The Quotes canon
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Every quote has been curated by hand and carefully authenticated.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Richard Nixon15 quotes
Well, when the president does it…that means that it is not illegal. — Richard Nixon · 1977North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that. — Richard Nixon · 1969People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I am not a crook. — Richard Nixon · 1973I 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. — Richard Nixon · 1977Let us be proud that our system has produced and provided more freedom and more abundance, more widely shared, than any system in the history of the world. — Richard Nixon · 1973We 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. — Richard Nixon · 1969All 15 quotes →Susan Sontag13 quotes
Courage is as contagious as fear. — Susan Sontag · 2003Much 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. — Susan Sontag · 1973Get up quickly-just switch on the white light of the will. — Susan Sontag · 1973Though 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. — Susan Sontag · 1974Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. — Susan Sontag · 1966Camp 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. — Susan Sontag · 1964All 13 quotes →Joan Didion12 quotes
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. — Joan Didion · 1968We tell ourselves stories in order to live. — Joan Didion · 1979Character—the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life—is the source from which self-respect springs. — Joan Didion · 1961To 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. — Joan Didion · 1961To 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. — Joan Didion · 1961Was 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? — Joan Didion · 1963All 12 quotes →Robert Frost11 quotes
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I ––
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. — Robert Frost · 1916Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in. — Robert Frost · 1914And 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. — Robert Frost · 1941Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length. — Robert Frost · 1942I have been one acquainted with the night. — Robert Frost · 1928Now 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. — Robert Frost · 1923All 11 quotes →Steve Jobs11 quotes
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. — Steve Jobs · 2005It's more fun to be a pirate than to join the Navy. — Steve Jobs · 1987Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world? — Steve Jobs · 1983Stay hungry, stay foolish. — Steve Jobs · 1974Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. — Steve Jobs · 2005It'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. — Steve Jobs · 1998All 11 quotes →Ray Bradbury8 quotes
I discovered me in the library. — Ray Bradbury · 2010Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow after your characters have run by on their way to incredible destinations. — Ray Bradbury · 1990I 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. — Ray Bradbury · 2002There 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. — Ray Bradbury · 1950If 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. — Ray Bradbury · 1953The blizzard doesn't last forever; it just seems so. — Ray Bradbury · 2002All 8 quotes →Thornton Wilder7 quotes
The best part of married life is the fights. The rest is merely so-so. — Thornton Wilder · 1954The knowledge that she would never be loved in return acted upon her ideas as a tide acts upon cliffs. — Thornton Wilder · 1927Some 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. — Thornton Wilder · 1927Now 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. — Thornton Wilder · 1927The morning star always gets wonderful bright the minute before it has to go, doesn't it? — Thornton Wilder · 1938The whole purpose of literature... Is the notation of the heart. Style is but the faintly contemptible vessel in which the bitter liquid is recommended to the world. — Thornton Wilder · 1927All 7 quotes →Jack London6 quotes
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. — Jack London · 1916I 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. — Jack London · 1916There 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. — Jack London · 1903He 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. — Jack London · 1903A 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. — Jack London · 1902A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog. — Jack London · 1907John Steinbeck6 quotes
And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good. — John Steinbeck · 1952If it is right, it happens—The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away. — John Steinbeck · 1958A 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. — John Steinbeck · 1959I know this—a man got to do what he got to do. — John Steinbeck · 1939Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen. — John Steinbeck · 1947A writer lives in awe of words for they can be cruel or kind, and they can change their meanings right in front of you. They pick up flavors and odors like butter in a refrigerator. — John Steinbeck · 1954Anne Lamott3 quotes
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 · 1994Lighthouses don't go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining. — Anne Lamott · 1994Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes-including you. — Anne Lamott · 2017Lester Bangs3 quotes
The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you’re uncool. — Lester Bangs · 2000Music, you know, true music, not just rock n roll, it chooses you. — Lester Bangs · 2000The ultimate sin of any performer is contempt for the audience. — Lester Bangs · 1977Robert McNamara3 quotes
We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who participated in the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the priniples and traditions of this nation. We made our decisions in the light of those values. Yet we were wrong, terribbly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why. — Robert McNamara · 1995We all make mistakes. We know we make mistakes. I don't know any military commander, who is honest, who would say he has not made a mistake. There's a wonderful phrase: "the fog of war." What "the fog of war" means is: war is so complex it's beyond the ability of the human mind to comprehend all the variables. Our judgment, our understanding, are not adequate. And we kill people unnecessarily. — Robert McNamara · 2003Military force—especially when wielded by an outside power—just cannot bring order in a country that cannot govern itself. — Robert McNamara · 1995Ursula K. Le Guin3 quotes
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 · 1971Through story, every culture defines itself and teaches its children how to be people and members of their people. — Ursula K. Le Guin · 2002We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable-but then, so did the divine right of kings. — Ursula K. Le Guin · 2014Amy Tan2 quotes
Fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention. — Amy Tan · 1989I've often fantasized I would get a lot of writing done if I were put in prison for a minor crime. Three to six months. — Amy Tan · 2013Charles Bukowski2 quotes
What matters most is how well you walk through the fire. — Charles Bukowski · 1994When things are very very bad, a drink is the only magic cheap thing left to give you the dream, to make you feel good for a moment. — Charles Bukowski · 1981Creedence Clearwater Revival2 quotes
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 · 1969Still the rain kept pouring, falling on my ears,
And I wonder, still I wonder, who'll stop the rain. — Creedence Clearwater Revival · 1970Earl Warren2 quotes
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 · 1954Prior 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. — Earl Warren · 1966Marshawn Lynch2 quotes
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 · 2016I'm just 'bout that action, boss. — Marshawn Lynch · 2014Naomi Wolf2 quotes
What little girls learn is not the desire for the other, but the desire to be desired. — Naomi Wolf · 1990"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. — Naomi Wolf · 1990Pauline Kael2 quotes
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 · 1972The 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. — Pauline Kael · 1968Philip K. Dick2 quotes
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. — Philip K. Dick · 1978Reality denied comes back to haunt. — Philip K. Dick · 1974Wilson Mizner2 quotes
Be nice to people on your way up because you'll meet 'em on your way down. — Wilson Mizner · 1953A trip through a sewer in a glass-bottomed boat. — Wilson Mizner · 1953Anthony Kennedy1 quote
These men and women...ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right. — Anthony Kennedy · 2015Beck1 quote
I'm a loser, baby, so why don't you kill me? — Beck · 1993Bonnie Raitt1 quote
I can’t make you love me if you don’t.
You can’t make your heart feel something it won’t. — Bonnie Raitt · 1991Buddy DeSylva1 quote
Look for the silver lining
Whene'er a cloud
Appears in the blue. — Buddy DeSylva · 1920Clifford Geertz1 quote
There is no such thing as a human nature independent of culture. — Clifford Geertz · 1973Cornel West1 quote
Justice is love on legs, spilling over into the public sphere. — Cornel West · 2009Dale Russell1 quote
Dinosaurs are a touchstone that separates the mentality of children from that of adults. — Dale Russell · 1989Daniel Goleman1 quote
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. — Daniel Goleman · 1995