Special Quotations

Inspirational Quotations

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.

Originality is unexplored territory. You get there by carrying a canoe. You can't take a taxi.

It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.

You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it come true. You may have to work for it, however.

The constitutions of most of our states assert that all power is inherent in the people.

Can a blue man sing the whites?

The mere absence of war is not peace.

This problem, too, will look simple after it is solved.

I wish I'd drunk more champagne. [last words]

Learn to pause...or nothing worthwhile will catch up to you.

Freedom has always been an expensive thing.

Education can be defined as working with people, young and old, to prepare them to live in the future. The future may be bright. The future may be grey. But, most importantly we must insure that there will be a future.

Man's mind stretched by a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions.

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.

Go ahead and do the impossible. It's worth the look on the faces of those who said you couldn't.

Any good history book is mainly just a long list of mistakes, complete with names and dates. It's very embarrassing.

Winning isn't everything, but losing isn't anything.

People who are resting on their laurels are wearing them on the wrong end.

It had never occurred to me before that music and thinking are so much alike. In fact you could say music is another way of thinking, or maybe thinking is another kind of music.

Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity.

I am a slow walker, but I never walk back.

Things turn out best for the people who make the best out of the way things turn out.

It is the greatest shot of adrenaline to be doing what you have wanted to do so badly. You almost feel like you could fly without the plane.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

The great composer does not set to work because he is inspired, but becomes inspired because he is working.

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God cannot long retain it.

The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

Slaying sacred cows makes great steaks.

Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.

Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation.

Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction.

Creativity is the power to connect the seemingly unconnected.

Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip.

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

Everybody can be great. Because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve... You only need a heart full of grace... A soul generated by love. 

I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war.

The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn.

I have realized that my real self is a greater entity than any possible post or title.

Life is like an onion; you peel off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep.

I could not at any age be content to take my place in a corner by the fireside and simply look on. 

Being defeated is often a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent.

He who walks in the middle of the road gets hit from both sides.

An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere, while a pessimist sees only the red stoplight.... The truly wise person is colorblind.

Songs are funny things. They can slip across borders. Proliferate in prisons. Penetrate hard shells. I always believed that the right song at the right moment could change history.

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who haven't got it.

To bring up a child in the way he should go, travel that way yourself once in awhile.

We can't leave the haphazard to chance.

How can they say my life isn't a success? Have I not for more than sixty years got enough to eat and escaped being eaten?

Man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments.

The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from.

Unless life is lived for others, it is not worthwhile.

I think that maybe if women and children were in charge we would get somewhere.

Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.

We think too small. Like the frog at the bottom of the well. He thinks the sky is only as big as the top of the well. If he surfaced, he would have an entirely different view. .

My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.

There is no defense or security for any of us except in the highest intelligence and development of all.

There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.

No man is rich enough to buy back his past.

A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his client to plant vines.

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".

Nothing happens unless first a dream.

A man with a new idea is a crank, until the idea succeeds.

Expenditure rises to meet income.

Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won't come in.

I sometimes wonder if the manufacturers of foolproof items keep a fool or two on their payroll to test things.

The price of greatness is responsibility.

Memorable Quotes