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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“AALST (n.) One who changes his name to be further to the front.”
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All of Vietnam has [beautiful women] and not just singular enchantresses but huge aggregate percentages of sirens and belles. Any random group of thirty Vietnamese women will contain a dozen who make Julia Roberts look like Lyle Lovett ... I wonder if it changes the nature of a society for beauty to be so common. Maybe in Vietnam "She has a wonderful personality" really means something.”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In other amendments, we are proposing significant changes in social services for the poor. This proposal has been developed in recent months and will be ready for submission to the Congress next week. These amendments will: Encourage accountability and program results; Strengthen the role of Governors, mayors, and county executives; Seek to eliminate duplication and overlap.”
Richard Nixon (1913–1994) said by 1994 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Years compress like fault lines in the mind. While everything else changes, the mind remembers exactly what it wants to remember. A decade can be lost and a year seem like forever.”
Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No matter how the conomy and sociology of the neighbouring sectors of the Galaxy changes, there was always an elite; and it is always the characteristic of an elite that it possesses leisure as the great reward of its elite-hood.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Plowboy: You truly feel that all the major changes in history have been caused by science and technology?”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“2.6.: still a stable kernel, but accept bigger changes leading up to it (timeframe: a month or two).”
Linus Torvalds (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Species evolve to meet the environment. An intelligent species changes the environment to suit itself. As soon as a species becomes intelligent, it should stop evolving.”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Mother, where are the angels? I'm scared of the changes.”
“Meet is it changes should control Our being, lest we rust in ease. We all are changed by still degrees, All but the basis of the soul.”
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) first seen 1842 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Love Thou Thy Land", st. 11 (1842)
“Fool! All that is, at all, Lasts ever, past recall; Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure: What entered into thee, That was, is, and shall be: Time's wheel runs back or stops: Potter and clay endure.”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Natur duz awl her big and little jobs without making enny furse; the earth goes around the sun, the moon changes, the eklipses, and the pollywog, silently and taillessly, bekums a frog, but man kant even deliver a small-sized 4th ov July orashun without knocking down a mountain or two, and tareing up three or four primeval forests by the bleeding rutes.”
Josh Billings (1818–1885) said by 1885 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Eternity! thou pleasing dreadful thought! Through what variety of untried being, Through what new scenes and changes must we pass!”
Joseph Addison (1672–1719) said by 1719 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Inconsistencies of opinion, arising from changes of circumstances, are often justifiable.”
Daniel Webster (1782–1852) first seen 1846 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech (July 25 and 27, 1846); reported in Edward Everett, ed., The Works of Daniel Webster (1851), Vol. V, p. 187
“The ruling power within, when it is in its natural state, is so related to outer circumstances that it easily changes to accord with what can be done and what is given it to do.”
Marcus Aurelius (121–180) said by 180 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Also quoted by: Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
“Look round at the courses of the stars, as if thou wert going along with them; and constantly consider the changes of the elements into one another; for such thoughts purge away the filth of the terrene life.”
Marcus Aurelius (121–180) said by 180 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If man reflects on the changes and transformations which follow one another like wave after wave and their rapidity, he will despise everything which is perishable.”
Marcus Aurelius (121–180) said by 180 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My form remains one, though the matter in it changes continually. I am, in that respect, like a curve in a waterfall.”
C. S. Lewis (1898–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have now been in the BBC about 6 months. Shall remain in it if the political changes I foresee come off, otherwise probably not. Its atmosphere is something halfway between a girls' school and a lunatic asylum, and all we are doing at present is useless, or slightly worse than useless.”
George Orwell (1903–1950) first seen 1942 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diary entry (14 March 1942)
“There are no moral or intellectual merits. Homer composed the Odyssey; if we postulate an infinite period of time, with infinite circumstances and changes, the impossible thing is not to compose the Odyssey, at least once.”
Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) first seen 1949 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Immortal" (1949)
“Fiction is to the grown man what play is to the child; it is there that he changes the atmosphere and tenor of his life.”
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) first seen 1882 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Gossip on Romance, printed in Longman's Magazine (November 1882).
“Of course, I reserve the right to make wholly stupid changes to Perl if I think they improve the language.”
Larry Wall (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I know most of the young Democrats our age who want to go into politics, they mean well and they speak well, but none of them is as good as you are at actually doing things to make positive changes in people's lives.”
Bill Clinton (born 1946) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My soul, sit thou a patient looker-on; Judge not the play before the play is done: Her plot hath many changes; every day Speaks a new scene; the last act crowns the play.”
Francis Quarles (1592–1644) first seen 1635 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Epigram. Respice Finem (1635).
“It is a charmed ring—this emerald stone Will be a sign, when thou art from me gone. Mark if it changes; if a spot be seen On the now spotless ground of lighted green, Danger is round me; haste thou then to me, Thou know'st how fearless is my trust in thee.”
Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) said by 1838 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Weep not that the world changes—did it keep A stable, changeless state, 'twere cause indeed to weep.”
William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878) said by 1878 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“‘But youʼse takinʼ uh awful chance.’ ‘No moʼ than Ah took befoʼ and no moʼ than anybody else takes when dey gits married. It always changes folks, and sometimes it brings out dirt and meanness dat even de person didnʼt know they had in ʼem theyselves.’”
Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Everything passes Everything changes Just do what you think you should do And someday maybe Who knows, baby I'll come and be cryin' to you”
“May your hands always be busy. May your feet always be swift. May you have a strong foundation when the winds of changes shift. May your heart always be joyful. May your song always be sung. May you stay forever young.”
“I mean to speak tonight of big things, of big changes and the promises they hold, and of some big problems and how, together, we can solve them and move our country forward as the undisputed leader of the age.”
George H. W. Bush (1924–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We gather tonight at a dramatic and deeply promising time in our history and in the history of man on Earth. For in the past 12 months, the world has known changes of almost Biblical proportions. And even now, months after the failed coup that doomed a failed system, I'm not sure we've absorbed the full impact, the full import of what happened. But communism died this year.”
George H. W. Bush (1924–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I mean to speak this evening of the changes that can take place in our country, now that we can stop making the sacrifices we had to make when we had an avowed enemy that was a superpower. Now we can look homeward even more and move to set right what needs to be set right.”
George H. W. Bush (1924–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“These changes in identity and location can easily become nested inside each other, many layers deep, even if you aren't doing anything nefarious. Once you have forgotten who and where you are, the whoami command is indispensable.”
Neal Stephenson (born 1959) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You see, education is transformational. It literally changes lives. That is why people work so hard to become educated and that is why education has always been the key to the American Dream, the force that erases arbitrary divisions of race and class and culture and unlocks every person's God-given potential.”
Condoleezza Rice (born 1954) first seen 2001 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: {{cite web |url=https://2001-2009.state.gov/secretary/rm/2006/66630.htm |title=
“As a result of changes which, over the last century, have modified our empirically based pictures of the world and hence the moral value of many of its elements, the "human religious ideal" inclines to stress certain tendencies and to express itself in terms which seem, at first sight, no longer to coincide with the "christian religious ideal".”
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955) said by 1955 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You were supposed to have been in the Sector when the adjustment began. Because of an error you were not. You came into the Sector late — during the adjustment itself. You fled, and when you returned it was over. You saw, and you should not have seen. Instead of a witness you should have been part of the adjustment. Like the others, you should have undergone changes.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“With all our boasted reforms, our great social changes, and our far-reaching discoveries, human beings continue to be sent to the worst of hells, wherein they are outraged, degraded, and tortured, that society may be “protected” from the phantoms of its own making.”
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The methods of coping with crime have no doubt undergone several changes, but mainly in a theoretic sense. In practice, society has retained the primitive motive in dealing with the offender; that is, revenge.”
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“First Shakespeare sonnets seem meaningless; first Bach fugues, a bore; first differential equations, sheer torture. But training changes the nature of our spiritual experiences. In due course, contact with an obscurely beautiful poem, an elaborate piece of counterpoint or of mathematical reasoning, causes us to feel direct intuitions of beauty and significance. It is the same in the moral world.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ch. 14, p. 333 [2012 reprint]
“There is a thing inherent and natural, Which existed before heaven and earth. Motionless and fathomless, It stands alone and never changes; It pervades everywhere and never becomes exhausted. It may be regarded as the Mother of the Universe. I do not know its name. If I am forced to give it a name, I call it Tao, and I name it as supreme.”
Laozi (580–501 BC) said by 501 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: translated by Ch'u Ta-Kao (1904)
“Time changes all things and cultivates even in herself an appreciation of irony, — and, therefore, why shouldn't I have changed a trifle?”
James Branch Cabell (1879–1958) said by 1958 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You are the stream, the fish, the light, the pulsing shadow. You the unchanging presence, in whom all moves and changes. How can I focus my flickering, perceive at the fountain's heart the sapphire I know is there?”
Denise Levertov (1923–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Cage's Music of Changes was a further indication that the arts in general were beginning to consciously deal with the "given" material and, to varying degrees, liberating them from the inherited, functional concepts of control.”
Earle Brown (1926–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As I confronted her, the changes grew less apparent to me, her identity stronger. She was there, in the full vigour of her personality, battered but not diminished, looking at me, speaking to me in the husky, breathy voice I remembered so well.”
Willa Cather (1873–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What sort of arrogance did she have, even to imagine reaching back into the past and making changes? Who am I, she thought, if I dare to answer prayers intended for the gods?”
Orson Scott Card (born 1951) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The billion billion paths of his life lay open before him, waiting for his first choices, for the first changes in the world around him to eliminate a million futures every second.”
Orson Scott Card (born 1951) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As the brain-changes are continuous, so do all these consciousnesses melt into each other like dissolving views. Properly they are but one protracted consciousness, one unbroken stream.”
William James (1842–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Everything changes when we give ourselves permission to be more selective in what we choose to do.”
Greg McKeown (author) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The world's a scene of changes, and to be Constant, in Nature were inconstancy.”
Abraham Cowley (1618–1667) said by 1667 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The village would never accept it. It has a policy of never accepting anything. As a happy consequence, it changes about as fast as the rules of chess.”
Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) said by 2007 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source