me · 1991

★ 3.7

It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them.

1998

★ 3.7

Home is wherever I'm with you.

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros

Home · 2010

★ 3.7

I discovered me in the library.

Paris Review · 2010

★ 3.7

I'm just 'bout that action, boss.

Marshawn Lynch

2014

★ 3.7

The knowledge that she would never be loved in return acted upon her ideas as a tide acts upon cliffs.

The Bridge on San Luis Rey · 1927

★ 3.6

I have been one acquainted with the night.

1928

★ 3.6

Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.

If it is right, it happens—The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.

1942

★ 3.6

Letter

1958

★ 3.6

Character—the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life—is the source from which self-respect springs.

Self-respect: Its Source, Its Power · 1961

★ 3.6

To free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves—there lies the great, the singular power of self-respect. Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home.

Vogue · 1961

★ 3.6

Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.

Ursula K. Le Guin

1971

★ 3.6

Speech · Political speech

People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I am not a crook.

1973

★ 3.6

Reality denied comes back to haunt.

Philip K. Dick

Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said · 1974

★ 3.6

Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow after your characters have run by on their way to incredible destinations.

The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you’re uncool.

1990

★ 3.6

Film · Road movie · Comedy drama (film) · Comedy drama

Lester Bangs

Almost Famous · 2000

★ 3.6

Through story, every culture defines itself and teaches its children how to be people and members of their people.

Ursula K. Le Guin

2002

★ 3.6

Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work, and the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking and don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years go on.

2005

★ 3.6

You can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something…because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well worn path and that will make all the difference.

We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable-but then, so did the divine right of kings.

2005

★ 3.6

Speech

Ursula K. Le Guin

2014

★ 3.6

Short story

A good idea, he thought, to sleep off to death. It was like taking an anaesthetic. Freezing was not so bad as people thought. There were lots worse ways to die... Then the man drowsed off into what seemed to him the most comfortable and satisfying sleep he had ever known.

1902

★ 3.5

There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive.

He was mastered by the sheer surging of life, the tidal wave of being, the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew in that it was everything that was not death, that it was aglow and rampant, expressing itself in movement, flying exultantly under the stars.

The Call of the Wild · 1903

★ 3.5

Novel · Magazine

The Saturday Evening Post · 1903

★ 3.5

Some say that we shall never know, and that to the gods we are like the flies that the boys kill on a summer's day, and some say, to the contrary, that the very sparrows do not lose a feather that has not been brushed away by the finger of God.

The Bridge on San Luis Rey · 1927

★ 3.5

Now he discovered that secret from which one never quite recovers, that even in the most perfect love one person loves less profoundly than the other. There may be two equally good, equally gifted, equally beautiful, but there may never be two that love one another equally well.

Sharing food with another human being is an intimate act that should not be indulged in lightly.

The Bridge on San Luis Rey · 1927

★ 3.5

Essay · Food writing

M.F.K. Fisher

1949

★ 3.5

Novel · Science fiction

There was always a minority afraid of something, and a great majority afraid of the dark, afraid of the future, afraid of the past, afraid of the present, afraid of themselves and shadows of themselves.

Be nice to people on your way up because you'll meet 'em on your way down.

1950

★ 3.5

Biography

Wilson Mizner

1953

★ 3.5

Letter

A strange species we are. We can stand anything God and nature can throw at us save only plenty. If I wanted to destroy a nation, I would give it too much, and I would have it on its knees, miserable, greedy, and sick.

1959

★ 3.5

To have that sense of one's intrinsic worth which, for better or for worse, constitutes self-respect, is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent.

Was there ever in anyone's life span a point free in time, devoid of memory, a point when choice was any more than sum of all the choices gone before?

1961

★ 3.5

Prior to any questioning, the person must be warned that he has a right to remain silent, that any statement he does make may be used as evidence against him, and that he has a right to the presence of an attorney, either retained or appointed.

1963

★ 3.5

Supreme Court opinion · Legal opinion · Legal writing

Earl Warren

Miranda v. Arizona · 1966

★ 3.5

What have they done to the earth, yeah? What have they done to our fair sister? Ravaged and plundered and ripped her and bit her Stuck her with knives in the side of the dawn, And tied her with fences and dragged her down. I hear a very gentle sound, With your ear down to the ground We want the world and we want it We want the world and we want it Now.

The Doors

When the Music's Over · 1967

★ 3.5

Autobiography and memoir

Sex and religion are bordering states. They use the same vocabulary, share like ecstasies, and often serve as a substitute for one another.

Jessamyn West

1973

★ 3.5

Though collecting quotations could be considered as merely an ironic mimetism-victimless collecting, as it were... In a world that is well on its way to becoming one vast quarry, the collector becomes someone engaged in a pious work of salvage. The course of modern history having already sapped the traditions and shattered the living wholes in which precious objects once found their place, the collector may now in good conscience go about excavating the choicer, more emblematic fragments.

Melancholy Objects · 1974

★ 3.5

I brought myself down. I gave 'em a sword. And they stuck it in, and they twisted it with relish. And I guess if I'd had been in their position, I'd have done the same thing.

1977

★ 3.5

Not only did we play the race card, we dealt it from the bottom of the deck.

Robert Shapiro

1995

★ 3.5

We have to be people who set each other free.

Harry Hay

1998

★ 3.5

I have several walls in several rooms of my house covered with the snowstorm of rejections, but they didn't realize what a strong person I was, I persevered and wrote a thousand more dreadful short stories, which were rejected in turn.

2002

★ 3.5

Instead of looking at things, look between things.

John Baldessari

2009

★ 3.5

Speech · TED Talk

Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes-including you.

Anne Lamott

2017

★ 3.5

Now no joy but lacks salt That is not dashed with pain And weariness and fault; I crave the stain Of tears, the aftermark Of almost too much love, The sweet of bitter bark And burning clove.

The words "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang," which I saw on an Italian movie poster, are perhaps the briefest statement imaginable of the basic appeal of movies.

1923

★ 3.5

Pauline Kael

1968

★ 3.5

The moon does not fight. It attacks no one. It does not worry. It does not try to crush others. It keeps to its course, but by its very nature, it gently influences.

Ming-Dao Deng

1996

★ 3.5

Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow.

What factors are at play, for example, when people of high IQ flounder and those of modest IQ do surprisingly well? I would argue that the difference quite often lies in the abilities called here emotional intelligence, which include self control, zeal and persistence, and the ability to motivate oneself.

2011

★ 2.9

Daniel Goleman

1995

★ 2.5

I know this—a man got to do what he got to do.

The Grapes of Wrath · 1939

★ 2.1

If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none.

Fahrenheit 451 · 1953

★ 2.0

Real art has the capacity to make us nervous.

Music, you know, true music, not just rock n roll, it chooses you.

Against Interpretation · 1966

★ 2.0

Film · Comedy drama (film) · Comedy drama

Lester Bangs

Almost Famous · 2000

★ 2.0

The blizzard doesn't last forever; it just seems so.

The morning star always gets wonderful bright the minute before it has to go, doesn't it?

2002

★ 2.0

Play · Drama (play) · Drama

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.

1938

★ 1.9

1939

★ 1.9

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.

Cosmopolitan · 1947

★ 1.9

Camp is a vision of the world in terms of style-but a particular kind of style. It is the love of the exaggerated, the "off," of things-being-what-they-are-not... The ultimate Camp statement: it's good because it's awful.

Notes on Camp · 1964

★ 1.9

The man who insists on high and serious pleasures is depriving himself of pleasure; he continually restricts what he can enjoy; in the constant exercise of his good taste he will eventually price himself out of the market, so to speak.

Notes on Camp · 1964

★ 1.9

When we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something or need something, not that it is a pragmatic necessity for us to have it, but that it is a moral imperative that we have it, then is when we join the fashionable madmen, and then is when the thin whine of hysteria is heard in the land, and then is when we are in bad trouble.

1965

★ 1.9

What pornographic literature does is precisely to drive a wedge between one's existence as a full human being and one's existence as a sexual being.

We find ourselves rich in goods, but ragged in spirit; reaching with magnificent precision for the moon, but falling into raucous discord on earth. We are caught in war, wanting peace. We are torn by division, wanting unity. We see around us empty lives, wanting fulfillment. We see tasks that need doing, waiting for hands to do them.

The Pornographic Imagination · 1967

★ 1.9

Speech · Political speech