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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“Reading people like James Baldwin [made me realise] that, if you’re an artist, there’s no reason not to make art out of anything. Sex is a big part of the human experience. It’s something that we’re hardwired to think about. Why would you avoid making art about something that is so all-encompassingly important to human beings?”
Nalo Hopkinson (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A capacity, and taste, for reading, gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others. It is the key, or one of the keys, to the already solved problems. And not only so. It gives a relish, and facility, for successfully pursuing the [yet] unsolved ones.”
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) said by 1865 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I never tire of reading Tom Paine.”
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) said by 1865 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in A Literary History of the American People (1931) by Charles Angoff, p. 270
Also quoted by: Thomas Paine (misattributed)
“I sometimes think that the American story is the one about the reading of the will.”
Lewis H. Lapham (1935–2024) said by 2024 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The sort of ill-informed armchair moralizing that pours from the permanently outraged, Daily Mail-reading mentality is one of the more revolting and frightening aspects of our society.”
Derren Brown (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The most cursory look at cold-reading and suggestion tells us that Tarot cards are not evil; psychics do not ‘usher in’ the Devil or his minions; and even the creepy old Ouija board can be shown to operate via quite everyday, natural, physical forces.”
Derren Brown (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My techniques are concerned with reading signals from people, tiny unconscious clues that betray their thoughts. I tend to see it like a game...”
Derren Brown (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We form many of our political opinions through reading papers and unconsciously absorbing the rhetoric of the journalists. Later, we spout the same opinions as our own. This parallels the way we respond to any authority and it’s something politicians understand well.”
Derren Brown (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“From psychics to spiritualists to palm readers to graphologists to astrologists, the ‘expert’ in question either just simply deluded and naive or they’re using a skill called cold-reading.”
Derren Brown (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“kummel and have deep conversations about Plato and Kant while listening to classical music. Or she would spend the entire morning in the bathtub, with bubble-bath up to her chin, reading Proust. If you wanted to talk to her you had to do it in the bathroom.”
Joan Vollmer (1923–1951) said by 1951 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If we wish to speak and write like Hemingway, we cannot simply dumb down our language to a third-grade reading level and be done with it. To achieve the coveted "Hemingway effect," we must weather our speech with the timeless expressions found within the literary canon. In other words, minimalism is complicated.”
Tom Heehler wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The idea — the core idea of humanism — is that the act of reading about great deeds will lead you to imitate them,..”
Stanley Fish (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To manage, learn your management skills from the greatest managers and those who were perfectionist by reading their failures.”
Elia M. Ramollah (born 1973) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A society can exist - many do exist - without writing, but no society can exist without reading.”
Alberto Manguel (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“reading is at the beginning of the social contract”
Alberto Manguel (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I never talked to anyone about my reading; the need to share came afterwords.”
Alberto Manguel (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The American psychologist Julian Jaynes, in a controversial study on the origin of consciousness, argued that the bicameral mind - in which one of the hemispheres becomes specialized in silent reading - is a late development in humankind's evolution, and that the process by which this function develops is still changing.”
Alberto Manguel (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Socrates affirmed that only that which the reader already knows can be sparked by a reading, and that the knowledge cannot be acquired through dead letters.”
Alberto Manguel (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One can transform a place by reading in it.”
Alberto Manguel (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“From its very start, reading is writings apotheosis.”
Alberto Manguel (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is in the translation that the innocence lost after the first reading is restored under another guise, since the reader is once again faced with a new text and its attendant mystery. That is the inescapable paradox of translation, and also its wealth.”
Alberto Manguel (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As centuries of dictators have known, an illiterate crowd is easiest to rule; since the craft of reading cannot be untaught once it has been acquired, the second-best recourse is to limit its scope.”
Alberto Manguel (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If, in reading translations, you come across a haiku that does not convey to you any emotion at all, do not blame yourself or the poet. Blame it on the translator!”
Harold Gould Henderson (1889–1974) first seen 1967 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Haiku in English'. Charles E. Tuttle 1967
“Only half of writing is saying what you mean. The other half is preventing people from reading what they expected you to mean.”
James Richardson (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My years of reading P.T. Barnum is finally coming into play. [snaps fingers] This notion of saying nothing, of keeping a secret, and doing it in a way that's not elitist but that's like, You wanna come in here and hear? [whispers] We have a secret. That's all that I can tell you. But you're involved. You know?”
Josh Homme (born 1973) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Reported in Jay Babcock, "MUSIC IS NEVER WRONG: A visit with Josh Homme & John Paul Jones of Them Crooked Vultures", Arthur Magazine (October 15, 2009).
“I prefer listening to talking, reading to socializing … I like to think before I speak (softly).”
Susan Cain (born 1968) first seen 2012 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Susan Cain: Quiet revolutionary" speaker profile at TED.com, February 2012 (est.)
“Good writing has an aliveness that keeps the reader reading from one paragraph to the next, and it's not a question of gimmicks to "personalize" the author.”
William Zinsser (1922–2015) said by 2015 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Make a habit of reading what is being written today and what has been written before. Writing is learned by imitation.”
William Zinsser (1922–2015) said by 2015 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nobody ever stopped reading E. B. White or V. S. Pritchett because the writing was too good.”
William Zinsser (1922–2015) said by 2015 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A modern philosopher who has never once suspected himself of being a charlatan must be such a shallow mind that his work is probably not worth reading.”
Leszek Kołakowski (1927–2009) first seen 1988 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Metaphysical Horror (1988)
“I'll never have to write my memoirs now after reading this. She had six husbands, at least six lovers - why, my life is so dull compared to hers! I've had one husband, one daughter, one house and no lovers.”
Irene Dunne (1898–1990) said by 1990 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Everyone Loved Irene, by William Frye Vanity Fair, 2004]
“Reading it [Rathbun's blog] had a therapeutic effect. It made me realise that I wasn't the only one with doubts. He reflected exactly what I was thinking.”
Mark Rathbun (born 1957) first seen 2012 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Luis Garcia, cited in (Adams 2012).
“This is my 763-page indictment for five hundred years of theft, murder, pillage, and rape. So is Almanac long? Sure, but federal indictments are long...And mine is a little more interesting reading than a straight-on legal indictment.”
Leslie Marmon Silko (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The thought definitely crosses my mind, but for me, it has always been about reading great scripts and finding things I relate to, and this was one of those. As an actor, I think you always want your work to do well, and I think that’s hopefully what’s going to happen. Hopefully this movie does turn out as great as everyone wants it to be, and hopefully we don’t disappoint anyone.”
Liam Hemsworth (born 1990) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Don’t go through life without reading the autobiographies of Emma Goldman, Prince Kropotkin, Malcolm X”
Grace Paley (1922–2007) said by 2007 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I started reading about people of great accomplishment ... and it dawned on me suddenly that the person who has the most to do with what happens in your life is you.”
Ben Carson (born 1951) first seen 2011 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in "World-Renowned Pediatric Neurosurgeon Dr. Benjamin Carson Attributes His Success to Confidence Gained Through Reading and Education", PR Newswire (October 19, 2011)
“Reading is the way out of ignorance, and the road to achievement.”
Ben Carson (born 1951) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You can tirelessly keep on reading the same author, revere, admire, praise him, exalt him to the skies, know and recite each of his sentences by heart, and yet remain completely unaffected by him, as if he had never demanded anything of you and not said anything at all.”
Elias Canetti (1905–1994) first seen 1989 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: J. Agee, trans. (1989), p. 43
“I was reading of chaos that contained order; of information as the primal, creative force; of systems that, by design, fell apart so they could renew themselves; and of invisible forces that structured space and held complex things together. These were compelling, evocative ideas, and they gave me hope, even if they did not reveal immediate solutions.”
Margaret Wheatley (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There isn't any distinction between a reader and a writer – reading is so much a part of it.”
Dermot Healy (1947–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The more rigorously criticism historicizes a work of art, in the sense of lodging it in the context of the moment of its production, the less likely it becomes for criticism to be able to explain either its own subsequent interest in the work or the possibility of lay—that is, nonacademic—interest in reading it.”
Russell Berman (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I lead a simple life now, I am foolish, an old man in love, a dreamer who dreams of nothing but reading to Allie and holding her whenever I can. I am a sinner with many faults and a man who believes in magic, but I am too old to change and too old to care.”
Nicholas Sparks (born 1965) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Psychoanalysis is unlikely to be repealed; people are not going to go back to reading novels in order to understand themselves and their lives.”
Geoffrey Nunberg (1945–2020) first seen 1983 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Geoffrey Nunberg (1983) The Decline of Grammar, The Atlantic, December 1983
“,” is a true story about . Reading her life and dramatizing it, I could find all these things . . . some have changed, and some haven’t that much. Oh, I love that story – I love her. I love her femininity, her weaknesses as well as her strengths. The way she falls desperately in love with and she just can’t give him up. But what does he hold against her? Her achievements”
Alice Munro (1931–2024) said by 2024 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The practice of reading aloud did do something towards attuning my ear .The subtle cadences of Elizabethan blank verse taught me more than the substantial study of English prosody could do at that time.”
Vernon Scannell (1922–2007) said by 2007 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I was the living proof of T. S Eliot's assertion that poetry can communicate before it is understood.the conscious,analytical part of my response was lulled into a kind of stupor by the rhythms and richness of the imagery of the poetry I was reading.”
Vernon Scannell (1922–2007) said by 2007 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The proper act of reading of a poem was not an act of passive submission but one of collaboration with its author.”
Vernon Scannell (1922–2007) said by 2007 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I wake up angry every morning and start reading. Then I'm furious.”
Paul Conrad (1924–2010) first seen 1999 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Astor, D. (1999). The state of editorial cartooning eyed at Iowa City symposium. Editor & Publisher, 132(43): 35.
“I don't see a great deal in editorial cartooning today, and neither do the editors. Damn few of them want cartoons that say something that should be said, politically, that is. As long as that continues, cartoonists are going to be in bad shape, but not as bad shape as the publishers and owners of the newspapers will be in when the people realize they're not reading anything.”
Paul Conrad (1924–2010) first seen 2002 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Pompilio, N. (2002). Not So Funny. American Journalism Review.
“I was excited by the story of Yayati. This exchange of ages between the father and the son, which seemed to be terribly powerful and terribly modern. At the same time I was reading a lot of Sartre and the Existentialist. This consistent harping on responsibility which the Existentialist indulge in suddenly seemed to link up with the story of Yayati.”
Girish Raghunath Karnad (1938–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source