Quotations about:
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Come, clear the way, then, clear the way:
Blind creeds and kings have had their day.
Break the dead branches from the path;
Our hope is in the aftermath —
Our hope is in heroic men,
Star-led to build the world again.
To this Event the ages ran:
Make way for Brotherhood — make way for Man.

Edwin Markham (1852-1940) American poet
“Brotherhood,” The Man with the Hoe and Other Poems (1899)
 
Added on 6-Mar-15 | Last updated 6-Mar-15
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If you realize you aren’t so wise today as you thought you were yesterday, you’re wiser today.

No picture available
Olin Miller (fl. early 20th C) American humorist
(Attributed)
 
Added on 5-Mar-15 | Last updated 5-Mar-15
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The real sadness of fifty is not that you change so much but that you change so little.

Maxwell "Max" Lerner (1902-1992) American journalist, columnist, educator
“Fifty,” New York Post (18 Dec 1952)
 
Added on 17-Feb-15 | Last updated 17-Feb-15
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We acquire the strength we have overcome.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet
“Considerations by the Way,” The Conduct of Life, ch. 7 (1860)
 
Added on 7-Oct-14 | Last updated 19-Feb-22
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When you’re a kid, a rural, agriculturally-based colony town is a lot of fun to grow up in. It’s life on a farm, with goats and chickens and fields of wheat and sorghum, harvest celebrations and winter festivals. There’s not an eight- or nine-year-old kid who’s been invented who doesn’t find all of that unspeakably fun. But then you become a teenager and you start thinking about everything you might possibly want to do with your life, and you look at the options available to you. And then all farms, goats and chickens — and all the same people you’ve known all your life and will know all your life — begin to look a little less than optimal for a total life experience. It’s all the same, of course. That’s the point. It’s you who’s changed.

John Scalzi (b. 1969) American writer
Zoe’s Tale, ch. 1 (2008)
 
Added on 24-Sep-14 | Last updated 24-Sep-14
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Nothing, I am sure, calls forth the faculties so much as the being obliged to struggle with the world.

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) English social philosopher, feminist, writer
Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, “Matrimony” (1787)
    (Source)
 
Added on 23-Sep-14 | Last updated 17-Feb-22
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Soon ripe, soon rotten.

John Clarke (d. 1658) British educator
Proverbs: English and Latine [Paroemiologia Anglo-Latina] (1639)
 
Added on 8-May-14 | Last updated 8-May-14
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HAL: Presume not that I am the thing I was;
For God doth know — so shall the world perceive —
That I have turn’d away my former self.

Shakespeare
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Henry IV, Part 2, Act 5, sc. 5, l. 60ff (5.5.60-62) (c. 1598)
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Added on 9-Apr-14 | Last updated 29-Jan-24
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One grows or dies. There is no third possibility.

Oswald Spengler
Oswald Spengler (1880–1936), German author
Aphorisms, #147 [tr. O’Brien (1967)]
 
Added on 19-Feb-14 | Last updated 19-Feb-14
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He not busy being born
Is busy dying.

Bob Dylan (b. 1941) American singer, songwriter
“It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” (1965)
 
Added on 5-Feb-14 | Last updated 5-Feb-14
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Self-correction begins with self-knowledge.

[Principio es de corregirse el conocerse]

Baltasar Gracián y Morales (1601-1658) Spanish Jesuit priest, writer, philosopher
The Art of Worldly Wisdom [Oráculo Manual y Arte de Prudencia], § 69 (1647) [tr. Maurer (1992)]
    (Source)

(Source (Spanish)). Alternate translations:

The knowledge of one's self is the beginning of amendment.
[Flesher ed. (1685)]

Self-knowledge is the beginning of self-improvement.
[tr. Jacobs (1892)]

It is a first principle that in order to improve yourself, you must first know yourself.
[tr. Fischer (1937)]

 
Added on 4-Dec-13 | Last updated 5-Dec-22
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He knows not his own strength that hath not met adversity.

Ben Jonson (1572-1637) English playwright and poet
Timber: Or, Discoveries, “Explorata” (1640)
 
Added on 22-Apr-13 | Last updated 21-Oct-14
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To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are.

Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) American writer, philosopher, longshoreman
The Passionate State of Mind, Aphorism 151 (1955)
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Added on 13-Feb-12 | Last updated 24-Jun-22
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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, Sr. (1809-1894) American poet, essayist, scholar
“The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table,” Atlantic Monthly (1858-09)
    (Source)

Collected in The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, ch. 11 (1858).
 
Added on 21-Sep-10 | Last updated 4-May-23
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Goethe says that, if you plant an oak in a flower-vase, either the oak must wither or the vase crack; some men go for saving the vase. Too many nowadays have that anxiety; the Puritans would have let it crack. So say I. If there is anything that cannot bear free thought, let it crack.

Wendell Phillips (1811-1884) American abolitionist, orator, social activist
Speech, Pilgrim Society, Plymouth (21 Dec 1855)
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Added on 15-Sep-10 | Last updated 17-Feb-21
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All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution.

Havelock Ellis (1859-1939) British sexologist, physician, social reformer [Henry Havelock Ellis]
“The Individual and the Race,” Little Essays of Love and Virtue (1922)
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In a passage describing the cost of population growth under the Biblical commandment of "Be ye fruitful and multiply." The above is only a fraction of the sentence, which reads in full:

It has meant that all civilisation has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution, and the human race has gone on lightly dancing there, striving to forget that ancient warning from a soul of things even deeper than the voice of Jehovah: "At the hand of man will I require the life of man."
 
Added on 26-Jun-09 | Last updated 14-Sep-22
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It contributes greatly towards a man’s moral and intellectual health, to be brought into habits of companionship with individuals unlike himself, who care little for his pursuits, and whose sphere and abilities he must go out of himself to appreciate.

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) American writer
The Scarlet Letter, “Introduction: The Custom-House” (1850)
 
Added on 24-Apr-09 | Last updated 8-Dec-15
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Divine Providence sends the chiefest benefits under the mask of calamities.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet
“The Fortune of the Republic,” lecture, Boston (1878-03-30)

Final version of a lecture first given in 1863, and his last public speech.
 
Added on 24-Mar-09 | Last updated 27-Mar-23
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Zeus, who guided mortals to be wise,
has established his fixed law —
wisdom comes through suffering.
Trouble, with its memories of pain,
drips in our hearts as we try to sleep,
so men against their will
learn to practice moderation.
Favours come to us from gods
seated on their solemn thrones —
such grace is harsh and violent.

τὸν φρονεῖν βροτοὺς ὁδώ-
σαντα, τὸν [πάθει μάθος]
θέντα κυρίως ἔχειν.
στάζει δ’ ἀνθ’ ὕπνου πρὸ καρδίας
μνησιπήμων πόνος· καὶ παρ’ ἄ-
κοντας ἦλθε σωφρονεῖν.
δαιμόνων δέ που χάρις βίαιος
σέλμα σεμνὸν ἡμένων.

Aeschylus - awful grace - wist_info quote

Aeschylus (525-456 BC) Greek dramatist (Æschylus)
Agamemnon, ll. 175-183 [tr. Johnston (2007)]
    (Source)

Alt. trans.:
  • "It is through suffering that learning comes." [In Arnold Toynbee, "Christianity and Civilization" (1947), Civilization on Trial (1948)]
  • "God, whose law it is that he who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despite, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God." [tr. Hamilton (1930)]
  • "Guide of mortal man to wisdom, he who has ordained a law, knowledge won through suffering. Drop, drop -- in our sleep, upon the heart sorrow falls, memory’s pain, and to us, though against our very will, even in our own despite, comes wisdom by the awful grace of God." [tr. Hamilton (1937)]
The first Hamilton alternate was used, slightly modified, by Robert Kennedy in his speech on the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. (4 Apr 1968). Kennedy's family used it as an epitaph on his grave Arlington National Cemetery: "Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart, until in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom, through the awful grace of God."

See here for more discussion.
 
Added on 19-Aug-08 | Last updated 6-Jul-20
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Learning is not compulsory; it’s voluntary. Improvement is not compulsory; it’s voluntary. But to survive, we must learn.

W Edwards Deming
W. Edwards Deming (1900-1993) American management consultant, educator
“Quality, Productivity, and Competitive Position” seminar (24-28 Feb 1986)
    (Source)

Often paraphrased: "Learning is not compulsory. Neither is survival."
 
Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 21-Jul-20
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But, on the other hand, Uncle Abner said that the person that had took a bull by the tail once had learnt sixty or seventy times as much as a person that hadn’t, and said a person that started in to carry a cat home by the tail was gitting knowledge that was always going to be useful to him, and warn’t ever going to grow dim or doubtful.

Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894)

Full text.

Variants sometimes seen:

  • The man who sets out to carry a cat by its tail learns something that will always be useful and which never will grow dim or doubtful.
  • A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.
 
Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 26-Jan-19
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Trickling water, if not stopped, will become a mighty river.

Confucius (c. 551- c. 479 BC) Chinese philosopher, sage, politician [孔夫子 (Kǒng Fūzǐ, K'ung Fu-tzu, K'ung Fu Tse), 孔子 (Kǒngzǐ, Chungni), 孔丘 (Kǒng Qiū, K'ung Ch'iu)]
(Spurious)

No citations found. Not found in the Analects.
 
Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 20-Jun-22
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If we attend continually and promptly to the little that we can do, we shall ere long be surprised to find how little remains that we cannot do.

Samuel Butler (1835-1902) English novelist, satirist, scholar
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)
 
Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 5-Sep-19
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All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.

Samuel Butler (1835-1902) English novelist, satirist, scholar
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler, ch. 1 “Life” (1912)
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Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 5-Sep-19
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OPHELIA: Lord, we know what we are but know not what we may be.

Shakespeare
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Hamlet, Act 4, sc. 5, l. 48ff (4.5.48-49) (c. 1600)
    (Source)
 
Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 29-Jan-24
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Nothing determines who we will become so much as those things we choose to ignore.

(Other Authors and Sources)
Sandor McNab
 
Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 14-Apr-14
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I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge.

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) American composer
“Contingencies,” Themes and Episodes (1966)
    (Source)
 
Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 30-Oct-19
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No individual or group will be judged by whether they come up to or fall short of some fixed result, but by the direction in which they are moving. The band mans is the man who no matter how good he has been is beginning to deteriorate, to grow less good. The good man in the man who no matter how morally unworthy he has been is moving to become better. Such a conception makes one severe in judging himself and humane in judging others.

John Dewey (1859-1952) American teacher and philosopher
Reconstruction in Philosophy, ch. 7 “Moral Reconstruction” (1919)
    (Source)
 
Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 30-Dec-20
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Many would be wise if they did not think themselves wise.

[Serían sabios algunos si no creyesen que lo son.]

Baltasar Gracián y Morales (1601-1658) Spanish Jesuit priest, writer, philosopher
The Art of Worldly Wisdom [Oráculo Manual y Arte de Prudencia], § 176 (1647) [tr. Jacobs (1892)]
    (Source)

(Source (Spanish)). Alternate translations:

Some would be wise, if they did not think themselves so.
[Flesher ed. (1685)]

Some would be wise if they did not believe themselves wise.
[tr. Fischer (1937)]

Some would be sages if they did not believe they were so already.
[tr. Maurer (1992)]

 
Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 7-Feb-23
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Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid only of standing still.

(Other Authors and Sources)
Chinese proverb
 
Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 11-Feb-20
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Every evil in the bud is easily crushed: as it grows older, it becomes stronger.

[Omne malum nascens facile opprimitur; inveteratum fit pleurumque robustius.]

Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) Roman orator, statesman, philosopher
Philippicae [Philippics], No. 5, ch. 11 / sec. 28 (5.28) (1 Jan AD 43)
    (Source)

(Source (Latin)). Alternate translations:

Every evil is easily crushed at its birth; when it has become of long standing, it usually gets stronger.
[tr. Yonge (1903)]

Every evil is easily crushed at its birth; become inveterate it as a rule gathers strength.
[tr. Ker (1926)]

 
Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 14-Aug-22
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There is no fruit which is not bitter before it is ripe.

Publilius Syrus (d. 42 BC) Assyrian slave, writer, philosopher [less correctly Publius Syrus]
Sententiae [Moral Sayings]
 
Added on 1-Feb-04 | Last updated 15-Feb-17
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