Start now. Start where you are. Start with fear. Start with pain. Start with doubt. Start with hands shaking. Start with voice trembling but start. Start and don’t stop. Start where you are, with what you have. Just … start.
Quotations about:
meme
Note not all quotations have been tagged, so Search may find additional quotes on this topic.
I like to believe that people, in the long run, are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.
Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969) American general, US President (1953-61)
Broadcast with Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, London (31 Aug 1959)
The way’s not easy where the prize is great:
I hope no virtues, where I smell no sweat.
Francis Quarles (1592-1644) English poet
Emblems, Emblem 11, Epigram (1634)
(Source)
Often given, "I see no virtue where I smell no sweat."
No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels. Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-rousing remain the true duty of patriots.
Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941) American feminist, journalist, political activist
“Introduction: Family Values” (1988), The Worst Years of Our Lives (1990)
See Johnson.
Begin, be bold, and venture to be wise.
[Dimidium facti qui coepit habet; sapere aude; incipe!]
Horace (65-8 BC) Roman poet and satirist [Quintus Horacius Flaccus]
Epistles, Book 1, Epistle 2, ll. 39-40 [tr. Cowley]
Alt. trans.: "He who has begun has half done. Dare to be wise; begin!"
It is a great deal better to live a holy life than to talk about it. We are told to let our light shine, and if it does, we won’t need to tell anybody it does. Light-houses don’t ring bells and fire cannon to call attention to their shining — they just shine.
Dwight Lyman "D. L." Moody (1837-1899) American evangelist and publisher
(Attributed)
Sometimes quoted, "they just shine on."
A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own.
Unwilling executants do not make for good execution.
B. H. Liddell Hart (1895-1970) English soldier, military historian (Basil Henry Liddell Hart)
The German Generals Talk, ch. 4 (1948)
Man is the Only Animal that Blushes. Or needs to.
Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
Following the Equator, ch. 27, epigraph (1897)
(Source)
Alas, irreverence has been subsumed by mere grossness, at least in the so-called mass media. What we have now — to quote myself at my most pretentious — is a nimiety of scurrility with a concomitant exiguity of taste. For example, the freedom (hooray!) to say almost anything you want on television about society’s problems has been co-opted (alas!) by the freedom to talk instead about flatulence, orgasms, genitalia, masturbation, etc., etc., and to replace real comment with pop-culture references and so-called “adult” language. Irreverence is easy — what’s hard is wit.
Tom Lehrer (b. 1928) American mathematician, satirist, songwriter
Rhino Records online chat (17 Jun 1997)
You don’t become great by trying to be great. You become great by wanting to do something, then doing it so hard that you become great in the process.
Randall Munroe (b. 1984) American webcomic writer, roboticist, programmer
XKCD, # 896 “Marie Curie” (9 May 2011)
(Source)
By doing good we become good.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) French philosopher and writer
Emile, ch. 4 (1762) [tr. Foxley (1911)]
We can sit in our corners, mute forever, while our sisters and ourselves are wasted, while our children are distorted and destroyed, while our earth is poisoned. We can sit silently in our corners, mute as bottles, and we will still be no less afraid.
Audre Lorde (1934-1992) American writer, feminist, civil rights activist
“The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action,” The Cancer Journals (1980)
(Source)
Originally given as a speech at the Modern Language Association meeting (28 Dec 1977).
“Money does not bring happiness” — only the wherewithal, perhaps, to endure its absence.
Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941) American feminist, journalist, political activist
Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class, ch. 6 (1990)
People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
A Treatise on Parents and Children (1910)
The human soul, the world, the universe are laboring on to their magnificent consummation. We are not fashioned thus marvelously for nought.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet
Journal (1820-12)
Never make fun of someone who speaks broken English. It means they know another language.
H. Jackson "Jack" Brown, Jr. (b. 1940) American writer
Life’s Little Instruction Book, Vol. 3, #1427 (1993)
(Source)
The true focus of revolutionary change is never merely the oppressive situations that we seek to escape, but that piece of the oppressor which is planted deep within each of us.
Audre Lorde (1934-1992) American writer, feminist, civil rights activist
“Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference,” Copeland Colloquium, Amherst College (Apr 1980)
Reprinted in Sister Outsider (1984)
There’s a brave fellow! There’s a man of pluck!
A man who’s not afraid to say his say,
Though a whole town’s against him.
The first thing to learn in intercourse with others is non-interference with their own peculiar ways of being happy, provided those ways do not assume to interfere by violence with ours.
William James (1842-1910) American psychologist and philosopher
“What Makes a Life Significant,” Lecture, Harvard (1899)
Reprinted in Talks to Teachers on Psychology, Part 2, Lecture 3.
It is far more impressive when others discover your good qualities without your help.
Judith Martin (b. 1938) American author, journalist, etiquette expert [a.k.a. Miss Manners]
(Attributed)
Sow good services: sweet remembrances will grow from them.
Germaine de Staël (1766-1817) Swiss-French writer, woman of letters, critic, salonist [Anne Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein, Madame de Staël, Madame Necker]
(Attributed)
In J. D. Finod (trans.), A Thousand Flashes of French Wit, Wisdom, and Wickedness (1880).
Devil-worship remains what it was, even when the idol is draped in the national flag.
William Ralph Inge (1860-1954) English prelate [Dean Inge]
“Patriotism,” Outspoken Essays: First Series (1915)
Hope
Smiles from the threshold of the year to come
Whispering “it will be happier.”
I have believed the best of every man,
And find that to believe it is enough
To make a bad man show him at his best,
Or even a good man swing his lantern higher.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) Irish poet and dramatist
Deirdre (1907)
I have often thought, says Sir Roger, it happens very well that Christmas should fall in the Middle of winter.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) English essayist, poet, statesman
The Spectator (Jan 1712)
There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilisations — these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit — immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn: We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously — no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner — no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbour, he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat — the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.
C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer, literary scholar, lay theologian [Clive Staples Lewis]
“The Weight of Glory,” sermon, Oxford University Church of St Mary the Virgin (8 Jun 1941)
Black as the devil, hot as hell, pure as an angel, sweet as love.
[Noir comme le diable, chaud comme l’enfer, pur comme un ange, doux comme l’amour.]
Charles Maurice, Prince de Talleyrand-Périgord (1754-1838) French statesman
(Attributed)
(Source)
Elements of a good cup of coffee.
In private life, no motive of action is at present so powerful and so persistent as acquisitiveness, which, unlike most other desires, knows no satiety.
William Ralph Inge (1860-1954) English prelate [Dean Inge]
“Patriotism,” Outspoken Essays: First Series (1915)
The dictionaries should get with it; in pronunciation and ultimately in usage, when enough of us are wrong, we’re right.
William Safire (1929-2009) American author, columnist, journalist, speechwriter
Language Maven Strikes Again, “Drudgery It Ain’t” (1990)
(Source)
Often paraphrased: "The thing about language is that, when enough of us are wrong, we're right."
The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) British playwright and critic
Treatise on Parents and Children, “Children’s Happiness” (1914)
If you don’t have confidence, you’ll always find a way not to win.
Carl Lewis (b. 1961) American Olympic athlete
(Attributed)
Self-hatred leads to the need either to dominate or to be dominated.
Gloria Steinem (b. 1934) American feminist, journalist, activist
Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem, “A Personal Preference” (1992)
There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle, because we do not lead single-issue lives.
Audre Lorde (1934-1992) American writer, feminist, civil rights activist
“Learning from the 60s,” speech, Malcolm X weekend, Harvard University (Feb 1982)
(Source)
Reprinted in Sister Outsider (1984).
The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced.
Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) American industrialist and philanthropist
“Wealth,” North American Review (Jun 1889)
Reprinted in The Gospel of Wealth (1889).
None knowes the weight of anothers burthen.
George Herbert (1593-1633) Welsh priest, orator, poet.
Jacula Prudentum, or Outlandish Proverbs, Sentences, &c. (compiler), # 880 (1651 ed.)
Call me a “rube” and a “hick,” but I’d a lot rather be the man who bought the Brooklyn Bridge than the man who sold it.
Will Rogers (1879-1935) American humorist
(Attributed)
I think that’s all anybody wants. To belong. To be people.
Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988) American writer
Friday [Friday Jones] (1982)
Not the cry, but the flight of a wild duck, leads the flock to fly and follow.
(Other Authors and Sources)
Chinese proverb
First recorded by Jean Paul [Johann Paul Friedrich Richter] (1763-1825), Levana, sec. 8 (1807): "Nicht das Geschrei, sagt ein chinesischer Autor, sondern der Ausflug einer wilden Ente treibt die Heerde zur Folge und zum Nachfliegen." (See H. A., A Book of Thoughts (1865))
Value yourself according to the burdens you carry, and you will find everything a burden.
James Richardson (b. 1950) American poet
Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten-Second Essays, # 52 (2001)
What was impossible yesterday is an accomplishment today — while tomorrow heralds the unbelievable.
Percival E. Fansler (1883-1937) American engineer, businessman, entrepreneur
Speech, First Scheduled Commercial Airline Flight, St. Petersburg, Florida (1 Jan 1914)
Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results.
Margaret Atwood (b. 1939) Canadian writer, literary critic, environmental activist
Surfacing, ch. 3 (1972)
(Source)
And when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcome
but when we are silent
we are still afraid.
So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive.
Audre Lorde (1934-1992) American writer, feminist, civil rights activist
“A Litany for Survival,” The Black Unicorn (1978)
Democracy postulates community of interest or loyal patriotism. When these are absent it cannot long exist.
William Ralph Inge (1860-1954) English prelate [Dean Inge]
“Our Present Discontents,” Outspoken Essays: First Series (1919)
Not a day passes over the earth but men and women of no note do great deeds, speak great words, and suffer noble sorrows.
Charles Reade (1814-1884) English novelist and dramatist
The Cloister and the Hearth, ch. 1 (1861)
There is a sort of gratification in doing good which makes us rejoice in ourselves.
Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) French essayist
“Of Repentance,” Essays (1588) [tr. Frame (1958)]
HAMLET: Use every man after his desert, and who should ‘scape whipping?
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Hamlet, Act 2, sc. 2, l. 555ff (2.2.555) (c. 1600)
(Source)
You’re not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can’t face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it.
Malcolm X (1925-1965) American revolutionary, religious leader [b. Malcolm Little]
“Prospects for Freedom in 1965,” speech, New York (7 Jan 1965)
(Source)
We are a nation of many nationalities, many races, many religions — bound together by a single unity, the unity of freedom and equality. Whoever seeks to set one nationality against another, seeks to degrade all nationalities. Whoever seeks to set one race against another seeks to enslave all races. Whoever seeks to set one religion against another, seeks to destroy all religion.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945) American lawyer, politician, statesman, US President (1933-1945)
Speech, Brooklyn, New York (1 Nov 1940)
Be wiser than other people, if you can; but do not tell them so.
Lord Chesterfield (1694-1773) English statesman, wit [Philip Dormer Stanhope]
Letter to his son, #104 (29 Nov 1745)
(Source)
Terrorism’s goal is to commit frightening, high-profile crimes that scare people into making rash, expensive decisions that make the world look like the terrorists would like to see it.
Cory Doctorow (b. 1971) Canadian-British blogger, journalist, activist, author
“How terrorists trick Western governments in doing their work for them,” Boingboing.net (16 Nov 2015)
(Source)
One must be prepared not to act, but to “stand still in the light,” confident that only such a stillness possesses the eloquence to draw men away from lives we must believe they inwardly loathe.
Theodore Roszak (1933-2011) American historian and author
The Making of the Counter Culture, ch. 8 (1969)
Administrivia: A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words (but shouldn’t use that many)
So I’ve been doing a graphic / visualization / meme for one quotation a day (out of the five I usually do) for a month now, and it seems to be both popular and pretty sustainable (at least until I get a job), so I will continue doing so.
You can see the list to date by clicking on the “Visual Quotes (memes)” link in the sidebar; I’m tagging each of them with a tag of “meme”. You can also visit PixTeller, which is where I’m building these; I think they’ve definitely improved since the first few I did as I’ve learned more about the tool and what works (and what doesn’t work as well).
If you have any suggestions for improvement in this effort, please leave me a comment.
It’s so wrong to think that spectacular courage is the best bravery. The noblest bravery is battling against these dreadful daily assaults, often very minor, on one’s spirit.
Joanna Trollope (b. 1943) British writer [pseud. Caroline Harvey]
The Rector’s Wife (1991)
No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it for any one else.
Charles Dickens (1812-1870) English writer and social critic
Our Mutual Friend, ch. 9 (1864-65)
