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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“I stood willingly and gladly in the characters of everything — other people, trees, clouds. And this is what I learned, that the world's otherness is antidote to confusion — that standing within this otherness — the beauty and the mystery of the world, out in the fields or deep inside books — can re-dignify the worst-stung heart.”
Mary Oliver (1935–2019) said by 2019 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My children's books are written on the belief that every child has a talent and a passion. Each story unfolds into an adventure of nurturing that confidence until a passion blooms.”
Masiela Lusha (born 1985) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I would like my books to stand as a tool to unbind children from expectations of poetry because it should free the child to self-expression and exploration.”
Masiela Lusha (born 1985) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Ah, books.” Ziegler, smiling, came up behind me. “They bob like corks on an ocean. Float between worlds, messages in bottles.”
Robert Charles Wilson (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We’re all depressingly ‘lay’ outside our specialisms — my own knowledge, of recent biological advances, such as it is, comes largely from ‘popular’ books and journalism.”
Martin Rees (born 1942) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My books are a lot less politically conscious than people think. I will write them first because it is sprouting and I have to do it. Afterward I can look at them and say, "Now, that's what I was doing.”
Joanna Russ (1937–2011) said by 2011 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He taught himself to write, retyping books by writers he admired: Steinbeck, Hemingway, Faulkner... the usual heavyweights. He said he wanted to get inside the rhythm of their language and find his own stlye.”
William McKeen (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Books, like lives, are always unfinished even when they end, for to write is to struggle with contingency, to impose a certain false order upon the endless, and endlessly frustrating, nature of thought.”
Mark Kingwell (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sukie had always said that the Alice books were the Old and New Testaments for ghosts—which Pete had never understood; after all, Lewis Carroll hadn’t been dead yet when he’d written them.”
Tim Powers (born 1952) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have said that Marinetti was.. ..exceptionally gifted, and I should add that I never saw him twiddling his thumbs even for ten minutes.. ..beside his desk he often kept piles of books in which he would write dedications.. ..invariably with the purpose of spreading the word about Futurism.”
Carlo Carrà (1881–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[I do not] carry such information in my mind since it is readily available in books. ...The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think.”
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) first seen 1921 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In response to not knowing the speed of sound as included in the Edison Test: New York Times (18 May 1921); Einstein: His Life and Times (1947) Philipp Frank, p. 185; Einstein, A Life (1996) by Denis Brian, p. 129; "Ein…
“Fundamental ideas play the most essential role in forming a physical theory. Books on physics are full of complicated mathematical formulae. But thought and ideas, not formulae, are the beginning of every physical theory. The ideas must later take the mathematical form of a quantitative theory, to make possible the comparison with experiment.”
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) first seen 1938 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Evolution of Physics (1938) (co-written with Leopold Infeld)
“Formerly, it was held by philosophers and mathematicians alike that the proofs in Geometry depended on the figure; nowadays, this is known to be false. In the best books there are no figures at all. The reasoning proceeds by the strict rules of formal logic from a set of axioms laid down to begin with.”
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All that I know about my life, it seems, I have learned in books.”
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Scriptures, n. The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.”
Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) said by 1914 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Earth and Sky, Woods and Fields, Lakes and Rivers, the Mountain and the Sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books.”
John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury (1834–1913) first seen 1894 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Use of Life (1894), ch. IV: Recreation
“The road to ignorance is paved with good editions. Only the illiterate can afford to buy good books now.”
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) first seen 1949 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Days with Bernard Shaw (1949) by Stephen Winsten
“The hotel shop only had two decent books, and I'd written both of them.”
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Experience is the child of Thought, and Thought is the child of Action. We can not learn men from books.”
Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) said by 1881 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think the author who speaks about his own books is almost as bad as a mother who talks about her own children.”
Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) first seen 1870 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech at banquet given by the city of Glasgow to Disraeli on his inauguration as Lord Rector of Glasgow University (19 November 1870), cited in Wit and Wisdom of Benjamin Disraeli, Collected from his Writings and Speec…
“I owed a magnificent day to the Bhagavad Gita. It was the first of books; it was as if an empire spoke to us, nothing small or unworthy, but large, serene, consistent, the voice of an old intelligence which in another age and climate had pondered and thus disposed of the same questions which exercise us.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) first seen 1848 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: October 1, 1848
“The profit of books is according to the sensibility of the reader. The profoundest thought or passion sleeps as in a mine until an equal mind and heart finds and publishes it.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When the Court moved to Washington in 1800, it was provided with no books, which probably accounts for the high quality of early opinions.”
Robert H. Jackson (1892–1954) said by 1954 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Supreme Court in the American System of Government (1955), p. 30
“Most books belong to the house and streets only, and in the fields their leaves feel very thin.”
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) said by 1862 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal. (This quotation is from Notebook IV in Notebooks: 1942-1951, not Myth of Sisyphus. The quotation appears in none of Camus books you find in bookstores).”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Quakers sent me books, from which I learnt how they had, years ago, established beyond doubt the duty for a Christian of fulfilling the command of non-resistance to evil by force, and had exposed the error of the Church's teaching in allowing war and capital punishment.”
Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In spite the mountains of books written about art, no precise definition of art has been constructed. And the reason for this is that the conception of art has been based on the conception of beauty.”
Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I like to do my principal research in bars, where people are more likely to tell the truth or, at least, lie less convincingly than they do in briefings and books.”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Imagine if all of life were determined by majority rule. Every meal would be a pizza. Every pair of pants, even those in a Brooks Brothers suit, would be stone-washed denim. Celebrity diet and exercise books would be the only thing on the shelves at the library. And — since women are a majority of the population — we'd all be married to Mel Gibson.”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Should novels generally be 600 pages? No, they should not. Half of writing, maybe 3/4 of writing, is editing. This seems to be a thing that has not gotten through to them. It’s my impression that you could get rid of half of most of these books. These people are not good enough to be this long, but they’re apparently also not good enough to be shorter.”
Fran Lebowitz (born 1950) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ruminator Magazine interview with Susannah McNeely (August/September 2005).
“Educational television should be absolutely forbidden. It can only lead to unreasonable expectations and eventual disappointment when your child discovers that the letters of the alphabet do not leap up out of books and dance around the room with royal-blue chickens.”
Fran Lebowitz (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was morality that burned the books of the ancient sages, and morality that halted the free inquiry of the Golden Age and substituted for it the credulous imbecility of the Age of Faith. It was a fixed moral code and a fixed theology which robbed the human race of a thousand years by wasting them upon alchemy, heretic-burning, witchcraft and sacerdotalism.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) first seen 1908 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: (1908/1913)
“No man can get anywhere in this world in any really and endurable manner without some recourse to books.”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) first seen 1939 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Evening Sun (1939) in an editorial calling for adequate financial support for the Pratt Library; affixed to the wall inside the entrance to the Enoch Pratt Free Library Branch 2
“As for younger writers, Mencken wrote a friend in 1935, “all…seem to be headed toward the left….The left-wing movement…is bound to be transient, but while it lasts it has pretty well killed intelligent criticism in this country. Books are judged not by their worth as works of art, but by their political content…”
H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Resolve to spend a certain number of hours every day amongst your books.”
Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) first seen 1763 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to James Boswell (8 Dec 1763)
“Books that you may carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are the most useful after all.”
Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) said by 1784 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: From Sir John Hawkins's Life of Johnson, Apothegms (1787)
“'Paradise Lost' is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it longer than it is.”
Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) said by 1784 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is only one thing which interests me vitally now, and that is the recording of all that which is omitted in books.”
Henry Miller (1891–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.”
W. H. Auden (1907–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Literary confessors are contemptible, like beggars who exhibit their sores for money, but not so contemptible as the public that buys their books.”
W. H. Auden (1907–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If you think the terrorists would become peaceful if only America would stop provoking them, then it might make sense to leave them alone. This is not the threat I see. I see a global terrorist movement that exploits Islam in the service of radical political aims — a vision in which books are burned, and women are oppressed, and all dissent is crushed.”
George W. Bush (born 1946) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am not a visual person. I have spent so many bounded years in my childhood that I have grown used to having books as my window on reality.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1980 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In Joy Still Felt (1980), p. 217
“Of all the books I have ever worked on, I think Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare gave me the most pleasure, day in, day out. For months and months I lived and thought Shakespeare, and I don't see how there can be any greater pleasure in the world—any pleasure, that is, that one can indulge in for as much as ten hours without pause, day after day indefinitely.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1980 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In Joy Still Felt (1980), pp. 464–465
“Publishers, with their usual bravery, dumbed down their books in order to make money at the expense of leaving American children undereducated or, worse, miseducated.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) said by 1992 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So far no one had had enough courage and intelligence to reveal me to my dear Germans. My problems are new, my psychological horizon frighteningly comprehensive, my language bold and clear; there may well be no books written in German which are richer in ideas and more independent than mine.”
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) first seen 1887 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Carl Fuchs (14 December 1887)
“If I heeded all the advice I've had over the years, I'd have written 18 books about Rincewind.”
Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) said by 2015 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In one way or another, all my books have been devoted to expounding and exploring the almost limitless power of the Darwinian principle—power unleashed whenever and wherever there is enough time for the consequences of primordial self-replication to unfold.”
Richard Dawkins (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The winter wind is loud and wild, Come close to me, my darling child; Forsake thy books, and mateless play; And, while the night is gathering grey, We'll talk its pensive hours away;—”
Emily Brontë (1818–1848) first seen 1846 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Faith and Despondency", st. 1 (1846)
“I have had the experience of having my sister get up at a meeting at Columbia University, where these scholars from all over the world were anointing Fear of Flying as a classic. And my sister got up and said, "Erica Jong has ruined my life — with her books.”
Erica Jong (born 1942) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Frank O'Connor, the Irish writer, tells in one of his books how, as a boy, he and his friends would make their way across the countryside, and when they came to an orchard wall that seemed too high and too doubtful to try and too difficult to permit their voyage to continue, they took off their hats and tossed them over the wall — and then they had no choice but to follow them.”
John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source