The Quotes canon
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Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Margaret Atwood9 quotes
Nobody dies from lack of sex. It's lack of love we die from. — Margaret Atwood · 1985This above all, to refuse to be a victim. — Margaret Atwood · 1972When we think of the past it's the beautiful things we pick out. We want to believe it was all like that. — Margaret Atwood · 1985But who can remember pain, once it’s over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind. — Margaret Atwood · 1985Don't let the bastards grind you down. — Margaret Atwood · 1985But people will do anything rather than admit that their lives have no meaning. No use, that is. No plot. — Margaret Atwood · 1985All 9 quotes →John Kenneth Galbraith6 quotes
All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership. — John Kenneth Galbraith · 1977It will be convenient to have a name for the ideas which are esteemed at any time for their acceptability, and it should be a term that emphasizes this predictability. I shall refer to these ideas henceforth as the conventional wisdom. — John Kenneth Galbraith · 1958Wealth is not without its advantages and the case to the contrary, although it has often been made, has never proved widely persuasive. — John Kenneth Galbraith · 1958Trickle-down theory—the less than elegant metaphor that if one feeds the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows. — John Kenneth Galbraith · 1992These are the days when men of all social disciplines and all political faiths seek the comfortable and the accepted; when the man of controversy is looked upon as a disturbing influence; when originality is taken to be a mark of instability; and when, in minor modification of the scriptural parable, the bland lead the bland. — John Kenneth Galbraith · 1958One can relish the varied idiocy of human action during a panic to the full, for, while it is a time of great tragedy, nothing is being lost but money. — John Kenneth Galbraith · 1955Leonard Cohen6 quotes
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in — Leonard Cohen · 1992Some say that no one ever leaves Montreal, for that city, like Canada itself, is designed to preserve the past, a past that happened somewhere else. — Leonard Cohen · 1963A woman watches her body uneasily, as though it were an unreliable ally in the battle for love. — Leonard Cohen · 1963I don't consider myself a pessimist at all. I think of a pessimist as someone who is waiting for it to rain. And I feel completely soaked to the skin. — Leonard Cohen · 1993Now, maybe there's a God above
As for me all I've ever learned from love
Is how to shoot at someone who outdrew you
But it's not a cry that you're hear tonight
It's not some pilgrim who claims to have seen the light
No, it's a cold and it's a very broken Hallelujah — Leonard Cohen · 1984Everybody knows the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows. — Leonard Cohen · 1988William Osler4 quotes
The natural man has only two primal passions, to get and beget. — William Osler · 1904The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism. — William Osler · 1902The young physician starts life with twenty drugs for each disease, and the old physician ends life with one drug for twenty diseases. — William Osler · 1950Take the sum of human achievement in action, in science, in art, in literature-subtract the work of the men above forty, and while we should miss great treasures, even priceless treasures, we would practically be where we are today... The effective, moving, vitalizing work of the world is done between the ages of twenty-five and forty. — William Osler · 1925Joni Mitchell3 quotes
I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
I wish I had a river so long
I would teach my feet to fly — Joni Mitchell · 1971They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot,
With a pink hotel,
A boutique, and a swinging hot spot. — Joni Mitchell · 1970We are stardust,
We are golden,
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden. — Joni Mitchell · 1969Marshall McLuhan3 quotes
Advertising is the greatest art form of the twentieth century. — Marshall McLuhan · 1976The medium is the message. — Marshall McLuhan · 1964Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room. Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America—not the battlefields of Vietnam. — Marshall McLuhan · 1975John McCrae2 quotes
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below. — John McCrae · 1915To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields. — John McCrae · 1915Pierre Trudeau2 quotes
Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered the beast, one is affected by every twitch and grunt. — Pierre Trudeau · 1969There's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation. — Pierre Trudeau · 1967Yann Martel2 quotes
To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation. — Yann Martel · 2001Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at it while it can. But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud. — Yann Martel · 2001Agnes Martin1 quote
Your path is at your feet whether you realize it or not. That is the most important thing that I will say but I will not enlarge upon it. — Agnes Martin · 2004Alex Trebek1 quote
My life has been a quest for knowledge and understanding, and I am nowhere near having achieved that. And it doesn’t bother me in the least. — Alex Trebek · 2020Arthur Charles Erickson1 quote
North American civilization is one of the ugliest to have emerged in human history, and it has engulfed the world. Asphalt and exhaust fumes clog the villages... This great, though disastrous, culture can only change as we begin to stand off and see... The inveterate materialism which has become the model for cultures around the globe. — Arthur Charles Erickson · 1973Bruce Cockburn1 quote
Got to kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight. — Bruce Cockburn · 1984Charlotte Whitton1 quote
Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. — Charlotte Whitton · 1963Crowfoot1 quote
A little while and I will be gone from among you, whither I cannot tell. From nowhere we came, into nowhere we go. What is life? It is a flash of a firefly in the night. It is a breath of a buffalo in winter time. It is as the little shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset. — Crowfoot · 1890Drake1 quote
You only live once, that's the motto nigga YOLO — Drake · 2011Gilles Vigneault1 quote
My country is not a country, it is winter. — Gilles Vigneault · 1964Glenn Gould1 quote
The purpose of art is the lifelong construction of a state of wonder. — Glenn Gould · 1982Gordon Lightfoot1 quote
Does any one know where the love of God goes
When the waves turn the minutes to hours? — Gordon Lightfoot · 1976Hugh Keough1 quote
The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong; but that is the way to bet. — Hugh Keough · 1919Irving Layton1 quote
Only the tiniest fraction of mankind want freedom.
All the rest want someone to tell them they are free. — Irving Layton · 1969Jean Chretien1 quote
Leadership means making people feel good. — Jean Chretien · 1984Jim Carrey1 quote
I wish people could realize all their dreams and wealth and fame so that they could see that it’s not where you’re going to find your sense of completion. — Jim Carrey · 2014John C. Polanyi1 quote
When…we fear science, we really fear ourselves. Human dignity is better served by embracing knowledge. — John C. Polanyi · 1986John Philpot Curran1 quote
The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime, and the punishment of his guilt. — John Philpot Curran · 1816L.M. Montgomery1 quote
Look at that sea, girls-all silver and shadow and vision of things not seen. We couldn't enjoy its loveliness any more if we had millions of dollars and ropes of diamonds. — L.M. Montgomery · 1908Laurence J. Peter1 quote
In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence. — Laurence J. Peter · 1969Louis Riel1 quote
People say the native stands on the edge of a chasm. It is not he who stands on the edge of a chasm; his claims are not false. They are just... Every step the Indian takes is based on a profound sense of fairness. — Louis Riel · 1885Margaret Millar1 quote
Most conversations are simply monologues delivered in the presence of a witness. — Margaret Millar · 1942Mark Strand1 quote
A truly exciting poem has something evasive or mysterious at the core, and it succeeds in suggesting to us that the core is essential to our being. — Mark Strand · 1979