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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“He brought me his report card from the teacher and he said He wasn't very proud of it and sadly bowed his head. He was excellent in reading, but arithmetic, was fair, And I noticed there were several "unsatisfactorys" there; But one little bit of credit which was given brought me joy — He was "excellent in effort," and I fairly hugged the boy.”
Edgar Guest (1881–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The real turning point in my life came when I performed my best in Muzaffar Ali’s Umrao Jaan. After reading the script, I felt I had Umrao in me — the character influenced me so much. I put my soul into each minute aspect of my performance. I was thrilled when I won the National Award for Best Actress for Umrao Jaan.”
“After reading the script, I had a strange feeling that I had Umrao in me. And the film created history.… I gave a performance which is one of my personal favourites.”
“I remember reading a Scientific American article about the use of new physical techniques – including neutron scattering – as a method for unravelling the structure of the ribosome. I was fascinated. I knew ribosomes were a big fundamental problem in science and this was a method for chipping away at it.”
Venkatraman Ramakrishnan (born 1952) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Reading biographies of great men would shape the life of the youth.”
D. V. Gundappa (1887–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“...just like anybody else with an obsession, whether it be fishing, bowling or skiing, he has ways he can vicariously satisfy it. Maybe he is going to peep shows and reading detective magazines. I think there's an excellent chance that one way he gets off is by going to look at what they call the slasher films.”
Ted Bundy (1946–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Though the poems of Homer and his successors were recorded, there will be no Greek reading public till we reach the fifth century B.C. ...There was instead, a hearing public that formed responsive audiences at festivals and contests.”
Thomas Cahill (1940–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Prior to 1952, when M. Ventris first published his decipherment of the 'Linear B' tablets from Crete and Greece, showing that they were Greek, everyone assumed that Hebrew was recorded in writing before Greek. But now... we are reading Linear B Greek texts, written before the birth of Abraham (let alone before the date of any known Hebrew text).”
Cyrus H. Gordon (1908–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The question is then how can we decide what anybody in the ancient world said. We can't. We wish we could. It would be nice if we could. You would like to think that because you can go to the store and buy an edition of Plato that you are actually reading Plato, but the problem is that we just do not have the kind of evidence that we need in order to establish what ancient authors actually wrote.”
Bart D. Ehrman (born 1955) first seen 2008 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Textual Reliability of the New Testament: A Dialogue between Bart Ehrman and Daniel Wallace" (April 4–5, 2008), in The Reliability of the New Testament (2011) edited by Robert Stewart, p. 47
“One of the things about Adrianne I was always grateful for was that she always wanted to learn and experience more things in the world. She was very thoughtful and interested. She loved literature and reading.”
Adrianne Wadewitz (1977–2014) first seen 2014 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Molly Vetter, friend of Wadewitz — quoted in: Wetzel, Diane. (April 23, 2014). "NP grad, Wikipedia editor dies in Calif." NPTelegraph.com. North Platte, Nebraska. — and: Wetzel, Diane (April 23, 2014). "North Platte gra…
“If the public gets out of the habit of reading they will not come back to it. We shall enter a new phase of our history from which there is no turning back.”
Georges Duhamel (1884–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Use your radio, but know how to distrust it—and do not let a day go by without reading and meditation if you want to save your soul, that soul which is yours and yours alone.”
Georges Duhamel (1884–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Just as we say “listening and hearing,” “looking and seeing,” so we ought to have two expressions to distinguish active reading from passive.”
Georges Duhamel (1884–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The only negative thing she had to say was that I displayed a tendency to exaggerate the facts for the sake of interesting reading.”
George Alec Effinger (1947–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I do not attempt here to derogate my brother’s reading habits, but merely to indicate the disparity in our interests.”
George Alec Effinger (1947–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think people tend to forget that as celebrities we are still human. We have the same emotions - we cry, we have fun, we laugh, we get sad, and we get hurt. When something is written about you, which millions of people are reading, and it is not true, imagine how hurtful it can be.”
Sania Mirza (born 1986) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Well I certainly second that, I think in addition, well I mean other things I've written suggest reading a lot of history, and uh, clearly one of the things you want people to understand is the uncertainty of things. I mean, how you really have to look at a variety of alternative futures. Any notion that you know what's going to happen, I think is, not going to work.”
Andrew W. Marshall (1921–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock.”
Ben Hecht (1894–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I was astonished to discover that working in the laboratory—doing science in collaboration with interesting and creative people—is dramatically different from taking courses and reading about science.”
Eric Kandel (born 1929) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The greater pleasures of reading the LRB are thus paid for in a more erratic and limited horizon.”
Perry Anderson (born 1938) first seen 1996 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Debts 1. "The London Review of Books" (1996; 2005)
“From my reading of Gandhi I had learned how some people in India regard eating cow as unspeakably repulsive. I realized I felt the same way about cats and dogs: I could never eat them. Were cows so different from cats and dogs that there were two moral standards, one that applies to cows, another that applies to cats and dogs? Were pigs so different? Were any of the animals I ate so different?”
Tom Regan (1938–2017) said by 2017 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Hayek, highly influenced by Mach as a young man, began reading him immediately following his return from service in World War I. He remarked about four decades later that he was “stimulated by Mach’s work to study psychology and the physiology of the senses,” though his interest in these areas derived as much from disagreement as agreement with Mach’s work.”
Alan O. Ebenstein (born 1959) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In reading the economics journals and talking with newly-minted PhDs, it is as if Keynesian economics never existed.”
David Colander (1947–2023) first seen 2002 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: [David Colander, “Functional Finance, New Classical Economics and Great Great Grandsons” (2002).
“Relying on intelligence alone to pull things off at the last minute may work for a while, but generally speaking at the graduate level or higher it doesn't. One needs to do a serious amount of reading and writing, and not just thinking, in order to get anywhere serious in mathematics.”
Terence Tao (born 1975) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On requests for career advice, Generic platitudes: Work hard (Mar 20, 2007) Math Dept, UCLA.
“How did you…pass the time?” Sunday asked. “You couldn’t just ching out of it, could you?” “We had a different form of chinging,” Eunice said. “An earlier type of virtual-reality technology, much more robust and completely unaffected by time lag. You may have heard of it. We called it ‘reading.’”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Reading is sometimes an ingenious device for avoiding thought.”
Arthur Helps (1813–1875) said by 1875 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This comment is added as a caveat for scholars seeking to learn more about the Sangh Parivar. Don’t rely on secondary and tertiary sources, but have the document in your hand, rather than reading “critical analyses” about such politicized and sensitive issues.”
Yvette Rosser (born 1952) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Rosser, Yvette Claire (2003). Curriculum as Destiny: Forging National Identity in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. University of Texas at Austin.
“There is no doubt of the need for an up-to-date, balanced, and comprehensive work on the history of atomism, drawing ideas, mathematics, and experiment together into a single story. When available, it should become required reading for all students of the exact sciences.”
Lancelot Law Whyte (1896–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The more you understand a poem and its complexities and depth, the more you will be able to do when reading it aloud.”
John Hollander (1929–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Central also to reading verse aloud is the handling of enjambment, ..the interplay of line-end and sentence-flow.”
John Hollander (1929–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The poem is an original and unique creation, but it is reading and recitation: participation.”
Edward Hirsch (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Haiku reading and writing can lead to a deeper understanding and appreciation of life and our environment.”
William J. Higginson (1938–2008) first seen 1985 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Haiku Handbook Mcagraw Hill Books 1985
“Reading, and perhaps ultimately writing, is nothing like living in a place and time where two very young men are killed in a way that is treated like entertainment.”
Edwidge Danticat (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When reading the Renaissance authors who spread their religious ideas by laughter rather than by thumbscrew and stake, we find that they do not limit themselves to the few places in Scripture where laughter is presented as desirable and good. Both theology and their own sense of fun lead them to find laughter from one end of the Bible to the other.”
Michael Andrew Screech (1926–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Thank you, Datuk Lat. It is not too late to promote a culture of reading.”
Anwar Ibrahim (born 1947) first seen 2022 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Anwar Ibrahim (2022) cited in: "Anwar hails cartoonist Lat, wants youth to read works of world’s greatest thinkers" in Malay Mail, 11 December 2022.
“[S]tart by reading Pareto; elites routinely do things that in retrospect look politically suicidal.”
Brian Reynolds Myers (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Could you spend a week or even a day without reading your emails, using social media or going online? Someone recently joked with me that having Internet access is more important than having food or water.”
Nigel Cumberland (born 1967) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Randolph Bourne has not been forgotten, not completely. People are still reading his work. They're still talking about his ideas and about his memorable phrases. The most famous of these has gradually become so widely quoted in our culture that millions of people have heard it, even heard it repeatedly, without ever learning who originally wrote or said it: "War is the health of the State.”
Jeff Riggenbach (1947–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The outstanding quality accomplishments of industry during the past decade are familiar history. Particularly during World War II, the accomplishments made by the precision equipment in our tanks and guns and planes were indelibly impressed upon the entire world. This results side of the quality picture makes impressive reading.”
Armand V. Feigenbaum (1922–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nothing, in truth, has such a tendency to weaken not only the powers of invention, but the intellectual powers in general, as a habit of extensive and various reading without reflection.”
Dugald Stewart (1753–1828) said by 1828 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: p. 334 (in 1829 edition)
“Management is not people, it is an activity like walking, reading, swimming or running. People who perform management can be designated as managers members of management, or executive leaders.”
George R. Terry (1909–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My aim is... to place before a young student a nucleus of well-ordered knowledge, to which he is to add intelligent notes and illustrations from his daily reading.”
James Gow (scholar) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“About my English... I learned more from listening to Hank Williams of Johnny Cash... than from reading Shakespeare.”
Henri Levaufre wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Unique descriptions of scene play a significant role in the success of fiction, and any first-rate novelists knows enough to keep changing the scenes in which his characters carry out action, since that no only conceals the novelist's shortcomings, but also heightens the reader's enthuisiasm in the reading process”
“In the Diary which begins 1845 there is a much larger infusion of secular matter. I find myself deep in the literary history of the eighteenth century, reading Gray's Correspondence, Prior's Life of Goldsmith, Hume's Life and Correspondence ...”
Mark Pattison (1813–1884) said by 1884 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Micro computers used as word processors complement the audio facilities, enabling the interactive teaching of all four language skills reading, listening, speaking and writing.”
David Crystal (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are constantly reading and listening to, writing and speaking, this text in the context of and against the background of other texts and other discourses.”
“‘Internationalism’ is a way of reading, and not a demography of readership ...’”
Amit Chaudhuri (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Casting off the legacies of colonialism opens up exciting new possibilities for the understanding of Indian protohistory, provided the constraints of the colonial period are not replaced with an equally constraining insistence on a different ideologically driven reading of the historical evidence, whatever that ideology might be.”
Edwin Bryant (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“According to Aurobindo,... there are passages in which the spiritual interpretation of the Dasas, Dasyus and Panis is the sole one possible and all others are completely excluded. There are no passages in which we lack a choice either between this interpretation and a nature-poetry or between this interpretation and the reading of human enemies.”
K. D. Sethna (1904–2011) said by 2011 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source