- WIST is my personal collection of quotations, curated for thought, amusement, turn of phrase, historical significance, or sometimes just (often-unintentional) irony.
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Popular Quotables
- “Wealth and Poverty,” speech, National… (7,629)
- Agamemnon, ll. 175-183 [tr. Johnston (2007)] (5,946)
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- “The Triumph of Stupidity” (10 May 1933) (5,041)
- Nobel prize acceptance speech (10 Dec 1962) (4,879)
- “On The Conduct of Life” (1822) (4,086)
- “In Search of a Majority,” Speech,… (3,910)
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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.
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- 9-Nov-20 - "On Education," Address on installation as rector, University of St Andrews, Scotland (1 Feb 1867) | WIST on Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967).
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- 4-Nov-20 - ***Dave Does the Blog on Annual Message to Congress (6 Jan 1941).
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Quotations about support
Note that not all quotations have been tagged, so the Search function may find additional quotations on this topic.
Most artists, ashamed of their need for encouragement, try to carry their work to term like a secret pregnancy. … We bunker in with our projects, beleaguered by our loneliness and the terrible secret that we carry: We need friends to our art. We need them as desperately as friends to our hearts. Our projects, after all, are our brainchildren, and what they crave is a loving extended family, a place where “How’d it go today?” can refer to a turn at the keys or the easel as easily as a turn in the teller’s cage.”
Julia Cameron (b. 1948) American teacher, author, filmmaker, journalist
“Taking Heart,” The Sound of Paper (2005)
(Source)
One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.
Carl Jung (1875-1961) Swiss psychologist
“The Gifted Child” (1942), The Development of Personality, sec. 250 (1954) [tr. Hull]
(Source)
Translated from "Der Begabte," Psychologie und Erziehung (1946).
You have it easily in your power to increase the sum total of this world’s happiness now. How? By giving a few words of sincere appreciation to someone who is lonely or discouraged. Perhaps you will forget tomorrow the kind words you say today, but the recipient may cherish them over a lifetime.
Dale Carnegie (1888-1955) American writer, lecturer
In Dorothy Carnegie, The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking (1962)
To Herbert Westbrook, without whose never-failing advice, help, and encouragement, this book would have been finished in half the time.
P. G. Wodehouse (1881-1975) Anglo-American humorist, playwright and lyricist [Pelham Grenville Wodehouse]
A Gentleman of Leisure, Dedication (1910)
(Source)
To be vested with enormous authority is a fine thing; but to have the onlooking world consent to it is a finer.
Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, ch. 8 “The Boss” (1889)
(Source)
Historians have a word for Germans who joined the Nazi party, not because they hated Jews, but out of a hope for restored patriotism, or a sense of economic anxiety, or a hope to preserve their religious values, or dislike of their opponents, or raw political opportunism, or convenience, or ignorance, or greed.
That word is “Nazi.” Nobody cares about their motives any more.
They joined what they joined. They lent their support and their moral approval. And, in so doing, they bound themselves to everything that came after. Who cares any more what particular knot they used in the binding?
Andrew R. Moxon (contemp.) American writer, critic [a.k.a. Julius Goat]
Blogspot (16 Jan 2017)
(Source)
Frequently mis-attributed to Twitter, where Moxxon also posts under his @JuliusGoat handle. The original Julius Goat Blogspot site is no longer online.
Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind then that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; and while there is a criminal element, I am of it; and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.
Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926) American union leader, activist, socialist, politician
Statement to the Court (18 Sep 1918)
(Source)
On being convicted of Sedition. Often paraphrased: "As long as there is a lower class, I am in it. As long as there is a criminal element, I am of it. As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free."
Terrorism set up by reformers may be just as bad as Government terrorism and it is often worse because it draws a certain amount of false sympathy.
Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948) Indian philosopher and nationalist [Mahatma Gandhi]
In Young India (18 Dec 1924)
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)
No law is stronger than is the public sentiment where it is to be enforced.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) American lawyer, politician, US President (1861-65)
Letter to John J. Crittenden (22 Dec 1859)
Speak well of your friend in public, admonish him in secret.
Publilius Syrus (d. 42 BC) Assyrian slave, writer, philosopher [less correctly Publius Syrus]
Sententiae [Moral Sayings], # 870 [tr. Lyman, Jr (1862)]
Them as can do has to do for them as can’t. And someone has to speak up for them as has no voices.
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
The Wee Free Men (2003)
There is no greater challenge than to have someone relying upon you; no greater satisfaction than to vindicate his expectation.
Kingman Brewster, Jr. (1919-1988) American educator, diplomat
Baccalaureate address, Yale (12 Jun 1966)
No one man can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices.
Edward R. Murrow (1908-1965) American journalist
See It Now (7 Mar 1954)
(Source)
Comment to the production team before the episode on Senator Joseph R McCarthy’s Communist witch hunt.
He who begins by loving Christianity better than truth, will proceed by loving his own sect or church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) English poet and critic
Aids to Reflection (1825)
It is not so much our friends’ help that helps us as the confidence of their help.
Epicurus (341-270 BC) Greek philosopher
The Vatican Sayings
Alt. trans.: "It is not so much our friends' help that helps us as the confident knowledge that they will help us."
If you don’t understand that you work for your mislabeled subordinates, then you know nothing of leadership. You know only tyranny.
Dee W. Hock (b. 1929) American businessman
“Unit of One Anniversary Handbook,” Fast Company (28 Feb 1997)
