My Favorite Quotes

While we are asleep in this world, we are awake in another one.

Salvador Dali (painter, 1904-1989)

A guidance counselor who has made a fetish of security, or who has
unwittingly surrendered his thinking to economic determinism, may steer a
youth away from his dream of becoming a poet, an artist, a musician or any
other of thousands of things, because it offers no security, it does not
pay well, there are no vacancies, it has no "future".

Henry M. Wriston (11th president of Brown University, 1889-1978)

Imagination is more important than knowledge.  Knowledge is limited.  Imagination encircles the world.
Albert Einstein (scientist)

That is my main goal in life- to get along with people.

Goldie Hawn (actor/producer)

Map out your life, but do it in pencil.

Jon Bon Jovi (musician)

All great art comes from a sense of outrage.

Glenn Close (actor)

It’s a great challenge to be better than your opportunities.

Sarah Jessica Parker (actor)

All good things have come out of dreaming.

Arthur Miller (playwright)

The problem with people who have no vices is that they’re pretty sure to have some annoying virtues.

Elizabeth Taylor (actor)

Nothing that grieves us can be called little: by the eternal laws of
proportion a child's loss of a doll and a king's loss of a crown are events
of the same size.

Mark Twain (author/humorist, 1835-1910)

If the secret sorrows of everyone could be read on their forehead, how many
who now cause envy would suddenly become the objects of pity.

Italian proverb

A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or
offer your own version in return.

Salman Rushdie (writer, 1947- )

We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive
alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in
genders.

Maya Angelou (poet, 1928- )

My faith is that the only soul a man must save is his own.

William Orville Douglas (US Supreme Court Justice, 1898-1980)

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.

William Butler Yeats (poet)

God could not be everywhere, and therefore he created mothers.

Jewish proverb

Nothing contributes so much to tranquilizing the mind as a steady purpose -
a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (author, 1797-1851)

A misery is not to be measured from the nature of the evil, but from the temper of the sufferer.

Joseph Addison (essayist/poet, 1672-1719)

If you don't execute your ideas, they die.

Roger von Oech (author/consultant)

The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, philosopher (1844-1900)

1) I'm not offended by dumb blonde jokes because I know I'm not dumb. I also know I'm not blonde.

2) We are all pieces of God... and we're never gonna find Him if we don't go inside.

Dolly Parton (singer/songwriter)

An individualist is a man who says: ‘I will not run anyone's life - nor let anyone run mine. I will not rule or be ruled. I will not be a master nor a slave. I will not sacrifice myself to anyone - nor sacrifice anyone to myself.’

Ayn Rand (writer)

The popular notion about marriage and love is that they are synonymous, that they spring from the same motives, and cover the same human needs. Like most popular notions this also rest not on actual facts, but on superstition....
On rare occasions one does hear of a miraculous case of a married couple falling in love after marriage, but on close examination it will be found that it is a mere adjustment to the inevitable.

Emma Goldman (feminist)

One of the things about equality is not just that you be treated equally to a man, but that you treat yourself equally to the way you treat a man.

Marlo Thomas (actor)

I don't have a problem with men. I have a problem with STUPID men.

Maggie Estep (feminist)

One wonders what would happen in a society where there were no rules to break.

Doubtless, everyone would quickly die of boredom. 

Susan Howatch (British writer)

My guess is the point of the "male-basher" label is that I'm supposed to back down... ditto buzzwords like "aggressive" and "bitch," among others. Someone throwing those words up does not do so by accident. They are trying to trigger a meta-message, to get our goody-goody, desperate-for-acceptance inner girly-girl to take over. Guess what? I've got that little twit gagged, I was sick of her mealy-mouthed whining holding me back!

Erica Jackson (feminist)

I don't need anyone to rectify my existence. The most profound relationship we will ever have is the one with ourselves.

Shirley Maclaine (actor)

I encourage women to explicitly rebuff unwanted approaches, but I know it is difficult to do. Just as rapport building has a good reputation, explicitness applied by women in this culture has a terrible reputation. A woman who is clear and precise is viewed as cold, or a bitch, or both. A woman is expected, first and foremost, to respond to every communication from a man. And the response is expected to be one of willingness and attentiveness.

Gavin de Becker (security specialist/author)

The number one need of all people is acceptance... the number one fear is rejection.

Dr. Phil McGraw (psychologist/author)

Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one getting burned.

Buddha (spiritual leader)

I, myself, have never been able to find out what feminism is; I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.

Rebecca West (feminist)

No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.

Alice Walker (writer)

If you just set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing.

Margaret Thatcher (former Prime Minister of Britain)

Remember- no one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

Eleanor Roosevelt (former First Lady/social activist)

Any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid.

Hedy Lamarr (actor)

If the gods listened to the prayers of men, all humankind would quickly
perish since they constantly pray for many evils to befall one another.

Epicurus (ancient philosopher)

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.

Mohandas K. Gandhi (social/political reformer)

It's a shallow life that doesn't give a person a few scars.

Garrison Keillor (radio personality/writer)

The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest men of past centuries.

Rene Descartes (philosopher)

For every problem, there is a neat, simple solution, and it is always wrong.

H. L. Mencken (writer)

To be well informed, one must read quickly a great number of merely
instructive books. To be cultivated, one must read slowly and with a
lingering appreciation the comparatively few books that have been written
by men who lived, thought, and felt with style.

Aldous Huxley (writer)

There is no disguise that can for long conceal love where it exists or simulate it where it does not.

Francois de la Rochefoucauld (philosopher/historian)

Sometimes we must interfere. 

When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in  jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant.  

Whenever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must -

at that moment - become the center of the universe.

Elie Wiesel (writer)

When Alexander the Great visited Diogenes and asked whether he could do

anything for the famed teacher, Diogenes replied: 'Only stand out of my

light.' Perhaps some day we shall know how to heighten creativity. Until

then, one of the best things we can do for creative men and women is to

stand out of their light.

John W. Gardner (writer)

Understanding a person does not mean condoning; it only means that one does

not accuse him as if one were God or a judge placed above him. 

Erich Fromm (psychoanalyst)

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter

and those who matter don't mind.

Dr. Seuss (writer)

There are times when we must sink to the bottom of our misery to understand

truth, just as we must descend to the bottom of a well to see the stars in

broad daylight. 

Vaclav Havel (Czech president)

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves. 

Carl Jung (social scientist/author)

The music than can deepest reach

And cure all ill, is cordial speech.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (writer)

All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. 

All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story.

James Baldwin (writer)

The instinct of a man is to pursue everything that flies from him, and to fly from all that pursue him. 

Voltaire (philosopher)