Peter > Peter's Quotes

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#1

“I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.”
― Edward Everett Hale

tags: ability, accomplishment, confidence, determination, self, self-esteem

815 likes

#2

“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

tags: how, life, purpose, questioning, questions, why

5820 likes

#3

“Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.”
― Voltaire

tags: answers, man, questions, thinking

4627 likes

#4

“The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, he's one who asks the right questions.”
― Claude Levi-Strauss

tags: questions, science

746 likes

#5

“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow

tags: paranoia, proverbs, wit

1753 likes

#6

“Most misunderstandings in the world could be avoided if people would simply take the time to ask, "What else could this mean?”
― Shannon L. Alder

tags: anger, ego, misinterpretation, misunderstand, misunderstandings, overthinking, pain, perception, perspective, questions, reading-into-everything, reading-into-things, second-quessing, self-esteem, self-improvement

1058 likes

#7

“Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.”
― Primo Levi

tags: common-men, danger, existence, holocaust, monsters, questions

837 likes

#8

“There are some questions that shouldn't be asked until a person is mature enough to appreciate the answers.”
― Anne Bishop, Daughter of the Blood

tags: answers, maturity, questions

395 likes

#9

“Where the questions of religion are concerned people are guilty of every possible kind of insincerity and intellectual misdemeanor.”
― Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion

tags: guilty, insincerity, lies, misdemeanor, questions

256 likes

#10

“After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn’t it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked—as I am surprisingly often—why I bother to get up in the mornings.”
― Richard Dawkins

tags: beauty, color, enlightened, inspirational, meaning, motivational, questions, sleep

348 likes

#11

“It's a fact—everyone is ignorant in some way or another.

Ignorance is our deepest secret.

And it is one of the scariest things out there, because those of us who are most ignorant are also the ones who often don't know it or don't want to admit it.

Here is a quick test:

If you have never changed your mind about some fundamental tenet of your belief, if you have never questioned the basics, and if you have no wish to do so, then you are likely ignorant.

Before it is too late, go out there and find someone who, in your opinion, believes, assumes, or considers certain things very strongly and very differently from you, and just have a basic honest conversation.

It will do both of you good.”
― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

tags: adapt, adaptability, assimilate, assimilation, beliefs, change, discovery, ignorance, ignorant, incorporating, introspection, learning, mutability, new, new-thought, open, open-mind, open-minded, open-mindedness, ponder, question, questioning, questions, re-evaluating, receptive, rethink, rethinking, secret, think, thinking, wise

374 likes

#12

“Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world. Mortal or immortal, few really ask. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds -- justifications, confirmations, forms of consolation without which they can't go on. To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner.”
― Anne Rice, The Vampire Lestat

tags: asking, courage, daring, knowledge, questions, risk, seeking, uncertainty

323 likes

#13

“My 'morals' were sound, even a bit puritanic, but when a hidebound old deacon inveighed against dancing I rebelled. By the time of graduation I was still a 'believer' in orthodox religion, but had strong questions which were encouraged at Harvard. In Germany I became a freethinker and when I came to teach at an orthodox Methodist Negro school I was soon regarded with suspicion, especially when I refused to lead the students in public prayer. When I became head of a department at Atlanta, the engagement was held up because again I balked at leading in prayer. I refused to teach Sunday school. When Archdeacon Henry Phillips, my last rector, died, I flatly refused again to join any church or sign any church creed. From my 30th year on I have increasingly regarded the church as an institution which defended such evils as slavery, color caste, exploitation of labor and war. I think the greatest gift of the Soviet Union to modern civilization was the dethronement of the clergy and the refusal to let religion be taught in the public schools.”
― W.E.B. Du Bois, The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois: A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century

tags: atheist, atlanta, civilization, clergy, creed, deacon, evil, exploitation, freethinker, germany, harvard, morals, orthodox, orthodox-religion, public-prayer, public-school, puritanic, questions, rebel, slavery, soviet-union, ussr, war

190 likes

#14

“Courage doesn’t happen when you have all the answers. It happens when you are ready to face the questions you have been avoiding your whole life.”
― Shannon L. Alder

tags: acceptance, beginnings, choices, counseling, courage, dating-questions, decisions, evaluation, experiences, goals, learning, lessons-in-life, marriage-questions, plans, questions, self-discovery, self-evaluation, self-realization, therapy

420 likes

#15

“The question is very understandable, but no one has found a satisfactory answer to it so far. Yes, why do they make still more gigantic planes, still heavier bombs and, at the same time, prefabricated houses for reconstruction? Why should millions be spent daily on the war and yet there's not a penny available for medical services, artists, or for poor people?

Why do some people have to starve, while there are surpluses rotting in other parts of the world? Oh, why are people so crazy?”
― Anne Frank

tags: anne, frank, inspirational, questions

138 likes

#16

“At the end of the day, the questions we ask of ourselves determine the type of people that we will become.”
― Leo Babauta

tags: choices, life, questions, wisdom

119 likes

#17

“She holds herself with such reserve. She smiles, but the smile doesn't reach her eyes, even in the company of the girls she's chosen to eat with. Why?
I have no clue, and I really don't want to spend my time worrying about it. But my brain pushes at the question anyway.
Why are people aloof?
Because they don't want to let others in.
Why don't they want to let others in?
Well, sometimes because they're shy, and sometimes because they're convinced of their own superiority.
But those aren't the only reasons. Sometimes it's because thay have something to hide.”
― Lauren Myracle, Bliss

tags: aloof, hiding, questions, shy

72 likes

#18

“He explained to me with great insistence that every question posessed a power that did not lie in the answer.”
― Elie Wiesel, Night

tags: questioning, questions

198 likes

#19

“An infinite question is often destroyed by finite answers. To define everything is to annihilate much that gives us laughter and joy.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Circle of Quiet

tags: definitions, finite, joy, laughter, questions

98 likes

#20

“To ask the 'right' question is far more important than to receive the answer. The solution of a problem lies in the understanding of the problem; the answer is not outside the problem, it is in the problem.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, The Flight Of The Eagle

tags: answers, doubts, knowledge, problem, questions, understanding

96 likes

#21

“Politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards. It takes both passion and perspective. Certainly all historical experience confirms the truth - that man would not have attained the possible unless time and again he had reached out for the impossible. But to do that a man must be a leader, and not only a leader but a hero as well, in a very sober sense of the word. And even those who are neither leaders nor heroes must arm themselves with that steadfastness of heart which can brave even the crumbling of all hopes. This is necessary right now, or else men will not be able to attain even that which is possible today.”
― Max Weber

tags: politics

128 likes

#22

“To acquire knowledge, one must study;
but to acquire wisdom, one must observe.”
― Marilyn vos Savant

tags: knowledge, observation, study, studying, wisdom

323 likes

#23

“Look into yourself and tell me truthfully: are you satisfied with yourself and can you be satisfied? Are you not all sad and bedraggled manifestations of a sad and bedraggled time? — are you not full of contradictions? — are you whole men? — do you believe in anything really? — do you know what you want, and can you want anything at all? — has modern reflection, the epidemic of our time, left a single living part in you; and are you not penetrated by reflection through and through, paralyzed and broken? Indeed, you will have to confess that ours is a sad age and that we all are its still sadder children.”
― Mikhail Bakunin

3 likes

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