2097 Quotations Found

Every reporter I know has to whore now and then, but damn if I understand those who pimp too.

Author: George Reedy | Note(s): Press secretary to Lyndon Johnson | Subject: Journalism

“What does it all mean?” is the wrong question. We are not looking for the meaning of life, we are looking for the experience of being alive, which the quest for meaning wipes out. The quest for meaning is what removes us from life.

Author: Joseph Campbell | Subjects: Life & Society, Philosophy

[Americans have] the habit of thinking in terms of comparison, of perpetual competition; either a thing must be the biggest and best in the world, or you must blush for it. But only ways and means are good comparatively and on a single scale of values. Anything good intrinsically, anything loved for its own sake, is its own standard, and sufficient as it is. The … [ Read more ]

Author: George Santayana | Subjects: America, Perception | Observation, Psychology | Behavior

Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.

Author: George Santayana | Subjects: Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior

I wish to mourn perpetually the absence of what I love or might love. Isn’t that what religious people call the love of God?

Author: George Santayana | Subjects: Love, Religion

True reason restrains only to liberate; it checks only in order that all currents, mingling in that moment’s pause, may take a united course.

Author: George Santayana | Subject: Thought | Inquiry

Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer: There is nobility in preserving it coolly and proudly through a long youth, until at last, in the ripeness of instinct and discretion, it can be safely exchanged for fidelity and happiness.

Author: George Santayana | Subjects: Thought | Inquiry, Wisdom

Cultivate imagination, love it, give it endless forms, but do not let it hold you. Enjoy the world, travel over it, and learn its ways, but do not let it hold you. Do not suffer it to oppress you with craving or with regret for the images that you may form of it. You will do the least harm and find the greatest satisfactions, if, … [ Read more ]

Author: George Santayana | Subjects: Imagination, Material Possessions, Personal Improvement, Philosophy, Travel

The true role of journalism is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

Author: Finley Peter Dunne | Subject: Journalism

They drew a circle that shut me out,
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But love and I had the wit to win.
We drew a circle that took them in.

Author: Edwin Markham | Subjects: Life & Society, Love, Poetry

In a competitive society, most things can be had at a price – though it is often a cruelly high price we have to pay. […] The alternative is […] the favor of the mighty.

Author: Friedrich Hayek | Subject: Economics | Economy

Of all the judgments we pass in life, none is as important as the one we pass on ourselves. Nearly every psychological problem – from anxiety and depression to self-sabotage at work or at school, from fear of intimacy to chronic hostility – is traceable to low self-esteem. In the chaotic and competitive world we face today, both personal happiness and economic survival rest on … [ Read more ]

Author: Nathaniel Branden | Subject: Psychology | Behavior

We think, and with those thoughts, we create. We create the world we live in […] We harvest in life, only and exactly, what we sow in our minds.

Author: Dr. Dennis R. Deaton | Subjects: Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior, Thought | Inquiry

Good turns are pleasing only in so far as they seem repayable; much beyond that we repay with hatred, not gratitude.

Author: Tacitus | Note(s): Roman historian | Subject: Psychology | Behavior

All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.

Author: T.E. Lawrence | Note(s): Lawrence of Arabia | Subjects: Dreams, Psychology | Behavior

A condition of being good is that it should always be possible for you to be morally destroyed by something that you couldn’t prevent. To be a good human being is to have a kind of openness to the world, an ability to trust uncertain things beyond your own control, things that can lead you to be shattered in very extreme circumstances for which you … [ Read more ]

Author: Martha Craven Nussbaum | Subjects: Good & Evil, Life & Society, Philosophy, Trust

In some respects, science has far surpassed religion in delivering awe. How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, “This is better than we thought! The universe is much bigger than our prophets said—grander, more subtle, more elegant. God must be even greater than we dreamed”? Instead they say, “No, no, no! My god is a little god, and … [ Read more ]

Author: Carl Sagan | Subjects: Math & Science, Religion

As a nation we began by declaring that “all men are created equal.” We now practically read it as “all men are created equal except Negroes.” When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read, “all men are created equal, except Negroes and foreigners and Catholics.” When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty. … [ Read more ]

Author: Abraham Lincoln | Subjects: Freedom | Liberty, Immigration, Politics & Public Policy, Race Relations, Tolerance

Human reason has this peculiar fate that in one species of its knowledge it is burdened by questions which, as prescribed by the very nature of reason itself, it is not able to ignore, but which, as transcending all its powers, it is also not able to answer.

Author: Immanuel Kant | Source: Preface to Critique of Pure Reason | Subjects: Philosophy, Thought | Inquiry

…men always feel insecure when their privileges are challenged. They are not prepared to accept the invasion of their wonted routines. They seek to make their private claims universal rights; and those who provide them with the means of enforcing their claims are regarded as their saviors. The limits of men’s faith in a reason which disturbs their established expectations are more narrow than they … [ Read more ]

Author: Harold J. Laski | Subjects: Philosophy, Psychology | Behavior