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Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,161,747 quotes Who coined it · How we decide

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Truth

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• “The power of a book lies in its power to turn a solitary act into a shared vision. As long as we have books, we are not alone.”

  Laura Bush (born 1946) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: As quoted in Bringing Out the Best in Everyone You Coach : Use the Enneagram System for Exceptional Results (2009) by Ginger Lapid-Bogda, p. 123

• “It is in the world of ideas and in the relation of his brain to the universe itself that the superiority of Man lies. The rise of Man may justly be described as an adventure in ideas.”

  Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) first seen 1955 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Frontiers of Astronomy (1955), p. 1

• “It's a bit early in the midnight hour for me / To go through all the things that I want to be Take me away / Coz I just don't want to stay / And the lies you make me say / Are getting deeper every day If you're lost at sea / Well I hope that you drowned" Please don't cry / Never say die”

  Noel Gallagher (born 1967) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “What are the ideas right now worth betraying? What are the lies we tell ourselves now?”

  Bono (born 1960) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “You do have a story inside you; it lies articulate and waiting to be written — behind your silence and your suffering.”

  Anne Rice (1941–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Life, I sometimes think—like dreams, like stories, like plans, even like lies if you will—is to be pondered on, interpreted, interrogated: but you had best not try to change it too radically in the middle, or you risk never finding its secret.”

  Samuel R. Delany (born 1942) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The real wealth of the Nation lies in the resources of the earth — soil, water, forests, minerals, and wildlife. To utilize them for present needs while insuring their preservation for future generations requires a delicately balanced and continuing program, based on the most extensive research. Their administration is not properly, and cannot be, a matter of politics.”

  Rachel Carson (1907–1964) first seen 1953 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Letter to the editor, Washington Post (1953); quoted in Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson (1999) edited by Linda Lear, p. 99

• “The sharpest peaks of the Ridge are the cluster of islets known as the Rocks of St. Paul, near the equator. The entire cluster of half a dozen islets is not more than a quarter of a mile across, and their rocky slopes drop off at so sheer an angle that water more than half a mile deep lies only a few feet off shore.”

  Rachel Carson (1907–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “What hast thou for thy scattered seed, O sower of the plain! Where are the many gathered sheaves Thy hope should bring again?" "The only record of my work Lies in the buried grain." * * * "What is the harvest of thy saints, O God! who dost abide? Where grow the garlands of thy chiefs In blood and sorrow dyed? What have thy servants for their pains?" "This only — to have tried.”

  Julia Ward Howe (1819–1910) first seen 1866 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Endeavor" in Godey's Magazine, vol. 72 (1866) p. 370

• “When you spend that long on the outer reaches of empire, you understand the cruelty of empire ... and the lies we tell ourselves about what is done in our name.”

  Chris Hedges (born 1956) first seen 2012 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Interviewed by Bill Moyers, "Sits Down With Bill Moyers" Truthdig (July 22, 2012)

• “I'm more optimistic because I see the resistance in the streets... That's where hope lies.... They're mostly young, incredibly courageous, they are out there braving economic misery, arrests, indiscriminate, brutal and often lethal police violence and COVID-19, and they're fighting against injustice and the elites anyway. They're all heroes in my book.”

  Chris Hedges (born 1956) first seen 2020 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Interview by Chuncey Devega "America faces a historic choice — 'ugly corporate tyranny' or revolution Salon (July 16, 2020)

• “Black people have not suffered as individuals but as members of a group; therefore, their liberation lies in group action. This is why SNCC—and the concept of Black Power—affirms that helping individual black people to solve their problems on an individual basis does little to alleviate the mass of black people.”

  Stokely Carmichael (1941–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Also quoted by: Charles V. Hamilton

• “Gird up your loins for the task that now lies ahead. I had asked you for men, money and materials. I have got them in generous measure. Now I demand more of you. Men, money and materials cannot by themselves bring victory or freedom. We must have the motive-power that will inspire us to brave deeds and heroic exploits.”

  Subhas Chandra Bose (1897–1945) first seen 1944 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Speech in Burma (July 1944) as quoted in The Great Speeches of Modern India (2011) by Rudrangshu Mukherjee

• “A man should be jailed for telling lies to the young.”

  Lillian Hellman (1905–1984) first seen 1956 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Candide (1956) a comic operetta based upon the satire by Voltaire.

• “The struggle for power in our day lies not between Crown and people, or between a caste of nobles and a bourgeoisie, but between the classes who have property and the classes who have none.”

  Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) first seen 1862 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: 'The Confederate Struggle and Recognition', Quarterly Review, vol. 112 (July & October 1862), p. 542

• “Rollers on the beach, wind in the pines, the slow flapping of herons across sand dunes, drown out the hectic rhythms of city and suburb, time tables and schedules. One falls under their spell, relaxes, stretches out prone. One becomes, in fact, like the element on which one lies, flattened by the sea; bare, open, empty as the beach, erased by today’s tides of all yesterday’s scribblings.”

  Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Only lies and evil come from letting people off.”

  Iris Murdoch (1919–1999) first seen 1961 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: A Severed Head (1961); 1976, p. 61.

• “And yet, today the harbour is silted up, most of the city lies buried beneath sand dunes and the land has become a desert. As the population had grown and more people wanted more fields, so more of the forest that once stood around the city was cut down, until eventually it was all gone. With no roots to hold the soil, and no attempt to conserve it, it was carried away by the wind and the rain.”

  David Attenborough (born 1926) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “A Spring returns, and they more youthful made; But Man grows old, lies down, remains where once he's laid.”

  Anne Bradstreet (1612–1672) said by 1672 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The creative process lies not in imitating, but in paralleling nature — translating the impulse received from nature into the medium of expression, thus vitalizing this medium. The picture should be alive, the statue should be alive, and every work of art should be alive.”

  Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “It’s in the nature of a good despot to say anything that will convince someone to do as he wishes. Only when he does not need them does he really say what he thinks. And by that time, of course, because he has no need of them, they are usually as good as dead. The secret of becoming a successful tyrant lies in an early ability to be all things to all people.”

  Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “What I do in the writing of any character is to try to enter into the mind, heart and skin of a human being who is not myself. Whether this happens to be a man or a woman, old or young, with skin black or white, the primary challenge lies in making the jump itself. It is the act of a writer's imagination that I set most high.”

  Eudora Welty (1909–2001) first seen 1980 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: from her Preface to The Collected Stories (1980)

• “It's by living on, it seems me now, that the way of real honesty lies. The realest possible honesty is come by, attained, earned if you like, by continuing. I'd put up these essays in evidence. Honesty is of human birth: it must breathe, and keep restoring itself.”

  Eudora Welty (1909–2001) first seen 1977 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: 1977 book review collected in in Eye of the Story (1978)

• “For progress there is no cure.... The only safety possible is relative, and it lies in an intelligent exercise of day-to-day judgement.”

  John von Neumann (1903–1957) first seen 1950 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Can we survive Technology?" 1950.

• “Europe becomes more and more a province of Islam, a colony of Islam. And Italy is an outpost of that province, a stronghold of that colony...In each of our cities lies a second city: a Muslim city, a city run by the Quran. A stage in the Islamic expansionism.”

  Oriana Fallaci (1929–2006) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: (2004). Editor Random House Incorporated, 2006. , 9780847827534. p. 34.

• “People call me the painter of dancing girls. It has never occurred to them that my chief interest in dancers lies in rendering movement and painting pretty clothes.”

  Edgar Degas (1834–1917) said by 1917 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “There is no kind of framework within which we can find consciousness in the plural; this is simply something we construct because of the temporal plurality of individuals, but it is a false construction... The only solution to this conflict insofar as any is available to us at all lies in the ancient wisdom of the Upanishad.”

  Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) said by 1961 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Prostrate the beauteous ruin lies; and all That shared its shelter perish in its fall.”

  William Pitt the Younger (1759–1806) said by 1806 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin, No. xxxvi, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

  Also quoted by: William Pitt

• “Then I found my head one day when I wasn’t even trying And here I have to say, ‘cause there is no use in lying, lying Yes the answer lies within, so why not take a look now? Kick out the devil’s sin, pick up, pick up a good book now.”

  Cat Stevens (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “In politics and politicians' lies The modern farmer waxes wondrous wise; Opinionates with wisdom all compact, And een could tell a nation how to act; Throws light on darkness with excessive skill, Knows who acts well and whose designs are ill, Proves half the members nought but bribery's tools, And calls the past a dull dark age of fools.”

  John Clare (1793–1864) said by 1864 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I would not change my native land For rich Peru with all her gold. A nobler prize lies in my hand Than East or Western Indies hold.”

  Isaac Watts (1674–1748) said by 1748 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Just as a tree cut down, that fell To north, or southward, there it lies: So man departs to heaven or hell, Fix'd in the state wherein he dies.”

  Isaac Watts (1674–1748) said by 1748 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “And he that does one fault at first And lies to hide it, makes it two.”

  Isaac Watts (1674–1748) said by 1748 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “SECRETS ARE LIES SHARING IS CARING PRIVACY IS THEFT”

  Dave Eggers (born 1970) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Here lies a Doctor of Divinity, Who was a Fellow too of Trinity; He knew as much about Divinity As other Fellows do of Trinity.”

  Richard Porson (1759–1808) said by 1808 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “A man who becomes used to deluding himself, who fails to face his own faults with revolutionary honesty and even lies to himself, is the most likely to become a traitor, since lying is the beginning of treachery.”

  Ashraf Dehghani (born 1948) first seen 1971 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Torture and Resistance in Iran, 1971

• “There can be no liberty for a community which lacks the information by which to detect lies.”

  Walter Lippmann (1889–1974) said by 1974 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Great also are the souls of the defenders—men who know that, as long as the path to death lies open, the blockade is not complete, men who breathe their last in the arms of liberty.”

  Seneca the Younger (5 BC–65) said by 65 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Do you ask me whom I have conquered? Neither the Persians, nor the far-off Medes, nor any warlike race that lies beyond the Dahae; not these, but greed, ambition, and the fear of death that has conquered the conquerors of the world.”

  Seneca the Younger (5 BC–65) said by 65 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I speculate that the genesis of the chicken-joke lies in some situation such as the one illustrated above, but over time the original context of the joke was lost, which left the chicken sadly decontextualized.”

  Ryan North (born 1980) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Mystic equality lies in abstraction, not in having or in doing, which are processes. In function and process, one man, one part, must of necessity be subordinate to another. It is a condition of being.”

  D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) said by 1930 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Prentice: What this young woman claims is a tissue of lies. Match: This is a boy, sir. Not a girl. If you're baffled by the difference it might be as well to approach both with caution.”

  Joe Orton (1933–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “India is the meeting-place of the religions and among these Hinduism alone is by itself a vast and complex thing, not so much a religion as a great diversified and yet subtly unified mass of spiritual thought, realisation and aspiration. What will finally come out of all this stir and ferment, lies yet in the future.”

  Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Tonight the lilacs magnify The easy passion, the ever-ready love Of the lover that lies within us and we breatheAn odor evoking nothing, absolute. We encounter in the dead middle of the night The purple odor, the abundant bloom.”

  Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) said by 1955 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “1) We want our loved ones' sacrifices to be honored by bringing our nation's sons and daughters home from the travesty that is Iraq IMMEDIATELY, since this war is based on horrendous lies and deceptions. Just because our children are dead, why would we want any more families to suffer the same pain and devastation that we are.”

  Cindy Sheehan (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Your Yes to God demands your No to all injustice, to all evil, to all lies, to all oppression and violation of the weak and the poor, to all godlessness and mocking of the holy. Your Yes to God demands a brave No to everything that will ever hinder you from serving God alone, whether it be your profession, your property, your house, your honor before the world. Faith means decision.”

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) first seen 1938 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Gift of Faith" (9 April 1938), in The Collected Sermons of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (2012), p. 203

• “We are a multitude of selves, and the sooner we learn that, the better. And in that rich alliance of psychological Aspects lies the very secret of our practical operative stability. Only because we change our positions constantly in reference to the psyche and the world are we able to manipulate physically and translate inner experience into sense terms.”

  Jane Roberts (1929–1984) said by 1984 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The important thing for me is the development and refinement of one’s perception of the world, the experimentation with viewpoints. This lies at the heart of storytelling, and all of the mechanical techniques one learns are merely tools. It is the writer’s approach to material that makes a story unique.”

  Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “There’s no need for your pretty lies now. It makes no difference to an old woman the things a young girl believed.”

  Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Happiness lies only in a divine unrest; and if you are lapped in comfort you stagnate and miss it.”

  John Buchan (1875–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

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