Manuel E. > Manuel E.'s Quotes

“...aunque pusieron silencio a las lenguas, no le pudieron poner a las plumas, las cuales, con más libertad que las lenguas, suelen dar a entender a quien quieren lo que en el alma esta encerrado: que muchas veces la presencia de la cosa amada turba y enmudece la intención más determinada y la lengua más atrevida." - Don Quijote de la Mancha, Parte I, Cap. XXIV”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

“Since all terms that are defined are defined by means of other terms, it is clear that human knowledge must always be content to accept some terms as intelligible without definition, in order to have a starting point for its definitions...[and] since human powers are finite, the definitions known to us must always begin somewhere, with terms undefined for the moment, though perhaps not permanently." - Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy”
― Bertrand Russell

“Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.”
― Benjamin Franklin

“All of us do not have equal talent, but all of us should have an equal opportunity to develop those talents.”
― John F. Kennedy

“There is inherited wealth in this country and also inherited poverty.”
― John F. Kennedy

“Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.”
― Ernest Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway: A Literary Reference

“Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire.”
― Thomas Keneally, Schindler’s List

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

“To define is to limit.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“The one charm about the past is that it is the past.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly -- that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to oneself. Of course they are charitable. They feed the hungry, and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion -- these are the two things that govern us.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray and Other Stories

“Conscience and cowardice are really the same things, Basil. Conscience is the trade-name of the firm. That is all.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“When we are happy, we are always good, but when we are good, we are not always happy.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
― Maya Angelou

“An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“We think ourselves possessed, or, at least, we boast that we are so, of liberty of conscience on all subjects, and of the right of free inquiry and private judgment in all cases, and yet how far are we from these exalted privileges in fact!”
― John Adams, The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson & Abigail & John Adams

“The inquisition of public opinion overwhelms in practice the freedom asserted by the laws in theory.”
― Thomas Jefferson, The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson & Abigail & John Adams

“Great difficulties may be surmounted by patience and perseverance.”
― Abigail Adams, The Quotable Abigail Adams

“Let us tenderly and kindly cherish therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write .”
― John Adams, The works of John Adams,: Second President of the United States

“I read my eyes out and can't read half enough...the more one reads the more one sees we have to read.”
― John Adams, Letters of John Adams, Addressed to His Wife

“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
― John Adams, The Portable John Adams

“Posterity! you will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it.”
― John Adams, Letters of John Adams, Addressed to His Wife

“The longer I live, the more I read, the more patiently I think, and the more anxiously I inquire, the less I seem to know...Do justly. Love mercy. Walk humbly. This is enough.”
― John Adams, The Letters of John and Abigail Adams

“There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.”
― John Adams, The works of John Adams,: Second President of the United States

“I must judge for myself, but how can I judge, how can any man judge, unless his mind has been opened and enlarged by reading.”
― John Adams, Diary and Autobiography of John Adams (Adams Papers)

“President Kennedy’s eloquence was designed to make men think; President Johnson’s hammer blows are designed to make men act.”
― Robert A. Caro, The Passage of Power

“There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?”
― David Foster Wallace, This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life