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Life

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“I say to the American people: What is this life you are living? Why do you keep silent? What situation are you in? I say to you the American people, according to the Koran: "They drive their people into the house of perdition." Your lives are lost, you will collapse, America will collapse.”
Mohammad Emami-Kashani (1931–2024) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Friday Sermon at Tehran University: America Will Collapse July 2004.
“Often it is the case that it takes ‘just a little’ to help and support people, so they can help themselves. I have met adults and children, men and women, whose living conditions are difficult for us to imagine, but every time I come away inspired by their strength and will to improve their lives and provide a better life for their children.”
Queen Mary of Denmark (born 1972) first seen 2012 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech at the opening of Danida’s 50th anniversary exhibition in Bella Center; quoted on royal website (16 March 2012)
“Life is no longer sacred from the moment the living become too numerous. The lives of surplus men are no more valuable than those of insects, and soldiers killed in war are no different in the eyes of those who command them.”
Albert Caraco (1919–1971) said by 1971 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: L’Âge d’Homme, Lausanne (1982), p. 79
“The danger of living two lives is that they can unintentionally collide. Like when my Erika Jayne voice comes into Erika Girardi’s life.”
Erika Jayne (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It’s important for us to think both about living healthy lives and promoting fraternity. Peace and sports can go together because sports teach us to be united. In his message to the world before the World Cup, Pope Francis said nobody should be alone in sports or in life. On a bigger scale, for our world to be a better place, countries also need to be united.”
Orani João Tempesta (born 1950) first seen 2014 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Conversation with Rio's Cardinal on the Pope, the Poor, Peace & Sports (July 12, 2014)
“My philosophy … is that my life is not worth living if I do not use it to change the lives of others. Make one person smile a day.”
Sheila Tlou (born 1950) first seen 2016 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Sheila Tlou: A giant in Africa’s AIDS response by Rebecca Haynes, Mail& GUARDIAN 15 December 2016, retrieved 13 November 2022
“Most people want the tiny percentage of the population who are trans to have the best lives they can. Living your best life would be one free of male violence. It is not feminists who murder trans people, although this might be the impression you would be left with if you relied solely on Twitter for your information.”
Suzanne Moore (born 1958) first seen 2020 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Women must have the right to organise. We will not be silenced" The Guardian (2 March 2020).
“What struck me the most, was living in a society for the first time in my life, where girls had no concerns whatsoever that their freedom to attend school could be taken away from them at any time, which is something that every single Afghan girl who's lucky enough to go to school lives with,”
Shabana Basij-Rasikh (born 1990) first seen 2023 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Resilient pioneers and daring dreams: The daunting journey of Afghan women to Rwanda The New Times (March 26, 2023)
“‘Fine Boys’ is my most satisfying work to write so far. It did not take a lot from me as its characters were living a life that I had lived. I think what it gave me was the satisfaction of seeing these characters speak as my friends and I spoke. I also saw that these lives were now important enough to be in a book.”
Eghosa Imasuen (born 1976) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Maurice Nicoll says all history is a living today. We are not enjoying one spark of life in a huge, dead waste. We are, instead, existing at one point "in a vast process of the living who still think and feel but are invisible to us.”
Richard Matheson (1926–2013) said by 2013 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Then there is this idea that the world owes you a living. Here is a little thought about that. It isn't particularly logical but it makes my point. You were paid when you were born, with the privilege of living. Death is all that is coming to you. Life came to you when you were born.”
John Sloan (1871–1951) said by 1951 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Whether you are young or old, what matters is the grace to continue living hereafter. A man may die young yet be satisfied with living but a wicked man is not satisfied even with long life.”
T. B. Joshua (1963–2021) first seen 2012 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On death - "Atta Mills Died A Martyr" UK Zambians" (August 1 2012)
“Modernism represents a true kind of living. Modernism is not about form or method or the works of a few artists, but rather about a necessary way of living. And only this kind of lifestyle can save China, because if we don’t have modernism, then we will die under the grasp of one or another ideology. Modernism at least says that every person is free and needs to honestly encounter his own life.”
Ai Weiwei (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I make images of the living for the living. I try to celebrate life. Iconic photographer Dorothea Lange, once said ‘I too have come to lend my voice to those least able to have a voice of their own.’ I agree.”
Manuel Rivera-Ortiz (born 1968) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Reading after a certain age diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking, just as the man who spends too much time in the theater is tempted to be content with living vicariously instead of living his own life.”
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) said by 1955 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Much reading after a certain age diverts the mind from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking, just as the man who spends too much time in the theaters is apt to be content with living vicariously instead of living his own life.”
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) said by 1955 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I wish to suggest that a man may be very industrious, and yet not spend his time well. There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living. All great enterprises are self-supporting. The poet, for instance, must sustain his body by his poetry, as a steam planing-mill feeds its boilers with the shavings it makes. You must get your living by loving.”
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) said by 1862 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The feeling of awed wonder that science can give us is one of the highest experiences of which the human psyche is capable. It is a deep aesthetic passion to rank with the finest that music and poetry can deliver. It is truly one of the things that make life worth living and it does so, if anything, more effectively if it convinces us that the time we have for living is quite finite.”
Richard Dawkins (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The living, he thought, should never be used to serve the purposes of the dead. But the dead—he glanced at Bruce, the empty shape beside him — should, if possible, serve the purposes of the living. That, he reasoned, is the law of life. And the dead, if they could feel, might feel better doing so. The dead, Mike thought, who can still see, even if they can't understand: they are our camera.”
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We don’t want to be manipulated by right-wing elitist billionaires or by left-wing guys that don’t understand our life on the ground that is living in fear of crime, that is living as a result of inflation that is killing us in many parts of the country. We need gas to go to work.”
Al Sharpton (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
Steve Jobs (1955–2011) said by 2011 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Life is a roar of bargain and battle, but in the very heart of it there rises a mystic spiritual tone that gives meaning to the whole. It transmutes the dull details into romance. It reminds us that our only but wholly adequate significance is as parts of the unimaginable whole. It suggests that even while living we are living to ends outside ourselves”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841–1935) first seen 1913 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Address to the Harvard Alumni Association to the Class of '61, in Speeches (1913), p. 96.
“The judgment that human life is worth living, or rather can and ought to be made worth living, … underlies all intellectual effort; it is the a priori of social theory, and its rejection (which is perfectly logical) rejects theory itself.”
Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) said by 1979 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I'll tell everyone that the children are my reason for living, when in reality my life is their reason for living.”
Paulo Coelho (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Once the Regime said that one living cell is a life, real living became irrelevant.”
Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Maybe there is a single spot, just one, where living organisms are holed up. Maybe so, but if so this would be the strangest thing of all, absolutely incomprehensible. For we are not familiar with this kind of living. We do not have solitary, isolated creatures. It is beyond our imagination to conceive of a single form of life that exists alone and independent, unattached to other forms.”
Lewis Thomas (1913–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All living things sustain each other. All living things depend upon death not as an end, an absolute completion, but as a beginning of a new rhythm, a way of fulfillment in passing on the restless force of life.”
Edmund Cooper (1926–1982) said by 1982 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My analysis of living systems uses concepts of thermodynamics, information theory, cybernetics, and systems engineering, as well as the classical concepts appropriate to each level. The purpose is to produce a description of living structure and process in terms of input and output, flows through systems, steady states, and feedbacks, which will clarify and unify the facts of life.”
James Grier Miller (1916–2002) said by 2002 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The evidence of prehistoric remnants combined with comparative data from living carnivores and other living primates has given us a picture of how the naked ape must have used this sexual equipment in the distant past and how he must have organized his sex life. The contemporary evidence appears to give much the same basic picture, once one has cleaned away the dark varnish of public moralizing.”
Desmond Morris (1928–2026) said by 2026 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As a bisexual woman (who, as it happens, is faithfully married to a man and therefore living a “straight” life) I feel it is important to include homosexual or bisexual characters in my work. I am living proof that such things are not “choices,” but innate…”
Alisa Valdes (born 1969) first seen 2008 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On how she tries to include LGBT characters in her works in “Interview With Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez” in AfterEllen.com (2008 Sep 25)
“I could not imagine a life that way…I wanted to be like everybody else. You marry a man who supports you – it never occurred to me I'd have to earn a living, and nor did I study to earn a living.”
Edith Windsor (1929–2017) first seen 2013 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On coming to the realization that she was a lesbian (as quoted in “Edith Windsor and Thea Spyer: 'A love affair that just kept on and on and on'”) (The Guardian; 2013 Jun 26)
“I don’t want to be fixed, if being fixed means being bleached of memory, untaught by what I have learned through this miracle of surviving. My survivorhood is not an individual problem. I want the communion of all of us who have survived, and the knowledge. (“Not Over It, Not Fixed, and Living a Life Worth Living: Towards an Anti-Ableist Vision of Survivorhood”)”
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (born 1975) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My life and work feed back to such an extent that creating is living, and living is not possible without creating.”
Abel Azcona (born 1988) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No words, however wise, could explain the awfulness of the death, not while the living were firmly attached to love, child-bearing, child-rearing, hunger, struggle, and the sunrise of tomorrow. Life had to flow all the time, for the living, like water in a stream.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The whole principle of living and learning is dependent on what is going on in the mind. The mind is like a huge, living tapestry. Everything we see, hear, learn and experience gets being imprinted on it. As we grow we begin to see that we can correlate those impressions into a definite pattern and so we call that our life.”
Bessie Head (1937–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I've had so many incredible experiences and I've been influenced by so many people I've served, I see this as a new chapter. I'm living out something that I'm convinced is what God wants me to do, and living out God's will for me has been the joy of my life.”
Robert P. Reed (born 1959) first seen 2016 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Bishop Robert Reed: Living God's will 'has been the joy of my life' (August 26, 2016)
“I'm not interested in living in a world where my race is not part of who i am. I am interested in living in a world where our races, no matter what they are, don't define our trajectory in life.”
Luvvie Ajayi (born 1985) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Living better to me means moving through the world as my authentic self at all times, showing up in every room I enter as my highest self means I’m living an abundant liberated life.”
Rina Chunga-Kutama wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I never denied what I did in the past. I admit that my background is (the) adult industry and which I cannot change. I never said I can change what I did. Right now, what I’m doing is I am living in peace, and I (am) studying every day and living in a peaceful space that I wanted. And that doesn’t affect any of your life.”
Rae Lil Black (born 1996) first seen 2025 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Former porn star Rae Lil Black hits back at critics over past career". NationalWorld. 19 May 2025.
“It's really just the most mundane things that I enjoy, really: going to the grocery, walking around parks. It's so…it's super simple but I am living, I'm loving and living this slow life, really.”
Bela Padilla (born 1990) first seen 2022 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: . "Bela Padilla: Actor, Writer, Director". Esquire PH. 07 March 2022
“My inspiration and influence are derived from the living conditions in the poorest community, the hardships I experienced from childhood, the trying experiences people continue to encounter, the things I sense and perceive, what I see and the things I am still going through as a person living this life.”
Winky D (born 1983) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I also explore collective and individual expressions of identity, living and the rigours of daily life as the embodiment of living and not merely existing.For this reason, each day I paint I wish to be in existence to the fullest extent.”
Ben Agbee (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I’m living in a new dream, I’m now living a second life. I do not take anything for granted anymore.”
Frankie Fredericks (born 1967) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The heart does not talk, it is the intellect that does all the talking. All dealings are at the intellectual level. We have become like machines; our very lives have become mechanical. Life has lost its naturalness — like a garland of plastic flowers. There is no heart in life anymore. Only when hearts come together does true life blossom.”
Mata Amritanandamayi (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What means more to the life of the individual in our own place in Time than this study of the nature of human nature, the search to discover pertinent traces of hidden impulses of life, to form continually new abstractions uplifting the life he lives?”
Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Political irrationalism which infests, deforms and destroys our lives, is — in the strictly psychiatric sense — a perversion of social life, caused by the ostracizing of the natural life functions and by their exclusion from the determination of social life.”
Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957) said by 1957 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I like to define biology as the history of the earth and all its life — past, present, and future. To understand biology is to understand that all life is linked to the earth from which it came; it is to understand that the stream of life, flowing out of the dim past into the uncertain future, is in reality a unified force, though composed of an infinite number and variety of separate lives.”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) first seen 1961 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Preface to Humane Biology Projects (1961) by the Animal Welfare Institute
“There is no wealth but life. Life, including all its powers of love, of joy, and of admiration. That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest numbers of noble and happy human beings; that man is richest, who, having perfected the functions of his own life to the utmost, has also the widest helpful influence, both personal, and by means of his possessions, over the lives of others.”
John Ruskin (1819–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I would like to suggest to you that you ‘grab life by the horns’ and do not let life grab you by the horns. You take control of your lives. … Do not let life control you. … Take charge. Rise to the divinity that is within you.”
Gordon B. Hinckley (1910–2008) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ensign, June 2003, 74–75.
“Man alone, it seems, lives all his life in the knowledge of death. And yet there is more to life than merely waiting for death. For life to have meaning, there must be a purpose. A man must pass something on — otherwise he is useless.”
David Gemmell (1948–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source