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. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide
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“Because our lives are cowardly and sly, Because we do not dare to take or give, Because we scowl and pass each other by, We do not live; we do not dare to live.”
James Stephens (author) first seen 1915 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Road", line 1, in Songs from the Clay (London: Macmillan, 1915) p. 97.
“Live as on a mountain. ...Let men see, let them know a real man who lives according to nature. If they cannot endure him, let them kill him. For that is better than to live thus.”
Marcus Aurelius (121–180) said by 180 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As long as all our dead live in the Spanish earth, and they will live as long as the earth lives, no system of tyranny ever will prevail in Spain.”
Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) first seen 1939 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On the American Dead in Spain", New Masses (February 14, 1939)
“If a man can only write well when drunk, I'll tell him: get drunk. And if he tells me that his liver suffers with it, I'll answer: what's your liver? It's a dead thing that lives as long as you live, and the poems you'll write will live without a as long as.”
Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How close men, despite all their knowledge, usually live to madness? What is truth but to live for an idea? When all is said and done, everything is based on a postulate; but not until it no longer stands on the outside, not until one lives in it, does it cease to be a postulate. (Dialectic - Dispute)”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) first seen 1835 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Journals of Søren Kierkegaard 1A75, 1835
“People live longer today than they ever have. They live happier lives, they have more knowledge, they have more information. All this is the result of communications technology and the tools with which man has equipped himself. How is any of that bad?”
Tom Clancy (1947–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We will not think noble because we are not noble. We will not live in beautiful harmony because there is no such thing in this world, nor should there be. We promise only to do our best and to live out our lives. Dear God, that's all we can promise in truth.”
Lillian Hellman (1905–1984) first seen 1956 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Candide (1956)
“Live in the world like a waterfowl. The water clings to the bird, but the bird shakes it off. Live in the world like a mudfish. The fish lives in the mud, but its skin is always bright and shiny.”
Ramakrishna (1836–1886) said by 1886 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Those in positions of power spend day and night plotting and pondering about what to do. The body is treated in a very careless way. People live their lives, constantly surrounded by anxiety. If they live long before dying, they end up in senility, worn out by concerns: a terrible fate.”
Zhuangzi (369–288 BC) said by 288 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ch. 18 (tr. Martin Palmer and Elizabeth Breuily, 1996)
“My theory is that literature is essential to society in the way that dreams are essential to our lives. We can’t live without dreaming — as we can’t live without sleep. We are “conscious” beings for only a limited period of time, then we sink back into sleep — the “unconscious.” It is nourishing, in ways we can’t fully understand.”
Joyce Carol Oates (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Egoic consciousness is something that the vast majority of people live in almost all the time. Humanity is by and large caught in this realm of egoic consciousness, and therefore manifests it in the way that we, human beings, live our lives - both individually and collectively.”
Adyashanti (born 1962) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is no "state" on the one hand, and people who live in it on the other. The "state" much rather belongs to what people do and understand. People do not live in the state. The state lives in the people.”
Gustav Landauer (1870–1919) said by 1919 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“…Most people are content to live their lives within prescribed and personal boundaries. But one of the points of artists surely is that they live outside their skin. That they're connected. That they hurt with the hurt of their fellow humans. How, then, can they disengage? How can you – if your task, if your gift, is narrative – absent yourself from the great narrative of the world?...”
Ahdaf Soueif (born 1950) first seen 2012 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On the question of what an artist is responsible for in “Ahdaf Soueif: In times of crisis, fiction has to take a back seat” in The Guardian (2012 Aug 17)
“Most Americans do not live in a flood plain. Most Americans don’t live where a highway might have torn through and disrupted their lives. Most American kids don’t go to a school across from a chemical plant, but there are many communities where that is a reality.”
Robert D. Bullard (born 1946) first seen 2021 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in "The renewed environmental justice movement is bringing in millions for Texas Southern University" Houston Chronicle (October 24, 2021)
“What I wonder," Bob Cole said in his strange tremulous voice, "is whether the people down here have to live this way so that we can live the way we do. We have to believe it's no, don't we? We couldn't face up to it otherwise. Because if most of the world lives in this kind of poverty so that we can have our goodies and our extra protein ration - what does that make us?”
Robert Stone (novelist) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“None of us will live our whole lives. One day I will die too. Various stories will be made about me in the media. News will be made about that story. I will not exist after death. I will be on the other side. I can't even protest. So I want to come live and tell the truth while I'm still alive.”
Humaira Himu (1985–2023) first seen 2023 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Actress Himu's statement on death 5 years ago goes viral, Somoy TV, 2 November 2023
“We are African women – we live here in Africa and even when we live elsewhere, our focus is on the lives of African women on the continent.”
Josephine Ahikire wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection: the fact that you don't merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.”
C. S. Lewis (1898–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Passionate — that means to live for the sake of living. But one knows that you all live for the sake of experience. Passion, that is self-forgetfulness. But what you all want is self-enrichment. C'est ça. You don't realize what revolting egoism it is, and that one day it will make you the enemies of the human race.”
Thomas Mann (1875–1955) said by 1955 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We now live within a globalized economy. So to live the way we are in Vancouver, it means that people in Mexico, people in Africa are having to change the way they're living.”
David Suzuki (born 1936) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The way he saw it, living taught you that you didn’t have to live the way you’d been taught to live. You came from one place but more important was where you decided to go.”
Colson Whitehead (born 1969) first seen 2021 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Harlem Shuffle (2021)
“(While living in Cincinnati) somebody said to us, "The birds and the bees don't live together; why should the blacks and the whites live together?”
Juanita Morrow Nelson (1923–2015) said by 2015 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I will live my dream. I enjoy what I am doing right now. I said I will live my dream in the sense that when I get to that end, I would have put in all I wanted to invest in my career. It’s then, I would say I will be living my dream but I am still working, working very hard to realize that dream. I can’t say I have landed yet.”
Rukky Sanda (born 1984) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am a committed writer or maybe I am an obsessed writer. I am obsessed by occupation because I live it. I witness the atrocities of occupation. I witness and live through those atrocities and still am living them. My characters represent what I experience, what I feel, what I think and believe. My characters, in a way, are me. I am them, whether in this novel or the previous ones or after.”
Sahar Khalifeh (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Why, why, why, why? I hate them all, I want to go home. I don't want to live with my Auntie, I don't want to live in Idogun. I want everything to go back to the way it once was, with Daddy, Adebola and me living at number 4 Egbecombe House.”
Sade Adeniran (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The secret of a joyful life is to live dangerously. A joyful life is an active life - it is not a dull static state of so-called happiness. Full of the burning fire of enthusiasm, anarchic, revolutionary, energetic, daemonic, Dionysian, filled to overflowing with the terrific urge to create - such is the life of the man who risks safety and happiness for the sake of growth and happiness.”
Richard Dawkins (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To live, by definition, is not something one learns. Not from oneself, it is not learned from life, taught by life. Only from the other and by death. In any case from the other at the edge of life. At the internal border or the external border, it is a heterodidactics between life and death.”
Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The people who walk angelically according to their free will and practice discipline in the life of the angels remove themselves completely from the desires of the flesh, beloved brothers; they die daily in the life that belongs to earth, but they live in the life of the angels, just as they share in the life of the Lord.”
Athanasius of Alexandria (296–373) said by 373 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The advanced life of virtue,” Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism (1995), p. 314
“You live this life for yourself. It’s just you that matters. You can’t be the judge of your own life and my life at the same time, No! This is my own life, I’d hold it.”
“Put your best foot forward. I am happy to announce that I am officially done with the fashion industry, I will be moving back to Australia In [sic] order to live the life that I fully deserved. Which is real life. I can no longer deal with the fakes and the lies. My life is too short for this dramatic life. I am thankful and grateful for every sweet souls [sic] that I have crossed path with.”
Ajak Deng (born 1989) first seen 2016 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Did supermodel Ajak Deng just quit because the industry is too racist?,FEBRUARY 25, 2016,https://www.nowtolove.com.au/author/now-to-love/
“This is not a lament, it's the cry of a bird of prey. An iridescent and restless bird. The kiss upon the dead face. I write as if to save somebody’s life. Probably my own. Life is a kind of madness that death makes. Long live the dead because we live in them.”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She wanted to live, and live fully, and to give life, she who loved life! What was the good of existing, if you couldn’t give yourself?”
Émile Zola (1840–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ch. 8 (tr. Jean Stewart, 1955)
“True philosophy must start from the most immediate and comprehensive fact of consciousness: "I am life that wants to live, in the midst of life that wants to live.”
Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If I am to live longer, perhaps I must live out my old age, seeing and hearing less, understanding worse, coming to learn with more difficulty and to be more forgetful, and growing worse than those to whom I was once superior. Indeed, life would be unliveable, even if I did not notice the change. And if I see the change, how could life not be even more wretched and unpleasant?”
Socrates (470–399 BC) said by 399 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nikos Kazantzakis says, “Live forever.” That’s his social obligation. The Saviors of God celebrates life in the world. Any great work does that for you. All of Dickens says live life at the top of your energy.”
Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It's easy to believe that you came into the world with a prearranged program you must follow. After all, long before you arrived, other people figured out how you should live, what laws you should obey, what your obligations are, the whole structure for a 'proper' life… Are you willing to give up the one life you have in order to conform to the way others think you should live?”
Harry Browne (1933–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Successful people do things, and get over with it, and leave others to live their life off it. I DO them. And then I leave it to others to live their life off it.”
Shahrukh Khan (born 1965) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“While you are a man, live the life of a man, and when you become a spirit, live the life of a spirit. But do not seek to mix the two together like oil and wine, and thus spoil both.”
H. Rider Haggard (1856–1925) said by 1925 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If I abandon this project I would be a man without dreams and I don't want to live like that: I live my life or I end my life with this project.”
Werner Herzog (born 1942) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In your life, you can talk about it. Oh in your life, you can live without. Can live without. ~ "Come Back Home”
“We love to live a simple life...we simply love the life we live though some would say its hard.”
Dawud Wharnsby (born 1972) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Any life lost in war is the life of a human being, irrespective of whether it is an Arab or an Israeli. The wife who becomes widowed is a human being, entitled to live in a happy family, Arab or Israeli. Innocent children, deprived of paternal care and sympathy, are all our children, whether they live on Arab or Israeli soil.”
Anwar Sadat (1918–1981) said by 1981 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Do live your life. No matter what. Live your life for yourself and your children. Because no matter what you try to do, no matter how you try to satisfy them, they still always want to compare you with somebody that is not You.”
Bukky Wright (born 1967) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If I have being able to influence people positively, that makes me feel good but I do not live my life because I want people to feel attracted to the kind of life that I live. I’m just being myself, I’m not pushed to do things because I want people to see me as a role model.”
Jumoke Odetola (born 1983) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Teachers should not die poor. We need to leave a legacy and retire from service to live a happy life. As I serve the nation through extending service to the girl-child, I implore fellow teachers to also live an entreprising life and outlive the notion where society believes that teachers should die poor.”
Victoria Mwaka wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We defend the fundamental right to life, yes, but we also defend what people need to live in dignity. Productive work and fair wages. Food and shelter. Education and health care and protection from harm. And we defend the Earth, because where else will the people live whose right to life we fight for?”
Michael Owen Jackels (born 1954) first seen 2021 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: US Catholic church is failing to respond to climate emergency, theologian says (26 March 2021) National Catholic Reporter
“If I have to live my life all over again, pipiliin ko pa rin maging journalist. (If I have to live my life all over again, i would still choose being a journalist.) Basically, because I love telling stories.”
Jessica Soho (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Is it all worth it? Sulit ba ang lahat ng aming pagod, hirap at sakripisyo?” Pero ako, if I have to live my life all over again, pipiliin ko pa rin maging journalist.” ['Is it all worth it? All the hard work, the struggles, the sacrifices?' For me, if I had to live my life all over again, I would still choose to be a journalist."]”
Jessica Soho (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Long live the ball, because this life is a ball above all balls, long live the ball, they won't invite us a second time, the orchestra is playing, they are still dancing and the doors are open, the day is worth the day and this life is worth the effort!”
Agnieszka Osiecka (1936–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I grew up without having a silver spoon in my mouth, and I know what it feels like. I want to be the bridge for these children to be able to live a good life [and] to be able to live a life with security and safety.”
Angelica Lopez (born 2000) first seen 2024 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Angelica Lopez dedicates Miss International journey to less fortunate children Life The Philippine Star, 25 October 2024.