Famous Quotes & Sayings

Ayn Rand

I consider promiscuity immoral. Not because sex is evil, but because sex is too good and too important ...

Ayn Rand

The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.

Audra McDonald

...I tried to kill myself. It was a feeble attempt, but I did. And I got put in a mental hospital for a month, and I got myself straight and worked on my mental health...it's nothing that I hide. It's nothing to be proud of or to be ashamed of. It's part of my life, you know? And I'm still here!

Bertrand Russell

When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children, endeavor to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.

Bertrand Russell

Dogma demands authority, rather than intelligent thought, as the source of opinion; it requires persecution of heretics and hostility to unbelievers; it asks of its disciples that they should inhibit natural kindliness in favor of systematic hatred.

Bertrand Russell

To understand the actual world as it is, not as we should wish it to be, is the beginning of wisdom.

Bertrand Russell

Both in thought and in feeling, even though time be real, to realise the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom.

Benjamin Disraeli

It is the fashion to style the present moment an extraordinary crisis.

Benjamin Disraeli

The profound thinker always suspects that he is superficial.

Benjamin Disraeli

Knowledge must be gained by ourselves. Mankind may supply us with facts; but the results, even if they agree with previous ones, must be the work of our own minds.

Benjamin Disraeli

Desperation is sometimes as powerful an inspirer as genius.

Carl von Clausewitz

It should be noted that the seeds of wisdom that are to bear fruit in the intellect are sown less by critical studies and learned monographs than by insights, broad impressions, and flashes of intuition.

Carl Sandburg

Tell no man anything, for no man listens Yet hold thy lips ready to speak.

C. S. Lewis

Surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of man he is.

C. S. Lewis

Now is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It won't last forever. We must take it or leave it.

C. S. Lewis

Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey 'people.' People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war... Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest.

C. S. Lewis

Be sure that the ins and outs of your individuality are no mystery to Him; and one day they will no longer be a mystery to you.

C. S. Lewis

If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons.

C. S. Lewis

Talk to me about the truth of religion and I'll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I'll listen submissively. But don't come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don't understand.

C. S. Lewis

We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and private: and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship.

C. S. Lewis

What seem our worst prayers may really be, in God's eyes, our best. Those, I mean, which are least supported by devotional feeling. For these may come from a deeper level than feeling. God sometimes seems to speak to us most intimately when he catches us, as it were, off our guard.

C. S. Lewis

If you are really a product of a materialistic universe, how is it that you don't feel at home there?

C. S. Lewis

To live his life in his own way, to call his house his castle, to enjoy the fruits of his own labour, to educate his children as his conscience directs, to save for their prosperity after his death -- these are wishes deeply ingrained in civilised man. Their realization is almost as necessary to our virtues as to our happiness. From their total frustration disastrous results both moral and psychological might follow.

C. S. Lewis

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.

C. S. Lewis

You cannot go on 'explaining away' for ever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on 'seeing through' things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it.

C. S. Lewis

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

Miley Cyrus

I don't ever want to have to need someone again - where you feel like, without them, you can't be yourself.

Calvin Coolidge

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers. It may not be difficult to store up in the mind a vast quantity of facts within a comparatively short time, but the ability to form judgments requires the severe discipline of hard work and the tempering heat of experience and maturity.

Alain de Botton

Not being understood may be taken as a sign that there is much in one to understand.

Ed McBain

The world is made of stairs, and there are those who go up and those who go down.

Ed Miliband

The most important lesson of New Labour is this: Every time we made progress we did it by challenging the conventional wisdom.

Deepak Chopra

When you make a choice, you change the future.

Aaron Copland

Most people use music as a couch; they want to be pillowed on it, relaxed and consoled for the stress of daily living. But serious music was never meant to be soporific.