Influential Quotes
“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”
“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”
“Everybody is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life thinking it’s stupid”
“If you hear a voice within you say, ‘You cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.”
“You see things; and you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say, ‘Why not’?”
“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”
“Never let your schooling interfere with your education.”
“Have no fear of perfection, you’ll never reach it.”
“Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people.”
““The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.””
“But if in your fear you would seek only love’s peace and love’s pleasure, then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love’s threshing-floor, into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.”
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
“If you focus too closely on a certain path, you may miss the detours you’re meant to take.”
“Everybody seeks happiness! Not me, though! That’s the difference between me and the rest of the world. Happiness isn’t good enough for me! I demand euphoria!”
“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”
“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
“I’m the one that’s got to die when it’s time for me to die, so let me live my life the way I want to.”
“He who has not the spirit of this age, has all the misery of it.”
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”
“Violence is what happens when we don’t know what else to do with our suffering.”
“Start telling the stories that only you can tell, because there’ll always be better writers than you and there’ll always be smarter writers than you. There will always be people who are much better at doing this or doing that — but you are the only you.”
“The personality susceptible to the dream of limitless freedom is a personality also prone, should the dream ever sour, to misanthropy and rage.”
“Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow.”
“History should be written as philosophy.”
“The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.”
“Everyone should be respected as an individual, but no one idolized.”
“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”
“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
“If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”
“As you can see, I have memorized this utterly useless piece of information long enough to pass a test question. I now intend to forget it forever. You’ve taught me nothing except how to cynically manipulate the system. Congratulations.”
“He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.”
“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
“I don’t know which is worse: that everyone has his price, or that the price is always so low.”
“Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.”
“Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.”
“The things you do for yourself are gone when you are gone, but the things you do for others remain as your legacy.”
“Impossibilities vanish when a man and his God confront a mountain.”
“You can’t do much about your ancestors, but you can influence your descendants enormously.”
“The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.”