Famous quotes

Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,808 quotes Who coined it · How we decide

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Books and reading

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“If your house has Cold Mountain poems They are better for you than sutras Hang them up where you can see them Read them and read them again”
Hanshan (born 800) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If you can't read and write you can't think. Your thoughts are dispersed if you don't know how to read and write. You've got to be able to look at your thoughts on paper and discover what a fool you were.”
Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) first seen 2001 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Salon.com (29 August 2001)
“You should read in your own field only when you're young. When I was 8, 10, 12, 16, 25, I read science fiction. But then I went on to Alexander Pope and John Donne and Moliere to mix it up.”
Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My mum taught me how to read before I went to kindergarden, I always thought that being able to read provided lightness, help to dispel darkness, ignorance and stupidity.”
Michael Moore (born 1954) first seen 2010 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview while promoting Capitalism : A Love Story (March 2010)
“What makes our poetry so contemptible nowadays is its paucity of ideas. If you want to be read, invent. Who the Devil wouldn't like to read something new?”
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) said by 1799 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So note the twentieth century down as a century of tragedy and war and death—but also please note that it is the century in which the human race finally learned to read and write. More people will learn to read and write in the next forty years than in all the thousands of years in history. I firmly predict that this will be the most important historical fact about this, our century.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) first seen 1961 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Guest of Honor Speech at the XIXth World Science Fiction Convention—Seattle, 1961 (pp. 196-197)
“Ladies and gentlemen to hell with the marvellous power of storytelling. If the audience for science fiction wanted storytelling, they wouldn't read goddamned science fiction, they'd read Harpers and Redbook and Argosy... We're not into science fiction because it's "good literature," we're into it because it's weird.”
Bruce Sterling (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Went to the new Church both morning and afternoon, and read service in the afternoon. I got through it all with great success, till I came to read out the first verse of the hymn before the sermon, where the two words ‘strife strengthened,’ coming together, were too much for me, and I had to leave the verse unfinished.”
Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) first seen 1862 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 31 August 1862
“I have read in Plato and Cicero sayings that are very wise and very beautiful; but I never read in either of them, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden.”
Augustine of Hippo (354–430) said by 430 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I can read minds but, it's pointless cause I'm illiterate. I'd know what you were thinking, if I could read. (laugh) I tried to add on to that joke. I got busted. Thought I could squeeze a couple more laughs out of it but, it was not to be.”
Mitch Hedberg (1968–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We don't get weapons contracts, nigga / We don't get cheap labor for our company, nigga / We ARE cheap labour, nigga / Turn off the news and read, nigga / read...”
Immortal Technique (born 1978) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A pamphlet, no matter how good, is never read more than once, but a song is learned by heart and repeated over and over. And I maintain that if a person can put a few common sense facts into a song and dress them up in a cloak of humor, he will succeed in reaching a great number of workers who are too unintelligent or too indifferent to read.”
Joe Hill (activist) first seen 1914 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to the editor of Solidarity (1914-11-29)
“I mean, the computer industry promises nothing. Did you ever read a shrink-wrapped license agreement? You should read one. It basically says, if this product deliberately kills your children, and we knew it would, and we decided not to tell you because it might harm sales, we're not liable. I mean, it says stuff like that. They're absurd documents. You have no rights.”
Bruce Schneier (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But Coraggio – and think of A.D. 2850. Where will your Carlyles and Emersons be then? But Herodotus will still be read with delight. We must do our best to be read too.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859) first seen 1848 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Journal entry (12 January 1850), quoted in The Journals of Thomas Babington Macaulay: 18 November 1848–27 July 1850, ed. William Thomas (2008), p. 198
“I read in the proof-sheets of Hardy on Ramanujan: 'As someone said, each of the positive integers was one of his personal friends.' My reaction was, 'I wonder who said that; I wish I had.' In the next proof-sheets I read (what now stands): 'It was Littlewood who said...' (What had happened was that Hardy had received the remark in silence and with a poker face, and I wrote it off as a dud....)”
John Edensor Littlewood (1885–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What is the use of education if we do not become creative, conscious and truly intelligent? Real education does not mean knowing how to read and write. Any stupid person, any fool can know how to read and write. We need to have intelligence and it only awakens within us when the consciousness awakens.”
Samael Aun Weor (1917–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“News is what a chap who doesn't care much about anything wants to read. And it's only news until he's read it. After that it's dead.”
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Take breath and read it with the ears, as I always wish to be read, and my verse becomes all right.”
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) first seen 1879 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Robert Bridges (25 October 1879 )
“And better had they ne'er been born, Who read to doubt, or read to scorn.”
Walter Scott (1771–1832) said by 1832 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Also quoted by: Sir Walter Scott
“I like to read the Bible, and I read it every day. I always have it beside my bed, and I cannot understand how there can be so many people who take such little heed of the Word of God.”
Wilhelm II, German Emperor (1859–1941) said by 1941 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I also think that fantasy fans should go back and read the classics: obviously Tolkien if you haven’t read him, but also works like Fritz Leiber’s classic Fahfrd and the Grey Mousers stories; the original Conan stories by Robert E. Howard and his other characters like Bran Mak Morn and Solomon Kane; Jack Vance, one of my all-time favourites, the marvellous The Dying Earth stories by Jack Vance.”
Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: George R. R. Martin, "An Interview With George R. R. Martin: Part One. Indigo Magazine, July 12 2011.
“When we read what Goethe says about men we are ashamed of what we have said; when we read what he says about painting and statues we are ashamed of what Goethe has said.”
Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A reader told me recently, in London, said that 'well, I read that you write the last sentence first, so I always read your last sentence first.' And I said, 'oh, no, you're not supposed to do that.'”
John Irving (born 1942) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In order to cultivate yourself and to drop no lower than the level of the milieu in which you have landed, it is not enough to read Pickwick and memorize a monologue from Faust. You need to work continually day and night, to read ceaselessly, to study, to exercise your will… Each hour is precious.”
Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) first seen 1886 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to his brother, N.P. Chekhov (March 1886)
“I'd read things, like people criticizing me. But no one likes to read stuff about that, and probably the main thing that was getting to me was me mum's illness.”
Jack Osbourne (born 1985) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But how is it you know all this about how large the ocean is? I thought you girls were limited to pretty chatter and the economics of housekeeping. I didn’t know you learned geography.” “We don’t,” she said, somewhat shamefaced. “But we learned to read, and once one can read, one can learn anything.”
Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have not read it, and I don't intend to read it. It's not worth the paper it's written on. To the end of time it'll always be a case of “Thy head or my head.” I've no faith in these schemes.”
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) first seen 1919 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Answer to John Hartman Morgan, who asked him what he thought of the Covenant of the League of Nations (1919), quoted in J. H. Morgan, John, Viscount Morley: An Appreciation and Some Reminiscences (1924), p. 91
“The most dangerous lovers women have are men of Cordis's feminine temperament. Such men, by the delicacy and sensitiveness of their own organizations, read women as easily and accurately as women read each other. They are alert to detect and interpret those smallest trifles in tone, expression, and bearing, which betray the real mood far more unmistakably than more obvious signs.”
Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) said by 1898 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The question, "How well does one read?" is a bad question...essentially unanswerable. A more proper question is "How well does one read poetry, or history, or science, or religion?" No one I have ever known is so brilliant as to have learned the languages of all fields of knowledge equally well. Most of us do not learn some of them at all.”
Neil Postman (1931–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Men of power have not time to read; yet men who do not read are unfit for power”
Michael Foot (1913–2010) first seen 1980 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On Benjamin Disraeli, in his own book, 'Debts of Honour (1980)
“So Bertrand Russell once said to me that the pupil in school should study whatever he liked. I asked whether this was not a crime against the pupil. ... Should he be allowed to grow up without knowing Shakespeare? ... Lord Russell replied that he would require a boy to read one play of Shakespeare; if he did not like it, he should not be compelled to read any more.”
Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Thereafter, when he himself was dead, he imagined that his poems would be published in some mysterious way, and the nation would read them for comfort in adversity, as it had read the poems of other poets before him; it was his highest wish that his poems could help those as unfortunate as himself to have patience to endure.”
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Early in my political career, I had an opportunity to read the speech and I almost threw up. You should read the speech.”
Rick Santorum (born 1958) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There was a desire — it wasn’t a marketing desire, it was ‘I want everybody to read this and to understand it no matter what level they’re at in their own education.’ Robert E. Howard was very well educated, knew a lot of stuff, but you didn’t have to know that to read Conan.”
Walter Mosley (born 1952) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I really enjoy good murder mystery writers, usually women, frequently English, because they have a sense of what the human soul is about and why people do dark and terrible things. I also read quite a lot in the area of particle physics and quantum mechanics, because this is theology. This is about the nature of being. This is what life is all about. I try to read as widely as I possibly can.”
Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) said by 2007 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When I originally started writing, I expected that probably very few people would read my poetry because in those days people didn’t read poetry much anyway.”
John Ashbery (1927–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My mother is probably the wisest person I've ever known. She's not schooled, she's not well read. But she has a philosophy of life that makes well-read people seem like morons.”
Gene Simmons (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I merge what I call the organic with what I call the abstract, which is what you are calling the geometric. As I see both scales, I need to merge these two in the ever-present. What they symbolize I have never stopped to decide. You might want to read it as matter and spirit and the need to merge as against the need to separate. Or it can be read as male and female.”
Lee Krasner (1908–1984) said by 1984 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There were certain impressions I wanted to fix. I read verse models but none seemed to suitably express that kind of impression..until I came to read French vers libre which seemed to eactly fitr the case.”
T. E. Hulme (1883–1917) said by 1917 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I guess I don’t subscribe to the twee school. I remember trying to lose our copy of Thomas the Tank Engine before I had to read it again. Life is a more dimensional and interesting affair than vestigially Victorian notions of childhood. I was trying to make something substantial, something to be read and reread.”
Art Spiegelman (born 1948) first seen 2008 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On his book Jack and the Box, as quoted in "Smart Art : Spiegelman doesn’t dumb down for kids" by Alexandra Zissu in New York Magazine (16 November 2008).
“I am a contributing creator of American civilization; it does not create me. I control the stem of this civilization that is within my reach; it does not control me. It can not even make me read Spengler, if I'd rather read a pulp magazine.”
Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Trent read and re-read the pitiful message [a suicide note], so full of the awful egotism of grief.”
Edmund Clerihew Bentley (1875–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think fiction comes from everything you've ever done, and said, and dreamed, and imagined. It comes from everything you've read and haven't read...I think my work comes out of the culture of the world around me. I think that's where my language comes from.”
Don DeLillo (born 1936) first seen 1997 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'Exile on Main Street: Don DeLillo's Undisclosed Underworld' by David Remnick, The New Yorker, September 15, 1997
“I have not read your novel but I have carefully read the reviews of your manuscript, responses to it, which contain many excerpts from your novel. Look how many quotes from them I have written down.”
Vasily Grossman (1905–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I read a lot of things about myself that aren't true … I've read that I've been with people I've never met. It's nice not to have any attachment, but, likewise, it's nice to have a boyfriend. I'm open to that. But it's hard, when you're working constantly, to spend enough time with someone.”
Scarlett Johansson (born 1984) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in "Wilde about the girl" in The Sydney Morning Herald (13 June 2005)
“Women enjoy'd (whate'er before th' have been) Are like romances read, or sights once seen: Fruition's dull, and spoils the play much more Than if one read or knew the plot before. 'Tis expectation makes a blessing dear; Heaven were not heaven, if we knew what it were.”
John Suckling (1609–1642) said by 1642 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I don't read poetry for pleasure. I read to be terrified in a way. And people who terrify me from their size and the grandeur of their imagination now are people like Pasternak and Neruda, a lot of Latin-American poets, Lowell - very few English poets - Ted Hughes a little...very few English poets now in fact (1968)”
Derek Walcott (1930–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You read the face of the sky and of the earth, but you have not recognized the one who is before you, and you do not know how to read this moment. (91)”
Jesus (6 BC–33) said by 33 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If he could read a line, just understand one sign. Close his mouth and hear the peace of hope and fear, if he could read a line. If he could keep in time.”
Dawud Wharnsby (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I read poetry all the time. Probably the poets everybody read then. Very catholic taste. I even loved Eliot then whom I later grew not to love. I knew lots of poems by memory and walked around mumbling them. Yeats, Rilke, Keats, Coleridge. I liked Milton a lot, for some reason. And then there were the Oscar Williams anthologies of 1942 and 1943 with those pictures of the beautiful young poets.”
Grace Paley (1922–2007) said by 2007 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source