- WIST is my personal collection of quotations, curated for thought, amusement, turn of phrase, historical significance, or sometimes just (often-unintentional) irony. Please feel free to browse and borrow.
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Popular Quotables
- “Wealth and Poverty,” speech, National… (6,350)
- “The Lesson for Today,” A Witness Tree (1942) (5,776)
- Agamemnon, ll. 175-183 [tr. Johnston (2007)] (5,634)
- Nobel prize acceptance speech (10 Dec 1962) (4,861)
- “The Triumph of Stupidity” (10 May 1933) (4,767)
- “On The Conduct of Life” (1822) (3,881)
- “In Search of a Majority,” Speech,… (3,790)
- “Get a Knife, Get a Dog, but Get Rid of… (3,643)
- “The Historian as Participant,” Daedalus… (3,050)
- “Hallowed Ground” (1825) (3,028)
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Adams, John • Bacon, Francis • Bible • Bierce, Ambrose • Billings, Josh • Butcher, Jim • Chesterton, Gilbert Keith • Churchill, Winston • Einstein, Albert • Eisenhower, Dwight David • Emerson, Ralph Waldo • Franklin, Benjamin • Fuller, Thomas (1654) • Gaiman, Neil • Galbraith, John Kenneth • Gandhi, Mohandas • Goethe, Johann von • Hazlitt, William • Heinlein, Robert A. • Hoffer, Eric • Huxley, Aldous • Ingersoll, Robert Green • James, William • Jefferson, Thomas • Johnson, Lyndon • Johnson, Samuel • Kennedy, John F. • King, Martin Luther • La Rochefoucauld, Francois • Lewis, C.S. • Lincoln, Abraham • Mencken, H.L. • Orwell, George • Pratchett, Terry • Roosevelt, Eleanor • Roosevelt, Theodore • Russell, Bertrand • Seneca the Younger • Shakespeare, William • Shaw, George Bernard • Stevenson, Adlai • Stevenson, Robert Louis • Twain, Mark • Watterson, Bill • Wilde, Oscar- Only the 45 most quoted authors are shown above. Full author list.
Recent Feedback
- 20-May-20 - Introduction to the Art of Thinking, ch. 1, "Friendship" (1761) | WIST on John 15:13 (KJV).
- 18-May-20 - Chamblee54 on Clouds, ll. 998-999 (423 BC) [tr. Athenian Soc. (1912)].
- 18-May-20 - Chamblee54 on Mills E. Godwin, Governor of Virginia (Dec 1966).
- 11-May-20 - Chamblee54 on “Indian Summer,” Enough Rope (1926).
- 1-May-20 - Quoted in The Observer (17 Mar 1985) | WIST on Robert J. Hanlon, “Hanlon’s Razor,” Murphy’s Law, Book Two (ed. A. Bloch) (1980).
- 1-May-20 - Grow, Grow – Traditional Iconoclast on Midrash Rabba, Bereshit 10:6.
Quotations about drive
Note that not all quotations have been tagged, so the Search function may find additional quotations on this topic.
Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to “jump at de sun.” We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground.
Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) American writer, folklorist, anthropologist
Dust Tracks on a Road, ch. 2 “My Folks” (1942)
(Source)
A person who has not done one half his day’s work by ten o’clock runs a chance of leaving the other half undone.
Emily Brontë (1818-1848) British novelist, poet [pseud. Ellis Bell]
Wuthering Heights, ch. 7 (1847) [Nelly]
(Source)
The starting point of all achievement is desire.
Napoleon Hill (1883-1970) American author, motivational writer
Think and Grow Rich (1937)
The great and glorious masterpiece of man is to know how to live to purpose; all other things, to reign, to lay up treasure, to build, are, at most, but little appendices and props.
Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) French essayist
“Of Experience,” Essays, Vol 3, ch. 13 [ed. Hazlitt, tr. Cotton]
(Source)
The trouble with being number one in the world — at anything — is that it takes a certain mentality to attain that position in the first place, and that is something of a driving, perfectionist attitude, so that once you do achieve number one, you don’t relax and enjoy it.
Billie Jean King (b. 1943) American tennis player
Billie Jean (1982)
Usually when people are sad, they don’t do anything. They just cry over their condition. But when they get angry, they bring about a change.
Malcolm X (1925-1965) American revolutionary, religious leader [b. Malcolm Little]
Malcolm X Speaks, ch. 9 “With Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer” (1965)
Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) American lawyer, politician, US President (1861-65)
Letter to Isham Reavis (5 Nov 1855)
If it had not been for the discontent of a few fellows who have not been satisfied with their condition you would still be living in caves. You never would have emerged from the jungle. Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization. Progress is born of agitation. It is agitation or stagnation.
Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926) American union leader, activist, socialist, politician
“The Issue,” Speech, Girard, Kansas (23 May 1908)
(Source)
