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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“Service of the people by sciences and arts will only exist when men live with the people and as the people live, and without presenting any claims will offer their scientific and artistic services, which the people will be free to accept or decline as they please.”
Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I fancy mankind may come, in time, to write all aphoristically, except in narrative; grow weary of preparation, and connection, and illustration, and all those arts by which a big book is made.”
Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) first seen 1773 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: (16 August 1773)
“If you refuse to study anatomy, the arts of drawing and perspective, the mathematics of aesthetics, and the science of color, let me tell you that this is more a sign of laziness than of genius.”
Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To some extent we are all the prisoners of stereotypes; we see each other in terms of distorted and oversimplified images. Better communication in the realm of ideas, of the arts, and of science can help refashion these false images. And by seeing more clearly we may act more wisely.”
Chester Bowles (1901–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The triumph of the industrial arts will advance the cause of civilization more rapidly than its warmest advocates could have hoped, and contribute to the permanent prosperity and strength of the country far more than the most splendid victories of successful war.”
Charles Babbage (1791–1871) first seen 1864 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. xii-xiii; Cited in: Samuel Smiles Industrial biography; iron-workers and tool-makers, (1864) p. 104
“The successful construction of all machinery depends on the perfection of the tools employed; and whoever is a master in the arts of tool-making possesses the key to the construction of all machines... The contrivance and construction of tools must therefore ever stand at the head of the .”
Charles Babbage (1791–1871) first seen 1864 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 173; As cited in: Samuel Smiles (1864) Industrial biography; iron-workers and tool-makers, p. 245
“The waking mind...is the least serviceable in the arts.”
Henry Miller (1891–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Apparently, mathematics and the martial arts are not necessarily mutually exclusive.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To apply oneself to great inventions, starting from the smallest beginnings, is no task for ordinary minds; to divine that wonderful arts lie hid behind trivial and childish things is a conception for superhuman talents.”
Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) said by 1642 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What you have here is an example of that well known phenomenon, A Bookshop Assistant Who Knows Buggerall But Won't Admit It (probably some kind of arts graduate).”
Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) said by 2015 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In short, there is everything about this season's entertainment to make the Hippodrome what it always is—a Temple of the Arts to all those who hang pennants on their automobiles, use “Shake hands with my friend” as a formula for introduction, and sprinkle powdered sugar on their sliced tomatoes. p. 106”
Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is a quaint comment on the notion that the English are practical and the French merely visionary, that we were rebels in arts while they were rebels in arms.”
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are all Greeks. Our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts have their root in Greece.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The life of the arts, far from being an interruption, a distraction, in the life of a nation, is very close to the center of a nation's purpose...and is a test of the quality of a nation's civilization.”
John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) first seen 1962 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: LOOK Magazine Article 'The Arts in America' (552)" (18 December 1962); also inscribed at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington, D.C.
“A warlike nation like the Germans, without either cities, letters, arts, or money, found some compensation for this savage state in the enjoyment of liberty. Their poverty secured their freedom, since our desires and our possessions are the strongest fetters of despotism.”
Edward Gibbon (1737–1794) said by 1794 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A long period of distress and anarchy, in which empire, and arts, and riches, had migrated from the banks of the Tiber, was incapable of restoring or adorning the city; and, as all that is human must retrograde if it do not advance, every successive age must have hastened the ruin of the works of antiquity.”
Edward Gibbon (1737–1794) said by 1794 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead: therefore we must learn both arts.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) first seen 1830 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Notebooks (1830).
“The fine arts once divorcing themselves from truth are quite certain to fall mad, if they do not die.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And, ev'n while fashion's brightest arts decoy, The heart distrusting asks, if this be joy.”
Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774) said by 1774 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“'T is woman that seduces all mankind; By her we first were taught the wheedling arts.”
John Gay (1685–1732) said by 1732 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our proper business is improvement. Let our age be the age of improvement. In a day of peace, let us advance the arts of peace and the works of peace. Let us develop the resources of our land, call forth its powers, build up its institutions, promote all its great interests, and see whether we also, in our day and generation, may not perform something worthy to be remembered.”
Daniel Webster (1782–1852) said by 1852 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love; Or chide my palsy, or my gout; My five gray hairs, or ruin'd fortune flout; With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve; Take you a course, get you a place, Observe his Honour, or his Grace; Or the king's real, or his stamp'd face Contemplate ; what you will, approve, So you will let me love.”
John Donne (1572–1631) said by 1631 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Degrade first the arts if you'd mankind degrade, Hire idiots to paint with cold light and hot shade.”
William Blake (1757–1827) first seen 1798 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Annotations to Sir Joshua Reynolds's Discourses, title page (c. 1798–1809)
“When nations grow old, the Arts grow cold, And Commerce settles on every tree: And the poor and the old Can live upon gold, For all are born poor. Aged sixty-three.”
William Blake (1757–1827) first seen 1800 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On Art And Artists (1800) 'On the Foundation of the Royal Academy'
“Commerce is so far from being beneficial to Arts or to Empire, that it is destructive of both, as all their History shows, for the above Reason of Individual Merit being its Great Hatred. Empires flourish till they become Commercial & then they are scattered abroad to the four winds”
William Blake (1757–1827) first seen 1810 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Public Address, Blake's Notebook c. 1810
“The human race, in its intellectual life, is organized like the bees: the masculine soul is a worker, sexually atrophied, and essentially dedicated to impersonal and universal arts; the feminine is a queen, infinitely fertile, omnipresent in its brooding industry, but passive and abounding in intuitions without method and passions without justice.”
George Santayana (1863–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is true that an observer, under that softening influence of the fine arts which makes other people's hardships picturesque, might have been delighted with this homestead called Freeman's End.”
George Eliot (1819–1880) said by 1880 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One can bring no greater reproach against a man than to say that he does not set sufficient value upon pleasure, and there is no greater sign of a fool than the thinking that he can tell at once and easily what it is that pleases him. To know this is not easy, and how to extend our knowledge of it is the highest and the most neglected of all arts and branches of education.”
Samuel Butler (novelist) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The great end of all human industry, is the attainment of happiness. For this were arts invented, sciences cultivated, laws ordained, and societies modelled, by the most profound wisdom of patriots and legislators.”
David Hume (1711–1776) said by 1776 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The soldier then in Grecian arts unskill’d, Returning rich with plunder from the field, If cups of silver or of gold he brought With jewels set, and exquisitely wrought, To glorious trappings strait the plate he turn’d, And with the glitt’ring spoil his horse adorn’d.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What wonder if the kindly beams he shed, Revived the drooping arts again; If science raised her head, And soft humanity, that from rebellion fled.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All arts and artists Theseus could command, Who sold for hire, or wrought for better fame.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He, full of fraudful arts, This well-invented tale for truth imparts.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Live then, thou great encourager of arts! Live ever in our thankful hearts.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“His knowledge in the noblest useful arts Was such dead authors could not give, But habitudes with those who live.”
John Dryden (1631–1700) said by 1700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Cradle of Letters ! Mistress of the World ! Soil of the Sun ! Italia! I salute thee ! How oft the human race have worn thy yoke. The vessels of thine arms, thine arts, thy sky !”
Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) said by 1838 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Music must take rank as the highest of the fine arts — as the one which, more than any other, ministers to human welfare.”
Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) said by 1903 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Can we ring the bells backward? Can we unlearn the arts that pretend to civilize, and then burn the world? There is a march of science; but who shall beat the drums for its retreat?”
Charles Lamb (1775–1834) first seen 1830 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to George Dyer (20 December 1830)
“The nation state has never been associated with peace on earth. Its most powerful recommendation and record is, as a matter of fact, as a wager of war. The history of nation states is written around the dates of war, not peace, around arms and not arts. The organization of warfare without the coercive power of the nation state is simply unimaginable at the scale with which we have become familiar.”
Karl Hess (1923–1994) said by 1994 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Literature is the noblest of all the arts. Music dies on the air, or at best exists only as a memory; oratory ceases with the effort; the painter's colors fade and the canvas rots; the marble is dragged from its pedestal and is broken into fragments.”
Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) said by 1915 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The inglorious arts of peace.”
Andrew Marvell (1621–1678) first seen 1650 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland, line 10 (1650)
“I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) first seen 1923 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech (7 June 1923), Seanad Éireann (Irish Free Senate), on the Censorship of Films Bill.
“We do not need to explain how the Aryans entered and settled in the Dravidian country (tira¯vit»a na¯» t»u), and subjugated and oppressed the Dravidians. Nor do we need to explain how before the Aryans entered the Dravidian country, the Dravidian country had a civilization and arts of the highest rank.”
Periyar E. V. Ramasamy (1879–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Wonder is not a disease. Wonder, and its expression in poetry and the arts, are among the most important things which seem to distinguish men from other animals, and intelligent and sensitive people from morons.”
Alan Watts (1915–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I mean, what is a woman? I assure you, I do not know. I do not believe that you know. I do not believe that anybody can know until she has expressed herself in all the arts and professions open to human skill.”
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) said by 1941 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We, by our arts may be called the grandsons of God.”
Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) said by 1519 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Few would defend a small view of Alchemy as "Mother of Chemistry", and confuse its true goal with those external metal arts. Alchemy is an erotic science, involved in buried aspects of reality, aimed at purifying and transforming all being and matter. Not to suggest that material operations are ever abandoned. The adept holds to both the mystical and physical work.”
Jim Morrison (1943–1971) said by 1971 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One is not quite certain that creativeness in the arts, literature, and science functions best in an environment of absolute freedom. Chances are that a relatively mild tyranny stimulates creativeness.”
Eric Hoffer (1902–1983) first seen 1956 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Entry (1956)
“I could give you a list a mile long of the homosexuals in the arts but there's no point in making a big tzimis about a relatively harmless and cool state of affairs — Each man to his own tastes.”
Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) said by 1969 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Stan [Perlmeter] was a liberal arts major... We happened to be in the same building... Again, it took five minutes for Stan to embrace the value approach.”
Warren Buffett (born 1930) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source