I left Harvard with no real awareness of the awful inequities in the world – the appalling disparities of health, and wealth, and opportunity that condemn millions of people to lives of despair.
I learned a lot here at Harvard about new ideas in economics and politics. I got great exposure to the advances being made in the sciences.
But humanity’s greatest advances are not in its … [ Read more ]
Author: Bill Gates | Subjects: Life & Society, Miscellaneous
Your soul is in your keeping alone. When you stand before God you cannot say “but I was told by others to do thus” or that “virtue was not convenient at the time.” This will not suffice.
Author: King Baldwin IV | Subjects: Life & Society, Religion
A great proportion of the misery that wanders, in hideous forms, around the world, is allowed to rise from the negligence of parents.
Author: Mary Wollstonecraft | Subjects: Culture, Family & Friends
Live as if you were to die tomorrow, learn as if you were to live forever.
Author: Gandhi | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Life & Society
It is man’s destiny to ponder on the riddle of existence, and as a by-product of his wonderment, to create a new life on this earth.
Author: Charles Kettering | Subject: Life & Society
To succeed in life, you need three things: a wishbone, a backbone and a funny bone.
Author: Reba McEntire | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Success / Failure, Wisdom
War is nothing about reason and everything about emotion. If it has logic, it is the mad logic of hell. All of us have some evil: deep in most, indulged by a few, universally released by war. Men sign away everything for this release, uncapping a pot they scarcely know is boiling, and then are haunted ever after.
Author: William Dietrich | Subjects: Life & Society, Military | War | Peace, Politics & Public Policy, Psychology | Behavior
When societies first come to birth, it is the leader who produces the institutions. Later it is the institutions which produce the leaders.
Author: Montesquieu | Subjects: Culture, Leadership
I don’t know what it is that makes someone love you, but whatever it is, it’s the only thing that matters, and if it isn’t there you won’t create it by kindness, or generosity, or anything of that sort.
Author: W. Somerset Maugham | Subject: Love
He was intensely moved by the grandeur of the struggle for life, and the ethical rule which it suggested seemed to fit in with his predispositions. He said to himself that might was right. Society stood on one side, an organism with its own laws of growth and self-preservation, while the individual stood on the other. The actions which were to the advantage of society … [ Read more ]
Author: W. Somerset Maugham | Subject: Life & Society
You know, there are two good things in life, freedom of thought and freedom of action. In France you get freedom of action: you can do what you like and nobody bothers, but you must think like everybody else. In Germany you must do what everybody else does, but you may think as you choose. They’re both very good things. I personally prefer freedom of … [ Read more ]
Author: W. Somerset Maugham | Subjects: America, Freedom | Liberty, International, Life & Society
It is scarcity and plenty that make the vulgar take things to be precious or worthless.
Author: Gaileo | Subjects: Environment | Sustainability, Insight, Life & Society, Material Possessions
I am convinced that no one loses anyone, because no one owns anyone. That is the true experience of freedom: having the most important thing in the world without owning it.
Subjects: Freedom | Liberty, Life & Society, Relationships
The little experience of life I’ve had has taught me that no one owns anything, that everything is an illusion – and that applies to material as well as spiritual things. Anyone who has lost something they thought was theirs forever (as has happened often enough to me already) finally comes to realize that nothing really belongs to them.
Subject: Life & Society
Science is a magnificent human achievement. But it cannot tell us how to live, or what we should live for. The need for that kind of meaning is, for us humans, as deep and relentless as the need for food or water. It cannot be denied for long.
Author: Wilfred M. McClay | Subjects: Life & Society, Math & Science
Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control. These three alone lead life to sovereign power.
Author: Alfred Lord Tennyson | Subjects: Life & Society, Power
The progress of man has never been impeded by preconceived ideas regarding his abilities, his proper interests, and his appropriate activities. Woman has always been so hampered.
Author: Faith Fairfield | Subjects: Culture, Feminism, Perception | Observation
Life is the sum of all your choices. History, by extrapolation, equals the accumulated choices of all mankind.
Note: only the first sentence is attributable to Camus I think…
Author: Albert Camus | Subjects: History, Life & Society
Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you represents determinism; the way you play it is free will.
Author: Jawaharlal Nehru | Subjects: Life & Society, Wisdom
Success, not greatness, is the only god the entire world serves.
Author: Cameron Crowe | Source: Drew Baylor (character played by Orlando Bloom) in the movie, Elizabethtown (2005) | Subjects: Culture, Life & Society, Success / Failure