Quotes · Skopia

422 quotes

Remember that Time is Money. — Benjamin Franklin · 1748 Rebellion to Tyrants is obedience to God. — Benjamin Franklin · 1775 Diligence is the mother of good luck. — Benjamin Franklin · 1736 Early to Bed and early to rise, makes a Man healthy, wealthy and wise. — Benjamin Franklin · 1735 Fish and Visitors stink after three days. — Benjamin Franklin · 1736 Haste makes Waste. — Benjamin Franklin · 1753 All 81 quotes →

Ralph Waldo Emerson45 quotes

Always do what you are afraid to do. — Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1841 In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed. — Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1841 The only reward of virtue is virtue; the only way to have a friend is to be one. — Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1841 This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it. — Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1837 Come out of your warm, angular house, resounding with few voices, into the chill, grand, instantaneous night, with such a Presence as a full moon in the clouds. — Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1838 Men are what their mothers made them. — Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1860 All 45 quotes →

Henry David Thoreau39 quotes

Our life is frittered away by detail…. Simplify, simplify. — Henry David Thoreau · 1854 The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. — Henry David Thoreau · 1854 If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. — Henry David Thoreau · 1854 I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. — Henry David Thoreau · 1854 I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. — Henry David Thoreau · 1854 In the long run men hit only what they aim at. — Henry David Thoreau · 1854 All 39 quotes →

John Adams32 quotes

A government of laws, and not of men. — John Adams · 1775 I agree with you, that in Politicks the Middle Way is none at all. — John Adams · 1776 The happiness of society is the end of government. — John Adams · 1776 The Revolution was effected before the War commenced. The Revolution was in the Minds and Hearts of the People. — John Adams · 1818 Every project has been found to be no better than committing the lamb to the custody of the wolf, except that one which is called a balance of power. — John Adams · 1789 We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. — John Adams · 1798 All 32 quotes →

John F. Kennedy23 quotes

And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country. — John F. Kennedy · 1961 For of those to whom much is given, much is required. — John F. Kennedy · 1961 Ich bin ein Berliner. — John F. Kennedy · 1963 Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty. — John F. Kennedy · 1961 All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words "Ich bin ein Berliner!" — John F. Kennedy · 1963 I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish...in a very real sense, it will not be one man going to the moon—if we make this judgment affirmatively, it will be an entire nation. For all of us must work to put him there. — John F. Kennedy · 1961 All 23 quotes →

Henry Adams16 quotes

Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, had always been the systematic organization of hatreds. — Henry Adams · 1907 Modern politics is, at bottom, a struggle not of men but of forces. — Henry Adams · 1907 All the steam in the world could not, like the Virgin, build Chartres. — Henry Adams · 1907 Practical politics consists in ignoring facts. — Henry Adams · 1907 At best, the renewal of broken relations is a nervous matter. — Henry Adams · 1907 All experience is an arch, to build upon. — Henry Adams · 1907 All 16 quotes →

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.16 quotes

Taxes are what we pay for civilized society. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. · 1927 If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought—not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. · 1929 Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. · 1911 The truth is, that the law is always approaching, and never reaching, consistency. It is forever adopting new principles from life at one end, and it always retains old ones from history at the other, which have not yet been absorbed or sloughed off. It will become entirely consistent only when it ceases to grow. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. · 1880 It is revolting to have no better reason for a rule of law than that so it was laid down in the time of Henry IV. It is still more revolting if the grounds upon which it was laid down have vanished long since, and the rule simply persists from blind imitation of the past. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. · 1897 It will need more than the Nineteenth Amendment to convince me that there are no differences between men and women, or that legislation cannot take those differences into account. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. · 1923 All 16 quotes →

Nathaniel Hawthorne14 quotes

Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind. — Nathaniel Hawthorne · 1860 We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream; it may be so the moment after death. — Nathaniel Hawthorne · 1836 Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart! — Nathaniel Hawthorne · 1850 No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true. — Nathaniel Hawthorne · 1850 On the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread, appeared the letter A. — Nathaniel Hawthorne · 1850 The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits. — Nathaniel Hawthorne · 1851 All 14 quotes →

George Santayana13 quotes

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. — George Santayana · 1905 Scepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer. — George Santayana · 1923 Let a man once overcome his selfish terror at his own finitude, and his finitude is, in one sense, overcome. — George Santayana · 1910 Perhaps the only true dignity of man is his capacity to despise himself. — George Santayana · 1910 The Bible is literature, not dogma. — George Santayana · 1910 There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval. — George Santayana · 1922 All 13 quotes →

Emily Dickinson9 quotes

Much Madness is divinest Sense — To a discerning Eye — Much Sense—the starkest Madness — 'Tis the Majority In this, as All, prevail — Assent—and you are sane — Demur—you're straightway dangerous — And handled with a Chain — — Emily Dickinson · 1886 If I can stop one Heart from breaking I shall not live in vain If I can ease one Life the Aching Or cool one Pain Or help one fainting Robin Unto his Nest again I shall not live in Vain. — Emily Dickinson · 1886 Inebriate of Air - am I - And debauchee of dew - Reeling - thro endless summer days - From inns of Molten Blue. — Emily Dickinson · 1861 Success is counted sweetest By those who ne'er succeed. To comprehend a nectar Requires sorest need. — Emily Dickinson · 1864 We never know how high we are Till we are asked to rise And then if we are true to plan Our statures touch the skies. — Emily Dickinson · 1886 That Love is all there is, Is all we know of Love; It is enough, the freight should be Proportioned to the groove. — Emily Dickinson · 1886 All 9 quotes →

John Quincy Adams9 quotes

Individual liberty is individual power, and as the power of a community is a mass compounded of individual powers, the nation which enjoys the most freedom must necessarily be in proportion to its numbers the most powerful nation. — John Quincy Adams · 1822 Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. — John Quincy Adams · 1821 From the experience of the past we derive instructive lessons for the future. — John Quincy Adams · 1825 Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air. — John Quincy Adams · 1802 It is a source of gratification and of encouragement to me to observe that the great result of this experiment upon the theory of human rights has at the close of that generation by which it was formed been crowned with success equal to the most sanguine expectations of its founders. — John Quincy Adams · 1825 The forest has fallen by the ax of our woodsmen; the soil has been made to teem by the tillage of our farmers; our commerce has whitened every ocean. The dominion of man over physical nature has been extended by the invention of our artists. — John Quincy Adams · 1825 All 9 quotes →

W.E.B. Du Bois8 quotes

The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression, even though that cost be blood. — W.E.B. Du Bois · 1909 Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house? — W.E.B. Du Bois · 1903 The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line. — W.E.B. Du Bois · 1900 The dark world is going to submit to its present treatment just as long as it must and not one moment longer. — W.E.B. Du Bois · 1920 It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others... One feels his twoness-an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivngs; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. — W.E.B. Du Bois · 1903 The Negro folk-song-the rhythmic cry of the slave-stands today not simply as the sole American music, but as the most beautiful expression of human experience born this side the seas. It has been neglected, it has been, and is, half despised, and above all it has been persistently mistaken and misunderstood; but notwithstanding, it still remains as the singular spiritual heritage of the nation and the greatest gift of the Negro people. — W.E.B. Du Bois · 1903 All 8 quotes →

Robert F. Kennedy7 quotes

Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance. — Robert F. Kennedy · 1966 Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. — Robert F. Kennedy · 1966 The gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans. — Robert F. Kennedy · 1968 There is a Chinese curse which says "May he live in interesting times." Like it or not, we live in interesting times. They are times of danger and uncertainty; but they are also the most creative of any time in the history of mankind. — Robert F. Kennedy · 1966 We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times; we've had difficult times in the past; we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; it is not the end of disorder. But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings who abide in our land. — Robert F. Kennedy · 1968 This world demands the qualities of youth: not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the life of ease. — Robert F. Kennedy · 1966 All 7 quotes →

William Lloyd Garrison6 quotes

Our country is the world — our countrymen are all mankind. — William Lloyd Garrison · 1837 The compact which exists between the North and the South is a covenant with death and an agreement with hell. — William Lloyd Garrison · 1843 I will be as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. No! No! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; but urge me not to use moderation. — William Lloyd Garrison · 1831 I am in earnest-I will not equivocate-I will not excuse-I will not retreat a single inch-and I will be heard! — William Lloyd Garrison · 1831 Wherever there is a human being, I see God-given rights inherent in that being, whatever may be the sex or complexion. — William Lloyd Garrison · 1853 Let Southern oppressors tremble-let their secret abettors tremble-let their Northern apologists tremble-let all the enemies of the persecuted blacks tremble. — William Lloyd Garrison · 1831

Abigail Adams5 quotes

These are times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed.... Great necessities call out great virtues. — Abigail Adams · 1780 In the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. — Abigail Adams · 1776 Patriotism in the female Sex is the most disinterested of all virtues. Excluded from honours and from offices, we cannot attach ourselves to the State or Goverment from having held a place of Eminence...Yet all History and every age exhibit Instances of patriotick virtue in the female Sex; which considering our situation equals the most Heroick of yours. — Abigail Adams · 1782 Whilst you are proclaiming peace and good will to men, emancipating all nations, you insist upon retaining an absolute power over wives. But you must remember that arbitrary power is like most other things which are very hard, very liable to be broken-and notwithstanding all your wise laws and maxims we have it in our power not only to be free ourselves but to subdue our masters, and without violence throw both your natural and legal authority at our feet. — Abigail Adams · 1776 It is really mortifying, sir, when a woman possessed of a common share of understanding considers the difference of education between the male and female sex, even in those families where education is attended to... Nay why should your sex wish for such a disparity in those whom they one day intend for companions and associates. Pardon me, sir, if I cannot help sometimes suspecting that this neglect arises in some measure from an ungenerous jealousy of rivals near the throne. — Abigail Adams · 1778

Oliver Wendell Holmes5 quotes

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, As the swift seasons roll! Leave thy low-vaulted past! — Oliver Wendell Holmes · 1858 Man has his will,—but woman has her way! — Oliver Wendell Holmes · 1857 Every now and then a man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions. — Oliver Wendell Holmes · 1831 There is no time like the old time, when you and I were young. — Oliver Wendell Holmes · 1865 I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving. To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it,—but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor. — Oliver Wendell Holmes · 1858

Dr. Seuss4 quotes

Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not. — Dr. Seuss · 1971 You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. And you are the guy who'll decide where to go. — Dr. Seuss · 1990 And when they played they really played. And when they worked they really worked. — Dr. Seuss · 1939 Nonsense wakes up the brain cells. — Dr. Seuss · 1983

Jack Kerouac4 quotes

But then they danced down the street like dingle-dodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everbody goes "Awww!" — Jack Kerouac · 1957 Pretty girls make graves. — Jack Kerouac · 1958 Rest and be kind, you don't have to prove anything. — Jack Kerouac · 1958 Ah, life is a gate, a way, a path to Paradise anyway, why not live for fun and joy and love or some sort of girl by a fireside, why not go to your desire and LAUGH... — Jack Kerouac · 1962

Sylvia Plath4 quotes

I desire the things which will destroy me in the end. — Sylvia Plath · 1951 I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart: I am, I am, I am. — Sylvia Plath · 1963 If you expect nothing from somebody, you are never disappointed. — Sylvia Plath · 1963 The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. — Sylvia Plath · 1953

Charles Sanders Peirce3 quotes

Every man is fully satisfied that there is such a thing as truth, or he would not ask any question. — Charles Sanders Peirce · 1903 When I communicate my thought and my sentiments to a friend with whom I am in full sympathy, so that my feelings pass into him and I am conscious of what he feels, do I not live in his brain as well as in my own-most literally! — Charles Sanders Peirce · 1966 Our whole past experience is continually in our consciousness, though most of it sunk to a great depth of dimness. I think of consciousness as a bottomless lake, whose waters seem transparent, yet into which we can clearly see but a little way. — Charles Sanders Peirce · 1966

James Russell Lowell3 quotes

And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days. — James Russell Lowell · 1848 Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side. — James Russell Lowell · 1845 And I honor the man who is willing to sink Half his present repute for the freedom to think, And, when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak, Will risk t' other half for the freedom to speak. — James Russell Lowell · 1848

Lucretia Mott3 quotes

In the true marriage relation, the independence of the husband and wife is equal, the dependence mutual and their obligations reciprocal. — Lucretia Mott · 1880 The legal theory is, that marriage makes the husband and wife one person, and that person is the husband. — Lucretia Mott · 1849 Let woman then go on-not asking favors, but claiming as a right the removal of all hindrances to her elevation in the scale of being-let her receive encouragement for the proper cultivation of all her powers, so that she may enter profitably into the active business of life... Then in the marriage union, the independence of the husband and wife will be equal, their dependence mutual, and their obligations reciprocal. — Lucretia Mott · 1849

William Cullen Bryant3 quotes

The groves were God's first temples. — William Cullen Bryant · 1824 Loveliest of lovely things are they, On earth, that soonest pass away. The rose that lives its little hour Is prized beyond the sculptured flower. — William Cullen Bryant · 1828 The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year, Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere. — William Cullen Bryant · 1832

Buckminster Fuller2 quotes

Now there is one outstanding important fact regarding Spaceship Earth, and that is that no instruction book came with it. — Buckminster Fuller · 1969 Nature is trying very hard to make us succeed, but nature does not depend on us. We are not the only experiment. — Buckminster Fuller · 1978

Chris Burden2 quotes

The first time you do something only happens once. — Chris Burden · 2008 To trust your intuition is exactly the opposite of any sort of formal education. — Chris Burden · 1993

Henry Beston2 quotes

The world today is sick to its thin blood for lack of elemental things, for fire before the hands, for water welling from the earth, for air, for the dear earth itself underfoot. — Henry Beston · 1928 The three great elemental sounds in nature are the sound of rain, the sound of wind in a primeval wood, and the sound of outer ocean on a beach. — Henry Beston · 1928

James McNeill Whistler2 quotes

I am not arguing with you-I am telling you. — James McNeill Whistler · 1890 Art should be independent of all claptrap-should stand alone, and appeal to the artistic sense of eye or ear, without confounding this with emotions entirely foreign to it, as devotion, pity, love, patriotism, and the like. All these have no kind of concern with it. — James McNeill Whistler · 1890

John Cheever2 quotes

It was at the highest point in the arc of a bridge that I became aware suddenly of the depth and bitterness of my feelings about modern life, and of the profoundness of my yearning for a more vivid, simple, and peaceable world. — John Cheever · 1978 Wear dark clothes after 6 p. M. Eat fresh fish for breakfast when available. Avoid kneeling in unheated stone churches. Ecclesiastical dampness causes premature gray hair. Fear tastes like a rusty knife and do not let her into your house. Courage tastes of blood. Stand up straight. Admire the world. Relish the love of a gentle woman. Trust in the Lord. — John Cheever · 1957

John Greenleaf Whittier2 quotes

For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: "It might have been!" — John Greenleaf Whittier · 1856 The Night is mother of the Day, The Winter of the Spring, And ever upon old Decay The greenest mosses cling. — John Greenleaf Whittier · 1847

Louisa May Alcott2 quotes

I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning how to sail my ship. — Louisa May Alcott · 1868 Women have been called queens a long time, but the kingdom given them isn't worth ruling. — Louisa May Alcott · 1869

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