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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“Keep reading. It's one of the most marvelous adventures that anyone can have.”
Lloyd Alexander (1924–2007) first seen 1999 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview with Scholastic students (1999)
“I'm frightened by your behaviour. I woke up this morning and you said good morning and i said good morning, what do you feel like doing today, and you said well i sort of have to do this thing, and i said what thing and you said go to the reading of my father's will, and I said what are you talking about and then you told me that your dad had died. THIS MORNING.”
Daniel Handler (born 1970) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“These are roads to take when you think of your country and interested bring down the maps again, phoning the statistician, asking the dear friend, reading the papers with morning inquiry.”
Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You listeners, the ones who found me first are, I believe, the future of great art thinkers. Because anyone that's found me now I really think is grabbing on to the ideas that I have, more than anything. It's about the music but it's also about the story. So thank you guys for loving and reading the story and being as into it and as passionate as I am.”
“By the mere reading of this work one can of course achieve an intellectual knowledge, but not wisdom. Knowledge can be gained by transference, but wisdom must be acquired by experience and recognition, the latter depending on the spiritual maturity of the individual. And this maturity again is determined by the spiritual development that is formed on the path to initiation.”
Franz Bardon (1909–1958) said by 1958 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sometimes I feel that a more rational explanation for all that has happened during my lifetime is that I am still only thirteen years old, reading Jules Verne or H. G. Wells, and have fallen asleep.”
Stanislaw Ulam (1909–1984) first seen 1983 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Preface To the 1983 Edition, p. xxvii
“I find that many modern fantasies explain things away far too easily, which makes a lot of it overly familiar (to me, anyway). Real myths are often strange and startlingly unfamiliar, and don't always give up their meanings easily; you have to tease them out, and for me, that's one of the pleasures of reading older collections of lore.”
Elizabeth Hand (born 1957) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Elizabeth Hand on Mortal Love at HarperCollins (2004)
“I often tell my clients they should do at least 30 percent of all their reading outside their own field. This will give them perspective and knowledge that will make them more interesting.”
Roger Ailes (1940–2017) first seen 1989 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: You are the Message : Getting What You Want by Being Who You Are (1989)
“Ultimately I think the difference between reading the Bible and studying it is making the connections between who Jesus is and what he's done.”
Mark Driscoll (born 1970) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Barry, John D. "Bible Study Anywhere", Bible Study Magazine, Mar-Apr 2009, pg. 14.
“Merely reading the Bible is no use at all without we study it thoroughly, and hunt it through, as it were, for some great truth.”
Dwight L. Moody (1837–1899) said by 1899 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Graham Wallas has reminded us that writing as compared with speaking involves an impression at the second remove and reading an impression at the third remove. The voice of a second-rate person is more impressive than the published opinion of superior ability.”
Harold Innis (1894–1952) said by 1952 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 2007 edition, p. 31.
“Those who do succeed in reading the Bible from beginning to end will discover that at least it has a beginning and an end, and some traces of a total structure.”
Northrop Frye (1912–1991) said by 1991 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Poisson, reading Galois' First Memoir, found the proof of Lemma III insufficient, and wrote in pencil the following comment.”
Évariste Galois (1811–1832) said by 1832 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But when I asked Mom, she shrugged and looked up at the sky. She had given up looking at me when we talked. “Reverend Beelson told us God would provide,” she said, as if reading that in the clouds. “And he does not lie.” It wasn’t clear if she meant Reverend Beelson or God.”
Jane Yolen (1939–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I soon began writing out my whole prayer and reading it back to God. Previously I'd get no further than "Dear God" and I'd already be thinking of the person I was going to meet for lunch or the board meeting agenda or what my family members and I would be doing later that evening. But when I began to move pen across paper, it became much easier to remain focused.”
Bill Hybels (born 1951) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I love reading manga!!” “I really, really love drawing them too!!” “I draw therefore I am!!” “This is proof that I exist!! I’m satisfied with just that!!!” The point is I’m a manga idiot.”
Hiromu Arakawa (born 1973) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Goethe, whose letters I've been reading very intensively during the past few weeks, is always stressing Verträglichkeit - agreeing to live and let live - as the most important element of friendship: we shouldn't try to change people, but simply let them be as they are, making the best of even partial concord, instead of trying to force a fictitious perfect harmony.”
Ida Friederike Görres (1901–1971) first seen 1951 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Broken Lights p. 82 Diaries 1951-1952
“Been reading Hardy's Return of the Native. Astonishing how moral standards have shifted over the past hundred years:shifted isn't the word - a landslide...Today the problems of these nineteenth-century novels strike us as exaggerated, as bathos, even comical - much ado about nothing. But for these people it really was a struggle with the gods, very real, menacing, dangerous gods.”
Ida Friederike Görres (1901–1971) first seen 1955 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Broken Lights Diaries 1955-57.
“Poetry is a vocal art for me, not neccessarilyperformative, it might be reading to one self or recalling some lines by memory.The speaker bringing their own experience to it,changing it with their own sensibility.”
Robert Pinsky (born 1940) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“An underestimated element in poetry, that reading aloud makes clear, is the pause. I mean especially the force of a pause or a couple of pauses close together, contrasted with a longer unit of grammar.”
Robert Pinsky (born 1940) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Article-Poems Aloud April 2009
“What our story, however, has demonstrated is the astonishingly checkered, not to say hazardous, career of a reading device which we in the West now take so much for granted. Historians have acclaimed the "triumph of the alphabet," but the triumph was often compromised, sometimes bitterly contested, and to this day is only half won.”
Eric A. Havelock (1903–1988) first seen 1987 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Chinese Characters and the Greek Alphabet" in Sino-Platonic Papers, 5 (December 1987)
“John Kenneth Galbraith doesn't get enough praise. The Affluent Society is a great insight, and has become so much a part of our understanding of contemporary capitalism that we forget where it began. It's like reading Hamlet and deciding it's full of quotations.”
Amartya Sen (born 1933) first seen 2002 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Amartya Sen, quoted in Jonathan Steele, "Last of the old-style liberals", The Guardian (2002)
“Those who wish to be inspired by the glory of the British Empire would do well to avoid reading Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations ... (pg. 164)”
Amartya Sen (born 1933) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I commented at the outset that I believe the Court presented an incomplete justification for its action. Academic criticism of Roe, charging the Court with reading its own values into the due process clause, might have been less pointed had the Court placed the woman alone, rather than the woman tied to her physician, at the center of its attention.”
Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933–2020) first seen 1985 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Some Thoughts on Autonomy and Equality in Relation to Roe v. Wade", North Carolina Law Review Volume 63, Number 2, Article 4, 1985, p.382
“Knowledge of the Bible never comes by intuition. It can only be got by hard, regular, daily, attentive, wakeful reading.”
J. C. Ryle (1816–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I would like to say I handle criticism well. In fact I enjoy reading the comments of the critics. It's great to have critics blasting you all the time. It keeps you on your toes, spurs you, challenges you, makes you want to get better. I take everything positively. There's so much to learn and do.”
Mallika Sherawat (born 1976) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Movie Mag International (September 2004)
“Personally, then I have no reason to lash out at the education system. Quite the contrary. Yet a lifetime of experience, plus a quarter century of reading and reflection, convince me that our education system is big waste of time and money. Almost every politician vows to spend more on education. As an insider, I can't help gasping, "Why? You want to waste even more?”
Bryan Caplan (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A Moral Reckoning is, among its other faults, a 352-page exercise in intellectual bad manners. Reading it is like listening for three days to Nikita Khrushchev banging his shoe.”
Mark Riebling (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All of us here are servants of the reading public. I am the head of the servants and I must show that I know better than any of the servants where the materials are found. I want to show that our service here is efficient and that we are really working to serve.”
Epifanio de los Santos (1871–1928) said by 1928 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Filipinos in History, Vol. 2 (1989) by National Historical Institute of the Philippines.
“On more than one occasion when reading Epifanio de los Santos, one reads Don Juan Valera.”
Epifanio de los Santos (1871–1928) first seen 1928 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted by Menendez Pelayo from Manila Spanish Daily in The Manila Tribune of April 19, 1928.
“I decided I don't want to go for the top job now. I could be working for another 25 years and I'd like to be reading bedtime stories to my children for another two or three years.”
Yvette Cooper (born 1969) first seen 2010 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On why she did not nominate herself to become Leader of the Labour Party, during BBC's Today programme (May 2010).
“Reading the Bible will help you get to know the word, but it's when you put it down and live your life that you get to know the author.”
Steve Maraboli (born 1975) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A retired physicist reading the Encyclopedia Britannica can do just so much toward securing world peace.”
Brian Hayes (scientist) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Artists have a sensibility that others don't have. They have a way of reading into the future.”
John Elkann (born 1976) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: All in the family", TIME, 06-25-2006
“Reading after a certain age diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking, just as the man who spends too much time in the theater is tempted to be content with living vicariously instead of living his own life.”
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) said by 1955 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Much reading after a certain age diverts the mind from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking, just as the man who spends too much time in the theaters is apt to be content with living vicariously instead of living his own life.”
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) said by 1955 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.”
Francis Bacon (1561–1626) said by 1626 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A careful reading of 50 Simple Things leaves you wondering whether you're going to die from environmental disaster or intellectual annoyance. Failing either, you can worry yourself to death.”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My girlfriend always giggles during sex. No matter what she's reading.”
Emo Philips (born 1956) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I was at the job of reading it for days and days, endlessly daunted and halted by its laborious dullness, its flatulent fatuity, its almost fabulous inconsequentiality.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have always suspected that the reading is right, which requires many words to prove it wrong; and the emendation wrong, that cannot without so much labour appear to be right.”
Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) first seen 1765 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Plays of William Shakespeare, Vol. I (1765), Preface
“I'm sick and tired of hearing things fromUptight short sided narrow minded hypocritesAll I want is the truth, just give me some truthI've had enough of reading thingsBy neurotic psychotic pigheaded politiciansAll I want is the truth, just give me some truth”
John Lennon (1940–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In general, when reading a scholarly critic, one profits more from his quotations than from his comments.”
W. H. Auden (1907–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Some perks belong, though to all unwilling celibates: our rooms are seldom battlefields, we enjoy the pleasure of reading in bed (as we grow older, it's true, we may find it prudent to get nodding drunk first), we retain the light to choose our sacred image.”
W. H. Auden (1907–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I'm referred to, I see, as 'the biggest banker in modern publishing'. Now there's a line that needed the celebrated Guardian proof-reading.”
Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) said by 2015 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I would just like to draw attention to everyone reading the above that this should be interpreted as 'I am not dead'. I will, of course, be dead at some future point, as will everybody else.”
Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) said by 2015 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The age seems sore from excess of stimulation, just as a day or two after a thorough Debauch and long sustained Drinking-match a man feels all over like a Bruise. Even to admire otherwise than on the whole and where "I admire" is but a synonyme for "I remember, I liked it very much when I was reading it," is too much an effort, would be too disquieting an emotion!”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) first seen 1820 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Thomas Allsop (30 March 1820)
“Reading the Socratic dialogues one has the feeling: what a frightful waste of time! What's the point of these arguments that prove nothing and clarify nothing?”
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) said by 1951 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A man perfects himself by work much more than by reading.”
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill up its empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining authors.”
Joseph Addison (1672–1719) first seen 1711 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: No. 94 (18 June 1711)